5.33 Surprising No One

Sky and Xia had a long talk about Abby. Then Xia came by a few days later, and they had another long talk about it. And then they talked some more in email.

Xia was upset, but she didn’t actually question Sky’s honesty about how Abby was conceived. Sky assumed at first that it was just an even more absurd story that Sky had secretly farmed genetic material from a one-night stand in order to carry that woman’s child while she was already married to someone else. Actually, when you said it that way, it actually did seem more plausible that Sky was a supernatural being with a different route to conceiving children.

But it turned out to be more than that. Xia’s great-uncle Zhan Wu had been Charles’s sensei. Xia had learned just a little bit about ghost people from him.

No, Xia wasn’t upset because she didn’t believe Sky’s story. She was upset because Sky never told her. And Sky honestly had never thought that she was being hurtful. She thought she was doing them both a favor to not force Xia to become involved in an enormous, unasked-for complication in her life.

Sky was certainly reexamining the way she looked at things.

Xia spent several afternoons a week at the Sample house, mostly to spend time with Abby. Xia was training as a fighter pilot with the Camelot Armory Air Force, and she kept very early hours — she was usually at work before the sun was up, and she showed up afterwards before Dylan was even home from school. Sky booked Sing-A-Grams for those afternoons. Her life became enormously easier to manage.

The newfound peace of mind left Sky with a new craving to be domestic. After all, she’d been living on delivery pizza, takeout, and microwave meals since Hunter left.

They ate a lot of burned grilled cheese sandwiches for a while. When it wasn’t fit for people to eat, Riddle was always ready to step in and help.

Abby grew into a child.

She was an energetic kid who loved to take on all variety of fantasy roles.

She had a naturally lovely singing voice and would spend hours making up songs and singing them to her favorite doll, Princess. She begged Sky for private singing lessons. Sky was delighted to have someone to share music with, especially since Dylan seemed to have no musical interest at all.

Abby’s imagination seemed boundless, and Sky enjoyed taking little vacations into worlds of Abby’s making. Abby could embellish and expand upon Sky’s bedtime stories to create new stories that Sky liked more than the originals.



Abby also enjoyed telling little white lies and experimenting with just what kind of nonsense she could make people believe. Sky and Xia started sending email notes to each other with things that Abby had told them so that they could compare notes.

Dylan, meanwhile, advanced from block architecture to scale models. He set up a card table in the living room and build a replica of Sunset Valley, where his grandfather came from, and ran a model railroad through it. He used to spend whole evenings perfecting it and adjusting the train track.

*

One afternoon, when he was adjusting the location of some buildings, Abby came up to watch. “Whatcha doin’?”

“All these houses need to be an inch to the left,” Dylan said absently.

“Why?”

“I wasn’t using the most up-to-date map of the Sunset Valley when I built this model,” he said. “It’s inaccurate.”

Abby looked over the model landscape with wide eyes. “You mean you made this exactly the same as a real place?” she asked.

“I sure did,” Dylan said proudly.

“Why on earth would you want to that?”

Dylan opened his mouth to explain how he’d made the model, then did a double-take. “Huh?”

“Why would you want to make it look like a real place?” Abby asked again. “You can always make up a place that is prettier and more exciting.

Dylan was genuinely puzzled. “I don’t know,” he said. “Then it wouldn’t be real.”

Abby rolled her eyes. “Real is boring,” she said. “In the real world, you can’t be a superhero. Or a princess.” She walked over to their dress-up chest a pulled out her pink satin princess dress. “Your problem is that you have no imagination.”

“I do so have imagination!” Dylan flared. “I can be a prince just as well as you can be a princess.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Abby said.

Dylan pulled on his blue prince costume and raised his scepter. “By the power invested in me as prince, I’ll built a city of emerald and marble. The streets will be paved with platinum because gold is too soft to make a good road. Everyone is guaranteed a good life and a living wage, provided that they donate time to keep the city clean and beautiful–“

“Wow,” Abby said, laughing. “You really don’t know how to do this.”

Dylan crossed his arms. “OK, you show me.”

Abby caught a fold of her skirt in one hand and raised her head regally to gaze over her subjects. She really was quite convincing. “I’m so pleased to meet you Ambassador,” she said as she raised her hand to a man’s imaginary lips. “Of course I would consider trade with your country when you ask so nicely.” She raised her hands and swept around the room. “I know. My people are so loyal. They would do anything for me. A princess like me can do anything.”

