The van was piled high with boxes of mostly brand new personal belongings. It was a little too heavy on the left side. When it went around one of the many bends in the road it would lurch slightly to the left, leaving Lovino to wonder for a milisecond if it was going to tip over. It didn't. The rented van safely reached it's destination and came to a halt in front of the enormous, overgrown lawn with a stepping stone path that lead up to the old and massive, 70 room villa Lovino Vargas and his younger brother, Feliciano had mysteriously inherited. Yeah, some old man apparently given them a whole mansion in his will. His relationship to the brothers was unspecified. The man might not even be dead. He was just assumed dead because he went on a boating trip 10 years ago and never returned. In his will it said Lovino and Feliciano Vargas were to inherit his villa and the contents therein upon Lovino reaching the age of 21. The most mysterious thing was: It was suspected their benefactor had been using an alias during his time owning the villa.
Lovino and Feliciano started unloading boxes and taking them into their new residence. "Let's put them all in the parlour, we can move them as we unpack. I could really use a siesta." Feliciano said to his brother as he set another box on the intricately carved late Renaissance era end table.
"How could you need a nap right now, you had two fucking cups of expresso this morning." Lovino retorted. "anyway, I'll go make a pizza, you do what you want." He relented. Lovino stepped into the main kitchen (there were three kitchens), which had olive green walls, cheddar orange counter tops and a banana yellow refridgerator and stove. "This room is hideous." Lovino muttered. He'd have to do something about that someday. He started putting dishes and food away in the cabinets, except the ingredients he would need to make pizza.
About an hour and a half later, Lovino leaned up against the kitchen door frame and shouted "Wake your ass up, Fratello, the pizza is ready." When his little brother didn't come after 5 minutes, lovino headed down the hall and into the parlour where Feliciano slept on a red velvet and ebony sofa and kicked him awake.
"Yay. We won't have to move anymore because we have our own house. Ve, I am so sick of foster homes and youth shelters." Feliciano said with a mouth full for veggie pizza, shortly into dinner time, when they sat down at the window seats in the dining room. Lovino didn't say anything, but contemplated this as he stared down at the empty, greasy, plastic plate in his lap. They had been shuffled from foster home to foster home since Lovino was four years old and Feli was two. They weren't always in the same foster home together. For the past two and a half years, they had been living in homeless shelters and youth hostels, not staying in the same place for more than four months. Lovino had had a couple of farm jobs and had been a waiter in a Spanish cafe during that time. Feliciano never even tried to get a job. Lovino had been saving money for the past 2 years and then decided to blow most of it in the last week, busy buying house hold items such as a mop and a toaster and a coffee maker.
What was that? Feliciano was making a noise. Oh, he was playing with a green marble. Feliciano dropped the marble and it started to roll across the stone tiled floor and into the colourful kitchen. He chased after it. Then there was a grinding noise. Was he moving the fridge? Yep.
"Lovi, you need to come see this right now!" Feliciano exclaimed. Lovino ran into the kitchen. His brother was squating beside the refridgerator in a dark grimey circle where it was obvious the appliance had been a minute before. Behind this spot was a small door in the wall that Feliciano was holding open. Instead of it leading into the front yard like it should have been, it appeared to be leading into a short dirt tunnel with what was clearly daylight at the other end. Feli stuck his hand in to demonstrate that it was real. "Isn't it neat? I think I found a tunnel to another dimension. Like Narnia."
"How can you be so fucking nonchalant about this?" Lovino said before following his younger brother into the tunnel. He thought it looked dangerous and he had to keep his airhead brother safe.
The tunnel widened, then opened up about twelve feet from where they had entered. The young men stood at this jagged opening and gazed out. They saw tropical foliage that extended out and down for hundreds of metres. They heard exotic bird song. Lovino figured the stench present was what a rain forest would smell like. He appeared to be on a plateau on one side of a large valley. On the far side of the valley he saw what looked like a village. "Let's not tell anyone about this." Lovino suggested to, it turns out, to no one because Feliciano had disappeared in the two minutes Lovino had not been paying attention. Damn it. He'd have to search for his brother. Again. It was not the first time he'd had to do this, but this time, he didn't know where they were, so more was at stake.
P.S. Feli never found his marble.