A/N: the obligatory chapter for any fic with Odd's family.

It really was not so bad in here, all things considered, Odd reasoned. Sure, there was a funky stench coming from the toilet- but that was to be expected. And the light was doing an odd flickering thing- but who's to say that all the lights in the house weren't doing that too? And sure, it may have been a little cramped, but his room was barely larger than this, when he really thought about it.

Plus, he had Kiwi in here with him.

He was svelte. Fitting in the bathtub was not a problem, and the linen closet inside the bathroom had been heaping with towels. It was comfortable enough for both him and his dog to lay on the nearly a foot of cushioning. And at least no one would barge in and interrupt him. And really, it was the quietest he could remember his house being for a long, long time.

It's not that he couldn't see the joke- he loves humor and locking someone in the bathroom is his type of funny. It's the idea that it probably wasn't meant to be an all-night affair that bothers him. Surely someone was supposed to let him out by now. And chances are, someone was. But Pauline probably thought it was supposed to be Adele who thought it was Marie's job, who had assumed that that Louise would take care of it who reasoned that Elisabeth of course would remember, who had thought she remembered Adele saying that she would. And even if his parents were home that holiday, the chances of noticing one of the brood missing for a night was slim to none. Such was life in the Della Robbia household.

So Odd holds out- he's good at that. He falls asleep in the tub with his arms wrapped around Kiwi and wakes up to the scraping sound of a chair being pulled away and the creak of a door slowly opening. His sisters are there, in their nightclothes and hair going in every which direction. They look apologetic but smirks are pulling at their lips.

"Have a good night?" one asks.

"The best," Odd replies. "A whole night without having to worry about seeing any of your scary faces. It's the most restful sleep I've gotten in months- years even!"

His sisters groan and walk away- but leave the door wide open and that's the important part so Odd hops out of the tub, grabs Kiwi, throws the towels in the bin for dirty clothes, and heads towards his own room. The walls are yellow this time, bright as if a light were shining on top of them. It makes the room look small. His first order of business is changing that.

He paints an orange sky above a wide-open plain, with crops of rocks in the distance. But even that seems to lonely, so in the distance, he paints a blur of pink and imagines that perhaps it's a friendly elf in the desert.

Somehow, it fits.