Tag Archive | zahra

3.16 Meet the Family

Fabian Branch Sample began his first day of married life by making breakfast.

Mac ‘n’ cheese. Well, it was a great breakfast when he was a bachelor.

Zahra, not the most inspired of communicators, pretty much broke the news to her family by letting them watch the new state of affairs. They were surprised but supportive.

“So, dear, it looks like you got married last night.”

“Yeah. It seemed like the thing to do.”

“He seems like a nice man, dear, but he doesn’t bring in much of a salary. Do you think we can afford it?”

“MOM!”

(Fabian did bring in about 1100 simonleons, which I think is the lowest amount any spouse has brought into the family so far. Law enforcement clearly does not pay.)

The men were even lower key.

“You gonna make my daughter happy?”

“Yup.”

“Thought so.”

(The men spontaneously bonding in their underwear was pretty awesome.)

Fabian and Adjo were already pals for reasons only the Sims game was tracking. I have to guess it’s mostly because they’re both people people, so they could hardly bump into each other in any context without becoming friends. Shanni didn’t have a lot of use for men that she wasn’t staking a claim on, and Fabian really wasn’t her type anyway, but they coexisted all right.

He pledged to help with Charles, but mostly what he did was take over other household responsibilities so that Zahra could spend more time with him.

He also convinced her that subtle pink accents in their bedroom was not only manly, but tasteful. Zahra, who didn’t pay much attention to aesthetics anyway, let him have his way.

(Yes, his favorite color is pink. I notice you can see him telling her this on their park date when they were teens. Fabian is such a Sensitive New Age Guy. I have vivid memories of adding pink accents to their bedroom and even photographing it, and I can neither find the photographs nor evidence of the pink in later photos. Did I do this on a version of the game that crashed on me? The world may never know. I’m at least two weeks beyond this, Sim-time, and I’ll have re-redecorate their bedroom.)

Things got back to routine in the Sample household, and in due course, Zahra and Fabian had happy news to report.

3.15 Loving Life

Sep1

Fabian worked long hours, but he spent as much time as he could at the Sample house, talking to Zahra. They filled the air with talk about computers, new discoveries at the science institute, and stars a million light years away. He was a beat cop now, but his dream was to get back behind a computer keyboard and become a forensics expert. Zahra should have realized that he’d never have moved this far away from science without a plan.

But it didn’t take a rocket scientist, or more effectively, a social engineer to figure out what he wanted.

Fabian had a gift for gab. He knew just what to say and how to say it, and he was even better at NOT saying things in a way that made them perfectly understood. Zahra’s husband was not just dead. He was dead twice over. She could let her life end here too, or she could start building something new. He’d rather if she was going to start something new, she did it with him.

But did she want something new with anyone? Zahra had spent her whole life loving Cycl0n3. She’d never expected to find herself single.

Things started to get out of hand.

Then they got really out of hand.

Was this what she really wanted? It certainly felt good.

Zahra spent a lot of time alone, thinking about what she wanted her life to be, and eventually things fell into place. It really was about choosing life over death. She wanted to love life again. And Fabian’s devotion had always been unwavering. If there was anyone in her life she could trust, it was him.

Zahra hated parties and crowds, fancy dresses and pretty jewelry. When she knew what she wanted, she invited Fabian to meet her alone at the beach at dusk.

There, she asked him to start a new life with her.

“I thought you’d never ask,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes.

And so, still frightened, Zahra stepped into the unknown.

(Woo. I’d always thought that Fabian would make a good alternate mate for Zahra, but when I got a look at his traits, he’s like her perfect man. He’s just like Cycl0n3, except with Charisma and social skills.)

3.12 True Friends

Aug19

One evening, as Zahra was weeding the garden, her cell phone rang. It was Fabian Branch.

“I know this sounds dorky,” he said, “but I’ve been really getting into cooking. I know your mom used to grow this amazing stuff in your back yard. Would you be willing to let me have some of the harvest? I can make it worth your while. Wait, I didn’t mean that how it sounded.”

Zahra hung up and smiled. It was a ploy, of course, to get her mind off things. But it was a kind ploy.

