Dear Mama, dear Papa,
I told you I’d send you a longer message as soon as I’d find the time, so here we go. If I’m being honest, I really miss you and Kiara. I know we’d all been excited about me moving out, but life in the Colony is so different from what I’m used to that I sometimes have trouble falling asleep out here. Especially when the waves are higher and it’s harder to ignore that I’m essentially drifting out on the open ocean, so much water on all sides—protected only by some metal and technology I barely understand. You never feel less in control than when your entire life depends on what's basically a nutshell balancing on the vastness of the wide ocean.
We don’t have news on what happened to great-uncle Dan yet, but I will let you know when we find out. I’m still not sure what to expect. Nobody here knows anything. He just… disappeared.
Well, enough complaining.
It’s our second month now, and aside from a few little things, I could as well be living in paradise. We have so much more space than at home and I’ve never felt more free in my life, especially when I look out the windows and the water seems to stretch into eternity. We have one big hub that all the smaller house boats connect to, if you want to know more about the technology behind it you should ask Kami though. She’s gotten a lot more involved in everything than me or Tim, which is fortunate because we’d be lost without her. Most public life takes place on the hub—my most favourite place in the whole world are the huge garden platforms where they plant and harvest our food. Kami started working there last week. Apparently she has a knack for plants.
Tim has found work in one of the administrative buildings, but he can work from home so we share the work room most days. I’ve actually started to work on that story I told you about, the one with the three kids and the little monsters. I’ve even done some preliminary character and setting sketches already. I think I might change parts of the original idea and transplant the whole thing here? The house boats are such an interesting place to set a story, especially with the tight-knit communities and the kindness everyone is displaying. (Especially when you then start wondering what happened to Daniel). Tim keeps talking of murder mysteries and Dan’s disappearance, always accompanied by suggestive eyebrow wiggling. You know how he is. I think moving here made it worse, actually, though he’s so much more relaxed and happy these days ♡ No matter my ocean-related nightmares, I don’t regret any of it one bit.
I’ve attached a few sketches I’ve done of the place, I’ll see if I can find the floor plan as well and mark things for you. (AN: I made you a very rough sketch of the important areas. I hope it makes sense!) I know you visited once, but Dan changed a lot of things in the meantime, and we’ve switched things around a bit more, too. There’s a bathroom, three huge leisure areas (two in the “wings”), two bedrooms (Tim got the single one with the big bed because he snores, but we do tend to switch around sometimes), a really nice kitchen, and the option to move stuff to the roof and stay out there when the sea is calm.
I still work every day, but it’s so much easier to take time off as well, especially because everyone is provided for here. I think I already look five years younger!
Tim's bedroom and the door to one of the 'wings', depicted shortly after we moved in so it didn't look quite as unkempt yet ;) The door is massive (as all of them are) so even if one area gets flooded for whatever reason, we won't sink (unless the leaks are massive, but even then we're at least partially connected to some of the other boats. So, no worries: we're as safe as we can be!)
From what I can tell, Dan was a really good cook, much better than all three of us combined. He left a bunch of cookbooks behind too. Oh, there are so many books… on everything. It’s basically heaven! I’m only used to ebooks, but paper books are so much nicer. I wish we’d had the space, growing up. But yeah. All of the furniture is stapled to the floors, or you can fix them in place with e-magnets and thin metal cables. They’re used to keep everything from falling out of the shelves too. We had a minor accident on the second day when we forgot to fix things in place before going to bed, but nothing major since. I’m glad that we moved into this already lived-in space though. Makes it much easier to know where to put what.
The Work Room. It has this really huge panorama window in the roof, so it's far too easy to just zone out and stare at the sky all day instead of working. Or the stars if you're a night owl like me and it isn't cloudy!
We have a lot of plants too—Kami brought most of them over from the hub, to imbue our little space with some life.
The house boat is surprisingly large—we thought it would be cramped and tiny and had already worried whether or not we’d manage to stash all of our things in addition to Dan’s (before sorting through them and throwing out half), but we barely own anything when you compare it to all the stuff Dan has stashed all over the place. It’s kind of weird to live among the possessions of a, well, a ghost. Especially if you can somewhat remember him. I can’t believe it’s already been a year since he went missing. Every time we find something weird, I wonder what the story behind it is… it’s a bit sad, but all of these things… I hope I don’t sound callous, but it’s the best source of inspiration ever.
The living-room. The best place aside from the wings, really! There's a huge panorama window that you can sit in and stare down at the waves from, and on the left it's a tiny bit wider than the wall so you can even hide in a small 'secret' space if you want to! We just need to be careful with the things we put on the tables, because if the waves are suddenly more violent than expected, well... we've broken more stuff through inattention than anticipated.
Everything in the shelves is secured in place and the tables' surfaces are magnetic, but glass bottles usually aren't... oops.
We’d also been worried that it would be too cramped and that we wouldn’t like each other anymore, but there’s a surprising amount of space, and if we’re tired of each other we can disperse all over, even when we have no access to anything outside the boat.
I think I can be happy here. It’s literally perfect, no wonder Dan left us all behind. :P
I’m going to send you a few photos in the next email, but I wanted to practise my environment drawing so you’ll have to bear with me.
Thank you for all your support over the years, it’s meant the world. And I know I've told you so often enough in person, but I wanted to send you this as a physical thing you can… I don’t know, frame or something. Pin it to that vintage magnet thing if you want.
I will let you know when I find enough time for a holo chat!
Yours in love,
Alexis
A rough sketch of the floor plan. I did my best, I really did. The plans I found were device-locked and couldn't be sent or printed, so I did my best to trace and enhance them. I hope my handwriting is readable! The wings can be used for leasure and fitness, if you push everything to the side. Though we usually prefer to do that in the hub, they have a lot more eqiupment than we do.
All in all it's so much more space than I expected, but even though we get along really well, we do need that kind of space for the times when we don't. And even then it's good that we have the hub and our neighbours in addition. ♡