::1.3:: South for the Winter

Autumn arrives in Twinbrook.

Insert clever joke about the Birdhouse living up to its name here.

"Hey, have you been to the community gardens yet?" Shari asks one evening—the sink exploding had reminded her, somehow.

Staci, still wearing her (in her opinion) cartoonish and unnecessary work costume, shakes her head.

"No," she manages to say, and immediately gets a mouthful of water.

"Let's go tomorrow." Shari tosses their leftover mac and cheese in the fridge. "I think you'll like it!"

The demand for her services is slowly increasing, but Shari still has a lot of downtime during the day. If there are no pending clients and she isn't in the mood to make more sketches for her portfolio, she grabs her guitar.

Recently, she's felt more confident in her abilities, and takes it with her as she explores different areas around town. That's how she stumbled across the Twinbrook Community Gardens, sitting clear-across the other side of town from the Birdhouse.

As predicted, Staci is impressed by their little outing. "I had no idea this was here! And we can just take anything we want?"

"Technically, yeah. I figure we're only supposed to take what we need, of course."

Unfortunately, as it happens so often in Twinbrook, they get rained out after less than an hour at the park.

"The sun was starting to set, anyway," Staci notes, trying to fit one final head of lettuce in her backpack.

"We can go wait in the visitor's center," Shari says. "I'll call a taxi."

"Staci, c'mon! The taxi's waiting!"

Staci hovers at the garden entrance. "You go on ahead... I'll catch up by broom later."

"You're gonna get soaked!"

"Umbrella spell!"

But before that, a quick, temporary shrinking spell...

Shari had been complaining that the Birdhouse's winding, creaking staircase was impossible to navigate in the dark.

Staci applauds herself for her creative problem-solving—at least, that's what she tells herself spurred the impulse.

The next morning, Shari is running so late for her newest assignment that she misses the new structure outside the house entirely.

DeAndre Wolfe is something of a celebrity, and most definitely one of the fanciest clients available in Twinbrook. She cannot mess this job up.

However, when she arrives at the house, only Gala Ball, DeAndre's young lover, is there to greet her.

Ms. Ball will be hosting a party by the end of the week, and needs Shari to do as much as she can to spruce things up before then. She also seems more excited to share her party plans than talk shop, and Shari spends the first half of the job getting an in-depth play-by-play on the renting of DJs and the choosing of charcuterie.

"I was thinking to knock this wall out, to completely open up the room for dancing," Gala says when Shari finally brings the conversation back around. She glances at the cat. "Oh, and we're going to need new furniture."

Shari sighs. It's always the furniture with this town.

Still, somehow, by the end of the day, Gala has agreed to a timeframe-appropriate proposal. Shari will be visiting the Wolfe mansion every day for the rest of the week to oversee the changes, but the hardest part—getting the client to agree to a realistic plan—is over.

Now, she notices.

"Staci," she says slowly, finding her roommate reading at the kitchen table inside. "How did that highway-sized street light get into our front yard?"

When she hears Shari's tone is more suspicious than enthused, Staci hides behind her copy of The Fortunes of Fortune Telling. "You said we could take anything..."

It clicks right away. "Anything we need, Staci! Need!"

"We do need it! It would take miles of holiday lights on the stair railing to see anything otherwise!"

Shari feels her blood pressure rising—but then she thinks about buying, unraveling, and running all those holiday lights.

"How is it even lit up?" she huffs instead. "Doesn't it need to be connected to the city power grid or something?"

"Magic?" Staci offers sheepishly.

Anyway, thanks to her work with DeAndre Wolfe, Shari nets her first award. Whoo!

The money brought in by the project is enough for the roommates to finally expand. A second floor is added to the Birdhouse.

There's much debate over who will get the new space. Shari insists she prefers keeping her sleeping bag close to her drawing table. Staci thinks, then, that Shari should move all her work supplies up to the new room and turn it into a studio. Shari says she likes sleeping and working in her little nook on the first floor; it's cozy. She's gotten attached to that nook.

