Romance was in the air when everyone returned from seeing Ada off. Charles and Veronica didn’t have many occasions to dress to the nines, and they liked what they saw.

 

“Eww,” Forest remarked. “Isn’t is supposed to damage our young minds to watch our parents being gross on each other?”

 

“I didn’t read that child psychology book,” Veronica said with a chuckle. “But I suppose we can help your delicate mind by going to our own room.”

Charles glanced over at the dining table, where Sky was sitting alone, arms crossed, staring down. “I’ll be right up,” he said. “I’m going to grab a slice of cake first.”

He tapped his daughter on the shoulder, warm ectoplasm touching same. “I’ll cut you a slice too.”

“Check this out,” Forest told Hunter. “It’s awesome. Dad just taught me how to play. I didn’t know he ever engaged in any exercise of the mind.”

 

“Ok…” Hunter said warily. “It looks really complicated.”

“It is,” Forest said. “That’s the beauty of it. “All the pieces do something different, and you have to line up a bunch of moves and counter-moves in your head.”

“You’ll trounce me,” Hunter said. “I know you’re a lot smarter.”

“It’s Ok,” Forest said. “Sure I well, but you can still think of it as a learning experience.”

 

“You know what’s the most awesome about this game?” Forest continued as he showed Hunter the complex moves the pieces were supposed to make. “It’s a little model of society. You have pawns that can’t do much, and their job is to be sacrificed to save the leader. Then it’s the leader’s job to get all the most powerful pieces working together to protect him from the powerful pieces on the other side that want to destroy him. It’s just like life.”

“Hmmm,” Hunter said. “I guess that’s like some people’s lives.”

Forest immediately took his queen.

Charles sat down with Sky for an evening snack. “So,” he said quietly, “What’s with the face?”

 

“You have Mom. Forest and Hunter have each other. Great Aunt Shanni and Great Uncle Adjo are close. Everyone was so eager to see each other at the wedding. Except me. Nobody’s ever eager to see me.”

“Wait,” Charles said. “I’m eager to see you every day.”

“You’re supposed to say that,” Sky pointed out. “You’re my dad.”

 

“You know, we’re fish of the same color,” Charles said. “I’m a ghost man, same as you. I know it’s hard.”

“You’re like a Sim-Fu god. Everyone respects you. You don’t have to go to school where everyone keeps their distance because you’re so creepy.”

Charles remembered back on his childhood, where people didn’t keep their distance because they almost never saw him. At the time, he’d have given anything just to be more than a shadow. But he couldn’t say anything like that. It would come out as, “You think you have it hard? When I was your age….”

So he just said, “It will get better. It doesn’t seem like it, but trust me.”

 

She forced a smile. “Thanks for trying anyway. Here, let me clean up.”

“Good grief, Sky!” Charles said. “That is NOT cleaning!”

———-

Not much to this one, but it was a little bit of character activity right after the wedding with everyone in their formals, and it didn’t seem appropriate to let this stuff steal Ada’s thunder.

I’m going to start trying to pick up the pace here. I’m at a point where I want to do an heir vote, and I want everyone to meet Generation 5 as teens before I post one. Plus, it’s high time everyone got to see Avalon and hear what’s going on with your cross-pollination sims.

It’s HARD for me to pick up the pace, though. I seem to have a psychological block against leaving out anything interesting. I have sorted the pictures for the rest of the posts I’m planning to do in Sunset Valley, and it looks like there are five more after this one — that’s including a montage post that includes several episodes I’d expected to post separately. Heh. I’ll see how fast I can put text to them and get them out.

Also, following my strategy of buying expansions from Amazon Download when they go on deep discount after the release of ANOTHER expansion, I now have Showtime. Nobody in Gen 5 will probably have much to do with it, since those characters are essentially complete, I’m not clear how many special lot spaces I’ll need in my almost built-out Avalon to be able to do much with it. We’ll see :).