From the journal of Nikki Feather, June 28

June 28, 2017

     We woke up yesterday morning to pounding rain with lightning and thunder. Within a half hour of us checking outside, it was hailing and we decided to stay here for the morning. We thought, it we're lucky, it'll let up by afternoon and we can still get a couple of hours driving in. But it didn't let up. It's still raining and we're still here.

     I got so bored this morning, I went exploring around the house. It's still really solid, no leaks, even in the attic. I was able to go through all the rooms, even the attic. The rooms upstairs were as empty as the ones downstairs, except for the table with one chair. The windows are mostly still whole, and the stairs and floors are still solid. I was enjoying looking at the old fashioned wall paper in the bedrooms and the old claw foot tub in the bathroom. Then, I found the door to the attic.

     I yelled downstairs, to Jackson, that I was going into the attic and then made my way up the stairs behind the door. It was really dark and my flashlight barely cut through the dusty air. But it did show a small beam of what was in there. I could see lots of old furniture and some trunks. I decided to go get the lantern we had and light up more of the attic.

     When I got downstairs, Jackson was reading one of the other mystery books we'd found but when I told him what I'd seen in the attic so far, he put it down and went back upstairs with me and two lanterns. We spent hours going through the cool stuff in the attic. There is a ton of old furniture, and we took a couple of the wing back chairs downstairs to sit in. Since we're stuck in the house, we might as well be comfortable while we're here.

     I found a stack of trunks and had a ball going through them. There were old clothes, like from the late 1800's on. I found this really old style women's underwear, I think the bottoms were called pantaloons, or something like that. There were a few corsets and some petticoats. In one of the other trunks, there was this cool fringed flapper dress with a moth eaten fur jacket. The dress is bright cherry red and still holding together really well. I put it in one of my bags. There won't be a lot of chances to wear it, but just having it and knowing it's there makes me happy.

     Jackson found this gentlemen's suit from the same time as the corsets and he put it on for fun. I refused to put all the clothes on to go with it, but I did find this cool 40's style cocktail dress and put that on. It's peacock blue and is strapless. We ate our lunch in our fancy clothes and then changed back into our clothes before looking outside. It was still pouring and the clouds went as far as the eye could see. The rain was not going to let up any time soon.

     We went back to the attic and spent another couple of hours exploring and trying on the clothes we found from the different era's. By mid afternoon, we were both tired and covered in dust and cobwebs. We went back downstairs, used some of our water to clean up and changed into clean clothes. Then, we both settled down and read our scary book out loud to each other for a few hours. The sound of the rain on the roof was hypnotic and we both dozed off early.

     It's now been another full day of playing in the attic, napping and reading out loud. Hopefully, the rain will let up soon, but until it does, I've decided this place isn't so bad after all. We've brought a few other pieces of furniture downstairs and have our room set up pretty comfortably. We're safe, dry and there's no undead around that we've found. Not too shabby, indeed.

As a writer and artist, I appreciate any readers and their comments. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. Please, come read the other blog I write for our artisan collective, Raven's Castle Creations, on our website at www.ravencastlecreations.com. It includes posts on art, the mythology of symbols we use in our art, history and more! Also, come see the art we produce in our Etsy store at etsy.com/shop/RavenCastleCreations. Follow us on Twitter at @ravencastleart and on Facebook at @ravencastlecreations.