Where does your character live? Take the weekend to write a descriptive scene showing your characters house and bedroom/where they sleep.

It's simple, really: the house. Settled on a grassy knoll, just past the scattering of trees that mark the edges of the forest at the foot of the mountain, Papaw's house sits. It's part of the larger – if one could call it that – community of Meadow Bridge, also at the foot of the hill. Tyler has fond memories of Papaw's house, of its brown siding and single story. The porch has always been white, although the paint is chipping now, and the knoll is wasting, pulling dirt from the foundation, baring its creekrock base and concrete porch pillars (added many years after the house was originally built).

Inside is simple: the foyer is the living room; branching to the right is a short corridor where a restroom and two bedrooms are attached. Through the end of the living room is the kitchen – yellow, dull, dusty. A door leads to the backyard on its back wall, and another hallway is to the right; the washer and dryer are behind a slitted wooden door that folds, and the master bedroom is behind a fragile-looking door at the end of the hall. That's where Mamaw and Papaw's room used to be, but since Mamaw's passing, Papaw has slept in one room off the living room.

Tyler moved in before Papaw left, and he took the spare guest room. It is immediately across from the restroom in the hall by the foyer. The room has a simple wooden door (orange), and enough room for basic necessities. When Tyler first moved in, it was just a twin bed and a dresser about two feet from its footboard. The single pillow was in a blue case, and still is, and the comforter was a stiff, floral thing that didn't match the blue pillow. After Courtney returned with his car, Tyler replaced it with a too-large black comforter, and sleeps on all-black sheets. Sparrows – poorly taxidermied on an ornate wooden base – are set on top of the dresser, from when Tyler had had the time to try to learn. Even though the feathers are mussed and the seams are visible on one bird, they still hold a special place in his heart.

Though Tyler largely has no desire to decorate the room further, he had found a tall, straight green glass that was hiding in a box in the kitchen. Papaw said he could have it, and Tyler has it filled with black pawn chess pieces. Each is from a different city he has visited, and they vary in size and style. They sit next to the birds, to their right.

The right side of the room has a single window with lacy, dusty curtains. Light filters in in the morning, illuminating the starch white carpet (also, somehow, dusty), and a folding wooden door on the other side of the bed that houses the closet. The closet is simple, and Tyler has a few clothes hung up in it. Since he has largely lived a nomadic life, settling down isn't something he does well; most of his belongings are still in his car, though he did bring in a beat-up cardboard box full of his favorite childhood things. It sits in a corner of the closet, quietly closed and mostly unbothered. Everything is kept tidy, including his bed, which he painstakingly makes each morning under the illusion he could leave any time he wants – thus why the room is so bare-bones.

The rest of the house is only noteworthy due to the amount of photographs that Papaw has hanging on the walls. Most depict his time with Mamaw, although there are plenty of photos of their children... though Tyler's mom is oddly missing from the photographs hanging on the wood-paneled walls. The chairs and sofa in the living room seem unnaturally starchy, and smell like old women's perfume. The kitchen is dingy and dark, matching the bathroom that is done in the same yellowed linoleum and orange-ish cabinetry. Papaw's room is piled with clothes and papers, but no one touches that. Mamaw and Papaw's room was taken over by Courtney after Papaw left, but Tyler only has a general idea of what the room looks like since he doesn't bother her (she painted the wood paneling white, and has some posters hanging).

715 words | divider from Falrefaei Collier on toppng