by katreeny » Sun Feb 24, 2008 1:26 pm
The room beyond is large and dimly lit. You can see windows on either side, but heavy shutters beyond them block daylight out. In front of you, there's a large lowered section shaped into a more or less circular seating area covered with cushions. The wall opposite the door has shelves like the ones you climbed in Experiments. The ornaments on the shelves look like treasured mementos rather than anything intrinsically valuable.
Near the outer window, you find a lever that opens the shutter, letting sunlight spill in. Now you can see that the window has an intricate stained glass pattern although it doesn't look like traditional stained glass. You cross to the other side of the room and open the other window, which looks out over a crater lake.
The shelves don't have much on them at all - some framed photos of attractive scenery, crystal sculptures that have an organic 'grown' look, and a few miniature dragon figurines.
You move through the archway into the next room.
This is a kitchen and dining area. You open the shutters on the inside and outside walls, then investigate. The dining table is a slab of rock that stretches over a lowered section like the one in the living room behind you. It's polished stone, with a checkered cloth haphazardly thrown over it. There's no dust, and no sign it's ever been used.
The kitchen section has shelves with crockery and silvery set neatly, other shelves holding pots and pans, and a basin with two levers and a faucet. The red lever does indeed produce hot water - hot enough to steam - and the blue one has cool water. There's a small stove which appears to simply be hot. Boxes on the shelves hold food, but not very much, and beside them is a book with a cover that says "Garden."
You open the book, and find several linking panels, one showing a grove of apple trees, another showing a field of berry bushes. Others show plants you don't recognize, but which have familiar-looking fruits.
After your experience with Experiments, you're a little reluctant to link away until you know more about the diarist, so you let the book lie. (You could link there - more on that later).
A heavy curtain separates the kitchen and dining room from the next room, which appears to be another living room. This one is more subdued than the first room, and instead of shelves has a single low table under the outside window. Instead of an inside window there are glass doors leading out to a patio.
You open the shutters, and go out onto the patio. It's got a pale green all-weather carpet on it, and stairs lead down to the lake. There's a beach there with black sand. Tucked in between the stairs and the crater wall you find an old-fashioned washing machine with a mangle, and strung lines for hanging clothes. The washing machine is powered by cables running down from the roof of the patio, which you guess must have solar panels on it.
The washing machine is empty, and there are no clothes on the lines. The beach is smooth, as though no-one's ever walked there before. The walls of the crater are too steep to climb, so you go back up to the second living room.
Another heavy curtain hides a door with yet another strange lock. This one has a panel of stained glass forming a series of swirls in to a clear center.
You check the notepad again. "Red. No, blue." Is written on the last page. "Blue" is underlined. You look back at the stained glass panel. Every color except blue has two swirls. You reach out and carefully trace the blue swirl from the outside to the center.
You hear a soft hum, and the door slides back into a recess in the thick stone wall. Beyond is another glittering stairwell with those crystal lights set in the wall to light it.
At the top of the stairs is another door, this one - thankfully - open. You've had enough of doors with peculiar locks. The room beyond is a bedroom.
Here, the shutters are open, letting you see the large roughly circular nest in the middle of the room. The pillows and covers are in disarray, the first sign that someone actually uses the place. Hand-made quilts drape the bed-nest, rumpled and tossed aside. Blue gauzy fabric drapes from the ceiling to hooks set around the room, giving the impression of being inside an exotic tent.
There's another door beside the stairwell, as well as the one on the other side of the room.
The door near the stairwell leads to a bathroom with a pool almost as big as the bed filled with steaming water. The water circulates in a gentle flow from the bedroom side to the kitchen side. Shelves along the wall hold towels, brushes and soap, and a gilt-framed mirror hangs from the wall above a hand basin. On the far side of the bathroom, another door opens to a toilet very similar in design to the one in the Bathroom Age.
There's nothing in either room that you wouldn't expect to see there, so you return to the bedroom. The draping actually hides nooks holding hanging areas for clothes and some chests which hold tee shirts and more... personal clothing.
You move to the other door, which is also open.
The room beyond is a study. Except for the windows, the walls are lined with shelves, and the shelves are filled with books. Some are ordinary books, although it's obvious the diarist's tastes are wide ranging and eccentric. Others are empty, intended as either diaries or Age books. A large section of shelf under the inner window acts as a desk, with a cheap plastic stool beside it.
The desk holds a cracked mug with an assortment of pens, more of the blank books and several linking books, each neatly labeled. "Bazaar", "Materials", "Klein". There's also a belt lying on the desk with a peculiar clip that holds another book, this one labeled, "Lagoon". You wish you'd had that one earlier. You open the Lagoon book, and see the lagoon where you'd first linked in the linking panel. When you turn the page, you see the storage cave on the second island. There is no link direct to the home island.
You put the belt on, thankful that it fits. You still have no way to get home, but at least you can come back to the Lagoon age if you find yourself somewhere unpleasant.
Under the belt is another book. This one is another diary, although it's undated. You skim through it, before adding it to your collection of items to read.
Katreeny - KI 954782