Shari wins by physically moving Staci's purple sleeping bag up to the second floor. The lamp she chose as a comfort item when they first moved in together goes, too.

Staci acquiesces. Touched by Shari's generousity, she doesn't admit that sleeping by herself in the new, barebones room is kind of lonely.

Here's a shot of the house with its freshly-constructed second floor (which is actually the fourth floor, according to build mode, and now the game won't let me go any higher.) 

Staci is coming home from work on a particularly witchy-looking night. Good thing she has that street light to help her get inside!

The expansion whisks away all of their savings, leaving not even enough to furnish it. Still, Shari scrapes together a few spare simoleons to buy her own small reward.

She rolled a wish for a tattoo, and this guy is going to give her one.

"So what are you going for here? What's the vibe?"

"Um... something yellow." Shari supposes she should've sketched up an idea or two herself before coming, but the whole thing is a bit of a whim.

"I dig it." The artist eyes her with a grin. "And what's the symbolism? What does it mean?"

"It means I like yellow."

The artist shows her a botanical piece from his catalogue.

"Flowers for the lovely lady," he explains with a dramatic flourish.

Shari raises an eyebrow, but agrees to the design as-is. It doesn't matter to her if her tattoo is completely unique or not.

At the end of the session, the artist hands Shari her bill—with his number written in the margins.

Shari crumples the paper and tosses it over her shoulder. "Are you serious right now?"

The artist blinks, taken aback. "I mean, we agreed to the price beforehand—"

"I'm not talking about the price, numbskull!"

"I—"

"Did you really think this would work? Give me a break! I can't even imagine doing this to one of my clients! The nerve!"

Long story short, this is Shari's first and last tattoo in Twinbrook.

The encounter makes her wonder, though...

She's always wanted to start a family someday. When she first arrived in Twinbrook, she thought that once she was settled in, she could start looking for someone to share that vision with.

She's settled in now, so why hasn't she started looking?

The weather grows colder. One day, the roommates find Bonne Chance's enclosure empty.

"Do you think he went south for the winter?" Staci asks, wringing her hands nervously.

"I think this is what happens when you leave a bird outside," Shari replies.

//

Shari has the hot-headed trait, so she often enters a lot and immediately finds someone to yell at. The scene with the tattoo artist actually happened backwards—first she yelled at him, then got a tattoo. I switched it to better incorporate it into the story, but the original order was pretty funny.

Staci is fulfilling the My Precious roll with her kleptomaniac trait. I don't know why I chose that one, when collecting literally anything else would've fit her personality better. I also keep trying to find things to steal that I don't feel like I have to go back and re-add so the public lots don't look weird. It's a struggle.

I dunno what happened with Bonne Chance. He was being cared for consistently, so I really did just assume he flew off because I kept his cage outside. Oops.

I feel like in my previous legacies there would be kids in the house by now. I'm usually pretty impatient about getting the next generation born, but for some reason I spent a lot of Staci and Shari's young adulthood focusing on their careers and house upgrades. The next stage is coming soon, I promise!

::1.2:: Bonne Chance

Staci and Shari make good roommates. They keep each other company, but don't get in each other's way.

Conversation is pleasant. Neither are very interested in talking about the past, for whatever reason—only their current circumstances.

They agree that getting a second floor on the house is a top priority.

Despite cramped quarters, there's very little stepping on toes... even as they both develop hobbies that make the lack of space very obvious.

While Staci derives enjoyment from honing her magic, Shari picks up a guitar at Thriftbrook, the town's perhaps too-aptly-named secondhand shop.

Her career pursuits in architecture are fairly practical, and she enjoys it well enough—but her personal goals are found between score sheets and steel strings. She has no desire to make a career of it; knowing her own talent, and maybe making some friends along the way, is enough for her.

She stares pensively at her fingers, a melancholy tune stirring whatever tragic backstory has been artificially implanted into her memories.

Privately, they both wonder how on earth their housing situation is working out so well.

Shari finishes enough pieces to call her collection of work a portfolio. Though it's all theoretical, it's received positively by the existing architect's network. She gets her first call for a job! A real, on-site one!

