Chapter Text
Prologue: Late Fall
Life is awful in Asterbury. I’ve been wondering since summer if moving here after graduation was the right thing to do all the time. I’m starting to think it wasn’t.
It didn’t start out badly. I told my parents I wanted to try what my friends and classmates were doing after we finished our formal education: living in the big city on my own. Mama and Daddy supported me from the start. I sent off job applications, got an office job at a good starting level with enough salary to support myself, and I moved to Asterbury properly. Things started out great. I made work friends, enjoyed the night life, and even got into my first adult relationship with what I’d thought was a nice boy. My expectations after school were to be an urban girl, out of the family home and work my way up in the business world even if I didn’t have a perfect goal. You don’t need to plan things out, my friends said. You go to the city to find yourself. So I did, with the hopes of finding my footing, a partner (or two), and take my steps through the Game of Life.
But that was three years ago, when I was a wide eyed idealist of eighteen and saw the city as something new and shiny after years of the biggest “real” city being a half hour away from home by train. Now I’m a girl of recently twenty-one, one of several thousands in the crowd, and I can’t believe I moved so far from home to be miserable.
My older brother Jai and my older sister Nye are well established in life. Jai’s following Dad into the equestrian business, and Nye’s over in New Middleford succeeding in the fashion world with a girl she’s hoping will pop the question in the next few years. And our baby brother Dee still has a few years before he’s on his own, but we’re all sure he’s going to follow Dad and Jai into the business.
I’m the one stagnating, running in circles, and the last season and a half have been more than enough to make me unhappy. The last several weeks alone have been mentally frustrating.
The office thing has become a burden. Every day I wear the same boring “professional” style—blouse, knee length skirt, low heels, and don’t dare forget pantyhose—and am expected to be there at eight-thirty sharp, presentable and pleasant and ready to spend the bulk of the day’s hours (minus two breaks and my half hour to eat a microwaved lunch) in the kind of computer tasks work that could be done in a half hour by anyone who can read, write, and read a spreadsheet—and that’s not including the “assorted” tasks like cleaning up the breakroom, coffee runs, and occasional presence at meetings that could all be e-mails. It was tolerable with my old boss, but after he retired I got a new one who’s the definition of “failing upwards”; when he’s not treating me like an underpaid secretary to take dictation while he leers at my chest, he’s asking our department to turn on his next big whim and then furiously un-whim it ten business days later, even though several of us told him it wouldn’t work the way he wanted, and my last two cost of living raises barely cover the rent rise with a hint of you’re a young thing and don’t need that much while I do more work for less pay.
I still have friends both here and in the suburbs, but those back home only want to ask about the city and those in the city are too busy at their own jobs to talk about anything at all unless it’s to bitch about our jobs over high priced mixed drinks and appetizers at a bar or go to a club where the drinks are even more expensive and I can’t get on the dance floor for two minutes before someone’s grinding on me from behind without even saying hi first. Even the group I came from West Asterbury with have all drifted off into different directions, and half of them have decided Asterbury isn’t for them. And outside of the dull group I’ve gotten tangled in, I just don’t have energy to make new friends.
Relationships? Hah. That’s the worst part of it. My boyfriend, the one I got with only two seasons after moving here, who I’d been with for two years? Ended things this fall with some bullshit about how “it’s not you it’s me.” It was only him who tried to take advantage of my bisexuality, who said being open was fine, then expected me to only look at women and be polyam to fulfill his fantasies of two women slavering over him while he complained about every man I struck up a friendship with even if they mostly went nowhere. And then told on himself when he decided being with a polyam Silk Country girl from West Asterbury meant I was some ignorant fool who wouldn’t care when I found out he’d cheated on me. All I asked was we tell each other about potential new partners and be honest, and he couldn’t even do that. Instead he had the next branch in his hand when he let mine go. Two days after we broke up I saw him on social media with the girl he’d told me for weeks was just a workout friend from his local gym. And to add insult to injury, he broke up with me a week before my twenty-first birthday, in part to avoid giving me anything—not that his presents or presence have been worth a damn anyways. I unfollowed him after seeing that post of the two of them. The new girl can have him. She’ll learn how selfish he is soon enough. But it still hurts. I gave him two years of my life and someone leaving, even when you’re better off without them, leaves an empty space where they were. I’m still broken up about it and even when I don’t want him anymore, I’m super lonely without him.