After work the next day, she dropped by Fabian’s house. He’d moved out from the huge den of the Branch clan and was living with a couple of roommates. A policeman’s salary barely made ends meet.

Fabian was delighted to see her and asked all sorts of questions about work. They had more to talk about than Zahra had realized. Fabian was a beat cop now, but he was studying to be a Forensic Analyst. He was up-to-date on all the scientific and computational advances. Zahra should have realized he wouldn’t be able to stay away from science; they’d grown up looking at the stars and speculating about what might live among them.

Eventually, Fabian admitted his real purpose.

“I was worried about you,” he said, scuffing his foot in the grass. “I know you have a big family and lots of support, but I didn’t want you to feel alone.”

Zahra was touched. Sometimes you could be alone in a crowd, and sometimes it could be hardest to talk to people you saw every day. And Zahra had never beaten around the bush about her and Cylc0n3, weird as the relationship might have seemed. Fabian was one guy who would never be phased by the world of the weird.

“Maybe we should hang out more in person,” she suggested. “Would you like to come by my house this week?”

Fabian’s eyes lit up. Zahra hoped he realized she meant to stay friends.

(Heh. I’ve never pushed these two together. In fact, they’re still friends because Fabian calls her autonomously. Right after Cycl0n3 “died,” Zahra got a bona-fide gardener’s opportunity to bring him some produce to cook with.)

3.11 Aftermath

Aug18

(Hey there! I’m trying to get past my writer’s block and get back to posting.)

You couldn’t call it death for someone who was already dead, could you? In the end, it didn’t really matter. Cycl0n3’s loss hit the Sample family like a ton of bricks. Everyone did their best to cope in their own way.

Shanni lost herself in Zahra’s best friend Fabian’s younger brother, Richard Branch.

(Yes, they’re brothers. Ida Branch has a dark skin tone, while Mr. Branch — whose name I forgot — had a light one. Here we see the non-subtlety of Sims 3 skin tone genetics.)

He was one heck of a kisser.

He also turned out to be one scary dude. There they were, making sweet nothings at each other in the hallway of the Branch house, when he suddenly started screaming at her. Something about ants. And aliens. Hoooboy. Shanni just stood there and took it, too frightened to say anything.

And he was holding his baby brother at the time.

At last, he stormed off, talking loudly to himself. Shanni got out of there right quick. She wanted comfort, but not that much.

(I failed to get the really good pictures of Richard ranting to himself. He did in fact go off at her in a dangerous-looking way in the middle of flirting. I’m guessing he’s Hotheaded, and he’s definitely Insane.)

(Also, it’s probably not obvious, but this scene happened in the old Frio house where our story began. The majority of the Branch clan has moved in here. Their father died of old age, and Fabian, the eldest, is also living elsewhere, with a roommate I think. So I think think Ida Branch and the three younger brothers Richard, Connor, and Tyrone are all living here together. Mamma Branch didn’t make no girls.)

Lance and Layla clung to each other. Life was short, and they were in their golden years. Zahra’s loss was just a grim picture of what they faced too.

(Spontaneous affection between Sims is so cute. Lance and Layla can’t get enough of each other these days.)

Everyone wanted to be there for Charles.

(This is Lance, tapping his foot, waiting for Adjo to finish playing with Charles so he can have a turn.)

And they tried to be there for Zahra, but she didn’t want to talk about it. She threw herself into her work, climbing the promotion ladder at the science center with alarming speed. After the first couple of nights, she never let any of her family see her cry.

Late at night, she whispered to Charles about his father.

Charles, as little as he was, seemed to understand.

3.10 Going Home

Jul5

It was Zahra’s day off, and she and Cycl0n3 took a much-needed morning together. They slept in luxuriously late. Adjo made sure that little Charles was taken care of before the twins headed off to school.

Romance was in the air. Lance jumped up at breakfast and asked Layla out on a date. She spent such long hours working at the bistro, and she never got a chance to experience the romantic atmosphere as a customer. He wanted to fix that.

The two of them looked sharp in their formals.

The afternoon was everything they’d hoped it would be.