On the day of, Staci stops her on her way out the door. "I've been working on something—just a simple charm, really. It'll give you good luck—not that you need it, but..."

Shari is a brave sim, but that doesn't mean she's immune to nerves. This job could make or break her newborn career. She grins. "I'll take whatever you've got."

Staci giggles anxiously. "I mean, if it works..."

Luckily (heh), the spell goes off without a hitch.

And so does Shari's first-ever house redesign.

Clark Peddler and Penny Pincher's reputations precede them, even for a newcomer to town, and don't exactly bode well for being paid fairly for labor. But if it gives her something to add to her portfolio, Shari won't complain.

Clark is especially fond of the bedsheets chosen in the final redesign. They kind of match his suit jacket! Shari walks away with a glowing review.

On the walk home, she finds a macaw chilling in the grass. 

Despite her complete lack of animal handling experience, he climbs onto her arm easily.

"This must be the part where the good luck kicks in," she marvels.

The housemates put out some posters and an online ad, but no one steps forward to claim the exotic bird. After some waiting, they set him up on the balcony and name him Bonne Chance.

Staci's job is also going... fine.

Becky Baker has been trying to teach her the ropes of "gazing into a sim's soul," but apparently Staci is not a very good liar. 

Still, it seems Becky's investment is paying off—word travels fast, and townsfolk are intrigued, if not still a bit wary, that there is purportly-real magic involved with the new fortune-telling business. Tacit approval from "one of their own" (even if it's Becky Baker) tips the scale of public opinion more toward intrigue.

If they manage to build a good customer base, everyone's getting a pay raise, Becky claims.

They aren't exactly rolling in simoleons, but the worst of the financial insecurity has been alleviated. The ladies find themselves with a free weekend and some spare change, and a summer festival that's about to leave town.

I never have good establishing shots of the festival grounds...

Staci still gets the sense that Twinbrook isn't fully comfortable with her presence.

Or maybe she's just taking too long at the snow cone machine...

Whether Shari recognizes her unease or not, Staci finds her company reassuring.

And there is fun to be had, and welcoming faces to be found.

"How are you so good at this?" Shari exclaims, wobbling and buckling on the roller rink. "You've done this before?"

Staci laughs. "Beginner's luck!"

"More like beginner's good luck charm."

Just when she starts to get her bearings, someone swoops in, takes Shari by the hands, and spins her out to the center of the rink.

"Easy there," the man says. "Lemme give you some pointers."

"No thanks!" Shari exclaims. But the man holds fast.

For a split second, Staci is frozen at the edge of the rink. A million ways to step in and help fly through her mind—but she can't get herself to move. Even the rising red of indignation she can see on Shari's face isn't enough to unglue her feet from their place.

But she has her wand with her (always), and a split second later it's in her hand. Keeping it low at her side, she mumbles a cantrip she's known since she was a child.

Simple, but effective—though Staci does grimace when the small gust of invisible energy pushes Shari to the ground, as well.

Shari, just as confused as her unsolicited rink partner (currently busy groaning in pain) doesn't hesitate, and takes the opportunity to log roll to the exit.

Goodwin Goode takes the opportunity of all the freed space to absolutely tear up the rink, putting everyone else at the summer festival to shame.

Back on her feet and freed from her skates, Shari finds Staci a few feet away from the rink, twisting her wand anxiously in her hands. "Wait, was that you?"

"I'm sorry, I should've done something more—"

"Don't even think about finishing that apology." Shari's already smiling, eyes sparkling in the low-hanging summer sun, the unpleasant encounter fading from her hands. "Thank you. And... that was hilarious. Exactly what that weirdo deserved."

Staci's heart is beating too fast to reply—adrenaline and magic and something else—but soon both of them are giggling uncontrollably.

As a token of thanks, Shari presents Staci with the wildflowers she picked earlier, unnecessarily wrapped in a gift box.

//

I don't know anything about how freelance architecture works in real life. 

I also don't know anything about the French language, but Google tells me "Bonne chance" means "good luck." I can't remember what I actually named the bird in-game.