Writing Book 1: Return to the Valley

[Gamer1234556]

Book 1 – Return to the Valley, Year 1 ​

This first installment follows Eric Keene’s return to Stardew Valley after leaving behind his life at Joja Corporation. What begins as a chance to start over on his grandfather’s old farm quickly becomes something more complicated, as Eric realizes Pelican Town is not just a place from his childhood, but a place tied to family memory, old grief, and questions his grandfather never fully answered.

Unlike the original version of Book 1, this remake places a stronger focus on Eric’s past: his relationship with his grandfather Peter, his strained family history, his sister Eirika, and the life he left behind in the city. Spring begins with the physical work of rebuilding Keene’s Farm, but the real conflict is Eric trying to understand what he inherited — and whether returning to the valley means healing from the past or walking deeper into it.

Characters such as Lewis, Robin, Marnie, George, Evelyn, Penny, Haley, Emily, Shane, Abigail, and others play important roles in shaping Eric’s first weeks back in town. The farm, the Saloon, the Mines, the Museum, and the Egg Festival all feature prominently as Eric starts to reconnect with Pelican Town and uncover the first signs that the valley remembers more than it says.

Book 1 is complete. I’ll be posting one to two chapters per week to allow space for discussion and feedback.

Constructive critique is welcome — especially on pacing, dialogue, characterization, emotional clarity, and how well the remake establishes Eric’s past and Pelican Town’s larger history.

Chapters
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

 

[Gamer1234556]

Prologue​

I still remember the last message my grandfather gave me from his deathbed.

Not because I understood it.

I didn’t.

Back then, I was still young enough to believe families stayed the way they were simply because they always had. My mother still stood near my father when we visited. My sister still sat beside me, swinging her legs from the edge of the chair because her feet couldn’t quite touch the floor. My grandfather still felt like the center of the room, even when he was too weak to stand.

Grandpa had always seemed bigger than sickness.

Even lying in bed, with the curtains drawn and the late afternoon light spilling pale across the walls, he carried himself like a man who had merely decided to rest for a while. His hands were thinner than I remembered. His voice had lost some of its strength. But his eyes were still sharp.

They found me first.

Then Eirika.

Then my parents.

Mom stood closest to the bed, her hands folded tightly in front of her. She kept smiling, but it was the kind of smile adults used when they were trying not to frighten children.

Dad stood behind her, arms crossed, one shoulder pressed against the wall.

He looked tired.

Or annoyed.

At that age, I didn’t know there was sometimes no difference.

Grandpa noticed anyway.

“You’re hovering, Sarah,” he said.

Mom let out a small laugh, but it broke halfway through.

“I’m allowed to hover,” she said. “You’re my father.”

Grandpa smiled faintly.

“That’s never stopped you from arguing with me before.”

Eirika giggled beside me.

Mom’s mouth trembled, but she covered it quickly. Dad looked toward the window.

I remember that part clearly.

The way everyone seemed to know something was happening except me and Eirika.

We knew Grandpa was sick. We knew the adults spoke more softly in the hallway. We knew Mom cried sometimes when she thought we were asleep.

But we didn’t understand what it meant for someone to be leaving.

Not really.

Grandpa shifted slightly against the pillows and looked toward Dad.

“David,” he said.

Dad straightened.

“Peter.”

There was something in the way they said each other’s names. Not anger exactly. Not even dislike. But something old and tight, like a knot neither of them had ever bothered to loosen.

Grandpa studied him for a moment.

“Take care of them.”

Dad’s jaw moved.

“I have been.”

The room went quiet.

Mom closed her eyes for just a second.

“I know,” Grandpa said.

But the words did not sound like agreement.

Dad’s arms tightened over his chest.

“I don’t need to be reminded of my own family.”

“No,” Grandpa said, still calm. “But sometimes men need to be reminded of what a family is.”

I looked between them, confused.

Eirika leaned closer to me and whispered, “Are they fighting?”

I shook my head because that was what I wanted to be true.

Mom turned quickly.

“Not now,” she said, her voice low.

Dad looked at her.

“I didn’t start this.”

Grandpa exhaled, long and tired.

“No,” he said. “You rarely do.”

That time, even I understood enough to feel the air change.

Dad looked like he wanted to say something. For a moment, I thought he would. Then he pushed himself away from the wall and stared down at the floor instead.

Mom’s fingers tightened around the edge of the blanket.

“You know,” she said quietly, “this house only ever worked because of you.”

Grandpa looked at her.

“Sarah…”

“It’s true,” she said. “You kept everyone coming back. Birthdays, dinners, Christmas, repairs, arguments…” She swallowed. “Whenever something broke, everyone just waited for you to fix it.”

Dad made a small sound under his breath.

Mom turned to him.

“What?”

“I said nothing.”

“No,” she said, softer now, but sharper. “You never say nothing.”

Dad looked away again.

Grandpa watched them both with a sadness I would not understand until years later.

At the time, I thought adults were supposed to know what they were doing. I thought if they sounded certain, then they were certain. I thought if they stayed in the same room, it meant they still belonged there.

Eirika reached for my hand.

I let her take it.

Her palm was warm and small, and she held on like this was all just another uncomfortable visit we would laugh about later.

Grandpa’s eyes softened when he saw us.

“Come here, you two.”

We moved closer together. Eirika went first, because she always did when she was nervous. I followed because I always followed her.

Grandpa lifted one hand with some effort and rested it on Eirika’s head.

“My bright little star,” he said.

She smiled immediately.

“Am I getting something too?”

“Eirika,” Mom warned gently.

Grandpa chuckled. The sound was weak, but real.

“You already have too much fire to carry,” he said. “Anything I gave you would just make trouble.”

Eirika grinned.

Dad muttered, “That much is true.”

For a second, the room almost felt normal.

Almost.

Grandpa reached toward the small table beside the bed. Mom moved quickly to help him, but he raised two fingers.

“I can manage.”

She stopped.

Slowly, carefully, he opened the drawer and took out a sealed envelope.

It was old-fashioned, thick, and folded neatly, sealed with a deep purple stamp.

My name was written on the front.

Eric.

Not “my boy.”
Not “grandson.”
My name.

Something about that made my stomach tighten.

Grandpa held it out to me.

