(open)
The inside of Gaheris' little house out in Nexus-land is wall-papered completely in his own drawings of his past and present, meticulously nailed into the sod bricks with all the obsessive patience Gaheris has learned over the last thousand years. He's moved in completely--he lost the apartment in New York--and a box of Salvation Army clothes is shoved under the little bed. In the few months he's been here, he's been working steadily, and he has new shelves on the walls, the table from his old apartment beside the fireplace, and even a couple of low footstools that can be used to crowd around said fireplace in the event of cold. The shelves are full of boxes of pencils and charcoal, packs of cigarettes, stacks of paper, and tubes of oil and acrylic paints. A crooked easel is leaning against one wall; a carefully excavated hole in the floor is just deep enough into the cool earth that he can store a couple six-packs of beer in there (a canvas has been laid over the opening to keep things moderately safe).
Gaheris doesn't collect memories very well except from his own head onto paper, but there are also a few tokens on the table: a love-knot Katherine wove him back in Germany, the thing that made it certain he would have to leave; a carved toy of indeterminate species which Siggi made the year he turned ten, and managed nearly to sever his finger in the process, which is why there's a bloodstain on it; and a clay mug that Gaheris himself shaped on the potter's wheel under instruction from a sculptor he worked for in China. He used to move around more than he has in the last hundred years; he used to get something tolerably like a family when he went places. He doesn't do that any more.
From the outside the house is fairly innocuous, with its mud walls and thatch roofing. Since he doesn't worry about food, there's no need to think of a garden. Inside it just looks like the lair of some mad artist, which isn't too far from the truth.
And for his part, Gaheris is getting by. By this time, to be honest, thinking of new suicide attempts to try out has become almost a game--it never actually takes, and Gaheris knows that, so he just does his work and makes new plans, carries them out, goes back to work. Right now he's got the crooked easel set up outside and is painting, all the while working out something complex that involves the New York transit system. He's almost having fun.
Gaheris doesn't collect memories very well except from his own head onto paper, but there are also a few tokens on the table: a love-knot Katherine wove him back in Germany, the thing that made it certain he would have to leave; a carved toy of indeterminate species which Siggi made the year he turned ten, and managed nearly to sever his finger in the process, which is why there's a bloodstain on it; and a clay mug that Gaheris himself shaped on the potter's wheel under instruction from a sculptor he worked for in China. He used to move around more than he has in the last hundred years; he used to get something tolerably like a family when he went places. He doesn't do that any more.
From the outside the house is fairly innocuous, with its mud walls and thatch roofing. Since he doesn't worry about food, there's no need to think of a garden. Inside it just looks like the lair of some mad artist, which isn't too far from the truth.
And for his part, Gaheris is getting by. By this time, to be honest, thinking of new suicide attempts to try out has become almost a game--it never actually takes, and Gaheris knows that, so he just does his work and makes new plans, carries them out, goes back to work. Right now he's got the crooked easel set up outside and is painting, all the while working out something complex that involves the New York transit system. He's almost having fun.