Bastien
Bastien was finally finding his feet in this strange new world. He'd found clothes, a job (of sorts - they didn't pay him, but it was something to do) and a house no one else seemed to want. Looking inside, it wasn't hard to see why -- half of the ceiling had fallen in, a heavy wooden beam now diagonally laying across the dusty floor. Still, Bastien looked at the fireplace, with its careful brick laying and the relatively untouched second room and decided he liked the challenge.
On the first day he simply cleaned, working around the collapse. There was a story in this house, he felt - notches on the stone that looked like a child's height chart and the remnants of an animals footprints in crude cement outside. He found himself growing more fond of it as time went on and his cleaning improved the house immeasurably.
Still, there was a hole in the ceiling. With some effort he had strung up a oiled cloth to protect him from the worst of the weather, but the beam still remained. He tried his best to cut, shove and break it, but the damn thing was solid. For now, he had given up.
Instead he put his hand to something much more suited to his talents. He had found a stick and some grass, crafted a crude paintbrush - mixing some mud and flowers had given him something he hoped might stain the wood of his door. Gently, thinking of patterns he remembered from his mother's dresses as a boy, he began to paint the doorframe, humming to himself as he swirled the brush over the grain of the wood. He was determined that he would have the most beautiful house on this street before any of them even knew what had happened.
