Description of Haven, for Arithon and Bianca
Living room - dark orange, burnt almost-brown. Laced with a subtle honey. Almost a paprika. Deep red brick fireplace. Very dark blue chairs and rug in front of the fire (which is open). Huge tapestry hung on one wall, depicting scenes from Arda - a Christmas present from Namo. There's a large television and DVD player - it only plays DVD's though obviously, as no television programming on this world.
Dining room - dark red walls.
Kitchen - Spanish style. Terracotta coloured walls and stone tiles.
Bedroom - huge, king-sized, iron-framed bed. All sheets in navy blue. White walls with black edgings, and black picture frames, to match the black bed frame.
En-suite bathroom - black and white for the tiles, walls, towels and fixtures. Large bath/Jacuzzi. Shower big enough to take about five people.
Nursery - yellow.
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Walls throughout the house, and on the stairs, are decorated with photographs taken by Random - landscapes of Columbia and Australia, the ocean, and quite a few of Ramon stolen at moments when he wasn’t expecting them. A few of the two of them together. All beautiful and very very good.
Walking in through the front door takes you into a small porch area, with coat hooks and a place for outside footwear. Past that is the ground floor, which is mostly open-plan. High ceilings and large windows - the ones at the front of the house look over the big lake, with vast amounts of green sky on display.
The room is big but comfortable, the two armchairs and sofa are large and squashy, with lots of cushions. It has an open fire and generally some wood and coal stacked in a bucket next to it.
The kitchen is through an arch in one wall, with a breakfast bar down one side and an island in the middle, with worktops and all modern appliances along the other wall. Very Spanish in its colouring and design, very comfortable. One end opens up on to the dining room, where there’s a wooden table large enough to seat 8-10 people comfortably, a sideboard and cabinet with good cutlery and china.
At the other end, stairs lead down to the basement, where there’s a very well stocked wine cellar and about a years supply of every type of liquor you can think of, including Atlantean. Laundry facilities are also down here, with a small utility area in one corner. On the other side of the cellar, there’s another room. It has shelves in it like a warehouse - there are cases full of cash and bearer bonds there, amounting to about $10 million. Gun racks line one wall for larger rifles and assault weapons, and a bench holds about twenty various kinds of handguns. One set of shelves holds cases and bags, these all contain various types of drugs, ranging from painkillers to heroin. Ramon’s swords and Random’s fencing sabers are hung on the opposite wall from the large guns.
A hallway leads off one corner of the living room and that leads down to the nursery, which is a typical child’s haven of cot, changing table, soft colours and heaps of soft toys, with a mobile hanging over the barred-round crib where Martin sleeps.
The stairs to the upper level are also off the hallway, and they circle round to the upstairs which consists solely of a large bedroom and en-suite bathroom. The bed is enormous and comfortable, there are two armchairs and a couple of chests of drawers, a wardrobe, and a night stand on either side of the bed. The en-suite bathroom is big too, with a huge tub and separate shower, large sink set into a cabinet that holds cleaning equipment. There’s an airing cupboard for towels and bedroom linen, and a rug on the floor that tends to slip over the tiles if you’re not careful.
Outside - the back of the house looks over rough wilderness. The front, as mentioned before, overlooks the lake. It’s about a hundred meters to it though, and there’s a path that’s been cut through grass by fairly constant use. The area around the lake is stony but the water is clear and good for swimming. And there's a large jack pine a little way around the banks (see icon), a beautiful old feature of the landscape.
At the back of the house there’s an outhouse for the generator that powers the place, and a store of logs and wood - complete with axe - for fuel supplies. The house is central heated, of course, but the fuel for the fire is there anyway, because it’s nice to have it.
If your back is to the front of the house, looking to the right will show a large hill - almost a ridge - about three miles away, the land to the left is flat, but wild. Walking to the top of the hill will reveal a panoramic landscape, with a view for miles over flat land, with another huge lake that animals like to come and wallow in. You can literally see for miles from that hill, way out to hills far in the distance.
Current climate is spring-like. Quite warm but prone to showers and a little chilly at night. The lake probably isn’t warm enough to swim in yet. In the summer though, the place gets hot, not just warm.
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In the kitchen, there’s a note for Arithon and Bianca.
Make yourselves at home, treat it as if it’s yours. We won’t disturb you - if we need anything we’ve forgotten, we’ll Trump you first before coming back. Help yourselves to any drink you want - there’s probably not much food in but only because we don’t cook. The door to the bar is usually the front door, it hasn’t let us down yet. Bar’s good at providing groceries but if there’s anything particular you want, Trump us in Portugal and we’ll bring it through from Earth.
Have a good time and make the most of the solitude!
R&R