5.26 Paths Apart

Word of Hunter’s produce got around, and one day he got the phone call of his life. The Round Table, Avalon’s premier restaurant, offered him a contract as a supplier.

Hunter had finally made it. His business was successful.

Moreover, he was going to have to move out of the Sample estate, and soon. He needed to expand his garden if I was going to meet the demands of his contract.

The puppies continued to be adorable.

Abby was learning more every day.

Her first word was “ball,” but she seemed to mean it in a kind of extravagant way.

Eliana threw herself into her new job at the Sufficiently Advanced Technology Center. You could find her studying scientific experiments almost any time she wasn’t at work.

The more she relaxed and felt safe, the more she seemed discover a second childhood.

She and Dylan were especially fond of each other. He needed someone to help him lighten up and remember how to be childish.

Forest worked hard. Pretty much all the time. His family sometimes didn’t see him for days.

Hunter kept to his evening patrols several evenings a week. It has been so long now since he had seen the unicorn that he sometimes wondered if he’d imagined it. Still, he couldn’t let it go.

Then one day, out in a pouring rainstorm, he finally hit pay dirt.

The creature was even more captivating than he remembered. All his plans and research fell out of his head, and he could only get soaked in the rain and stare at it.

The stallion seemed to laugh at him, but it was an affectionate kind of laugh. Before it disappeared, Hunter heard one sentence in his head. My name is Meteor. Then it was gone.

Leah was avoiding Sky. It was hard to miss it. She wasn’t arguing or acting angry. She just wasn’t around. She retreated from looking after Abby, leaving Sky responsible for the toddler’s skills.

She and Plum Marmalade had stayed in touch. The day after the Love Day birthday party, she called Plum up and invited her to the Magic Mirror Art Gallery to hang out for an afternoon. Plum accepted immediately. It was the first time they’d met face-to-face since that night outside the Sample house.

Plum seemed delighted to see her.

Just as before, a sense of instinctive trust seemed to pull them together. Leah had fought it before, wanting to believe that Sky’s love was true, but now she just felt so…. tired of it all.
She confessed how depressed and lonely she felt. She didn’t work for the police anymore because Sky had wanted to focus on their music, but Ghostwriter hadn’t had that many gigs in quite a while. Dylan was her pride and joy, but he was growing older and didn’t need a mommy leaning over his shoulder all the time.
And Abby….

It came pouring out almost before she realized what she was saying. Abby was Xia’s daughter.

Plum took the news very, very badly.

Leah was struck with guilt for breaking the news to Plum. But it was true. Shouldn’t Plum know?

She reached out hesitantly and took hold of Plum’s shoulder. “I know what you’re going through,” she said quietly. “We can survive this together.”

Plum forced a grateful smile through her tears. “Thanks,” she said. “I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”

Later that night, Veronica decided relax after a long day’s work at her inventing table with one of her old favorite hobbies — skinny dipping.

What she hadn’t realized was just how tired…. and perhaps how old she had become.

She was out in the middle of the pool before she realized how much work it was to tread water. She tried to swim back to the edge, but her arms got heavier with every stroke. She opened her mouth to call for help, and water came rushing in.

It happened so fast that she had gone under before anyone in the house knew something was wrong.

The family was stunned and devastated. But at least everyone was there to see her off.

Veronica was 105. At some level, her children knew that this could come at any time, even if they tried not to think about it. Being able to say goodbye softened the blow a little bit. It was more than they’d gotten with Charles.

When Veronica was gone, Sky stood by the swimming pool and sobbed.

Though almost nobody ever swam in it, Sky had always thought the pool was a sort of elegant status symbol. Suddenly she hated it.

The next morning, she called a meeting with a contractor and laid out plans to tear out the pool and expand the arboretum.

Veronica was laid to rest beside Charles. Perhaps they would help them find each other faster in the Netherworld.

———-

Well, it had to happen somehow, but I didn’t expect to lose Veronica that way. She was incredibly old. I think 105 was her final age, but I’d have to look it up to be sure. That was older than Lancelot and Layla, who were vegetarians. I gave up trying to get her to 200k happiness points, though. She left the game with close to 180k.

I thought it was cute that elderly Veronica was still skinny dipping autonomously, so I took that shot and went off to have Sky paint portraits. Then the camera was yanked back to Veronica gulping water. I directed her to leave the pool and got repeated route failures. Then Overwatch detected her as being unroutable, and she was reset to another location STILL drowning.

Apparently that pool was a death trap. It could have been caused by the fact that the arboretum was made with some fancy build mode hacks. I think the next house the Samples live in will be made without hacks if possible.

I suppose I could have reset her, but I thought — if Veronica had to go, wouldn’t she get a kick out of being a funky ghost? She’s the first non-old-age ghost in the Sample ancestry.

Also, Grim was glitched and never showed up. After everyone waited sobbing all night, I was forced to use MasterController to force kill Veronica’s ghost and have Sky retrieve her from the mausoleum. Perhaps that was why Veronica grew to be that old to begin with. I reset all the sims in town after that, but I guess I won’t know if Grim is functioning properly until someone else in the active family dies. Hopefully that won’t be for a long time. Townies are dying of old age just fine.

At any rate, trust Veronica to make a splash with her exit.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be as fond of a sim couple as I was of Charles and Veronica.

10 thoughts on “5.26 Paths Apart

  1. :((

    You're right, it had to happen at some point, but I'm still sad. Veronica and Charles were the perfect couple and I'll miss both of them being around. Too bad that your game was glitched!

    Before she died, I was just really happy for Hunter, since he saw the unicorn again – Meteor is a nice name. 🙂 Now he just has to get closer to it…

    And Leah…sigh.

  2. Sad update, for sure. Charles and Veronica were so great together. It seems like forever ago that I was wondering if he'd ever even fall in love!

  3. I would like to say that Leah is taking this all better, but her wishes haven't been terribly good. She never wants to interact with Abby. Unfortunately, I'm sure some of that is just that the game knows they're not biologically related.

    It has been so hard to get Hunter together with that unicorn, I swear.

  4. I kind of love that Veronica didn't wait around for Grim to come get her in old age… she liked doing everything on her own terms.

    I hope Hunter gets his unicorn soon, but it's nice to see him so happy!

  5. I agree with Dragonwife. Veronica always did things her own way, and damn the consequences. She was an awesome sim and I hope she and Charles will spice things up in the Netherworld. Skinny dipping is the best way to go, but I have to hope, for her descendants sakes, that she manages to find some clothes in the afterlife. A naked ghos will definitely cause a stir!

    I hope you have better luck with the unicorn than I do! It seems like an impossible LTW to me, and we both have to try and complete it!

  6. I’ve never noticed before how beautiful the pool was. With all the flowers around it and the direct access from the arboretum… Simply beautiful!!! Truth is, that houses built with cheats alternating the correct routing are unpredictably dangerous, but truly amazing. I will never stop admiring the wonderful creations of the builders from the Sim community.

    It’s always so heartbreaking when the time comes for our beloved Sims. Veronica was really a great woman. I will miss her and her sexy underwear dearly. Hopefully, she’s reunited with Charles now and they are happily skinny-dipping in the Netherworld. Good bye, Veronica.

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