Excerpts from Simbook, one year after what the Monsoon-Farley family has dubbed simply “The Incident”:
Lynn Farley
14 July
Finally getting on a plane towards Shang Simla. It’s been way too much waiting.
Margaret Farley
Remember to be careful!
Rem Monsoon
😀 Mum’s thinking you’ll try to bungee jump off the plane.
Lynn Farley
😛
Lynn Farley
14 July
The accommodations could definitely be worse. It’s really close to the centre, and the building is super cool! Also the picture I took is proof that we survived the flight, with just some numbed muscles and major jet lag.
Jace Herring
The place is awesome. I’m calling the fancy bunk!
Lynn Farley
Jace, I’m right next to you. You can just turn your head and talk to me. 😛
Lynn Farley
15 July
Went for a walk in the centre. It’s really beautiful. Behind Bree and I you can see the Halls of the Lost Army.
Rem Monsoon
Nice! Can you take lots of pictures on pretty scenery? I wanna paint EVERYTHING there.
Margaret Farley
hi lynaöaflk paskxliw llkasöd.
Margaret Farley
Sorry. Merry wanted to say hi too. He can almost type already!
Lynn Farley
Mum, there are such things as delete and backspace…
Bree Vasquez
😀
Lynn Farley
16 July
Got to visit the famous Scholar’s Garden. It really is as peaceful as the websites claim.
Min Han
Not pictured: Michel falling into the pond.
Michel Faroffington
Hey! 😡
Jace Herring
lol
Lynn Farley
18 July
Okay, here’s some scenery pics. Shang Simla is amazing.
Rem Monsoon
Yay, thanks!
Lynn Farley
19 July
The time to get back home is getting closer, but there’s still plenty of time to do stuff. Today was a shopping day, but I’m hoping we’ll get to see the terracotta army later.
Lynn Farley
19 July
Aaaw, yeah!
Rem Monsoon
Did they look like they might wanna come to life and attack people?
Lynn Farley
Stop watching so many movies.
Rem Monsoon
Been raiding your bookshelf, actually. 😛
Lynn Farley
As long as you don’t destroy anything…
Lynn Farley
July 20
One of the last times we visited the centre. I’ll be missing this place later.
Min Han
Me too. It’s been amazing.
It really had been.
I sighed wistfully and logged out from Simbook and from my trip down memory lane. It’d been over half a year since we’d visited China. I’d been wanting to get out, to explore the world, and I’d asked my closest friends to go with me. After some planning and meeting up together several times, Jace, Bree, Michel, and Min had all said yes. And then, a year of working between studies and saving up every Simoleon I made had done it. Barely. To be honest, we couldn’t have gone if it hadn’t been for Michel being rich and helping us all. I hadn’t been a fan of the idea of him paying a bit more than the rest of us, but he didn’t seem to mind. Neither had Mrs. Faroffington, who had volunteered as our chaperone and then stayed out of our way as much as she could to have a holiday of her own. We’d had so much fun, and I felt like it had helped my depression more than a year of therapy and pills could. Not that it had magically cured it; it was still there, a blanket on my mind, but not as suffocating as before.
After that, it had been back to the everyday life. But even that hadn’t felt that bad. Things had changed, and I’d say the changes were for the better.
We’d done some renovating in the house, making the cold white walls a bit warmer with some wood panelling and brown paint. Mum and Patrick had loved fixing up the house, and Rem had always been the first to wake up to paint the walls. I’d loved carrying around the new stone tiles that were then put over the kitchen walls, and just helping things come together. Merrill had loved trying to paint everything in sight until we took the paints away from his reach. Oh boy, had he screamed.
Despite his occasional primadonna antics being mostly unchanged, Merrill had grown. He was talking a lot more, and his walking was much better. He could even draw, write some of the alphabets, and do something resembling very basic maths. And when he played his xylophone, it almost seemed like he knew what he was doing. Not that it made the sounds of him violently pummelling the notes out of the xylophone any less cringe-worthy.
Mum had enrolled on an online university course on computing and media to make her blog better. She had even bought a dorky university shirt and liked to walk around in it like she was the queen of the world. She seemed to worry a bit less too. I liked that. And she liked her studies, especially because studying and working mostly from home meant that she could still spend a lot of time with Merrill. She kept talking about how fast he grew, and how soon they’d all miss these days when Merrill was cute and little instead of cute and slightly less little. I suppose that made sense.
