A small orange and white starter cottage sits at the base of a dormant volcano in Sunlit Tides.
Alexandria Fleet, the island's newest resident, smiles when she sees it for the first time. Orange is not her color, but this is the first home she's ever been able to call her own.
There isn't much inside. The rooms only have basic furnishings, if they have anything in them at all. Alexandria doesn't see the emptiness, she sees possibilities... but her wallet is too thin to do anything about them yet.
The relocation bonus from her new job was generous, but she also needed advance pay to afford this slice of paradise.
After inspecting her cottage, Alexandria heads over to the military base to report in.
She joined the military in Bridgeport after graduation, because as a ward of the state she had no family, no safety net and no prospects, and she hoped the military could make something of her. At the very least, she could pick up skills useful for a different career.
The military sent her to Sunlit Tides. Now that she's here, she quickly learns a few unsettling things. First, she is the only sim in the military in Sunlit Tides, aside from her boss, Maru Mango, who has been running this place on his own for quite some time. Second, Maru has the insane trait.
He stops talking to his imaginary friend for long enough to order Alex to clean the base's latrines, and warns her to expect more recruits to arrive any day now.
Maru dismisses her relatively early in the day, leaving her to explore the island. Sunlit Tides is known for its wonderful spas and welcoming nightlife scene, but Alexandria is too poor to partake in any of that. Her job does provide her with free membership to the gym, though, so she checks that out.
She must have passed dozens of swimming pools on her way here, but the
gym has one too, and the locals are ignoring the treadmills and weights
in favor of socializing while swimming.
Joining in.
Alexandria learns swimming is boring, and not an efficient use of her time. When she leaves the pool and hits the treadmill, Cashew Cheremai follows her.
"It's too hot to walk outside, this is the smart way to go about it," he comments. Then he trips while he's staring at Alex's butt and almost faceplants into the machinery.
Alex introduces herself to some of the locals.
"This may sound very weird, but... is the blue hair natural?"
Marika Mehta stares at Alex like she's grown a second head. "You can literally see my real hair color at the roots, Lady."
Alex blushes. "Right. Sorry."
"Are those tats on your arm natural?" Marika snarks.
Alex touches her own hair, making sure her buns are still in place. She hasn't felt this awkward in a long time. She hasn't had a real conversation with anyone in a long time either.
She resolves to change all that now. She can, she thinks, choose to belong here. "I had ancestors with that hair color, that's all. Almost the exact shade of blue."
"Riiiight." Marika decides it isn't weird if Alex is crazy. It's a well known fact that Maru is totally nuts. Anyone who works for him is probably also nuts.
After a long day raising her athletic skill, Alexandria sits on the "new" (used) divan in her living room and watches the sunset, alone. She's used to being alone, to experiencing things alone. Wonderful things and terrible things too. She talks to herself often, but unlike Maru she recognizes her thoughts as her own...
By the end of the week, more sims have arrived in Sunlit Tides to work at the base, just like Maru said they would.
Alex falls into an easy friendship with Daniel Pleasant, who seems as laid-back as his surname suggests, despite his higher rank. He just got transferred here from Sunset Valley.
A tropical parrot spawns near the base so I have something to look at while my only sim tends to her rabbithole job.
"Don't work out on a totally empty stomach!" Alexandria has become a regular at the gym, and happily gives people advice, whether they want it or not. "You don't want your brain to associate working out with misery and deprivation."
Julian Strong ignores her advice. He has a date with Laurita Pepper later, and hopes an hour of working out will transform his body into something irresistible. All it really does is make him sweat so profusely he trails a green stank cloud behind him when he leaves, but the date apparently goes well, because soon after this I get a pop-up about how he and Laurita married, taking the hyphenated name Strong-Pepper.
Alexandria starts a garden. She has a supernatural affinity for plants. Everything she cares for flourishes, even when the soil doesn't seem right or the sunlight isn't agreeable.
She feels more at home in the garden than she does in her comfy bed. She likes to feel the dirt under her bare feet. Sometimes she imagines she can sense the life around her, interconnecting, her spirit blending with its energy. Her parents were into weird nature-shaman junk like that.
She barely remembers them, it's been so long since they passed away.
Alex is hired for a night as a bouncer at a restaurant expecting a rowdy crowd for some event.
Her athletic skills are just that well-known around town... apparently...
Alex has been living as frugally as possible, hoping to furnish her place properly soon, but when Daniel asks her out on a Friday night she happily accepts.
"So what brought you to Sunlit Tides, anyway? You don't sound like a local," he observes.
Alex tilts her head, confused. "Same as you! Military sent me here."
"Oh, well I had some choice in the matter. A tropical island seemed so... romantic, you know?"
"You requested to be stationed here?"
"Yeah, after word got to me that they needed a pilot."
Daniel tells Alex about how his father's dream was to become an astronaut, but he died before he could realize that dream. Daniel hopes to achieve what his father could not, to honor his memory.
"That's really cool," Alexandria assures him. She isn't sure if Jeff Pleasant would have wanted his son to devote his life to his memory, but the ongoing act of love has obviously helped Daniel cope with a difficult loss.
She does not open up to him about her own troubled past, about seeing many sims coping with loss and pain in different ways. Instead she just tells him she enlisted when she was living in Bridgeport.
"Bridgeport! So that's what that accent is," he says.
Alexandria smiles warmly. "I'm heavily influenced by Bridgeport, but my parents did a lot of traveling, and that rubbed off on me too, so if you were a Bridgeport local you'd also think I had a weird accent."
The pair enjoy drinks at the bar, then go upstairs to dance.
Alex has some moves! Daniel is impressed. But then, he hasn't been able to take his eyes off Alex since he first saw her. He tried to reign in his impulsiveness, but this is a new town, where nobody knows him, and nobody can tell his wife about this dalliance...
Daniel is a great kisser and he knows it. He's hooked women with just one kiss before.
"I had a great time," she says, unaware that she has become party to a betrayal.
She has a dreamy smile on her face, as if she's been starved for affection for a long time and finally a ray of hope has appeared. Daniel feels a stab of guilt, but just for a second. He will never truly have feelings for this woman. All he wants from her is a thrill, and the validation that he is attractive.
He doesn't let her leave without a romantic massage, which she happily accepts since it's been such a grueling week.
"Ohh that is amazing," she encourages him.
If she understood people better, maybe she'd know a wedding ring when she sees one, but the thought doesn't even cross her mind. She associates rings with fashion, enchantments and witches, not with promises of love and monogamy.
It's late. Their stomachs are growling. The drinks were not enough. Daniel makes a dirty joke while suggesting that they get dinner somewhere, and Alex giggles, but then she turns him down. Money is too tight to go out to dinner.
I'll get her next time, for sure, Daniel thinks to himself. Then he'll break this off, before 'this' can become anything with meaning.
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Etc.: New legacy, new problems.
This is a Random Legacy Challenge. You can find our thread on Mod the Sims.
Alexandria Fleet (this legacy's founder) is a distant descendant of Barnacle Bay's Fiona Fleet. She was born in one of my other legacies. You can think of other versions of Alexandria that appear in my other legacies as alternate timeline versions of her, unless you've read though my Goldbeards legacy in which case you know [spoilers].
