5.4 Open Doors

Things only seemed to get more intense for Sky and Leah.

They liked to keep things adventurous, and they were always sneaking away to woohoo in strange and exciting locations.

When Leah wasn’t around, Sky was usually thinking about her.

Hunter was also in a pretty good mood, though he didn’t talk much about details.

Forecasts warned that this would be a record-breaking winter in Avalon. Hunter stored most of his seeds and moved a few important plants into a makeshift greenhouse to last out the cold.

But the thing that his family noticed most was that he was suddenly spending a lot of time sending email on the computer. Sky thought she heard him say something about Eliana Baerwyn. She still had another term left in high school, so email seemed like a good place to talk.

Meanwhile, time passed for the Samples. Veronica and Forest bonded over chess — it was a good thing to fall back on when they couldn’t find much to talk about.

Charles took care of Ghost.

And one day Veronica’s phone rang. When she answered, it was the Mayor of Avalon on the line. They wanted to give her the key to the city as a tribute to all her work with the supernatural.

It took a lot to floor Veronica Krane Sample, but this definitely was it.

On the day of the ceremony, the old Motive Mobile pulled up at the gates of Camelot.

Sky took the chance to entertain the crowd before the ceremony began. If nothing else, it was a good way to increase her visibility.

Shanni made it to the ceremony. “I’m getting too old for this sort of thing,” she admitted. “But then again, I’m getting too old for a lot of things these days.” It was hard to take her seriously when she said that while she was holding her toddler daughter Holly.

Jeannette was there, along with Shanni’s elder daughter with Jeanna, Renee.

Jeanna and Shanni had shared a long and loving marriage after all, which was more than Shanni thought she was offering when they got married. They took every day as a gift.

It was a gift that couldn’t keep giving forever, unfortunately. This was the last time Shanni spent time with her extended family. She died quietly in her sleep not long after. Since she and Jeanna were married, she’d been saying, “If I die in bed with a hot younger woman, I’ll consider myself lucky.” And that’s exactly how it worked out.

As the clock struck 4pm, Veronica stepped into the Great Hall and accepted the award from the major, who she’d never met before. He shook her hand warmly and thanked her for everything she’d done for supernatural understanding within Avalon and throughout the simworld.

Veronica, who had been thinking for a long time about how she would respond, grinned and said, “Yes. About that.”

She walked out of the hall onto the lawn, held up a flask filled with colored liquid. “This is my latest invention, and I think it might help with supernatural understanding.” Then she threw it at her feet. The crowd gasped as Veronica was enveloped in glowing smoke.

When the smoke cleared, Veronica was a ghost.

“I wanted to know what it’s like,” she declared in a voice that echoed like Charles’s. Then she floated over to her bemused husband.

He seemed awfully human and solid by comparison. But neither of them was really paying attention any longer.

“You always surprise me,” Charles said breathlessly when they returned home.

Veronica chuckled. “Well, I try.”

Then she was suddenly solid again. “Oh, that’s not fair!” Veronica exclaimed. “I was hoping it would at least last long enough for me to take you to bed. Now I’ll have to make another one!”

But in the meantime, they headed to bed anyway.

[I had a picture of the key, but I can’t seem to find it. I’ll put it in a post at some point.]

———-

This was a really cute end-of-career award opportunity that got totally borked in some later expansion. I ran it about five times, and the Mayor disappeared every time without giving Veronica the key. I assumed this had something to do with the Jynx rabbithole rug I was using for City Hall, but no — when I looked it up online, this opportunity has been borked for ages. So I built a story out of it and gave Veronica the key using buydebug. 🙂

And, once again, how the heck did Hunter get to be so hot??

This is where I finally had to kill Shanni manually. She was caught in some kind of in-between glitch where half the system thought she was dead and the other half did not. I felt bed doing it; she’s a favorite of mine. But she’d already lived an unnaturally long life, so it was way past time. I didn’t even know that Renee existed until this sequence. I was only aware of Holly, who was an adoptee I replaced with a genetic child by both of them — I couldn’t figure out why Jeanna was adopting, and when I went into MasterController to fix it, I discovered Shanni listed under dead sims. Renee certainly looks like she’s a genetic child of Shanni’s though.

12 thoughts on “5.4 Open Doors

  1. Stride of Pride Leah is so cute!

    I adore Hunter. And not just because he's so pretty.

    I love that Veronica wanted to experience ghostly life! She and Charles are so sweet. It's nice that her accomplishments were recognized, too. She's been fighting that fight for a long time.

    Poor Shanni. I understand why, but it's still sad that she had to be killed off. Renee looks so much like her, though!

  2. So much adorableness in this chapter … Veronica & Charles, Leah % Sky or Hunter in the bubble bath. I think Hunter in the bubble bath tops all of it though! I love that guy so much. Why do I get the irrational thought that he's cheating on Arya though … I mean, this is the REAL Hunter. Mine is just an alternative reality version. I guess I just love the idea of he and Arya so much, I don't like seeing him with (or chatting online) to other girls!

    RIP Shanni. As painful as it undoubtedly was, you did the right thing. A part of her lives on in her two adorable girls though.

  3. That was a very good piece of storytelling, with the key and the ghostifying! Glad that this opp got un-borked so you could tell it this way. It totally fits and is *right* for this. Kudos!!

    oh yeah, Hunter is a nice looking piece of sim-man! *is unashamed of my perving on sims* Perving aside, this generation's looks really seem to fit their sim-traits and the way you're writing their characters. Hunter looks very outdoorsy, Skye looks very music-inclined, and Forest, his hair and the ring and his clothes, I hate to admit it but I'm just very interested in his story. And that's *weird* for me, 'cause I usually don't like evil sims very much.

    *is hopelessly addicted* <3 <3 <3

  4. RIP Shanni… why do your games keep glitching? That's not very nice… anyway, it was nice to see her around for so long.

    I'm totally in love with Sky and Leah 😉 They are such a cute couple!

  5. Hee! This post was a lot of fun to think up.

    Veronica has been spending a lot of time at the chemistry table, but most of the potions you come up with that way are something most of my sims would never use — things for nasty pranks like Bladder Flow. I haven't had a prankster sim yet. Then Veronica rolled a wish to make a ghost transformation potion (whatever it's called), and that just seemed perfect for her. Right after she finally learned to make it, this opportunity came up.

    I dunno that I think my game is unnaturally glitchy right now. There always seems to be something. The stuff that's going on right now is rather minor.

    And yeah, I have a lot of fun dressing up my sims and finding the perfect hair for them. I'm glad you appreciate it, Misims :). I want Forest to look a bit like a gangster because that's basically what he is.

  6. Aw, your sims are all doing well. I haven't ever tried out the potions so the ghost potion is interesting for Veronica to use and her and Charles are still cute together. Although it's sad that your game is having all sorts of glitches again.

  7. Poor Shanni, stuck in-between the worlds of the Dead and the Living. I believe that nothing much changes in her (after)life though, she will reunite with her lifetime love Agnes and make hundreads of ghost babies 😀

    It was fun to see Veronica as ghost. It’s really seems that she takes her job seriously. Lol. Great chapter!

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