The last several weeks of the season have been the same, with the spice of barely seeing the autumn sun other than through the office windows before I get off work.
Get up with my alarm, tug on my office clothing, catch the city rail to work in a crowd, pick up coffee and something “baked” from the coffee shop on the first floor of the office building, burn the hours away for my pay, get on the rail back, run whatever errands can’t be put off til Saturday, get the mail, and if no one in the group chat’s suggested an expensive night out (and I haven’t decided to skip) ride the seven floors up to my overpriced one-bedroom apartment with a kitchen just big enough to do the basics. Some nights I don’t have the energy to do more than throw canned soup on the stove and toss together a salad to add some greenery; on the nights I’m not even up for that, placing my usual order of lamb saag and samosas (with rice and naan) from the Chai Silk restaurant that smells like home and pour wine on the side, watch whatever’s on the TV that’ll make a soothing background noise while I mindlessly scroll through videos, and then plop into bed when my phone alarm goes off at half past midnight so I can get up and do it all over again. Weekends have the variety of laundry, cooking proper meals for myself, and getting to wear jeans and my hair not slicked back into a professional bun with two layers of hair gel so there’s no flyaways which’ll get me a talk from New Boss about how the way my hair grows naturally out of my head’s “a distraction” with that passive aggressive tone in his voice.
The first weekend of the season, I have something to look forward to. I ignore anything the group chat suggests, let them know I’m unavailable, come back to the apartment just long enough to pick up my travel bag, and take the thirty minute train ride out to West Asterbury. To home. Where Mama smiles to see me walk in, Dee gives me his playful teasing, and Daddy and Dee and I go out to the pastures and either tend the horses or exercise them, riding out until the horses are tired and the sun’s a sliver on the horizon. I sleep in my old room down the hall from Dee’s and spend almost two full days eating delicious food, listening to the quiet, catching up with family, and riding horses in the part of the Asterbury suburbs where it’s almost the county. I don’t even have to do the riding lessons like Dee’s expected to do, half because I already have a job and half because Dad knows I just need the time to ride and clear my mind and try not to count down the hours before I have to head back to Asterbury proper and continue to feel like my skills, from mounting up to chopping up, are atrophying. After my ex broke up with me I took the Friday and the Monday after off—despite my new boss’s lamentations Monday had an important conference (which I learned the Tuesday after was another reversal of what’d he’d told us to do two Mondays before)—and spend whatever time wasn’t on the back of a horse crying on Jai’s shoulder and scooping mango ice cream from the carton while Jai assured me the ex was losing more than he was gaining. And getting a proper birthday celebration with my favorite cake helped take the sadness off.
But the break at the start of the season—and the unexpected break—aren’t enough. Mama, Daddy, and even Dee in his slightly snarky way can tell I’m not the girl who struck out to the city with the hopes to find the path to happiness. I’m not the girl with high hopes instead of high rent.
I’m sorely tempted to call the whole thing off, quit my job, have Jai and Dee come help me pack up what little I have here, shuffle back to West Asterbury, and consider the City Girl Experiment a failure before getting a job at the local Montgomery’s and at least plod away in a job that lets me wear denim and come home to ride until I find out what’s really out there for me.
Something more is out there for me. I know it is.
I don’t know what I want.
I just know, like I sobbed against my big brother’s shoulder, I want something better than what I’ve gotten lately.
*~*~*
It’s a early Fall afternoon, the Thursday after the unexpected break home that rolled into my birthday. No one in the group chat had a decent plan for dinner or could give a definite confirmation we’d go out before Friday night, so I headed straight home after work. I’m sorting through my mail while the hum of the microwave heating my left over lasagna drones and the garlic bread (just a loaf I picked up from the grocery on the way home) cools on the counter.
Junk mail, junk mail, letter from a friend from school who recently moved to Hillsdwell (which is smaller than West Asterbury), the birthday card from my older sister Niesha she said she’d send late since she couldn’t make it out to West Asterbury this weekend, junk mail, junk mail, Montgomery’s ads, grocery store flyer—
Something different.
It’s not that big of a piece of mail, just big enough to stick out from yet another credit card application I’m likely going to shred. A simple trifold pamphlet. The front shows a lush valley in what has to be late spring or early summer, with expanses of grass, land growing rows of crops, bordered by bright green trees, and a field full of healthy happy farm animals. At the top it says Oak Tree Valley and inside the front of the first fold it reads:
”New Farmers Wanted! Join us and help Oak Tree Valley grow as you work the land!"