“And for my very special grandson,” he said, his voice thin but steady, “I want you to have this sealed envelope.”

I took it carefully.

The paper felt heavier than it should have.

Eirika leaned over my shoulder.

“What is it?”

I started to turn it over.

Grandpa’s hand closed gently around mine.

“No, no,” he said. “Don’t open it yet.”

I froze.

His grip was weak, but his eyes held me in place.

“Have patience.”

I looked down at the envelope again.

“When do I open it?”

Grandpa smiled, but there was something sad in it.

“When you need it.”

I frowned.

“How will I know?”

“You will.”

That answer frustrated me. I wanted rules. A date. A reason. Something clear enough that I could not get it wrong.

Grandpa seemed to understand that too.

He looked past me for a moment, toward the window. Outside, the old trees around the house swayed gently in the wind. I remember how peaceful they looked. Like the world had no idea anything was ending.

Then Grandpa spoke again.

“Listen close.”

Everyone did.

Even Dad.

“There will come a day,” Grandpa said, “when you feel crushed by the burden of modern life.”

The words sounded strange to me then. Too large. Too distant.

“When your bright spirit begins to fade into emptiness.”

Mom looked down.

Dad shifted against the wall.

Eirika’s hand found mine again.

“When that happens, my boy…” Grandpa’s voice weakened, then steadied. “You’ll be ready for this gift.”

I stared at him.

“But what if I open it too early?”

“You won’t.”

“What if I forget?”

“You won’t.”

“What if I lose it?”

Grandpa’s smile deepened slightly.

“Then your sister will remind you where you put it.”

Eirika nodded seriously.

“I will.”

Grandpa looked at her with such tenderness that, even now, that memory hurts.

Because she meant it.

Because she would have reminded me.

Because there was a time when losing something only meant asking Eirika where it was.

Mom turned away from the bed, one hand pressed to her mouth.

Dad finally moved closer.

For a moment, he stood beside her. Not touching. Not comforting. Just close enough that a stranger might have mistaken it for unity.

Grandpa saw that too.

His gaze settled on them, tired but searching.

“Don’t let the house become quiet,” he said.

Mom looked back at him.

“What?”

“This family,” Grandpa said. “It was never meant to live in separate rooms.”

Dad’s expression tightened.

“Peter—”

“I know,” Grandpa said.

Dad stopped.

Grandpa’s eyes moved back to me.

I did not understand why he looked so sad.

I thought he was talking about the house. About dinners. About people visiting less after he was gone.

I did not know he was talking about all of us.

I did not know that one day Mom and Dad would stop speaking except through lawyers and tired phone calls.

I did not know Eirika and I would be pulled to opposite sides of a broken family like furniture divided between houses.

I did not know that my sister, who sat beside me that day with her hand in mine, would become someone I remembered more often than I saw.

I did not know that the envelope in my hand would one day feel like the last thing anyone gave me before everything started coming apart.

Back then, I only knew that Grandpa looked tired.

I stepped closer.

“Are you coming home?” I asked.

Mom made a sound behind me.

Grandpa looked at me for a long moment.

Then he reached out and brushed his thumb gently against my knuckles.

“Oh, Eric,” he said.

That was all.

No promise.

No comforting lie.

Just my name.

Eirika started crying first, though she tried to hide it. I heard her sniff beside me and saw her wipe her face with her sleeve.

Dad looked away.

Mom sat down on the edge of the bed and finally took Grandpa’s hand.

For a while, nobody spoke.

The room was full of things I was too young to understand.

Regret.

Fear.

Love that had nowhere useful to go.

And the strange, terrible feeling of a family holding itself together for one more afternoon because the man who usually held it together was still breathing.

I kept the envelope pressed against my chest.

I thought it was a secret.

A mystery.

Maybe even a treasure.

I did not know it was a door.

I did not know it was waiting for the day I would have nowhere else to go.

Those were the last words I ever heard from him.

 

[Gamer1234556]

Chapter 1​

Years passed before I thought about that letter again.

Not because I forgot it.

I told myself I did, but that was never true. The envelope followed me from room to room, apartment to apartment, year to year. It sat in drawers beneath old chargers and expired warranty cards. It disappeared under tax forms, student loan notices, and the kind of mail I opened only when the red print became threatening enough.

But I always knew where it was.

Some things you don’t lose.

You just spend years pretending you don’t need them.

By then, I was working in a cubicle at Joja Corporation.

Grey walls. Grey carpet. Grey light humming overhead. Grey faces bent toward grey screens. The whole office looked like someone had drained the color from the world and sold it back to us as efficiency.

The only sound was typing.

Not conversation. Not laughter. Not even anger, most days.

Just typing.

An endless rain of keyboard clicks, like static from a dying machine.

I sat in the middle of it with my shoulders hunched, my eyes burning, and my third cup of coffee going cold beside my keyboard. The coffee had come from the break room machine, which tasted like someone had taught water what bitterness was and then punished it for learning.

I drank it anyway.

Everyone did.

That was how Joja worked. It gave you something bad, convinced you there was no alternative, and then watched you become grateful for it.

Across the aisle, Marv from processing was clearing out his desk.

At least, I thought his name was Marv. It might have been Mark. Or Martin. I had heard Dobson shout it once, but never kindly enough to remember.

A cardboard box sat on his chair. A cracked mug. A stress ball shaped like the Joja globe. A framed photo of two children. A fake plant that looked healthier than anyone in the room.

No one looked up for more than a second.

That was the worst part.

Not that someone had been terminated.

That happened often enough.

The worst part was how quickly the office corrected itself around the absence.

One person gone. One chair empty. One login disabled. The machine hiccuped, then continued.

Beside the vending machine, Harold from compliance stood perfectly still, staring at nothing. He had been there when I came in. He was there after the morning meeting. He had been there long enough that I started to wonder if he was working or decomposing.

He looked like he had spent so many years under fluorescent light that his bones had started giving up.

Nobody checked on him either.

A man in a cowboy hat passed by carrying a stack of folders against his chest. Boots, belt buckle, pearl-snap shirt, the whole thing. He had been dressing like that for three weeks. I still had no idea why.

No one blinked.

Joja had no dress code worth enforcing anymore.

