IV The Bathroom
Ember had been wandering aimlessly around the endless corridors and baffling twists and turns when she saw how dark it was getting outside. She would have checked her watch if she had one, but she didn’t so she hazarded a guess at it being about 10, 11 o’clock. She was exhausted and needed to find somewhere to sleep.
But first she wanted to take a shower. She hadn’t washed since she arrived at the mansion and it showed. Her soft skin which was normally a delicate pale porcelain was now covered with a light layer of grime.
She had changed a lot since the fire. Her hair which had previously hung in a glossy waterfall down to her knees was now cut so that it just brushed her shoulders. She had donated the shorn locks to charity. It was a brilliant fiery scarlet and in certain lights she looked as though her whole head was engulfed in tongues of fire.
Her eyes were a brilliant emerald green but they had lost their sparkle and looked to big for her elfin face. Her clothes hug off her. She was normally slim but now she was a pathetic bag of skin and bone. The girl who had once fought off a gang of fourteen year olds at the age of ten because they insulted her sister was now replaced by a pathetic, sad, shell of a girl. She looked like a ghost wandering along the deserted corridors and when she turned into a room on her left marked “Bathroom” you would have half expected her to float straight through the door.
She didn’t but she nearly fainted when she saw the splendour inside. A huge Olympic sized swimming pool filled the middle of the room. It was empty. But the room was still filled with light multi-coloured steam that tickled and warmed your skin as it floated over you. The walls were tiled in so many different colours all merging together so that it was impossible to tell where one tile ended and the other began. The ceiling was so high you couldn’t see it through the mist and there was a single painting of a beautiful sunset over a beach hanging on a wall. Ember simply stared enraptured and walked over to the edge of the pool. It was so deep that if it were full her feet would be a foot from the bottom. Ember was stunned. This couldn’t be someone’s bath surely?! She knew her uncle was rich but not this rich! Slowly, timidly as though fearful it might bite her she turned one of the taps. There were hundreds all around the edges of the pool and each was a different metal and had a different gem stuck in the handle. The one she turned was made of white gold and had a ruby stuck in it. But the taps didn’t have water coming out. Instead all sorts of different foams and bubbles and different scents came gushing out. From one tap came loads of enormous bubbles big enough to fit a human baby inside. From another ice blue foam with white lilies floating on top. And from another came water that seemed to have all the colours of the rainbow reflected on it’s surface. Soon the pool was close to overflowing and there Ember remained swimming around until the water had gone cold. Coming out she saw some clothes lying on a nearby bench. They had definitely not been there before. Slightly surprised but thinking the whole mansion was so out of the ordinary anyway she put them on. They were warm as though they had just come out of the dryer and she put on some slippers that curled around her petite feet like two small puppies. Red hair dripping she walked out of the steam filled room in search of a place to bunk down for the night.