I set it aside into the keep pile. Once my food’s done and I’ve set something on the TV to fill the air while I eat to not sit in silence, I sit down to read the pamphlet and read through it proper before I eat.
The wording is clear and direct. Farmland is opening in the area of Oak Tree Valley: a small rural area far west, in the rural part of Central Country closer to the mountains. The Oak Tree Town Guild is offering applicants the chance to own—own—several acres of rich, ready farmland. Applicants don’t have to be an expert farmer—no experience is needed, accepted farmers will be trained by local farmers. They’ll give anyone who fits the bill a chance to come and cultivate the land. It has to be an application, though, as Oak Tree Valley has limited space and thus must be highly discriminating in whom comes in to take the farmland. There’s instructions on how to send for further information and the application—they don’t even list a website, it’s a mail in application. The application should include a short essay about what you as a resident can bring to the town, and how you intend to try your best as a farmer and what makes you stand out as a farmer. The application and essay should be returned to the Oak Tree Town Guild Hall, Farmer’s Association, addressed to Guild Master Livingston. Applications are due by the last days of the fall season. Replies will be sent back no later than the middle of winter, and accepted applicants will receive information on arraigning an early spring arrival in time for the active growing season.
That night in bed, I stare up at the “landlord’s white” ceiling.
No one in my family has ever been a farmer. Cocoa Silk people like me—well, I’m mostly Cocoa—aren’t known for farming. We’re historically and culturally known for horse care and husbandry. My great-great grandparents—on both sides—immigrated from Silk Country to Central Country long before even my great grandparents were born, and on Daddy’s side I can trace back for eight generations as the descendant of horse breeders and caretakers. Cocoa Silk peoples are said to ride behind our mothers before we can walk, and historically cultivated many of the breeds known across multiple countries including the high level thoroughbreds. Horse riding is in my blood. We are a people intertwined with horse care, and the back of a horse is one of my most comfortable places. As a kid, I wasn’t just a horse girl, I was the horse girl, and that wasn’t always said as a compliment.
But since Grandpa’s day, horses have become less of a necessity and more of a frivolity in the more urban and suburban places. Cities grew and cars and trains and inner city light rail became more commonplace and horse riding became less of an everyday travel and work necessity and more of a upper class hobby in the suburbs we now live in. I’d be lucky guessing to say even one in twenty of the Central Country people who attend Daddy’s classes do it as more than a hobby or to perform in horse shows.
Horses used to be used heavily on farms. Some still are—many people in the community commit to work horses over show ponies. But horses aren’t farming.
And I’ve always thought about farming, since the time in grammar school when we grew beans in paper cups and mine grew the best because I remembered to water it just right, and at the end of the unit I brought the little paper cup home and Mama bought a pot for me and I’d tend to it every day after school and looked up how to support the growing length, and it flowered and then grew pods enough we got to cook them in dinner after harvesting and I was proud to say they were my beans even though Dee still refused to eat them. Mama and Daddy said I had Gaia’s green thumbs. The next year when we did a “what do you want to be when you grow up” presentation, I came home the day after presenting crying and when Daddy asked what was wrong, I told him Amy Thompson had said horse girls don’t grow up to be farmers and I was furious because Amy had let her little bean plant dry up anyways so what did she know, it wasn’t fair, and I bet I could be as good a farmer as anyone. (He’d had to explain to me what horse girl meant. It was the first of many hard conversations Cocoa Silk kids get growing up.) I’d keep a garden if I had space and time for it—and permission, and the assurance that the manager of my apartment building wouldn’t consider a porch full of running peas and potted tomatoes an “eyesore.”
A farm’d be far away from the urban tightness of Asterbury, from office jobs and high rises and wearing pantyhose and all this everything here squashing me down. It wouldn’t come without its risks. Oak Tree Valley is probably small, and small town living comes with all the inconveniences they have. And it’s definitely rural. I looked up more information, and Oak Tree Valley is a six-hour train trip from Asterbury. It’ll be far from my parents and siblings, yes. But they’ll understand. They understood when Nye moved two and a half hours north by northwest.
I roll over. It'll mean being visibly Cocoa Silk in a place that probably doesn’t have any. For all I know I’ll be the only non-Central Country person there. If I get there.
Still.
The thought of leaving this failed city life and all the hurt behind is appealing.
