1.8 Check for Princesses

Traveling was educational, but it feels good to be home.

"I thought the ocean was really scary!" Junpei confesses.

"What do you see out there anyway?"

"A window."

"You're not looking OUT the window? You're looking AT the window?"

"Sis, you ever wonder what it's like to be a squirrel?"

"No..."

"Do you wonder if it's nuts?"

"I said no!"

One day, Junpei decides he isn't climbing aboard the school bus.

Finley opens the window a crack. "What the heck? Get in here!"

"Why?" he calls back.

This causes the other children on the bus to hoot and cheer. Finley lets the window drop closed, and slumps back in her seat. "Fine," she mumbles quietly, so no one else can hear. "Get in trouble if you want."

Mab is still asleep, after a long night of ghost control. Junpei hops on his bicycle and just... pedals. Today seems good for a completely random adventure.

He goes further than he has gone before.

Junpei loves being outside, warmed by the sunshine, cooled by the breeze, dashing through fields unrestrained, listening to the birds and the river. Mab has indulged her children, taking them out camping, and frequently to parks, but family outings don't compare to the freedom of running wherever Junpei's feet take him.

Junpei adores small creatures. This butterfly lands softly in his hand, as if supernaturally willed to do so. Once he's looked closely and identified its species, it gracefully glides away.

The living essence of a turtle isn't the same as the energy Junpei senses from people, and ghosts. But it's still there, and no animals can hide from his notice.

...But that FREAKING CASTLE did a pretty good job escaping his notice until just this moment.

It was even further away than it looked.

Wow! So tall!

After a thorough inspection of the surrounding weeded-up area, and a failure to reach any of the windows to peek inside, not to mention the empty vibe he gets from the place, Junpei is forced to conclude there are likely no vampires, witches or princesses on the premises. Boring! He spends a while skipping stones across the water that's collected around the sinking foundation, then goes home.

Mab senses her son approaching the house around lunchtime, and storms outside to meet him.

"I had to check for princesses stuck in castles," he says nervously. "No big deal, Mom."

"Junpei, are you having trouble in school?"

"I make straight A's," he protests.

"With the other children?"

He shakes his head no.

"Then why did you skip school?"

"Just to see what would happen I guess." He looks down at his feet, as if something in the grass had caught his attention. After a long moment, he looks up at Mab again. "You're gonna ground me now, huh?"

She relents, and hugs him. "I will definitely ground you next time. Don't you ever run off again without telling me where you're going, understand?"

Junpei blinks, having expected much worse. "Okay."

Mab doesn't even let the incident ruin her promise to take the kids to the park that evening. She likes this park. It's colorful and whimsical, and has a view of a waterfall in the background.

"Mom should have beat you," Finley whispers to her brother.

Hmmm....

Finley stares at their mother's behavior. "Ghosts? Here? I don't feel anything."

"She's checking for tree spirits. They'll grow vines down your throat and string you up in trees to die. For trespassing. And then-"

"Just stop. Stop it right now. No further."

Junpei grins. "What?"

"If I don't stop you, you'll just keep going, and this stupid tree spirit story will get totally out of control, and you won't even remember where you were going with it in the first place."

Mab wonders where Junpei gets such horrible ideas.

"You," Mab accuses. The kids are in bed. No jobs tonight. Mab stays awake anyway, waiting for phone calls of distress from her neighbors. "Masterson, do you need me to suck your soul into the device you, yourself, created, and relocate you? Before you'll leave me alone? Why aren't you moving on?"

He sits down with her. Being captured in the Banshee Banisher would be a bad experience, a very bad day indeed, and he should know, but the threat doesn't shake him up at all. He's super chill as a ghost.

But this time, unlike the last time Mab caught him watching her, when the twins were only little babies, he seems willing to speak. "You're still angry with me?"

"No." She raises an eyebrow. "Traumatized, I guess. From watching you... uh... die? But that's what I get for watching, isn't it? Nightmares for weeks. Weeks!" She lets the silence hang in the air for a while. "Weeks."

"Can I help?"

Mab folds her arms. "Of course not! I'm doing great now. Never better. I've got my little house... and my little family... and... never better. Can't keep me down."

The ghost seems to accept Mab's words, then quietly thanks her for her attempts to quiet the remnants of the spiritual disturbance in this town. She's literally cleaning up the mess he and his brother left behind.

"Sometimes I feel like I'll never be done," she grumbles.

"Have you never thought of finding help?"

"You mean...another medium?"

