Writing prompt 22nd Jan 2026

They had been new in the country for 3 days, days that were not getting any shorter. He would leave every morning to look for places they could live in. Too small, too loud, too unsafe, too expensive. Goldilocks' apartment eluded them so far. She made sure the kids were comfortable, well as comfortable as a family of four can be in a hotel room.

The fourth day had not started well. Their only friends, the only other family brave, or insane, enough to come with them had found a house. A quaint, gorgeous apartment in a nice neighbourhood. "Nothing fancy", they said with the typical faux dismissal that one has to show when blessed with the fortune to escape a shared purgatory. He burned inside. Not with jealousy, but fear. Fear that he'd made the wrong decision, fear that they'd discarded stability for an empty promise, fear that their friends had snapped up the last good apartment in the city. Alright fine, he was jealous.

Someway through viewing another terribly overpriced, dusty apartment covered in a messy collage of furniture he flinched as his phone rang. Being on the recieving end of a call in a new country was unnerving. Her voice came over the phone, filled with sheepishness, embaressement, anger and the slight aftertaste of a repressed giggle - all the emotions that come with taking responsibility for children.

“So, they tried to make pizza in the room”, she said.

“And...?”

“Well they don't fully understand the adhesive properties of melted cheese, so we're going to have to pay the hotel to replace the iron in the room.”

He paused for a bit, the dam bursting slowly and then all at once. Bottomed out and completely full, he burst into laughter for the first time in 3 days in the new country.