It didn’t matter what you wore.

Your soul looked the same as everyone else’s.

“Morning, sunshine.”

I looked up.

Juno leaned against the divider between our cubicles, holding a paper cup in one hand and a breakfast sandwich in the other. She wore a dark red blazer, scuffed boots, and the expression of someone who had already been disappointed by the day and was eager to blame someone specific.

Her hair was pinned up badly. Not carelessly. Badly. As if she had fought it in the mirror and both sides had lost.

“You look like someone turned a haunted house into a person.”

“Thanks.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“I figured.”

She took a bite of her sandwich and grimaced.

“Why do I keep buying these?”

“Because hope is a disease.”

“There he is.” She pointed at me with the sandwich. “There’s the Eric Keene I tolerate.”

I tried to smile.

It didn’t quite work.

Juno noticed.

Of course she noticed. Juno noticed everything, especially things people wanted left alone.

Her eyes flicked to my phone.

It was face down beside my keyboard.

It had been buzzing all morning.

I had not answered once.

Juno lowered her voice.

“Nancy?”

I looked back at my screen.

“Work.”

“Sure.”

“It is work.”

“Eric.”

I hated when she said my name like that. Not because she was wrong, but because she was almost always too close to right.

I clicked uselessly through the spreadsheet in front of me.

Columns. Metrics. Targets. Follow-ups. Projected completion variance.

Words that sounded responsible because nobody wanted to admit they meant nothing.

Juno kept watching me.

“I’m not doing this right now,” I said.

“I didn’t ask you to do anything.”

“You’re standing there with your interrogation sandwich.”

“This sandwich is a witness.”

“Juno.”

“What? I’m just saying, when someone’s phone buzzes that much and they look like they’re being hunted by it, usually there’s a story.”

“There isn’t.”

“Uh-huh.”

The phone buzzed again.

Once.

Twice.

A third time.

Juno’s eyebrows rose.

I flipped it over before I could stop myself.

Nancy.

Of course.

The preview was short.

Are you ignoring me now?

Below it, another.

Kel asked if you were coming tonight. Don’t make this weird again.

My stomach tightened.

Juno saw my face.

“Ah,” she said.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You said ‘ah.’”

“That’s not legally speech.”

I locked the phone and put it back down.

The screen lit up again almost immediately.

Juno’s expression softened, which somehow made it worse.

“Is Kel doing his thing again?”

I stared at the spreadsheet.

“What does that mean?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Eric.”

I sighed.

“Fine.” Juno muttered. “Is Kel still acting like he doesn’t understand boundaries because acting stupid is easier than being decent?”

I said nothing.

That was answer enough.

Juno swore under her breath.

“He knows what he’s doing.”

“You don’t know him.”

“I know men who smile like they’re innocent while standing exactly where they shouldn’t be.”

“Juno.”

“Sorry.” She lifted one hand, though she didn’t sound sorry. “I forgot we all have to pretend this is complicated.”

“It is complicated.”

“No, it’s messy. There’s a difference.”

My jaw tightened.

I wanted to snap at her. I wanted to tell her to mind her own business, to stop acting like she understood a relationship she only saw from the outside, to stop looking at me like I was already halfway underwater.

But the worst thing about Juno was that she did understand.

Not all of it.

Enough.

Before I could answer, another voice cut in.

“Juno, leave him alone before you start charging by the diagnosis.”

Lisa appeared beside her, carrying two folders and a mug with faded flowers painted around the rim.

Lisa did not move through Joja like the rest of us.

Most people dragged themselves. Some rushed. Dobson stalked. Olivia floated from crisis to crisis with the hollow-eyed grace of someone whose soul had been converted into paperwork.

Lisa moved quietly.

Not weakly. Not timidly.

Quietly.

Like she had decided years ago that the only way to survive this place was to bring her own weather into the room and refuse to let Joja change it.

She set one folder on my desk.

“Inventory reconciliation,” she said. “Dobson wants it by noon, which means Olivia needed it yesterday, which means none of us are eating lunch.”

Juno lifted her sandwich.

“I’m eating lunch right now. In protest.”

“That is breakfast.”

“All meals are political under capitalism.”

Lisa gave her a patient look.

Juno grinned.

For the first time that morning, I almost laughed.

Almost.

Lisa noticed that too. But unlike Juno, she didn’t press.

She just leaned slightly against the cubicle wall and looked at the phone on my desk.

“You don’t have to answer that here,” she said softly.

I swallowed.

“I know.”

“You say that like someone who doesn’t know.”

Juno pointed at Lisa.

“See? Calm version of what I said.”

“No,” Lisa said. “You were being aggressive.”

Juno sighed in exasperation.

“Fine, I was doing the efficient version. Happy?”

Lisa smiled faintly, then looked back at me.

“You look exhausted.”

“I’m fine.”

Both of them looked at me.

I hated that too.

“Well… I’m functioning,” I corrected.

“Sure you are,” Juno snorted, “it’s the official Joja standard.”

The phone buzzed again.

I didn’t look.

Lisa did.

Not at the screen. At me.

“You stayed late again?”

“Dobson needed the quarterly conversion templates fixed.”

“Dobson needed someone to blame if they weren’t fixed,” Juno said.

Lisa’s mouth tightened slightly.

“She’s not wrong,” she said.

I rubbed my eyes.

The screen blurred when I opened them again. Numbers doubled for a moment, then snapped back into place.

“I had to get it done.”

“No,” Juno said. “You chose to get it done because Dobson has trained you to treat his panic like your responsibility.”

I wanted to tell her she was wrong.

Then Dobson’s voice cut through the office.

“Keene.”

Every keyboard in the room seemed to hesitate for half a second.

Then the typing resumed faster.

​

Dobson stood at the end of the aisle, clipboard in hand, tie pulled too tight, jaw clenched like he had bitten down on a nail and decided to make that everyone else’s problem.

He was not especially tall, but he had the gift of making every room feel smaller when he entered it.

His eyes moved from Juno to Lisa to me.

“Is this a break area?”

Juno looked around.

“No. Break area has worse lighting.”

Lisa lowered her eyes.

I didn’t.

That was my first mistake.

Dobson’s gaze settled on me.

“Keene, why are there three people standing at your station?”

