With the faintest trace of a southern accent, she said, “Thank you, Mr. Dru.” She stood still for a moment. “Well…can I come in?” Before I could recover my manners, from behind me, the speakers let out a yelp and a mild curse as the bad guy got clipped by a bouncing fireball sent his way by the Wizard. “Am I interrupting something?”
“What? Oh, not at all. Come in and make yourself comfortable. I’ll turn off the book.”
She smiled a little bit wryly at that comment. “Hey, I enjoy reading as much as the next guy, but I love listening to a well-read story. It feels right to me.” I forced out a chuckle like a normal person would do and held my hands up over my head, shaking them and saying, “If I was a deep thinker or something equally smug, I’d probably say, ‘Stories should be spoken aloud and shared by word of mouth’.”
She walked into my house and across my floor timidly, her steps hesitant and her eyes searching my walls and floors for something. “Is everything alright?” I asked as she made her way deeper into my living room.
She deflected, “I like your house. It’s…simple.”Huh. Unintentional backhanded compliment aside, my house is a simple affair with a basic floor plan. It consists of one large living room that could act as my dining room assuming I ever had a guest. At the back of the house is the small kitchen hiding behind a half wall. You can see straight into and out of it. Off to the left side of the house and behind a blond-stained wood door are my bedroom and master bath. Off to the right behind one plain white door is a bathroom for those same non-existent guests who get to eat in the dining room. It also connects to the room behind the other plain white door in the wall leading to a second bedroom that I had turned into a training room complete with heavy bags and fighting dummies. I’m not sure why. I never use it.