Cycl0n3 and Zahra rolled out of bed and quickly fell into the usual topic of conversation: their son.

But this time Cycl0n3 called a halt to it. Zahra had been working her tail off at the science lab, then coming home to work her tail off tending to Charles. She needed to take some time to herself away from both work AND family.

He kicked her out of the house to spend the afternoon at the spa getting a massage. But not before he showed her is appreciation.

It turned out to be the last wish he would have a chance to fulfil.

Alone in the house, he headed downstairs to play with Charles.

They read together from a math-for-toddlers book. Charles’ eerie ghost voice piped up against his father’s. Cycl0n3 felt completely fulfilled.

And then a strange sensation came over him. It was as if the wind blew through him, and he was the wind, and it called to him from beyond the pale.

Alone on the back deck, Charles went on reading until Mommy came home.

Zahra returned, flushed with a good massage and feeling carefree, to find her ghostly son alone in the house. At first she was furious. “Where is your father?” she demanded of little Charles.

Charles looked up at her with penetrating inhuman eyes, and she realized for the first time that he truly was something different.

“Daddy went home,” he said.

Then her eyes fell on an urn sitting on the deck. She hadn’t noticed it in the pile of Charles’ toys. Suddenly she understood.

Nobody knew exactly what the science lab had done to Cycl0n3. Somehow, in her heart, she’d always just assumed he was immortal in his half-ghost, half-human form. Apparently not. The Netherworld had called him back.

She picked up the urn and placed it in her bedroom, hoping against hope that he’d rise again, in whatever ghostly form he was permitted. But even when the other family ghosts came out to play, the urn was silent.

Goodnight, Cycl0n3.

(It turns out that Cycl0n3 was “living” on borrowed time. I knew he had a lifespan of sorts, and that he’d be called back into his gravestone eventually. However, when he married Zahra and changed his name, his gravestone got borked. Apparently EA in its infinite wisdom was using character name to attach the ghost to the gravestone, and Cycl0n3 Sample couldn’t be using Cycl0n3 Sw0rd’s gravestone. This caused some other glitches I was struggling with, since the character was now duplicated — the version of him in his gravestone and the version I was playing. When I figured this out, I had to use some of Twallan’s mods to get him to terminate gracefully, but that also ended up destroying his gravestone. I’m terribly grumpy about this; I wanted the whole family to be in the graveyard. I’m still trying to see if I can export Cycl0n3 from a previous save file and get him properly stowed in a gravestone, but I may just call myself lucky for having a functioning game file and give up.)

(ETA: Fixed the last picture. Somehow the mood was lost when instead of Zahra sleeping alone, the last pic was of Shanni taking a bubble bath. Woot.)

3.8 Stir Crazy

Jun29

Charles made it to toddlerhood in the way much like his less ghostlike family members.

And the rest of the clan got busy teaching him and showing him more about life.

Charles’s first word was “food.” Good eating boy.

(Or is that “bowl”? “Spoon”? Help me here!)

There was plenty of help with Charles. Zahra loved him very much, and she was fascinated to see this strange new life form growing every day. But she now had learned the hard way — she was not meant to be a stay at home mom.

Zahra had been climbing the walls so long that you could see her fingernail marks in the plaster. But no matter what she tried, she couldn’t persuade the Science Center to take her back a day sooner. Zahra couldn’t contain her frustration. There was so much science to be done!

She tried to distract herself with her favorite leisure activity.

Or well, that was now her second leisure activity.

Her old friend Fabian Branch called her up a few times to cheer her up.

That was nice, but Fabian was busy at the police station, and he didn’t have a lot of time to drop by.

At last, the interminable maternity leave lifted, and Zahra was off like a shot. With the amount of preparation she’d done at home and her fresh enthusiasm to be back on the job, she got a promotion her very first day back.

That was that. She’d taken the career hit for having a family. Now was time to make science.

3.6 It Takes a Village

Jun23

So…. what is a ghost’s baby? A baby ghost. Zahra’s mystery was solved.

