<div style="text-align: justify;">She <span style="font-style: italic">did</span> feel wanted and welcome. Much more than she had expected to be. A brittle laugh escaped her as she felt Jill's warm hand on her shoulder. <span style="color: #4080FF">"'s all good,"</span> she said, looking at Dimitri's nose instead of his eyes. It was ridiculous and embarrassing, the way she was acting. Jill hadn't meant anything by her question. And how was she supposed to know about a long lost friend of a girl she had only just met? Alannah absentmindedly patted Jill's hand and forced the smile to return. She raised her chin and carefully brushed her hair behind her ear. <span style="color: #4080FF">"So,"</span> she continued, voice not the least bit shaky. <span style="color: #4080FF">"Don't I evah get to see the resta the house?"</span><br/><br/><div><hr style="height:2px; width:100%; border:0; color: silver;background:silver;"/></div><br/>The upstairs turned out to be much like the downstairs, if the downstairs had had a long, narrow hallway. There were three doors. One door at the far end, two lead into rooms on the left. Alannah followed behind Dimitri; it was much too cramped for them to walk side by side here. They were right beneath the roof, too. Not accustomed to walking with her neck halfway bent down, she scraped her head more than once. Dimitri had no problems, despite being taller than her. <br/><br/>It turned out the the door at the end was a bathroom. The other doors respectively lead into a somewhat dusty attic and his bedroom, he told her. Alannah stuck her head inside one door and immediately withdrew with a sneeze. <span style="font-style: italic"><span style="color: #4080FF">No wondah the resta the house is spotless, they kept it all in here!</span></span> <br/><br/>They left the attic alone and opened the last door. She lingered against the door frame as he went inside and sat down on his old bed, resting his elbows on his knees. Little particles of nothing and everything glittered in the lazy sunlight that flooded through the slanted window in the roof. A bookshelf stood at one end. Faint, golden letters shone from dark green backs. She couldn't tell what they said from here, but there were a lot of them, so it was probably a lexicon of some sort. Her eyes glided upwards to a globe that stood atop the bookshelf. She remembered the first time she had seen one of those, and smiled. She continued to explore the room with her eyes as she took a creaking step inside. Behind Dimitri were a couple more shelves, though these were completely free of books. She kneeled on the twin sized bed to get a closer look. It reminded her of a magpie's nest. There was a faded picture of a dark haired, widely grinning teenager sitting next to a foal. A ship in a bottle, as well as a larger ship without a bottle. A tarnished mouth organ had been forgotten behind one of them. <br/><br/>Alannah took down the picture and grinned back at the boy. <span style="color: #4080FF">"That ya?"</span> She asked as she handed it to Dimitri and sat herself down properly next to him.</div>