A nice residential area. When so many houses across the city and especially in Earth N were prefabricated or rushed out, the houses here were three stories, with built-in garages. Driveways were often brick laid out in patterns. Things marked it as different from the Earth I’d grown up in. Lawns were transplanted from the landscape that had been here prior to the houses going up, or the existing material hadn’t been removed. The ground was uneven, rough, with dense weeds often overtaking or replacing grass. Where trees stood on many lawns, the trees were older, less cultivated, with stubborn and jumbled root systems and gnarled branches. Many had burls.

The veins of gold and yellow ran through much of it, too. The middle and sides of the road were marked with serrated lines of yellow triangles. The area didn’t have a dense assortment of streetlights, and I imagined the triangles were meant to catch headlights in the dark, so drivers would see three dotted yellow lines marking the bounds of the road.

Fences, trees near the road, rocks at the corners of property and other potential obstacles had their own dashes of yellow paint, stickers, or ribbons.

Kenzie’s house was steel gray, consisting of three sections, with only the rightmost having a third story—and it had a garage below that taller section. The roof was peaked over the front door but sloped toward the front, everywhere else. The windows were large, modern, with stained glass in frames hanging in between many of the windows and the curtains. Clear glass, gray-black tinted glass, and rose pink. Two cars in the driveway, with one being the van that Kenzie had used in the past to transport her tinker stuff.

She had a key hanging from a chain at her neck, and used it to let us in.

The walls were eggplant, and it somehow didn’t look terrible. Monochrome art and art that was mostly monochrome with really bold yellows and oranges to catch the eye ran through the entire foyer, with more pictures going up the wall in parallel with the stairs. I could smell Italian spices and I could hear a volatile hiss of steam from the kitchen as meat cooked.

“I’m home!”

Her mother appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, apron on, color matched to the slate walls and blue decor of the kitchen I could see behind her. She used a tea towel to dry her hands.

“Victoria. It’s so nice to have a guest. We don’t get the opportunity that often, because we have a tinker in the house, who doesn’t always clean up after herself.”

“Mommmmm.”

Irene pursed her lips together, before giving me a bit of a smile. “Everything went well today?”

“Reasonably well,” I said. I pulled my bag around. “I wanted to bring wine, but it wasn’t doable since we thought we might get into a fight. I brought chocolate.”