With Autumn Comes the Long Night

 

    In the early days of their marriage, life for the Lassiters was good. Cora's garden was flourishing, and she had even won an award from the city for her contributions to the local food scene. Yves was an aspiring sculptor, so he spent most of his days in his studio in the basement, working away with clay or wood. Cora quickly learned which crops sold for more and started focusing on those, while Yves toiled almost endlessly to improve his skill, coming up from the basement only for what amounted to the basics of survival. They barely saw each other, even though they both worked from home and were on the same lot 24/7. 

    

First moments of labor

    Even with all that work, there was time enough for other activities, and it wasn't long before they found themselves expecting their first child. The birth kinda snuck up on us all, and once again they were pitifully broke, living bill to bill, harvest to harvest and sculpture to sculpture. 

Even in sleep, Cora dreams of work.

 They were both exceptional parents from the beginning, taking turns to watch over their son, Jean, who for a sim baby seemed remarkably fussy.  He demanded a lot of their time, and Cora began to see her garden fall into decline as she had less time to care for it.

   Cora and Yves were two ships passing in the night, and barely spoke or acknowledged each other. Even with Yves having 'workaholic' as one of his traits, he began wanting to spend time with Cora more than he wanted to sculpt or sell his work, and that was how I knew they were really falling deep into their own isolation.
  

    
     Autumn was marching stolidly onward, though, and many nights covered the garden in a layer of frost so thick that it took a few warm days to remove. So, when she could not garden, she spent extra time with Jean, doting on him. As they saved up some money, she also purchased some planter pots and moved some of her more valuable plants inside, to continue the growing season even through the increasingly colder days and nights.

Cora and Jean among the plants of her tiny conservatory.

    Even as her food harvests diminished and their profits (or in many cases, barely breaking even) fell with it, so too did their budget, and more and more of her harvests began to find a home in their own larder instead of being sold at the local market. Their home, though poor, was a beacon of warmth and love, a pool of golden light sheltered from the increasing frost and meager meals.

A quiet book on a frosty day.

 
      Jean was never hungry, though many nights his parents might have had less than they wanted or eaten leftovers for the umpteenth time in a row, keeping careful track of which were oldest so that nothing was spoiled or wasted. Jean knew nothing but love and attention, and Cora doted on him.

Yves worked

And worked.

And he worked. Exhaustion was a regular thing for him.

The new second story, with Cora enjoying a rare warm day.

        More and more, Yves worked while Cora raised Jean. While there was plenty of love, the labor was not quite shared. His sculptures were regularly bringing in about 1300 simoleons each. With the extra money, they scrimped here and there where they could, and with a little work they added a second story to the house, literally a wall or a room at a time as they could afford it. Even when 'finished' with paint and flooring, many of the rooms sat empty, devoid of furniture or light fixtures, or anything except the hope that one day the whole house, not just their few little ground rooms, would be full of life and light.

Jean's birthday and a cake they couldn't afford

 And a good thing too, Jean was having a birthday and would soon be starting to school. As a present they bought him furniture for his new room.








 But Cora was still worried about money. Yves tried to reassure her, confident in his growing skill and too prideful to admit that they might be struggling. Also maybe a little too focused on his work to realize he wasn't even really getting dressed each day, just stumbling down the stairs to the studio in whatever he had passed out in the night before.

     All I could think of while watching them fret was of the common meme making fun of the HGTV show "Househunters." Click the link if you're unfamiliar with the joke.

"Hi, I'm Cora, a home gardener and this is my husband Yves, a freelance sculptor."

You get the idea.

To compensate, he spent even more time in his studio, and she saw him only for a few minutes here and there, in passing, at night, in the early hours, whenever they could squeeze in a cup of coffee together. And once again, even those few fleeting moments were enough to add another small, looming reason to be worried: she was pregnant again. 
      In a moment of frivolity she had taken Jean to the autumn fair and gotten her face painted. Now, in the early morning, with the reality of a second pregnancy and even more bills piling up in the face of the oncoming winter, that one tiny act seemed stupid and wasteful.

Cora with Rickard.