The desire to live far from home, and try to grow a career off the land in harmony with nature is even more appealing.
Maybe I won’t make it. Maybe I’ll fail at farming. Witch Princess Curses, maybe they won’t even consider me—rural towns are notoriously non-diverse and they might take one look at the words Cocoa Silk and send off a form refusal. But I’d rather be visible in the country than overlooked and overworked in a large city another day.
I won’t know if I don’t try, and I can’t try if I don’t apply. The worst that can happen is I’ll be told no, thank you for your time. And if that happens, I’ll stick it out until my lease is up and go back home to West Asterbury. Either way, I’m out of here in the spring.
I send off for the application the next day. It arrives two days later, faster than I thought it would—they must be really eager. It’s a Saturday when it arrives, so I have all day free to consider it. I fill out the information requested, tell the group chat I can’t go out tonight, and stay up until four a.m. typing a heartfelt and hopefully skillful essay about how—while I’ve never farmed—I come from a long lineage of Coca Silk horse cultivators and am willing to learn how to farm and try my hardest to learn the trade and all its ways. I drop the application off Monday on the way to another day of placating a useful idiot and spend the next several nights dreaming of wide green pastures, blooming crops, and barns full of farm animals.
It's not very far into Winter when I receive a thick cream envelope. Thick is good, no matter what exes who now date pale skinned gym bunnies say. I open it up right there in the front lobby.
Dear Ms. Maddox:
We are pleased to offer you the opportunity to become a farmer in our Oak Tree Valley community—
I nearly drop the letter. I don’t, and instead, drop it in my tote and rush up to my apartment. I barely get my shoes kicked off before I sit down to read further.
Included with the welcoming letter are instructions on how to confirm my arrival date—the first of the Spring Season is preferred so I can start getting established and be trained early in the growing season—what I’ll need to complete my Farmer’s Visa once I arrive, the nearest train station to direct my arrival, and the physical address I can ship any trunks or containers to; they’ll be placed in secure storage before I arrive and get settled at my farm. There is also a check—an actual physical one—with what they hope is a sufficient amount to cover my travel ticket costs and partial moving expenses, and they’ll connect me with my mentor once I arrive.
At the end, it reads:
Once again, we’re happy to welcome you to Oak Tree Valley. We look forward to your arrival, and can’t wait to see your growth into becoming a valued member of our community.
Sincerely,
Oak Tree Valley Town Council
I’ve been accepted. I’m going to be a farmer. Or at least, I’m going to try. Maybe I’ll fail and have to come back to West Asterbury in a year, but I’ve got a shot. And I am not throwing it away.
I piss off my boss by taking off an unplanned for Friday yet again and zoom back to West Asterbury that morning before even the horses are up for breakfast. Mama frets I’ve been fired until I tell her and Daddy what I’ve done, letter in hand. Daddy’s eyebrows raise halfway to his hairline at the thought of his third-oldest child living six hours by train from home, out in the west Central Country. Mama is shocked I even applied. But they’re not merely happy for me, they’re overjoyed I’m finally pursuing the dream that sprouted with a little bean in a paper cup. They both agree if I need anything, including some seed money (Daddy can’t help making dad jokes), let them know and they’ll do what they can. Horse people make decent money, especially now that horses are more of a luxury.
I slam my resignation on New Boss’s desk Monday morning along with a request to time out all my time off so I don’t have to juggle moving and sitting in another meeting that could have been a memo. I inform the front office of my apartment building I won’t be renewing my lease in Spring.
The Asterbury group chat explodes when I let them know. Annie from the third floor offices says there’s a reason she moved the other way as soon as she graduated to a place where absolutely no one has to know your name. Heather in accounting says she didn’t think my kind wanted to live so far in the middle of nothing, which results in a thirty-minute reply chain while several people in the group call her out on her ignorance. Amy Thompson—who is in HR and just another reason to leave—snidely says I’ll be slinking back to Asterbury once I get a taste of country comforts, and I snidely ask her how are things going with Colin and mute the chat for two hours while watching four episodes of Lunar Legends.
I spend the next week kon-marieing my life to what matters, limiting myself to three large shipping trunks and one personal packing trunk, including some of my favorite books and my copy of Adoring the Stars I was gifted for my birthday and read in three days. What few things don’t fit in the trunks I desperately can’t part with go into boxes to store at my parents’ place until I have room to get them.