 

"Another medium," he repeats her words back to her.

 

"Well. No. That never occurred to me. It took you long enough to find me."

 

"I was bad at finding people. Social graces were not my strong point," the whispery voice responds.

 

Mab looks away dramatically, contemplating his assessment. "This is true."

When she looks back at him for a response, he isn't there anymore.

Spirits are relocated, angry ghosts are talked down, sympathized with, reasoned with, sent away...

When she's talking with them, Mab's thoughts drift back to the ghost she didn't try very hard to sympathize with. Masterson didn't even ask about the children, she realizes. He was worried about her.

And that makes her mad. How dare he worry about her.

Mab dreams about Junpei. In her dream, he has a beautiful voice, crisp and clear. The song though, it belonged to Mab's grandmother. Mab never taught it to her son. And as she considers this, Junpei gets stuck on one note. The end of one word. Just... stuck. Like a long scream.

Mab wakes up, as if startled by an alarm. Only to find the morning is peaceful; even the bird chitterings outside are at a hush.

"Dad," she mumbles, trying to shake the haze from her sleepy mind. Then she has to wonder why she said it. If she was looking for parental comfort from a bad dream... or something else. Something her brain knows that she doesn't know.

Mab's apprehensive as she checks the mailbox. She goes so far as to close her eyes and take a deep breath before reaching in.

...There's nothing inside except bills.

IT IS FINLEY'S BIRTHDAY.

Being the elder of the twins, Finley aged up first, and now cheers her "little" brother on.

Mab's busy with a haunting tonight, like most nights, but the kids' present, a brand new laptop, is already sitting on the table. The model is identical to the one she owned when they were babies.

They have both sprouted incredibly thick hair.

"We're getting you to a stylist," Finley threatens.

Junpei aged up with the eco-conscious trait and sets about resurrecting the garden plants Mab has left to wither, and Finley zones out when he tries to explain the evils of big agribusiness, and all the reasons they should try to avoid and undermine it.

Finley did hear her brother say something about a garden dramatically reducing the cost of meals in a household. She goes to their mother to worry about money.

"We're fine," Mab reassures her. "No, I don't want you to get a part-time job. I want you to enjoy high school, and discover your interests at your own pace."

Finley nods numbly. It dawns on her that childhood is fading, and her interests so far have only been having fun. That can't go on forever.

Determined to prove her children shouldn't worry about finances, Mab has some work done to the house, so she can give them each their own bedroom. Finley's reaction to her new bedroom is a delighted squeal.

Junpei even let his sister have the computer desk.

It's in this re-decorated room, using the computer while the kids are in school, that Mab gets the news her parents have passed away. One of her father's friends, a man named Pedro Pesce, went through the trouble of trying to contact her.

"We want to go with you," Finley says sulkily. It's a sad, if not unexpected day to discover her grandparents have died, and it's been made sadder knowing she won't get a beach vacation out of it.

"You have mid-terms," Mab reminds them half-heartedly. "And I won't be gone long. Now this shouldn't have to be said, but if you get any phone calls about ghosts, ignore them. Or tell them my personal number is unreachable right now for a reason. If either of you pick up the Banshee Banisher and try to solve problems yourselves, I'll make you regret it."

Both teens make a pouting face at their mother, in unison.

The twins knew it wasn't the school tests that kept their mother from bringing them to Barnacle Bay. But the real reason... that, they didn't know. The real reason was Mab couldn't stand to have them with her if she had to confront old acquaintances.

By the time Mab arrived in Barnacle Bay, her parents' possessions were already removed from the house. She finds Kendra Goldbeard (the third) at the Goldbeard Galleon Gallery, already overseeing the fourth round of auctioning-it-off.

"Most of the Archers' assets were auctioned away," Kendra informs her. "You must understand, they were one of the Goldbeard branch families. We, the main family, had every right to reclaim their estate, when no heir stepped forward within the set amount of time."

Kendra is so distant of a relation, Mab never would have thought of her as one. But the Goldbeards more or less own the town, and operate by the rules they've set for it. If something can technically belong to them, of course they'd know of it, and seize it. 

"Did you forget I exist or something?" Mab accuses.

"You may take this up with my lawyer, but you'll find it a waste of time, pet. In the mean time... there are still a few items you may be able to buy back."

"I don't think I can stomach that." 

Kendra frowns slightly, as if disappointed. "Then I am afraid we have no business."

"You're selling everything?"