“Inventory reconciliation,” Lisa said calmly. “I brought him the updated forms.”

“I didn’t ask you.”

The words landed flat.

Lisa went still.

Juno’s face changed.

Mine did too.

Dobson took one step closer.

“This department is currently under target by twelve percent. We lost another employee this morning. Productivity is being monitored hourly until further notice. I don’t have time for social hour.”

“Marv was fired twenty minutes ago,” Juno said. “Maybe people are allowed to breathe.”

Dobson looked at her.

“What was that?”

Lisa touched Juno’s arm.

“Nothing,” Lisa said.

“No, I heard something.” Dobson’s smile was thin and unpleasant. “Would you like to repeat it for the report?”

Juno opened her mouth.

I spoke first.

“She said people are allowed to breathe.”

The typing around us faltered again.

This time, it did not fully recover.

Dobson turned toward me slowly.

“What did you say?”

I could feel Lisa looking at me.

Juno too.

Maybe half the aisle.

My heartbeat hard once.

Then again.

I thought of Grandpa before I understood why.

Not the letter.

Not yet.

A story.

One of the old ones.

Grandpa sitting at the kitchen table with me and Eirika on either side of him, his hands wrapped around a mug of tea, telling us about the marches before the Ferngill-Gotoro War swallowed everything polite.

How he had stood outside a recruitment office with a dozen other students and a banner half the town called treasonous.

How some official in a polished coat had told them to disperse.

How Grandpa had smiled and asked whether the man believed obedience counted as peace.

Eirika had loved that story.

She had asked if Grandpa got arrested.

He had laughed and said, “Only briefly.”

Mom had told him not to encourage us.

Dad had said nothing.

At the time, I thought the story was funny.

Now, with Dobson staring me down under the fluorescent lights, I remembered the way Grandpa’s voice had changed at the end.

Men who love authority always call it order.

People who suffer under it know the difference.

Dobson tapped his clipboard once.

“Keene.”

I blinked.

The office came back.

Grey walls. Grey carpet. Grey faces pretending not to watch.

“I said,” I repeated, though my voice sounded far away, “people are allowed to breathe.”

Dobson’s face darkened.

Juno whispered, “Oh, this is going great.”

Lisa said, “Eric.”

Not warning.

Not scolding.

Fear.

That should have stopped me.

It almost did.

Then Dobson stepped closer to my desk and looked down at the spreadsheet on my screen.

“You are behind.”

“I’m doing three people’s work.”

“You are assigned deliverables.”

“Because you fired one person and scared another into becoming furniture.”

Someone made a choking sound from another cubicle.

Juno stared at me like she couldn’t decide whether to salute or tackle me.

Dobson’s voice dropped.

“You need to be very careful.”

And there it was.

Not the words.

The feeling.

That familiar tightening in my chest. That old reflex to shrink before someone with a title. To apologize before I knew what I had done. To turn anger into efficiency because anger had nowhere safe to go.

Nancy’s texts still glowed in my head.

Kel asked if you were coming.

Don’t make this weird again.

Dobson’s eyes stayed on me.

The office hummed.

Lisa’s hand rested lightly on the cubicle wall.

Juno wasn’t smiling anymore.

I looked at Dobson and realized, suddenly, that I hated him.

Not in the dramatic way. Not in the satisfying way.

In the tired way.

The way you hate a leak you’ve been placing buckets under for years.

“I am careful,” I said.

“Not careful enough.”

“No,” I said. “That’s the problem.”

Dobson’s mouth tightened.

“Back to work. All of you.”

No one moved.

For one impossible second, nobody moved.

Then the far end of the office stirred.

​

Olivia stepped out of her office with a stack of folders hugged to her chest and a headset still hanging from one ear.

She looked worse than the rest of us.

That was impressive.

Olivia was technically our manager, though “manager” at Joja mostly meant she absorbed pressure from above and redistributed apologies downward. She had the exhausted, overburdened look of someone who had spent years putting out fires with paper towels and being evaluated on water usage.

Her red blouse was wrinkled. Her hair was pinned neatly on one side and escaping on the other. There were dark half-moons under her eyes.

“Dobson,” she said.

He turned slightly.

“Not now.”

“Yes, now.” Her voice was quiet, but it cut. “Conference room. Regional is on hold.”

Dobson’s jaw flexed.

“This team is underperforming.”

“This team is missing three people and just lost a fourth,” Olivia said. “Conference room.”

For a moment, they stared at each other.

Then Dobson pointed the clipboard at me.

“This isn’t over.”

“No,” Juno muttered. “That was clear.”

Dobson shot her a look before following Olivia toward the conference room.

Olivia paused as she passed my desk.

For half a second, her eyes met mine.

She looked exhausted.

Not cruel. Not kind. Just worn so thin there was barely anything left between the person she had been and the job that kept taking pieces of her.

“Eric,” she said softly, “please don’t make today worse.”

Then she kept walking.

That should have made me feel guilty.

It did.

But beneath the guilt was something else.

Something hotter.

Because Olivia was not wrong. Today would get worse. For her. For the team. Maybe for everyone who had to explain why one employee finally snapped and walked out without completing his forms.

But I was tired of every bad system surviving because the decent people inside it were too overburdened to handle one more crisis.

I sat back down.

Lisa exhaled.

Juno leaned closer.

“Well,” she whispered, “that was either the beginning of a labor movement or the last ten minutes of your employment.”

“Juno,” Lisa said.

“What? I’m giving historical context.”

My hands were shaking.

I hid them under the desk.

Lisa noticed anyway.

She crouched slightly beside the cubicle wall, lowering her voice so only I could hear.

“Are you okay?”

I almost said yes.

The word was right there.

Automatic. Useless.

Instead, I looked at my phone.

Another message from Nancy.

Seriously, Eric. Answer me.

Then one from Kel.

Bro don’t make tonight awkward lol

I stared at it.

Bro.

As if that made anything better.

As if everyone could just keep smiling because naming the problem would be the real problem.

My chest tightened again.

The office seemed to tilt around me.

The lights hummed louder.

The keyboard clicks became rain against glass.

I opened the bottom drawer of my desk.

I don’t know why.

Or maybe I do.

Maybe some part of me had been reaching for it all morning.