In any other family, this would have caused a stir. Well, all right, even here there was a bit of a stir. But these were the Samples. Samples are brave. Samples love nothing more than to sit down and have a fireside chat with the ghosts of their dead relatives.

When Zahra told her father that she had married Cycl0n3, he blinked and said, “You don’t think he’s a bit old for you? Seeing how he dated your grandmother, and he’s dead and all?” One she’d convinced him that she was truly happy, he shrugged and gave her his blessing. Before that moment, he hadn’t really thought of Cycl0n3 as any different than Susie or Connor. Ghosts have a right to be happy too, after all.

That’s just a bit of context to describe why the freakout at the Sample household wasn’t particularly freaked or out.

Lance was particularly delighted with his grandson. He’d have been delighted if Charles were green with tentacles.

Adjo couldn’t stop tickling and cuddling the new arrival.

All-in-all Zahra had plenty of help. Whenever Charles whimpered, someone was there with a bottle and a diaper, and for all that nobody really had to lose much sleep.

And of all of the Samples, Cycl0n3 was the most beside himself with pride and joy. Charles was his son. He’d made a new life, if a life was what this was, and if it wasn’t who cared anyway?

He’d longingly cared for Zahra, then Adjo and Shanni as babies, always figuring that his time was past. Now he had a wife and a new son. All was right with the world

3.5 Welcome Charles

Jun19

The Sample house was aflutter about the arrival of a new grandbaby.

None were more aflutter than Cycl0n3.

Everyone tried to prepare as much as they could.

The big question that nobody was asking was exactly what Zahra was carrying. A ghost’s baby would be… what? Zahra alone seemed unbothered by this. If anything, she was more excited by the big unknown. Her pregnancy was part impending motherhood and part science experiment, and that suited her just fine. She would have been disappointed if the child turned out to be an ordinary baby.

What she wasn’t ready for was just how much maternity leave was going to drive her crazy. She was climbing the walls for tasks to do. She took over most of the gardening from Layla.

She taught herself how to upgrade her computer.

And she counted down the days until the blessed day. When it came, she was more than ready.

Cycl0n3 was less ready. Connor’s ghost even drifted by to watch the excitement.

Charles Babbage Sample was born at 3:15 AM, and he didn’t disappoint.

He was definitely an unusual baby.

(WOOT! Ghost baby!)

3.3 Into the Oven

Jun16

Zahra wasted no time heading down to the science center to join her dream career.

Cycl0n3 found himself faced with yet another new start to his unlife. He was already a chess legend, so he got a hankering to try his hand at prose.

His journalism background made this an easy career to fall into. His lightly fictionalized account of his unlife, Ghosts Have Feelings Too became a bestseller.

He was so distracted that he picked up some of Layla’s fruit parfait, put it in his pocket, then pulled it out two days later and ate it.

Twice.

Maybe this was some sort of sympathetic connection to Zahra. She didn’t feel the slightest bit sick, but one night the test was positive anyway.

3.1 The Ghost-Traveler’s Wife

Jun13

Zahra was all grown up… and Cycl0n3 was in for a surprise.

Zahra and Cycl0n3 were both painfully awkward geeks, unlucky in friendship and unluckier in love. They had also known each other for all of Zahra’s life and almost all of Cycl0n3’s afterlife. In short, they understood each other, and neither of them was very used to being understood.

At least that was the case that Zahra made to him as she poured her feelings out in one great big torrent of words, peering at him with her too-serious green eyes. She wasn’t even afraid of rejection. The situation seemed so obvious to her that there was no way that he could *not* feel the same.

Cycl0n3, on the other hand, had literally changed Zahra’s diapers. When had everything changed while he was right there watching? Cycl0n3 never claimed to be an observant kind of guy. But he couldn’t deny their connection. It didn’t take Zahra long to bring him around.

It all moved so fast. Zahra so no reason to wait when she knew what she wanted.

She also had no need for approval from her family or any sort of fancy public display. Crowds made her nervous anyway.

“Till death do you part” seemed pretty meaningless here.

Just a few days ago, Cycl0n3 had completed what he thought was his greatest lifetime wish. Now he wondered if he might have been wishing for the wrong thing.