- The Last Step Inn
- laststepinn.jpg (46.24 KiB) Viewed 120 times
The first floor is a spacious room with a large hearth that provides warmth to the occupants. A lot of the cooking is done on the hearth, or in the attached kitchen area in the back, which leads out to a fenced in area where the family keeps chickens (most of these birds tend to walk around the entire outdoors as they are prone to escape the pen). The hearth-room is also where the majority of guests sleep, as the low tables and cushions are pushed against the wall to make room on the floor to spread out sleeping mats. This leaves for very little privacy.
At the second floor lives Jinshi and his family, with two spare, albeit very small, rooms. These they offer to travelers who might want more privacy, such as pregnant travelers, or those traveling with very small children. Or if someone thinks they're too important to sleep with the rabble in the common room.
Near the chicken-pen, there's a wooden tub for washing and bathing that has some simple walls put up around it to give some privacy. Not that the chickens give anyone privacy.
When the weather is nice, the inn places tables and benches outside at the front, offering light refreshments and meals outdoors.
Surrounding the inn is a small farming commune, consisting of five other families making their livelihood here under the Imperials' protection. They trade with Jinshi's family, providing them with fresh food and other supplies for the inn in return for goods offered by the travelers. Chickens are abundant here, and the domesticated goats here respects only one person (and it's not the visitors). One of the families have a couple of pigs.
Growing in the small fields and gardens are a variety of hardy grains, vegetables, and some berries.