Under old pay stubs, loose pens, and a Joja employee handbook I had never read past the first page, there it was.

The envelope.

Deep purple seal.

My name on the front.

Eric.

For a second, I was young again.

Sitting beside Eirika in Grandpa’s room.

Her hand in mine.

Grandpa’s voice thin but steady.

There will come a day when you feel crushed by the burden of modern life…

I had thought the words were dramatic then.

Grandpa had always been a little dramatic.

War stories. Protest stories. Stories about the farm, the valley, the way the seasons taught people humility because no one could negotiate with rain. Stories about how authority was loudest when it was most afraid. Stories about how a person could lose themselves slowly enough to mistake it for growing up.

Eirika had loved the protest stories.

I had loved the farm ones.

Neither of us had understood they were the same story.

Lisa saw the envelope.

Her expression changed.

“What is that?”

I ran my thumb over the seal.

“My grandfather gave it to me.”

Juno leaned over the divider.

“Is this a family curse situation? Because honestly, today could go either way.”

I almost laughed.

This time, something actually escaped.

Small. Broken. But real.

Lisa smiled faintly.

“When were you supposed to open it?”

I looked toward the conference room.

Dobson was visible through the glass, pacing with his clipboard while Olivia stood by the table, one hand pressed against her forehead. She looked like the only pillar in a building nobody had bothered maintaining.

Then I looked at the spreadsheet.

At the phone.

At Nancy’s messages.

At Kel’s stupid little “lol.”

At the empty cubicle where Marv or Mark or Martin had been.

At Harold by the vending machine, still staring at nothing.

At Juno, trying to joke because rage was easier than despair.

At Lisa, calm in a room that did not deserve her.

“When I needed it,” I said.

No one spoke.

I broke the seal.

The paper unfolded stiffly, like it had been waiting years to breathe.

Grandpa’s handwriting was exactly as I remembered it. Firm. Slightly slanted. A little old-fashioned.

I read it once.

Then again.

Then a third time, slower.

Dear Eric,

If you’re reading this, you must be in dire need of a change.

The same thing happened to me once. I’d lost sight of what mattered most — real connections with people and the natural world. So I dropped everything and went to the place I truly belonged.

I’ve enclosed the deed to that place — my pride and joy: Keene’s Farm.

It’s located in Stardew Valley, on the southern coast.

It’s the perfect place to start a new life.

This was my most precious gift, and now it’s yours.

I know you’ll honor the family name, my boy.

Good luck.

Love,
Grandpa

P.S. If Lewis is still alive, say hi to the old guy for me, will ya?

I stared at the last line longer than the rest.

Of course.

Of course he had ended it like that.

Sentimentality and dry humor, folded together like he couldn’t bear to leave without one last joke.

My throat tightened.

For years, I had missed Grandpa in the way people miss the dead when life gives them time for it. Holidays. Old photographs. Mom saying his name and going quiet. Eirika sending a message on his birthday that neither of us knew how to answer properly.

But in that moment, under the fluorescent lights of Joja Corporation, with Dobson pacing behind glass and Nancy vibrating in my phone, I missed him like he had only just left the room.

I missed his voice.

His stories.

His hand covering mine before I could open the envelope too early.

I missed Eirika sitting beside me, promising she would remind me where I put it.

I wondered, suddenly and terribly, whether she would remember that.

Whether she remembered anything the same way I did.

Juno cleared her throat.

“So,” she said carefully, which was rare enough to be frightening, “are we talking inheritance, secret mission, or cult recruitment?”

Lisa elbowed her.

“What? I’m emotionally supporting him.”

I looked up at them.

“I have a farm.”

Juno blinked.

Lisa’s eyebrows lifted.

“A farm,” Juno repeated.

“In Stardew Valley.”

“Of course it’s called Stardew Valley,” Juno said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Lisa ignored her.

“Your grandfather left you a farm?”

I nodded.

I expected the idea to feel ridiculous.

It did.

But it also felt like air moving through a room that had been sealed shut for years.

A farm.

Dirt. Tools. Rain. Work that became visible. Work that did not vanish into quarterly reports and productivity dashboards. Work that could fail for reasons more honest than Dobson’s temper or Nancy’s silence or Kel’s smile.

Juno studied me.

“You’re thinking about it.”

“No.”

“You’re absolutely thinking about it.”

“I can’t just leave.”

“Why not?”

The answer should have been easy.

Rent. Bills. Nancy. Stability. Fear. The ordinary chains people wrapped around themselves and called adulthood.

But none of them came out.

Instead, I heard Grandpa again.

People who suffer under authority know the difference.

​

Then Dobson’s voice exploded from the conference room.

We all looked.

The door opened hard enough to hit the wall.

Dobson stepped out first, face flushed.

Olivia followed, saying something low and urgent, but he ignored her.

“Keene.”

The whole room froze again.

He marched down the aisle.

I still had the letter in my hands.

Dobson saw it.

“What is that?”

I folded the paper carefully.

“Personal.”

“This is company time.”

“No,” I said.

Lisa went very still.

Juno whispered, “Oh no.”

Dobson stared.

“What did you say?”

I put the letter back into the envelope.

My hands had stopped shaking.

That scared me more than when they had been.

“I said no.”

Dobson’s voice lowered.

“Keene, you are one disciplinary incident away from termination.”

“Then terminate me.”

A sharp silence fell over the office.

Even the keyboards stopped.

Dobson looked almost pleased, like I had finally handed him the shape of the thing he wanted.

Olivia reached the aisle behind him.

“Eric,” she said.

I stood.

My chair rolled back and struck the cubicle wall.

“I quit.”

The words came out too plainly.

Not shouted. Not heroic. Not dramatic.

Just finished.

Dobson blinked.

“What?”

“I quit.”

“You can’t just—”

“I can.”

“No, you will follow proper resignation procedure.”

I looked at him.

For the first time all morning, maybe for the first time in years, he looked small.

Not harmless.

Small.

“There’s a form for breathing here too?” Juno asked.

Dobson rounded on her.

“Enough.”

“No,” I said.

He turned back.

I took my badge off and set it on the desk.

Then my headset.

Then the half-empty coffee.

