A Slap in the Face

I said once in an earlier post that I was thankful Sims never had fertility issues or miscarriages. I never considered child death to even be a possibility. I knew that if you didn't take care of the children, social services would come and take them away, but I never knew that the children could actually die. Even pregnant women seem to have a sort of immunity against death.

I say all this because the other day, I watched one of my Sim children drown. No, I did not trap him in the pool intentionally. In the Sims 3 you have to actually build walls around the pool to trap them in, since simply removing the ladders does not prevent them from exiting the pool (they are able to climb out of the sides of the pool). No, he just floundered and died.

Truthfully, I didn't even know he was in the pool. I was on the other end of the house, watching Fedaykin teach baby Marcus how to walk, and occasionally glancing over at Caspian painting in the living room. It was an otherwise calm and collected Sunday afternoon. Suddenly, the event camera jerks me over to the pool, just in time to see Pye slip beneath the water. I paused the game to stare in shock at his corpse, just suspended in the water. The knowledge that there was nothing I could do, that he was dead, that I had played for several hours without a save so I couldn't reload, that all the plans I had made for him were now useless. Pye was gone.

 I un-paused the game and watched as the Grim Reaper showed up and most of the family ran outside to mourn and cry in shock. I have decided that this shot is one of the saddest and most horrifying screenshots I have ever taken in any of my Sims games. Pye, the child, begging for his life from the Reaper, who watches coldly while the child's grave lies between them. I will admit, I cried a little bit, not because I particularly liked Pye or anything, but because he was a child. A child.

Forgive me if the deaths of children hit me particularly hard.

Forgive me as well if the idea of a child, who for whatever reason must die, dies by drowning - is also particularly painful - I had a close brush with drowning as a child and was narrowly saved by one of my little sisters and my dad.

I suppose I had been living in this dreamworld where I felt the Sim children were immortal, unable to be harmed by fire or flood or famine, and that the worst thing that could happen was to be placed into state care. It was quite the slap in the face to learn otherwise.

Not something I ever wanted to see.

The Journal of Gonff, page 2

I woke up this morning and sat on the steps of the Comb and Wattle. I had slept in the stable, for I had no money left at all, and my belly was rumbling with hunger. I didn't know what to do. I had tried everything. No one had any work for me. 

I watched as people went about their business. Mostly common townsfolk, nothing interesting. Then, a stranger rode into town. He was rough looking, but he looked like he came from money, what with that big fancy horse of his and that green enameled armor. It was obvious he was a foreigner. I watched him for a moment as he rode slowly up to the inn and looked about, checking something in some little book of his. So, he had business here.

 I leapt up and offered to  watch his horse for him while he went inside. Foreign type like him should be easy enough to fool into thinking his horse needs to be watched. These might be troubled times, but no one is desperate enough to steal a horse yet. I just had to hope he didn't know that...

I must not be the wonderful salesman I always thought I was. Guess folks just used to buy my sister's salves and potions cause they actually needed em, not because of any great charisma on my part. The blasted fellow saw through my ruse, I think, and wouldn't even get off his horse while I was near! I wasn't going to make off with it, you miserable ....

In the end though, he gave me some pretentious speech about trying to always do good no matter your circumstances and not resorting to petty thievery just to get by. While I saw his point, I didn't need a sermon. He tossed me a few silvers and sent me on my merry way. I picked them up (stars above but I was starving) but I also didn't want to be some charity case. 

I didn't stay to see what he did. I went to one of the shops in Combe and bought some food, and then wandered south a ways out of town, where I sat under a tree and ate.

Turns out the tree I was sitting under belonged to some local farmer and I had unknowingly wandered onto his land. He didn't have any work for me, of course. But! His brother, a lumberer on the east side of Combe, did. That work consisted of clearing out some wolves and a few of the Blackwolds from the Chetwood. 

I am not a fighting man. I have a pair of knives, but one I've had since my boyhood, and the other I only picked up from a dead villager in the attack on Archet. I had never killed a man before. 

At first, even after doing what the man asked me to do, I still felt as though I had not yet killed a human. These Blackwolds were a pest. They destroyed my village, killed everyone I knew. Stars know where my sister is. I even relished the feel of my knife slipping between their ribs, watching their surprise as they fell. They were evil, and deserved to die.

At the end of the day I found myself with a fat pocket full of silver - the foreigner's odd coins mixed with those from the grateful fellow at the lumber camp. 

I went back to Bree and got myself a room at the Prancing Pony, completely overlooking the prices the innkeep was charging for both. I was a wealthy man now, with more silver than I'd had in years. But as I was eating, the reality of what I had done hit me. They may have been Blackwolds, but they were still humans. Still people, with lives and hopes and dreams. They were not like the mindless wolves I had killed, or the bear that chased me on the outskirts of Staddle. The food turned to ash in my mouth and the crackling fire suddenly felt like the Icemaw itself. Everyone was watching me, I knew it. They could see it on my face, could see the blood on my hands. Was there blood on my hands? I thought I had washed ...

I ran from the inn, guilt bearing down on my shoulders and grief clouding my eyes. I ran blindly, stumbling through the streets, until I could run no more. I retched up the little food and drink I had already consumed and fell down, exhausted. 

When I woke up the next morning my pockets were empty. I had been robbed during the night. Good. I didn't want that man's pity money, or the blood money from what I had done. Better to starve and die.

I stood, slowly, and dusted myself off. I wandered aimlessly through the streets of Bree, and by nightfall found myself in this place known as Beggar's Alley. Here was where I belonged, among the thieves and the rabble and the ... the murderers.

Wordless Wednesdays: Fangorn Forest