“Ugh,” Dylan said. “Why would you want to do THAT?”

“What?” Abby demanded, stomping her foot. “I was perfect!”

“Have everyone looking at you like that,” Dylan said. “It’s so…. exposed.”

Abby and Dylan had a long way to go before they could ever understand each other.

*

Sky and Xia set careful boundaries on their relationship. Xia might sleep over, but they made it clear from the start that there was no exclusivity. In fact, some day’s they’d just sit up in bed and tell stories about their erotic adventures with other people. Xia preferred women, but she also found the occasional man interesting, so her stories were sometimes truly alien to Sky.

The Sing-A-Grams had really enhanced Sky’s reputation as a performer. There was standing room only in the bars and pubs when Ghostwriter played. And there was more. In addition to her active fan website, Sky started seeing her face on the cover of gossip magazines. She thought she should have been scandalized, but she actually found it amusing. After her performances, she was flocked by attractive young women trying to attract her attention, and every once in a while, she let someone who interested her show her a good time.

So she shouldn’t have been surprised when she started waking up sick in the mornings.

“I’m pregnant,” she said unceremoniously when she left the bathroom one morning after another round of vomiting.

Xia threw up her hands. “That’s a thing with you, isn’t it. Can’t you do anything about it?”

“My mother had her tubes tied,” Sky said. “I’ve been avoiding it because I wasn’t sure I wanted to give up having children.”

“And now?”

“I think I’ll have it done after this one,” Sky admitted.

Xia took her hand. “You’re going to need some extra help now,” she said. “I’m over here all the time. What would you think if I just, well, moved in?”

Sky squeezed her hand. “Would you seriously consider doing that?” she said. “It would make things so much better.”

Xia kissed her. “Done,” she said.

“Just remember–“

“NO COMMITMENT!” And Sky and Xia laughed.

———-

And this is the final baby from Generation 6. One of the sub-challenges I set for Sky was to have three kids by three different women. That certainly shakes up the genetics.

This would have been a couple of posts, but with no pictures I thought I’d toss them all together. Sorry if it’s too long.

Pictures resumed shortly before Abby became a teen, so at least I could share what she looked like. The scene with Abby and Dylan dressed up as royalty was super cute :-p.

0 thoughts on “5.33 Surprising No One

  1. Ooooooh! So many unexpected things happening in Sky's life. The last child will have a hard time competing with his/her older siblings, especially when it comes to being heir. Have you picked yet?

    Abby as a child is probably the cutest sim I have ever seen <3

  2. Stupid Blogger ate my comment.

    I'm glad you like Abby! Xia has good genes. And Abby's everyday outfit was something I downloaded from MTS that I think is the most attractive outfit for a girl sim child I've ever seen EA seems to always put the waistline at the armpit.

    Child 3 turns out to be interesting in spite of being born so late. I have a favorite for heir now, I think, but it's not a strong favorite. All three kids should be teens briefly, so I'm planning on putting up a poll.

  3. You're right, Xia is an excellent mother in terms of genes. 😉 I can't wait to see Abby get older. Voting for one of them probably won't be easy, even though I have a favorite right now… but then again, I haven't seen the third child yet. And if you're saying it's interesting, I certainly shouldn't make up my mind too early!

  4. Stupid internet crashing and destroying my comment 🙁

    I like Sky and Xia's relationship. It seems to work for them in this stage in their life. It's also fantastic to see Sky so relaxed and happy. She really has the best of both worlds now. I do wonder if they'll ever want to settle down someday in the future?

    Abby is so endearing and sounds so much like me as a little girl. I completely lived in my own head and was always the one to make up these random games and stories. However, I was more of an introvert like Dylan. I honestly can't make up my mind between these two. And now Sky's pregnant again we've got one more to choose from. Exciting!

  5. Aww. It would have been fun if Sawyer turned out to be February's. I was doing it randomly, though, and the winner was Amy Winter. I failed to mention that she's an elfified version of this Amy Winehouse sim: http://www.modthesims.info/download.php?t=479142

    Ought to be interesting for the genetics. He's a child in gameplay, so I don't have a good idea what he looks like yet. I haven't been able to even load the game for weeks due to the crash of my Windows partition. I have a new computer now, and it took me three evenings to get the game installed with all the expansions :-p. I still haven't loaded my store content, installed CC Magic, or updated my mods.

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