I didn’t know why I set down the coffee. It wasn’t company property. Maybe I just didn’t want to take the taste with me.

Lisa watched me with wide, worried eyes.

“Eric,” she said softly, “are you sure?”

No.

I wasn’t.

I was not sure of anything.

Not the farm. Not Stardew Valley. Not whether I had enough money to last more than a month. Not what Nancy would say. Not what Kel would pretend not to understand. Not whether Eirika would laugh, worry, or ask why I had not told her sooner.

But I was sure of one thing.

If I sat back down, I would disappear.

“I have to be,” I said.

Juno looked at me for a long moment.

Then she nodded once.

Not joking.

Not smiling.

Just nodding.

“Good,” she said.

Dobson grabbed the clipboard so hard the paper bent.

“This will be documented as job abandonment.”

“Document it however you want.”

“You will not use this company as a stage for some childish breakdown.”

There it was.

Authority always needed your pain to be childish.

Your exhaustion. Your anger. Your refusal. Your grief.

If it could make you small enough, it never had to answer for what it had done.

I thought of Grandpa outside the recruitment office, smiling at the man in the polished coat.

Only briefly, he had said, when Eirika asked if he had been arrested.

I almost smiled.

“This isn’t a breakdown,” I said.

Then I picked up the envelope.

“It’s a resignation.”

Dobson took one step toward me.

Olivia stepped between us.

Not dramatically. Not bravely, exactly.

Just enough.

“Eric,” she said, her voice low. “Go.”

Dobson glared at her.

She did not look at him.

Her eyes stayed on me.

There was something in them I did not expect.

Not approval.

Not anger.

Maybe envy.

Maybe relief.

Maybe the terrible exhaustion of someone who understood why I was leaving and hated me a little because she could not.

“Go,” she repeated.

So I did.

I walked past the empty cubicle. Past Harold by the vending machine. Past the man in the cowboy hat, who raised two fingers in a silent salute that made absolutely no sense and somehow meant everything.

Juno followed me to the end of the aisle.

“You'd better send a postcard from farming hell,” she said.

I looked back.

Lisa stood beside my desk, holding the folder she had brought me.

She looked sad.

But she smiled.

“Take care of yourself,” she said.

I wanted to say something meaningful.

Something grateful.

Something that explained that they had made Joja survivable longer than it deserved to be.

But Dobson was behind them. Olivia was behind him. The office was behind all of us. And if I started saying goodbye, I wasn’t sure I would be able to leave.

So I nodded.

Then I walked out.

The lobby doors opened with a soft mechanical sigh.

Outside, the air was cold and smoggy and smelled like wet pavement, exhaust, and someone’s cigarette burning near the curb.

It was not clean.

It was not peaceful.

It was not freedom, not really.

But it was outside.

I stood there for a moment with Grandpa’s envelope in my hand and breathed like my lungs were remembering what they were for.

My phone buzzed again.

Nancy.

I did not answer.

Another buzz.

Kel.

I did not answer that either.

I looked south, though I could not see anything from there except traffic, towers, and the flat grey lid of the city sky.

Somewhere beyond all of it was a place I had not seen since I was a child.

A farm.

A valley.

A town with Lewis, an old friend whom Grandpa used to talk about all the time when we were kids.

A place Grandpa had called his pride and joy.

The perfect place to start a new life.

I wanted to believe him.

That was the most dangerous part.

The next day, I bought a bus ticket south.

To Stardew Valley.

To Keene’s Farm.

To whatever Grandpa had seen in me that I had lost along the way.

I told myself I was going to make him proud.

I did not know yet that pride was not what the farm would ask of me.

I did not know I was not walking into peace.

I was walking into weather.

Into debt.

Into soil that remembered more than it should.

Into a town beautiful enough to make suffering look almost holy if you weren’t careful.

Into a history buried beneath stone, roots, and old lies.

I thought I was escaping the storm.

Really, I was only leaving the first one behind.

 

[lil timmy]

Love it!

 

[Cuddlebug]

After reading this new version I understand why you had to overwork the story... Much better writing than before, feels more depth and complex.

 

[Gamer1234556]

Chapter 2​

The bus ride into the valley felt like breathing again for the first time.

After years surrounded by grey walls and blue light from a monitor, the sight of actual blue sky and green hills hit me harder than I expected. Not all at once. That would have been easier. Instead, it came in pieces.

The way the road curved between the trees.

The way sunlight flashed between branches instead of fluorescent panels.

The way the hills rose in uneven green folds, careless and alive, as if nobody had ever asked them to justify their productivity.

I sat by the window with Grandpa’s letter folded in my jacket pocket and watched the city fall away behind me.

At first, I tried not to think.

That had become a skill over the years. Joja trained it into me. Nancy perfected it. Kel made it necessary. Dobson rewarded it. Thinking too much only made the room smaller, the phone heavier, the next morning harder to face.

But the closer the bus came to Stardew Valley, the harder it became to keep memory out.

The road remembered me before I remembered it.

A bend near the river.

A stand of trees leaning over the ditch.

A weathered sign half swallowed by grass.

And suddenly I was not alone in the seat anymore.

Eirika was beside me again, knees tucked up, forehead pressed to the glass, fogging it with her breath because she said the valley looked different if you blurred it first.

“Stop doing that,” I had complained.

“You stop looking boring.”

“I’m not looking boring.”

“You look like Dad when Mom asks him to help carry something.”

That had made Mom laugh from the front seat.

Mom had always laughed too quickly on those trips, as if laughter could keep everyone in the car from noticing how tired she was. She packed snacks in plastic containers and napkins folded with unnecessary care. Apple slices. Crackers. Cheese. Little sandwiches wrapped so tightly they looked like gifts.

“You two behave,” she would say, turning around with a smile that never fully reached her eyes once Dad started watching the clock.

Dad drove like every road was wasting his time.

One hand on the wheel. One elbow against the door. His jaw set whenever we hit traffic, construction, rain, or anything else that proved the world was not arranged for his convenience.

“Your father does know we’re coming, right?” he had asked once.

Mom’s voice sharpened before her smile did.

“He invited us, David.”

“I know he invited us. That’s not what I asked.”

From the back seat, Eirika had looked at me.

I had looked at her.

Children learn early when to become quiet.

