2.4 Have Your Party

 

Flora misses home when she's away. Freshly back from Shang Simla again, she finds Ariel in the hallway, serenading her with his guitar.

She listens to the love song he sings for her, one he's written in her absence, and she feels now is the time.

 

 

"I've been thinking..." she begins, when he finishes with his song, but she's interrupted.

 

Before she can propose to Ariel, Ariel proposes to her.

 

Flora cannot contain her joy.

 

She hasn't gotten to sleep in her own bed in a while, so Ariel carries her up to it.

 

Ariel gets a call at 1 AM about proving his exercise prowess by working out in three different ways. He isn't sure what's wrong with this town sometimes.

Flora dreams about her big news, and how best to announce it to everyone.

 

Flora asks Iris what she thinks of Ariel.

 

"I like Ariel just fine, but you don't need my permission, sheesh! Congratulations by the way."

"Thank you! I just... wanted to make sure you were cool with all these changes, since he'll be staying with us permanently I think."

 

"Psssh I knew it was going to be permanent from day one. Come on. I'm not dumb. But anyway I'm going to uni after my birthday, and after that who even knows? Maybe I'll travel the world! Like you."

Flora blinks. "I always come home eventually."

"So, um, I wanted to have a wedding party, but Ariel is worried his father might ruin it."

"Maru's getting worse, but he never misses work. Schedule the party accordingly," Alex suggests.

"Well Ariel wants his father there. He just doesn't want his father to do something crazy."

"I don't have a potion to fix Maru Mango, Flora."

Flora sighs sadly. "Maybe I shouldn't have a wedding party. Echo didn't. Am I being ostentatious?"

"No, of course you're not! Have your party. You and Echo just have different ideas of what is fun."

"Well she didn't ask MY opinion," Lupin pretends to be offended. "I'm the genius around here but I get no respect."

"You're just the famiwy beebee," Iris teases, using the baby-talk voice at him that he's always hated.

"Maybe she's still mad about the whoopee cushion..."

 

"You have been kind of a pain lately, to be honest." 

 

 

 

Flora loves the outdoors, so she and Ariel have their wedding party at a small park near their home. It's directly across the street from the Pleasant household, but unlike Ariel's unpredictable, insane father, Flora's biological father is absolutely predictable and can be counted on to not show up.

 

Ariel's little sisters, Morgan and Marsha, are here... but no sign of their father. 

 

Oh well. He was invited, but maybe it's for the best he didn't show.

 

Ricardo Yang (Flint's father) and Lucretia Parrott (Alex's boss).

 

Flora thanks her half-brother Jeff for coming to the party. It means a lot to her.

Ariel barely even notices who's here and who's not. All he can see is the smile on his bride's face.

 

On Lupin's left is classmate Max Strong-Pepper. I don't know why he's here, but what a name.

 

Nice. That +40 mother of the bride moodlet is kicking in.

Morgan watches from waaaay in the back. All she's here for is free cake.

 

Any time now, guys. Morgan isn't getting any younger.

 

Flint Yang finally shows up. 

 

"I'm fashionably late."

 

 

Aaaand he snags the first slice of cake. 

 

 

 

 

"I'm not even sorry."

After dining on cake and salad, Ariel provides the party's entertainment.

Keaunu Keilani provides backup.

Hilary Lum isn't a fan, I guess... 

 

 

 Ariel's teenage sisters seem embarrassed by everything that's happening here.

 

 

Echo and Flint are pleased enough with the music to start dancing to it.

"I'm pregnant," she whispers. "I found out this morning."

The little smile that lights up her husband's face melts her heart.

Tips! The best kind of wedding gift is a monetary wedding gift, right?

"Where'd Mom run off to? I thought I saw her crying..."

"I'm not sure, Lupin... perhaps she was overcome with emotion?"

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Etc. Keaunu Keilani is actually an elder when the game starts. It's my practice now to turn elders the town starts with into young adults, to give them a chance at living a normal sim life, unless they already have families (EG adult children) in the town in which case I let them be. 

 

Ariel's mother, Eleanor Waterson, got the same treatment... but I must have accidentally made her adult instead of young adult, because she's already long dead of old age.

