Everet finishes this woman's request to go through her neighbor's garbage...
So naturally he closes the case by setting his notes about it on fire and throwing the flaming ball into her lawn's dead overgrowth. Is this a test for the fire department, to see how they are getting along without Malcolm's heroism?
Wiggles fits right in with Megan, who loves anything and everyone supernatural. He even expresses some willingness to visit the lab and be tested. When he's not being his mean-spirited self to her, he can be quite refreshing to talk to.
Dustin and Meghan aren't the only ones in the house who feel like Eugene never moved on...
Dustin isn't convinced that it's really the same person, however, and has stopped trying to talk to him to get any kind of closure. He can only really do something about the living. The ghost seems somehow offended by this.
Jyoti's new career in the Starlight ROTC has made her more fearless than ever. She slaps Wiggles on the butt after he loads the dishwasher. “Keep up the good work and we'll keep letting you be real.”
To make sure he stays real, he asks Andrea to scan him a few times. “All your readings are normal.” She sounds impressed. “I even think I could clone you. If you ever feel like having to raise yourself up from being a ...a baby, that is.” She's meant for the comment to sound funny, but she finds herself trailing off.
Where is Jiraya, out there and hidden away from me in the wide wide world? Will I ever see him again in this life?
She turns quickly away with the sample and retreats to her lab.
If her behavior is strange to Wiggles, he doesn't show it.
Jet, days away from graduating, is doing his final studies underground. It's less oppressive here, somehow, and more orderly. (isn't the butler supposed to fix the sink?)
Jyo, an adult, allows herself to feel nothing on occasion. But there is peace in moments like this too, so she lets herself get lost in the landscape. It does no good to run, and equally no good to not run, so sometimes she runs, and sometimes she does not. It's working for now. The days are starting to pass by.
Everet approaches Andrea cautiously one afternoon, knowing that she isn't going to like this topic of conversation. But something has got to be done.
Leaving things the way they are is no good.
He spends a moment touching the box gingerly, as if asking for permission to move it. To move... who is inside.
Everet has called the family together in one place for an announcement, somehow taking on the role that Dustin hasn't been able to bring himself to. “Dad... can't keep haunting this place forever, and it's time. My mom won't want him to stay here, as much as he loved you all. His final rest should be with ...those who are resting.”
His normal ease is stifled by the atmosphere of the Sparrow house in recent months. He hesitates to take someone away from them, but maybe this will be good for them, to let go of the numerous other griefs that have been hanging so thickly in the air.
Not everyone who was called, came. But, Dustin and Meghan decide that it's time to make arrangements, no matter who is not ready for it. Even if they are not.
“We've got to move on,” Dustin says quietly. “It's what Eugene would want, and what the kids ...need.”
“It's just you and me for this one, girl.” Jyoti says to her faithful dog Leila.
“Just me, my mom and dad, my brother, that new dog who is super cute but whose name escapes the watcher... I guess everyone else is sitting in the trunk.”
(this is why one should never keep the default name)
Sunny days in Starlight always seem like an idyllic paradise.
Love the advertising showing things that sims can't even DO, here.
As everyone manages somehow to disembark the Rocktown-whatever-hundred, they all become immediately sad. Except the horse. That horse looks hungry.
Or, broken? Who knows.
Either way, it's time to say goodbye.
The family rarely faces loss long enough to dress up for it, but this was a very worthy occasion. The celebration of more than one life.
Meghan feels some hope for the future, after this horrible day is over. It helps that she's not walking directly in the midday sunlight.
Whenever Jyo hesitates to move forward, there is Leila, loyally urging her on, knowing her apprehension, as if to say 'I am still here, you are still here, let's live the best way we can!'
Jyo may be imagining it though, but she's comforted a bit.
Any minute after this, things will start to get better, she thinks.
Meghan is having all kinds of moments of clarity today. “This was a good choice.” She says in a quiet voice.
Everet barely heard her. He nods.
“It was now or never, we can't leave all of our loved ones at your place, after all. And maybe, cousin Meg, Andrea, whoever you feel like being right now, maybe you can leave a few regrets behind here. There is so much time left for us, isn't there?”
She smiles and nods back. “I didn't know you were going to be so brave.”
He shrugs. “Maybe I've been growing up.”
“Yeah, maybe you have.”
The look on Meghan's face weirds me out a little bit. She never seems this happy. But as this is a sad occasion, I will take what I can get.
Eventually everyone meanders slowly over to the place where Malcolm, Emir, Eugene and Lize are laid to rest. Or at least, their ashes are.