     Their second son, Rickard, was born in the last week of autumn. Her garden was barely producing, spending more time dormant than workable. Yves, too, like the roots of her garden seeking nourishment below ground, spent more time in his basement studio than above it, frequently napping on a small futon down there instead of coming up to bed. He would come up to grab a plate of leftovers from the fridge, or to shower or use the toilet, but then he was back at work.

Then, the unthinkable happened.

 

A New Legacy

     It's been a while. Four years, give or take. I recently decided the Sims itch was unbearable and decided to load up the Sims3 to give a legacy game another whirl. Hopefully without a corrupted save this time.

     Unfortunately, my computer has been rebuilt/wiped about three times in the intervening years, so the old save is completely gone, and I decided to start a new legacy instead of trying to recreate the chaos that was my last game at gen 13 or 15 or wherever it was.

     So, I present to you all, the vast desert of the internet - Cora Lassiter.

     To give her a headstart, I sent her right off the bat to the library to stock up on a level or two of some relevant skills. Her life's ambition is to have a fantastic wine collection (or nectar, to keep the game within ratings), so first thing would be to learn gardening. While there, scoping out an eligible bachelor so we could get a jumpstart on gen2 wouldn't be too much to ask, would it?

     As it turns out, there were lots of guys in the library, handsome ones, well-off ones, even not so likable ones. Only problem is..... none of them were single. I had her prowl the library like a creature in heat and not a thing came of in fact, most of em didn't take too kindly to her overly-forward introductions. Time to go home, I guess.

      With a level or two of gardening under her belt, she quickly got to work setting up a full garden in the side yard. She registered as a gardener with city hall, so it would be up to selling produce to supply income. I forgot that plants take a while to grow .... so things were a little slim for a while.

The dreaded repo-(wo)man

    So slim, in fact, that she couldn't afford to pay her bills. What's that? Sell the GIANT nectar-press in the background to make money? NEVER. She scrimped and saved just to afford that trip to France. If stuff is getting repossessed, she better have a darn good reason. And as it turns out, the trip turned out to be far more fruitful (pun intended) than messing about with wine tours and varieties of grapes.

Adventure? Wine-tours? Husband-hunting?

     But yes, France. Champs le Sims, a quaint village in the countryside. She had enough set aside after her ticket to pick up a cheap second-hand Vespa, and in between learning all about nectar, she kept up the search for a husband.

     Again, just as in her hometown, lots of guys. Handsome guys, wealthy guys, talented guys.... but none of them were single. And if they were, none of them were nice. (Seriously. They all had evil, mean-spirited, or insane as traits. She was insulted, heckled, shoved, and slapped. Not the best way to start a relationship.)

Poverty, sims3 style: reading the manual for the nectar-press in the dark.

The garden was taking shape.

      The vacation was over all too quickly and she was sent home, loaded with knowledge of nectar ... but not much else. Also, broke. Completely broke. The repo-(wo)man came three more times before she was consistently getting enough income to stay ahead of the bills. But to stay ahead of the bills, the garden needed constant care and attention, and was maintained at a size that was just above unmanageable for a single person.

   I tried a few more times to find a suitable suitor, but she was always so exhausted from caring for the plants she had just enough time to introduce herself before she passed out in the street. Not the best way to make a good impression.

     I was starting to panic. She had gone longer in game than I had ever managed without finding at least one person to accept a flirt, much less return it. It was like the Sims world was completely devoid of romance or love or even just mutual attraction. (and as far as going after non-single sims .... I'd been down that road before, and I didn't want to start off my legacy game with that kind of bad juju.)


 
     So, she saved up, and went back to France. No nectar this time. No adventuring in forgotten ruins. Husband. That was the goal. Her hometown was devoid of any eligible bachelors, so it had to be somewhere else.

    And then, she met Yves.

     He was perfect.  He was intelligent, he was handsome, he was as penniless as she, but he was single. It was enough.

Things were looking up.

    Once back in her hometown, she invited him to visit her, and love (or at the very least, infatuation) swirled thick around them both. They decided to have a private wedding on the beach, impulsively, at 11 pm, to seal the deal (also he had only about an hour before he was going to be deported back to France, so you know, technicalities and such).

Finally, she's not alone.