I got the "Echo and Flint are expecting..." story progression pop-up while the two were at the wedding party. I'm glad they're getting along so well.

Outtake from the party. Ariel hoists Flint up for some booze.

2.3 Any More Mayhem

 The plasma vine has its first fruit this morning.

 

 

Alexandria gazes out at the water, not seeing it. The sun warms her skin, heats up her dark hair. She waits here sometimes, in the hours before or after work. She waits for Darshan to come back. A favorite private fantasy.

At first the details were numerous. Darshan would appear by starlight, he would explain what happened, how he made it back to her, they'd talk about the children and they'd make plans about the future. Over time the details faded. She stopped being able to imagine how he would react to Iris and Lupin, she stopped hearing his voice. Perhaps that's when he truly died, she thinks. That moment when she couldn't clearly envision him being part of her life anymore. She did not move on emotionally, but life changed around her, to the point it no longer resembles the one they shared together.

 

Now in her daydreams Darshan still comes back to her, but he says nothing. They embrace in silence. A wordless acknowledgement of pain, of her love enduring despite her failure to find a way to continue expressing it. It doesn't even matter that it's daytime. The sun can't burn a fantasy.  

 

Everyone leaves me.  

 

That thought rattled around in her head when Darshan disappeared. His sudden absence brought back the old pain of losing her parents and sister. Now she finds it resurfacing as her children grow into their own lives. Parenthood had many challenges, but letting go with grace has been the hardest one.

 

 

Alexandria's professional life is coasting along well these days. She knows almost everyone on her tiny island by now, and is invited to many parties. 

 

 

Mostly because people want to get a freebie fortune telling out of her.

 

 

"Your daughter couldn't make it?" Penelope Pepper politely inquires about Flora's activities. Penelope is a local artist who makes jewelry. She's bought several gems off of Flora.

 

"You really need to tell me the secrets of your skin-care routine," Jamel Wahine-Alto, who went to school with Flora, is now a young man, surprised by Alex's long-lasting youth.

Alexandria has to make something up on the spot about her skin care routine.

 

Despite being young enough to be her son, Jamel flirts shamelessly with Alex for a while, making lewd comments and suggestive hand-gestures.

Some women would find this flattening, but Alex is just... squicked out, and excuses herself from the Pepper family's dull party as soon as she can.

 

 Men flirt with her often. Usually not men as young as Jamel, but still.

She's considered dating some, but she always loses her nerve...

"I hope it isn't because of me. I would have wanted you to be loved and happy."

"It's not because of you." She's given it much thought, over the years. She will always love her memories, but there is room to love more. If she wanted to. If she felt ready. If.

 

"You don't want your heart broken again." He shakes his head. "I'm so sorry. I failed you." 

"It's not because of you," she repeats, as if that could make her feelings change.

 

"...when you begin to understand the burden of watching your children grow old and die while you stay young... ...then, you'll come find me. You always have."

 

It's the rocks, behind her house, at the bottom of the cliff, before the ocean. 

 

If she wanted to end her life, she'd probably jump, and aim for these rocks. 

 

But that isn't what the vision means. That isn't what 'come find me' ever meant.

She's always been confused by the words, and turned them around and around in her head searching for some hidden meaning, but... it was always merely a literal request.

 

 

There will be a point where she can't keep watching the world go on without her.

 

 

She loves her children so much, it's hard to think about being apart from them. Flora's world adventures, even Echo's moving to the other side of the lagoon fill Alex with a sort of a sad emptiness. But one day, her youthful looks will go from curious to suspicious, and she will have to leave this place. Where will she go, she wonders? Will her children be able to follow? 

 

Would they want to?

 

At this moment Flora is deep in a tomb in Egypt, chugging one of her potions to stay awake.

 

This has been a particularly fun trip. She finally caught a scarab beetle.

 

Flora won't let Ariel follow her into the dangerous tombs, but she hopes woohoo on four different continents is enough to sate his adventurous trait.

 

Al Simhara is rainy today, but it brings no reprieve from the heat.