"Mm. Now that you mention it... there may be several metric tons of old photographs, sitting out by the dumpster." Kendra smooths down a wrinkle on her dress. "I'm sorry, I doubt that's very helpful to you."

It's so weird to see the house this empty. Even the refrigerator is gone.

Mab broke in, just to check and see if there's any last thing salvageable. There's not.

She remembers her father wanted her to take his money and run, and she was too stubborn to do it. She almost questions why she's here, but she knows why she's here. She had to see this place empty to know it was really gone.

She remembers, painfully, the last conversation she had with her father. He told her his greatest regret was not thinking outside the box; if he'd have known she would run away, he would have uprooted the family himself. They could have moved away from the island. Anything to keep from losing her.

"You didn't lose me," she told him. "I kept you and Mom with me. I read your stories to my children. It doesn't matter where I am. You're still a part of me."

"You didn't lose me," he corrected, "but I lost you. We thought you were dead, Mab."

"I was worried you were already gone," a distantly familiar voice calls out.

"Gwen." Mab spits the word out like a curse. "Here to arrest me for breaking and entering?"

"Haha! Come on, I'm not a cop."

Gwen was Mab's childhood fair-weather friend, and weather was seldom fair. She hasn't changed her hairstyle, or her make-up since high school. Mab wonders what Gwen has done with her life, but can't bring herself to ask.

"I heard you were a ghost-hunter somewhere now!" Gwen prattles on. "I know Pesce was just pulling everyone's chain though. So how've you been, Mabs? What do you really do?"

"I slap bitches in the face for a living."

"Wow. Okay. Famous Archer social skills. I can take the hint, you hate me and you don't want to talk to me. Hear me out though. I... I wanted to apologize for all the nastiness that happened when we were in high school. I was a bad friend. I should have stood up for you, and... I never did."

"I don't need your apologies. I'm leaving now."

Gwen shrugs. She shoves a gloved hand into one of her jacket pockets, producing a gift box. A reusable gift box. The kind with the bow and everything attached only to the lid, so it never has to be ripped. It's visibly withstood some wear and tear. "I saved this for you."

Mab glares at the box, holding it firmly in both hands. She can't imagine its contents changing anything.

"It's the vampire's eye," Gwen says. "When we were little, you told me that one of your ancestors was a vampire, and she used it to woo her future husband."

"That was a stupid story," Mab says.

"But it was romantic."

Mab swallows her anger. "Thanks for rescuing this, Gwen."

Mab gets home as quick as she can. The twins didn't hold any wild parties, or otherwise destroy the place. Mab hangs the grand total of two paintings she rescued next to the television. It was all she could afford to snag at the auction house. "I'll find a nicer spot for you later," she promises them.

Despite being found in a dumpster, most of the photographs were intact. There are too many to display in Mab's tiny house, so she only hangs up the ones of her parents and grandparents. 

Mab didn't think she needed closure, but she's got it now, sick as it feels. With her parents gone, the road behind her has fallen apart, and all that's left is the path to forge ahead.

Finley draws a heart in the sand. "Do you think Mom's okay?"





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Etc.: Saved some things from my last legacies. Subtracted the "cost" of it all with MasterController.

I use a no-autonomous-scolding mod. Before generations, my sim kids could skip school. After generations, they were always being yelled at and punished for every stupid thing, and skipping school was not an option, despite how they'd sometimes roll wishes to do so.

Readers of my last legacy will remember Mab herself often skipped school.

I learned some things this session. (1) Kids can play in the sand, even if there's no sandbox. Wow! (2) Skipping stones! Is this new? (3) You can ask ghosts how they kicked the bucket. Sadly, the game just tells you "Sim has learned Sim died of old age" or whatever. I was hoping I'd get a snarky pop-up, like, "with my foot."

Finley's room is the one that counts for "luxury". I added in everything that the buy-mode categorizer suggested a bedroom should have, including a clock, with either the highest number of plus signs or the highest environment-upper score. Then I went and added extra decorations, and stuff I thought should be there, but wasn't suggested in categorizer (categorizer was mainly for me to make sure I hadn't "missed" anything a bedroom "should" have). I won't consider it fully complete until Finley gets the +40 decorated moodlet; right now she only gets the +25 moodlet. A few more paintings should fix that. 

Readers of my last legacy will recognize Gwen La Mer. I had the scene with her screenshotted before someone in the comments section called for her to show up and be slapped. ;D I should have technically aged Gwen up to adult from YA, but I forgot. Just pretend she's wearing 5 pounds of makeup to hide her age lines. Because she would.