HtH83 – The House We Want To Build (ii)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The girls plan the rebuild the room, Lumi thanks Minara for taking care of the rose.
"We should knock down the wall here so it leads straight to the kitchen!"
"--- a doorway that leads straight to the kitchen you say, Ablam? Mistrál shall write it down---"
"Ablam, no! That wall leads to the dining hall!!!"
"What about this one then, Eclair?"
It is now well past noon, and most of the burnt debris has been cleaned up. Within the blackened four walls, Piaccta has pulled over a picnic table. Measuring tape, handwritten notes, and crumbs from light snacks cover the top of this table, with Mistrál hunched over it with great excitement!
Our local inventor pores over the measurements she made for the room, and the many suggestions the girls gave for what the remodeled room would look like. Amongst them, a suggestion for a quiet tearoom, a front-facing pizza parlor for the "Piaccta Pizza" franchise, a grand games corner fit for socialites and theatre queens, all duly noted in Mistrál's neat handwriting.
A chance to build something entirely new!
And they got to design it themselves!
The girls all wanted different things, and none were discarded. Just stored for later consideration.
"Personally, I think Lumi's suggestion has merit..."
Eclair holds up a paper printed in tiny, almost illegible font.
Lumi had laid out a vision of an immersive 'multi-sensory experience'. A room open to people from outside the house, a place for stories, and a central stage for performances, plays, musical numbers...
"... and even spinaroonies! With big, big, windows so fans can look in!"
Piaccta remarks, spreading her arms out wide, having just come in with Hikari and Jules from inside the house. They had come back from putting away the burnt debris away, and were reading the note passed around.
"I think the idea of 'hidden alcoves' we can fill with books and artifacts is a fantastic idea---"
"What about my idea of connecting it to the kitchen, Hikari?? See, Lumi even wrote in an idea for a mini-kitchen---" Ablam points excitedly to a part written about a small cozy kitchen for tea and snacks,
"Mistrál is sure that if we work together, we can find a way to integrate your suggestion, Ablam."
"... it would be best if we didn't have to knock down a wall or two!" Eclair hastily adds!
Eclair tries to pry Ablam's hand from where the would-be doorway would be created, but Mistrál is already silently drawing schematics for an explosive-powered sledgehammer with an extremely long handle...
Throughout the excitement, Mistrál doesn't forget to look up.
To look towards the direction of the front garden,
where a shadow darts behind what's left of the wall, as if making herself smaller would make her unseen.
Unseen to her good sister-in-law, that is.
Mistrál smiles.
A knowing, Mistrál kind of smile.
(soft crinkling of grass from the front garden)
"Miss Minara, why are you hiding outside in the garden?"
Our local goblin yelps, spinning around what's left of the garden-facing wall to see Lumi coming up from behind! She had been so focused on observing the strange scene that was happening, she hadn't even noticed the teal-haired girl come up behind her.
"Did I scare you... just now?" Lumi fidgets around in place, hand clutching the side of her snowy-blue skirt.
"No...! I mean, I just don't understand..."
From where Minara was standing, the scene looked like something unreachable.
Something she shouldn't walk into, lest she disturb the laughter coming out of the house.
For someone like her, watching from the outside was far more than she deserved.
Why wasn't anyone blaming anyone else here? More importantly, why wasn't anyone blaming her?
It was a place foreign to her, foreign to how she grew up, foreign to how she lived her life.
So reaching forward felt like crossing a threshold that didn't make sense to her.
"What don't you understand, Miss Minara?" Lumi blinks, looking up at the blue-haired girl.
"... ... nothing. And everything really...!" Minara pulls the side of her frazzled hair, searching for the right words.
"How... are you all so... nice?"
The girl with teal hair finally understands.
"Miss Minara, you are a nice person too?"
Lumi puts a soft hand out in the front garden's direction, to a small plot where a single rose is growing. Where it had once been wilting, it has now shed its sickly leaves. Some small luster has returned to the half-open rose. If you looked really closely, you would find that small reddish sprouts are forming on the ground around her.
Minara is very familiar with this rose.
When the girls were away in Nangmen, her good sister-in-law had called back a favor to take care of this very rose. To be honest, all she did was to water the rose. In her mind, rather inconsistently, because she would worry about mosquitos, or she would oversleep and skip a day or two.
Still, water it she did.
She kept a promise.
Unsteadily, shakily, sleeplessly, but she did keep it.
And that was important.
"Thank you for taking care of our rose, Miss Minara!"
When Lumi beamed at her, the girl did not know what to think.
She simply watched the teal-haired girl cross the threshold, joining the table of happy voices.
What sort of expression did she make?
Did she too, cross the threshold?
These are not questions easily answered in the moment.
A theatre house is not built in one day.
It is built with steady steps, patience and understanding.
Hell's Theatre, continues.
We are trying something different! This is a simul-posting at the same time as the Scribblehub release! Go check out the entire series at this link!
