Lion's Gift

Chapter 8

When we get home, my mom backs up the car into a slot in our 28-car garage. I look at the house I have lived in since I was a year old. The house is secluded, with a huge property surrounding the large house.

It isn't a mansion, of course, since it's only the four of us at home most of the time, but it is extravagant. Huge oak and pine trees surround our house around the large lawn and yard. The outer walls are a creamy white color and there are many windows to let as much sunshine in as possible, but the glass is bulletproof since in our small town it rains much and even hails sometimes.

The lush green grass surrounding our house itself is weeded every week or so when me, my younger brother, Varun, my father, and my mother get together to spend time outside to take care of our garden. We started this tradition a couple of years ago, after we paid our gardener, Carrie, enough money to support herself and her seven-year-old brother, who has recently recovered from cancer.

There are different sections of the garden, with sections for local and exotic flora, sections for fruits and vegetables that grow on vines, in stalks, underground, and my personal favorite, a section for my mother's and my hand-selected roses. There are a few elaborate marble bird baths, feeders, and animal shelters for small animals and insects that help the garden. Every year, a community of beautiful and rare dragonflies, butterflies, and birds return to our garden. Our garden, though closed to the public, is often a topic for conversations amongst the others in town; a couple of times a few visitors, photographers, and those who are interested in our mini paradise have gotten permission from my father to roam about, taking photos and asking us questions about specific plants and animals.

Varun isn't as interested in gardening as me or mom, but he does have his own pot with a very large succulent, echeveria elegans. I gave it to him as a present on his tenth birthday (he's two years younger than me), and it was a tiny little thing in a small brown clay pot. He took good care of it every day, and now it is in a large, translucent glass pot that sits in the sun on a pedestal. It has many smaller daughter plants surrounding the middle mother plant, and the succulent leaves or petals are vibrant shades of green and blue, and even a little purple. A few pink buds poke out here and there, amongst the humungous petal like leaves.

Our house itself has three floors, an attic, and two basement levels. On the ground floor we have the usual; three sitting rooms, two kitchens, three dining rooms, a couple of storage closets, two bathrooms, an extra guest room, and a room filled with all the monitors for security cameral and such, which has a hidden door and is a room with no windows. Not many people outside our close family knows how to access this room, or even that it exists. On the second floor are my parents' room, my brother's room, a couple of closets, three guest rooms, an extra bathroom, two more sitting areas, and another kitchen with a dining room attached.

My parents have the largest bedroom of the house, with an attached bathroom, walk-in closet, and a sitting area. They have large windows covered with beautiful curtains and luxurious furniture. Varun has a smaller, but still very large room with the same attachments. His room theme goes along green tones, while my parents' is more shades of gray.

On the third floor is my room, my music room, my dance room, five guestrooms, two sitting areas, an extra bathroom, and a couple of closets. In the attic are two rooms for my grandparents (all of them are still living), when they visit, and the rest of the space is occupied by special rooms like my library. Rooms like the music room, dance room, and the library are technically belonging to the whole household, but they are mainly for my use, like how my brother has his art and game rooms, my father has his study and pool room, and my mother has her study and a separate room for her special cooking in the attic.

My room is larger than my brother's but smaller than my parents'. It has the same attachments, and my room theme is blue, with a large variety of shades, anywhere from pastel blue, to teal, to robin egg's blue, to navy.