Grandpa was always waiting when we arrived. Even standing near the old town square, one hand lifted in greeting, he seemed less like someone waiting for visitors and more like someone who had argued with the road until it agreed to bring us to him.

He smelled like soil, pipe smoke he insisted he had quit years ago, and the mint candies he kept in his coat pocket for Eirika because she always asked before dinner and he always pretended to object.

“There they are!” he would call. “My two favorite troublemakers.”

Eirika would launch herself at him first.

I followed half a second later, because that was usually how we worked.

At the festivals, Grandpa seemed to know everyone.

That was how I remembered it, anyway.

At the Egg Festival, he would stand near the square with Mayor Lewis, both of them laughing like they were continuing a conversation that had started twenty years earlier and had only paused because one of them needed to breathe. Lewis had been younger then, though I didn’t think of him that way at the time. Adults were simply adults until they became old all at once.

He had a rounder face back then. A brighter laugh. A way of clapping Grandpa on the shoulder that made it clear they had done this a hundred times before.

“Peter Keene,” Lewis would say, shaking his head. “You still owe me for that spring raffle.”

Grandpa would scoff.

“I owe you nothing. You miscounted.”

“You moved the basket.”

“I improved the basket’s position.”

“You cheated.”

“I organized.”

Lewis would laugh, and Eirika would tug my sleeve.

“Are they fighting?”

“No,” I’d say, though I was never fully sure. “I think that’s old people being friends.”

Marnie was there too.

I remembered her less clearly at first, then all at once.

A woman with kind eyes, strong hands, and a laugh that always seemed to arrive before she did. She would bring food wrapped in cloth or fuss over whether Grandpa had eaten enough, and Grandpa would complain with the dignity of a man being lovingly defeated.

“You’re thin again,” she told him one spring.

“I am efficient.”

“You’re stubborn.”

“I am also that.”

Lewis had stood beside them, smiling in that way adults smiled when a joke had history in it.

Marnie looked at Grandpa differently than most people did. Softer in some places. Older in others. Like she remembered versions of him the rest of town had misplaced.

“You could stay longer this time,” she said once.

Grandpa’s expression shifted.

Only a little.

But I saw it because I was standing close enough to steal another candy from his pocket.

“Could I?” he asked.

“You know you could,” Marnie said.

Lewis went quiet.

That was the part I didn’t understand.

The adults had been laughing a moment before. Then the air changed, not badly, but carefully, as if everyone had stepped near a hole in the floor and remembered where it was.

Grandpa looked toward the old road leading out of town.

“Pelican Town has survived worse than my absence.”

“That isn’t what she said,” Lewis replied.

Grandpa’s mouth twitched.

“No. It isn’t.”

Marnie folded her arms.

“You talk like coming back would be defeat.”

Grandpa looked at her then, really looked at her.

“No,” he said. “I talk like a man who knows what happens when people mistake return for repair.”

I had no idea what that meant.

Eirika, who had been trying to balance an egg on the back of her hand, looked up.

“Grandpa, are you coming back here?”

Grandpa’s face changed immediately. Whatever had passed between the adults vanished behind his smile.

“Now why would I need to come back?” he asked, reaching down to ruffle her hair. “You two bring half the trouble in the world to me every time you visit.”

“I don’t bring trouble,” I said.

“Eric,” Mom said from behind us, “you tried to climb into the mayor’s fountain last year.”

“I was investigating.”

Lewis pointed at me with absolute seriousness.

“And the town has never recovered.”

Eirika burst out laughing.

Dad did not. He stood near the edge of the square that day, hands in his pockets, looking around like he was waiting for the valley to prove why everyone loved it so much. He was polite to Lewis. Distant with Marnie. Careful with Grandpa in a way that was somehow worse than rude.

Mom noticed. She always did.

She touched Dad’s arm once, gently.

He moved it under the excuse of checking his watch.

I remembered that too.

Not because I understood it.

Because Eirika stopped laughing for a second.

At the Flower Festival, the memories came brighter.

Pink petals drifting across the bridge.

Tables set with food.

Music floating through the trees.

Mom wearing a dress she said was old but still looked pretty to me. Dad standing beside her with his collar slightly too stiff, pretending not to be uncomfortable. Eirika spinning until she got dizzy and nearly fell into a bush. Grandpa laughing so hard he had to sit down.

Lewis found him there beneath the trees.

Marnie followed with a plate of food.

“You’ll miss the dance,” Lewis said.

“I have survived missing worse.”

“You used to love the dance,” Marnie said.

Grandpa looked toward the couples gathering in the clearing.

For a moment, his face became unreadable.

“Used to,” he said.

Lewis glanced toward Marnie.

Marnie looked down at the plate in her hands.

I remembered the silence because it did not fit the music.

Then Grandpa saw me watching.

“Eric,” he called, waving me over. “Come here before your sister cons someone into giving her a flower crown she didn’t earn.”

“I earned it!” Eirika shouted from somewhere behind us.

“You stole it from a table.”

“I was borrowing it forever!”

Marnie laughed despite herself.

Lewis shook his head.

“Peter, your grandchildren take after you.”

“Of course,” Grandpa said proudly. “They’re Keenes.”

Dad’s mouth tightened at that.

Mom heard it even if he said nothing.

At the time, I thought everyone’s family had moments like that. Little pauses. Little glances. Little places where adults stepped around things children couldn’t see.

Maybe they did.

Maybe that was the problem.

The bus rolled over a familiar dip in the road, and the memory broke.

I blinked.

The seat beside me was empty.

No Eirika with her forehead against the glass. No Mom passing snacks over the seat. No Dad muttering about how long the drive was taking. No Grandpa waiting in the square with candy in his pocket and old arguments trailing behind him like a second shadow.

Just me.

A backpack.

A letter.

A deed.

And the strange ache of realizing I had returned to a place that had known me before I knew how much could be lost.

Stardew Valley was only half a mile ahead when the bus slowed, dust rising in lazy spirals behind us.

For a moment, I saw the valley the way I had as a child.

Small town. Warm air. Festival lights. Grandpa’s hand on my shoulder. Eirika laughing with flowers in her hair.

Then the bus turned, and the old memory shifted into the present.

The hills were still green.

The sky was still impossibly blue.

