After finishing the initial structure of the house, I started working on decorating it. I had noticed that the more original and the prettier the houses were, the more messages were left on the slate near the door. It also attracted more hikers, that spent more time watching my neighbours’ work in progress, and I was at the point where I no longer just appreciated the feedback, I now aimed to get more…

I built a few lawn chairs, to get people to sit down and stay for a while. I hung pictures on the walls in my home, and tried to find the right angle to make sure people would get a good view… I tried to choose subjects that were in my fields of interest but also met other people’s hobbies and likings…

For some reason, although there were some traces of different persons coming, Him was the only person I spent time with daily… He left mysterious notes at my door, never really clear about anything, but always making his point in the most blurry way. Back then, my life was quite drab, which was exactly why I had embarked in this crazy plan of having a glass house in the woods. My life lacked mystery and excitement, and he was suddenly filling that gap I hadn’t spotted clearly myself.

I was walking down by the lake more and more often too. I’d watch the new paintings in Him’s living room, leave a message about the choice of colors, and left to see what surprise waited for me home. Sometimes, I took my swimming suit with me and stayed in the water a while… Just staring at the house, hoping Him would show up. Sometimes he was home, and would make some fire in a drum he had installed near the shore… Just for me he said, just for our chats… We spoke, late at night, and watched the stars, and re-made the world in secret.

He’d take pictures of me during our chats… “It gave me an idea, for a painting you know?” And the next day, I’d be sure to see a new canvas, with a silhouette lightly looking like mine, betrayed by the flower I had in my hair the night before.

Never would we go into the other one’s house though. We never invited each other in, like for a last coffee… There was none of that ambiguous feeling of, “what if…” or was it? It didn’t matter, since there was no going-into-the-house possibility floating in the air. Sometimes, Him would take me in his arms, just before leaving. I’d close my eyes, enjoy the warmth of the hug, and he would be gone the second I’d open them again, making me wonder if it hadn’t been all in my head…

One evening I had been particularly busy working on stuff like pillow matching and color pallets for the new boudoir, I stepped out on my porch and noticed something new… There was a clearance I had never seen in the woods, and down the hill I could also see something strangely new…

A green light shining…