Dee tells me I’m out of my mind while he and Jai help me clean up the apartment enough to get my deposit back. He continues to do so every day he sees me especially after I move home for the interim, but there’s a glimmer in his purple-red eyes revealing he’s impressed I’m willing to risk such a venture.
Nye lets me know when she and Cammie come down from New Middleford for a visit I’m really taking a leap of faith—but so did she, after all.
Jai tells me, one afternoon while I’m helping him tend the stables—I’m at home anyways, so I’m willing to help at the stables—his baby sister the farmer better send him letters regularly from Oak Tree Valley.
My friends in West Asterbury ask me if I’ve quit the city life when I get home and are shocked to hear just how far I’ve gone to quit it and that out of all of us, it’s me who’s skipping out to the countryside. But they’re a lot more supportive of it than the Asterbury group chat. I ask for addresses and phone numbers and promise to write—but not to post about it online a ton and calls will be infrequent, especially until I know what the phone network is like out there. Curses, I tease, I might end up with a landline.
Mama takes me shopping to make sure I have everything I need, and insists I get a little extra—and several pairs of clean socks.
All too soon and not soon enough, the first day of Spring comes, the morning rolling in with a light fog that dissipates by the time we get to the breakfast café a few blocks down from the West Asterbury train station. I’ve already shipped my trunks ahead of me three days beforehand, reducing my already reduced possessions down to a travel pair of rucksack and duffel bag that holds a deceptive amount of clothes—just enough for the first week there. Mama, Daddy, Jai, Dee, Nye—who came down to see me off—and I all share a filling breakfast; Nye and I split the apple juice and Dee tries to steal a bite of my Center Rose toast before I remind him he has his own through a mouth full of breakfast sausage.
At the station, my parents and brothers and sister hug me once by one. Jai reminds me for the hundredth time to write. Dee tells me to grow more than dirt, and I playfully punch him. Nye tells me to show the West Central countryside what Cocoa Silk People are made of, and Daddy reminds her it’s Cocoa with Chai. Mama doesn’t say much, but she does say she’ll miss me, which gets Nye welling up, which gets me welling up. Even Dee blinks, then claims it must be the morning air.
With waves and heartfelt goodbyes, I board the eight a.m. train taking me out west, to start a new path in life.
As the suburbs slide away and the land transitions into hills and valleys, I stare out of the window, watching the land flow by and wondering what life has in store for me out in the countryside.
Author’s Notes:
Hello, readers. The first cut is the deepest set of notes is the longest.
I’ve been working on this in some form since I started playing Story of Seasons on my 3DS in 2015, but that wasn’t my first Bokumono Game. (Nami, my beloved, I would have gotten a lot further on my GameCube save if I could have played as a girl.) I created my character, set up my farm, and as I played, made notes the way Pokémon Nuzlocke players do but with less death. (Somewhat. Look, the game’s been out for nearly a decade in the US, it’s hard to spoil the beats. It’s how you hit em.) Then I got a hold of a text dump and it made it easy to make notes and expand characters. And also dislike some.
I’m going to be making up last names (and some middle ones) for every character. It adds dimension, diversity, and culture. I will also be making some things a little more realistic. Others will not be, because no one should read about three months of growing potatoes.
I’m an “author chooses not to use warnings” kind of person. We’re going to start with Mature but it will get explicit later on. It’s just not yet. Same with the ships; I’ll add them as the chapters are added.
This is not a short story. This is a long haul. I have literally 19k of character notes, never mind the gameplay notes. Characters will be more jerky, nuanced, and three-dimensional than the game has them. Time will pass and characters will grow up and adapt unless they’re a Dessie or a Witchie or a Sprite.
I don’t want corrections or constructive critics in my comments. I’ve got people for that and they know how to give me feedback. 90% of this is being posted to get me out of a mental writing funk and I am, as I tell my writing friends, on every inch of my personal bullshit. There will be shipping. A good part of it will be with my OC. Isn’t that what Annie/Minori is anyways once you take her off the default?
You’ll learn things as you go. And so will I. Milk facts milk facts milk facts.
The next "chapter" will be my OC's profile minus spoilers.
Central Country? Well, we have to have a setting for Oak Tree Valley and all the cities I reference in it, so Central Country it is.
Silk Country—and every country except Central—are divided into categories I’ve mapped to real-world locations. My life and my world has brown and black people.
- Cocoa Silk: “African/Black.”
- Chai Silk: “South Asia.”