Neela was finally starting to see Casa as an actual home, as opposed to yet another place she had run away to only to leave later. It was a feeling that she had never quite settled into with Ichika. There she had always felt like she didn’t belong because of her past, here that felt like less of a burden.
Tony helped too, and the house they were doing up to move into together. For Neela, who had been raised outside of a structured pack for most of her life, living in one building with nearly an entire pack in residence felt uncomfortable, even with a building as big as the courthouse. Sharing a single house with Tony however, felt right. Still in close proximity to the pack but with her own private space, shared between her and Tony.
There was still a lingering sense of wrongness at how close she was growing to Tony, her mind constantly thinking back to Julian, but Neela was working past that, trying her best to put the past behind her.
The house they had chosen was perfect in Neela's eyes. Small, but in a way that made it cosy, not constricting. A living room, furnished with several pillows and blankets retrieved from the Meria to make a sitting area nearby a fireplace, took up much of the room on the bottom floor, with a small alcove containing a stove and some cupboards allowing room to cook. The only other room on the bottom floor was a bedroom with an actual bed of all things, making sure the bed had been safe and finding a good mattress in the nearby towns had taken up much of Neela's time recently.
The second floor was mostly collapsed and unusable, though a small bit of floor near the staircase was usable for storing things. However the structural beams were still present, leaving the option for Neela to rebuild the flooring there when she had more time. For now it presented easy access to the attic and from there the outside of the roof, where most of the damage was.
Neela was working on smoothing down some rough edges on some of the floor sections when Tony called down to her. Usually the collie would have taken the upper floors, she was nimble and a good climber from working the Meria, but Tony had insisted for some reason. Neela quickly patter her belt, sending the hammers and other tools hung from it jingling, as she checked she had a packet of nails before she started moving upwards, jumping and climbing nimbly up the exposed beams and broken walling.
Neela had made her way up to Tony's level in short order, climbing up onto the roof through a sizeable hole, and moved over to him, muzzle brushing his cheek in a quick kiss as she came alongside him. She quietly passed him the paper packet of nails and rested her head on his shoulder, following his gaze out over the territory, "Nice view ain't it?" she said quietly, enjoying both the view and his company. Her eyes caught sight of the river, running close past the house, "River is pretty close an this roof is fairly flat, we leave a way to climb up here an this'd be a good fishing spot." she said conversationally.
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