#1
Prompt #1: Describe your character's favorite spot in their home/apartment.
Ava likes to keep things neat and ordered and scheduled; it's part of her armor. Everything in her apartment already has its place, even after just a couple of weeks. From her jacket and bag hanging neatly on the hook by the door, to the keys on the coffee table to the right of the latest issue of Science and a notepad. From the simple wooden desk she bought used with the trim Macbook in the center, to the tidy, tiny kitchen complete with the copper pots she'd splurged on before the move hanging from a small ceiling rack with their handles facing the same direction. She doesn't have a lot of space, but she prides herself on using it well. She likes to look at her brand new place and feel in control of her life.
But her bedroom -- her bedroom is chaos by comparison.
Sure, all her clothes are unpacked and her bed's usually made, but everything else is scattered: her albums, still in the plastic crates she packed them in, stacked against one wall next to her record player. Massive multicolored pillows she picked up here and there occupying one corner. Paperbacks and old copies of scientific journals and cookbooks taking up space under the window, next to the bodran that was a gift from her great uncle in Omagh and the cuatro her grandmother gave her. When she gets home she takes off her jacket, places her keys on the table, puts a kettle on for tea, and goes through all her other rituals, but it's not until she's in her bedroom that she really starts to unwind.
It's hard, sometimes, for Ava to relax. Retreating into herself has become easy since high school, when being invisible was easier than being the mixed girl who didn't quite fit in with the white kids or the black kids, or the girl who didn't really want to look at boys like the other girls and didn't know why, or the first-generation American who always kind of felt like an outsider. Or all of those things in one. But when she's here in her corner she can take off all her armor and plop down amongst her pillows and books. She can put a record on and get lost in some classic Soca or an Irish reel or maybe just some Foo Fighters, and she doesn't feel like she has to tuck any part of herself away.
Ava likes to keep things neat and ordered and scheduled; it's part of her armor. Everything in her apartment already has its place, even after just a couple of weeks. From her jacket and bag hanging neatly on the hook by the door, to the keys on the coffee table to the right of the latest issue of Science and a notepad. From the simple wooden desk she bought used with the trim Macbook in the center, to the tidy, tiny kitchen complete with the copper pots she'd splurged on before the move hanging from a small ceiling rack with their handles facing the same direction. She doesn't have a lot of space, but she prides herself on using it well. She likes to look at her brand new place and feel in control of her life.
But her bedroom -- her bedroom is chaos by comparison.
Sure, all her clothes are unpacked and her bed's usually made, but everything else is scattered: her albums, still in the plastic crates she packed them in, stacked against one wall next to her record player. Massive multicolored pillows she picked up here and there occupying one corner. Paperbacks and old copies of scientific journals and cookbooks taking up space under the window, next to the bodran that was a gift from her great uncle in Omagh and the cuatro her grandmother gave her. When she gets home she takes off her jacket, places her keys on the table, puts a kettle on for tea, and goes through all her other rituals, but it's not until she's in her bedroom that she really starts to unwind.
It's hard, sometimes, for Ava to relax. Retreating into herself has become easy since high school, when being invisible was easier than being the mixed girl who didn't quite fit in with the white kids or the black kids, or the girl who didn't really want to look at boys like the other girls and didn't know why, or the first-generation American who always kind of felt like an outsider. Or all of those things in one. But when she's here in her corner she can take off all her armor and plop down amongst her pillows and books. She can put a record on and get lost in some classic Soca or an Irish reel or maybe just some Foo Fighters, and she doesn't feel like she has to tuck any part of herself away.