Malcolm's post mortem award seemed out of place in the house, so it's been anchored to his headstone. Now anyone who wanders back behind the mausoleum will see that he is a hero.
“At least, you can be with your daddy.” Jyoti whispers to Emir's tiny grave, trying to hold herself together.
Then, without warning to anyone, she drops her umbrella to the ground and lets it all come spilling out.
Eventually, even Wiggles is moved by the atmosphere. Not that he has learned to shed tears, yet.
...And it hits Everet like a sack frozen french fries (because who buys sacks of potatoes anymore?) That he's not going to see his father ever again, and even the feeling of his restless spirit will now be tied to something else. Without his parents, what's he going to do with himself? Keep investigating? They were making some progress, but that's been getting even more dangerous. Jet thinks what happened to Malcolm wasn't an accident, and he was only recently associated with the Sparrow family. How much had his father's influence protected him and his brother Leon? He was not expecting to have a panic attack today!
When it's polite, and after kind words have been said, he's taking a trip somewhere, anywhere.
(But you know, after he done fulfilling plot-stuff)
Jet's not usually one to be sentimental, but there is so much to mourn here, he can't help but coming to put his arm around his sister. There are there for each other in times like this. He gives her a tight hug and doesn't say anything for awhile.
After all, Lize and Eugene are both buried at the end of the row here, she passed recently as well. It seems to be the end of an era for everyone.
Starlight Shores was a place where dreams came true, and a place of innocence. Until it wasn't, until the wrong sort of dreams started to come true.
Jyoti is not about to mention Loki here, to anyone, but for some reason she finds herself thinking of him today, of what might have been. This place reminds her of him, when she was dreaming in the hazy days of her youth. When he caught glimpses of her future, did he see this moment too? If so, then she is not alone. Another comfort, real or imagined.
Her dad comes to put a solid hand on her back. “I'm sorry sweetheart.” Is all he can muster. For some reason, it sobers her right up. Don't feel sorry for me, she thinks. I'm not the one who died.
“It's not right, is it, Jet?”
“It's not right.” He confirms, in that firmly conspiratorial way of his. “But, that doesn't mean that you have to worry about it. “We've got some witnesses coming forward from the hospital, but I won't go into that here.” She realizes that he is very angry, maybe even more than she is. “Whatever is really going on, we'll get to the bottom of it.” He says through clenched teeth.
The mood of the funeral changes with the cool of the rain in the air and Jet's information.
“Is it true, that the nurse who signed our son's paperwork, isn't on staff there?” Meghan asks out the side of her mouth.
Everet takes a long slow breath in. “Sort of.” He breathes out at once. “More like, they work with contractors who aren't directly on the payroll. Hospice nurses, Neonatal care, even Researchers, like you are, with the Science Division. They come and go. Nurse Kirke who found Malcolm, is like that. She's sold her home after someone died in it, I don't know more yet about your situation.”
She remembers to breathe too then. “Anything I can help you with, money, travel expenses, whatever you need, we'll take care of it.”
“It's okay, you're family”, Everet starts, 'But I'll keep it in mind. As a PI, If I can't help you find and bring back Jiraya, then who can?”
She nods and makes out a terse, “thank you.”
After the funeral, Jyo is too restless to go home right away. So, like so many years earlier when she was just searching and she didn't know what for, she finds herself at the gym.
She gets the feeling that she is going to have to dig deep to keep going in the next few years,
So like the muscle-headed woman that she is, she puts in work.
More weeks roll by.
Wiggles is drawing a self portrait.
Meghan spends more and more time away from the lab...
And Jyo gets back to a daily routine, without as many of the ghosts that were haunting. She even starts to wonder, what happened to her schoolmates, Howard and Kevin, what sort of work have they been doing lately? Howard's father is still the Mayor of this town and very active in local politics, did Howard want to follow in his footsteps? What about Kevin, whose fairy pedigree was of so great a value to his father, will he be able to break free and keep living among the humans? She laughs a bit at the thought, if he has such a long life ahead of him to live, why can't he stay in a place like this for a few hundred years if he likes? Still, everything is different now that they are adults and don't see one another so much. She misses the innocent times, she misses... even Loki, but only because she could confide in him for a time. Who will she confide in now?
That's easy.
Her family.
Signs of life...
...are a reminder that we are not alone.
And whatever is out there...
No matter how hard it is to discover...
No matter how bad the results...
It's still worthwhile to discover it.
To get back up, to keep going.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tune in next time to see some people you didn't think you'd have to care about!
And to find out why Leon hates our resort!
“Leon's dumb, the food here is great.” -Dustin, probably
No comments:
Post a Comment