Patrick was… well, Patrick. I don’t know if even the apocalypse could change him. He still liked hugging trees and making responsible consumer choices. He spent most of his free time in the garden, until frost attacked it and he had to let it fall dormant for the rest of the year. Then he moved back indoors to be himself. He still loved teaching and kept his mostly calm, warm nature intact even when paying therapy bills and seeing me sit in my room with a blank expression on my face. But now, when I did the blank staring much less, I noticed that he smiled a little more.
Rem was also still his own, kind of childish and definitely creative self. He’d been shaken by everything that had happened, sure, but he seemed to get over it much better this time. I’m sure that seeing his other family helped a lot too. Sometimes Alvar would visit us, and sometimes Rem would take the bus to Twinbrook and then walk beyond that. It made him less confused, at least, and I think he was slowly finding his identity. I’m sure the doubts about him not being Patrick’s kid had kept it on shaky grounds. Sometimes it was weird how having one’s fears confirmed actually made things easier. But only sometimes.
I could say that I was annoyed or embarrassed by my brother’s childish antics whenever he tried to cheer me up or just felt like being an idiot…
…but I had to admit that I’d learned to love that. Probably way before we’d started to become closer as siblings.
I think that one of the best things about facing all that awfulness in the past was that the smaller hurts felt… well, smaller. I could face difficult things with more bravery because I’d already been so scared and broken and yet managed to get over it. Almost.
Maybe that was why I was having a peaceful nostalgia moment instead of worrying about the upcoming spring that would surely be hell for anyone my age who wanted to have a future.
The pushy society dictated that I should already start to worry about graduating high school, even though this was only my second-to-last year. Not to mention how I was about to become eighteen years old. Almost an adult, legally responsible enough to be held fully responsible for screwing up. And Rem was on his way to high school now. I figured I should at some point start to mentally prepare for studying overloads and shattered dreams.
But not right now. Right now I was happy to just look out the window, at the gentle snowfall that had finally covered Sunset Valley after a too-long, dark autumn. The New Year was upon us, and Snowflake Day was already enough in the past for us to have eaten most of the festive food. I felt like I should go for a jog. I’d been eating way too much in the last few days.
I thought about it for a while, and then called Min and asked her if she wanted to challenge her lungs with the frosty air. She said yes, as long as she could first finish the video call she was having with… someone.
I had a feeling I knew who she was calling, even though she didn’t say it. Even I hadn’t missed the looks Min and Jace had given each other when we’d been in Shang Simla. And Bree had been gushing about the two endlessly after the trip. It was oddly cute, I suppose.
I stood up from my chair and didn’t make it far until Rem almost ran into me.
“Hey, Lynn! I was just practising in my room!” he said excitedly, “Look what I can do now!”
He lifted his hands, and light started to form between them. He scrunched up his forehead, and the light turned into a flower.
“See?” he said, “Look how precise my illusions are now!”
I smiled.
“Yeah, it’s awesome.”
Rem beamed back at me.
“Thanks!”
Then he ran downstairs, probably to either paint or to go outside and frolic in the snow. I realised I was still smiling. Yup, things had definitely turned out for the better in the last year and a half.
I tried my best to ignore the feel of a phantom gun in my hand and walked downstairs after my brother.
–
Author’s Note: Yay for a short interlude-ish thing that probably shows that I don’t use Facebook or the actual Simbook or anything like that… and it also shows my unwillingness to use chatspeak, since all the characters are surprisingly eloquent in their “Simbook-comments”.
For this story I now have a bunch of events that are out of order and kind of disjointed and I’m trying to weave them together into a logical plot-like thing. So I’m not sure how long it’ll take for this arc to really get going, but I’ll do my best to not leave you hanging for too long.
Have a lovely time!
The Fey of Life 
I’m glad Lynn is getting better, somewhat. The China trip definitely did her good!
It’s amazing how the human and fae families are so friendly now. I’m sure both Rem and Alvar are benefiting from this.
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The humans and the fair folk aren’t that close, but Alvar and Rem are acting as a sort of link between them. At least there isn’t any animosity between them, yet (who knows what happens later). But yeah, Rem and Alvar are both in a pretty good situation right now.
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