 

It's so hot, nobody wants to be properly dressed, even when talking serious business.

 

 

Flora finds some pretty weird stuff in tombs sometimes.

 

 Like... really weird stuff.

Out of potions instead of out of visa time, Flora returns home to enjoy sleeping in her own bed.

 

 

She wastes no time cluttering up the house with her favorite souvenirs.

 

 

Flora is paid to travel, but Ariel still feels like he needs to earn his own living, so it's back to work for him. He auditions for a gig at The Wave, this town's only actual showtime venue, but is rejected.

"You're just not up to our standards, Tank the Bard," proprietor Ursula Lemuel will barely even glance at him as he performs. Not a very good sign for his career aspirations.

At least the sing-o-grams are a steady source of income.

 

Maranda Parrott just had a really great workout. She isn't sure who knew about it, or why they cared to send Tank the Bard to congratulate her, but she's kind of scared.

"Where's your brother?" Alexandria worries about her son in ways she never worried about her daughters. He picked up his grades, now earning perfect A's, but his dissatisfaction with the education system began to manifest in new ways. He released 50,000 frogs into the principal's office.

Fifty. Thousand. Frogs.

And then there was the toilet paper incident. And the test answers leaked online incident.

Alexandria is afraid Lupin is going to be expelled if he causes any more mayhem. 

 

Once content with his laziness, now that he's been pushed, Lupin is realizing he does not just want to exist. He wants thrills. He wants to feel alive.

Pranking Flora with a whoopee cushion isn't as thrilling in practice as in concept, though.

Luna Wahine takes the red roses with a flirtatious smile. "Oooh, are you single? My husband is NEVER this romantic."

 

 Not only did Alastair Wahine order the sing-o-gram for his wife, he's standing right there...

Daniel Pleasant is retiring. The whole base chips in to pay Ariel to embarrass him.

"Aren't you Mango's kid?" Daniel grumps. He isn't even aware that Ariel sleeps with his daughter.

 

The important thing is to have fun.

Ariel delivers a song-o-gram to Echo on her wedding day. 

 

She's Echo Yang now.

"I've been thinking of getting some gym equipment, so Ariel can work on his bod at home," Flora comments to Iris, while they play a random video game from their collection.

"Sounds hot, but where would you put it?"

It's not long before Flora is back in Champs Les Sims, hunting down mummies.

 

Nobody has to know it was Flora Fleet who turned a local landmark into rubble so she could disturb the ancient burial grounds underneath...

 

 

Oh, you know, just a typical day as the chosen one.

Elliot Saint James has the wrong idea about why Flora is here. 

 

It's to buy some emerald necklace that's a secret tomb key.

He got it at an estate sale some years ago, and once it's clear a night in Flora's bed is not on the table, Elliot is willing to trade the necklace for some finely aged nectar.

If he knew what he had, he might have been able to ask a lot more for it... or maybe he would have handed it over for free, if he knew it stood between him and a mummy apocalypse.

Flora has only found one person in Champs Les Sims willing to discuss mummies with her, and it's this historian, Claudine Girard, who describes past mummy invasions in detail. Although when she says MorcuCorp set a bunch of mummies loose in Riverview, Flora begins to suspect she's a conspiracy theorist. There's no way that happened... right?

 

Flora brings a relic from Champs Les Sims back to its proper place in one of the Anubis temples in Al Simhara.

Then reports to Shang Simla to get paid for her progress.

 

 

 

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Etc.: I'm counting Sunlit Tides as somewhere in Oceania (in story still a territory of Sim Nation). So for Ariel and Flora to have woohoo'd on four continents, one must count Asia (Shang Simla), Europe (Champs Les Sims) and Africa (Al Simhara) as separate continents. Not everyone does.

 

 

 

I rolled "My Precious" for Flora's generation, and I'm using the Chinese vase relic collection for it. So here they are on display, with some other pieces nearby so the area looks more filled out. Instead of displaying a new vase every time she finds one, I'll be putting one or two up per sim week.

 

Flora has a lot of other shinies around the house (gems, relics, insects, neat things), but those are not "officially" counted in the collection for challenge purposes.