But the road looked narrower than I remembered.

The trees looked older.

And I was no longer arriving as Peter Keene’s grandson for a summer visit.

I was arriving with his farm deed in my bag because I had nowhere else to go.

When the doors hissed open, I stepped out onto the roadside and let the warmth of the rural air settle on my skin.

It felt like welcome.

It felt like warning.

I could not tell the difference yet.

 

[Gamer1234556]

Chapter 3​

“Hello! You must be Eric!” a cheerful voice called out.

I turned.

A woman with bright orange hair stood near the edge of the road, one hand lifted in greeting and the other resting against the strap of a tool bag slung over her shoulder. She had the kind of smile that arrived before the rest of her did, open and unembarrassed, like welcoming strangers on dusty roads was just part of a normal morning.

For a second, I only stared.

Not because she was strange.

Because she wasn’t familiar.

That bothered me more than it should have.

I had spent the last half mile remembering Pelican Town as if it were waiting for me exactly where I had left it. Lewis in the square. Marnie near the festival tables. Grandpa laughing under the spring trees. Eirika running ahead with flowers in her hair. The town preserved in my head like a pressed leaf between pages.

But this woman did not belong to any memory I could reach.

Maybe she had been there, and I had been too young to notice. Maybe she had arrived later. Maybe Pelican Town had been changing all this time while I treated it like a story Grandpa had folded away for me.

“Er—sorry,” I said. “Who are you?”

Her smile did not falter.

“I’m Robin, the local carpenter,” she said. “Mayor Lewis sent me to fetch you and show you the way to your new home. He’s already there, tidying up for your arrival.”

“Lewis,” I repeated.

The name landed differently than hers.

That one I knew.

Mayor Lewis had been part of Grandpa’s stories before I even understood what a mayor was. Lewis at the Egg Festival, accusing Grandpa of cheating at raffles. Lewis clapping him on the shoulder like they were brothers who had chosen politics instead of blood. Lewis and Marnie talking to him in low voices near the Flower Dance while Eirika and I chased each other through petals.

“Oh,” I said, feeling something warm flicker in my chest. “Lewis. He was one of my grandfather’s friends.”

Robin’s expression shifted.

Not dramatically. Just enough.

“Peter Keene,” she said.

Hearing Grandpa’s full name from someone else’s mouth made me feel oddly exposed.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t really know him well the same way Lewis does,” Robin admitted, glanced down the road toward town, then back at me. “By the time I settled here, Lewis had informed us that he had long passed away. The townsfolk do speak about him a lot, they’re excited that his grandson is coming to revive his farm!”

I tried to read her face.

“Do they say good things?”

Robin gave a small laugh.

“Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“Well,” she said, starting down the path and motioning for me to follow, “in a town this small, being remembered only one way usually means nobody knew you well enough.”

I wasn’t sure what to say to that.

So I followed.

The dirt road curved between trees and low grass, the valley opening wider with every step. Birds called somewhere overhead. The air smelled like dust, leaves, and something faintly sweet growing wild near the fence line. It should have felt peaceful.

It did.

Almost.

But Robin’s words stuck with me.

People still talked about him.

Mostly.

I looked toward the town as we walked. The buildings were familiar in shape but strange in detail. A roof repainted. A fence replaced. A sign I didn’t remember. Windows where I thought a wall had been. The mountains still stood in the distance, but the town beneath them had shifted in small, stubborn ways.

“You said you moved here later,” I said.

Robin nodded.

“Years ago now. Long enough that people still call me new when they want to annoy me.”

“Does everyone do that?”

“Mostly Lewis.”

That made me smile.

“Sounds like him.”

“So you do remember him.”

“A little. More from Grandpa than from myself.” I adjusted the strap of my bag. “We came here when I was a kid. Festivals mostly. Egg Festival. Flower Dance. Maybe summer once or twice. My sister remembers more of the running around parts. I remember the adults talking.”

Robin glanced at me.

“That sounds backwards.”

“Eirika did enough running for both of us.”

“Your sister?”

“Twin sister.”

“Oh.” Robin’s face softened. “Is she coming too?”

The question hit harder than it should have.

“No,” I said.

Robin noticed the change and did not push. I appreciated that immediately.

Instead, she said, “Well, the valley has a way of making people remember things they thought they forgot.”

“That sounds like something Lewis would put on a brochure.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” she said, laughing. “Maybe don’t tell him. He’ll ask me to carve it into a sign.”

The road dipped, then rose again.

As we walked, I kept trying to place her. Robin by the carpenter’s shop. Robin at a festival table. Robin laughing with Marnie. Robin talking to Grandpa.

Nothing.

There were gaps in my memory where whole people could have stood.

That should have been normal. I had been a child. Children remember color and noise before names. They remember a flower crown, a plate of food, the smell of rain on wood. They miss adults standing three feet away because adults, at that age, are simply part of the weather.

Still, the thought unsettled me.

Pelican Town had not frozen after I left.

Peter had not been the only person with a life here.

The valley had continued without me.

Without Eirika.

Without Mom and Dad pretending to be fine beneath festival banners.

Without Grandpa walking beside Lewis like the town had been built around their conversations.

Robin must have seen something on my face, because her voice gentled.

“Lewis was happy when he heard you were coming.”

“He was?”

“Oh, very.” She smiled. “Nervous too, though he’d probably deny that.”

“Why nervous?”

“Because Lewis gets nervous whenever the past knocks politely instead of staying buried.”

I looked at her.

Robin blinked, then winced.

“That sounded more dramatic than I meant.”

“No,” I said slowly. “It sounded like you meant it.”

She walked a few steps before answering.

“I only mean that your grandfather mattered to people here. When someone like that leaves, folks tell stories about him. After enough years, the stories become easier to handle than the person was.”

The words sat between us.

I thought of Grandpa at the Flower Dance, his face changing when Marnie asked if he would stay longer. Lewis going quiet. Mom watching Dad watch everything else.

“What kind of stories?” I asked.

Robin gave me an apologetic look.

“Not mine to tell.”

That was the first time Pelican Town felt less like a postcard and more like a house with locked rooms.

Before I could ask anything else, the trees thinned.

Robin stopped at the top of a small rise and spread one arm with theatrical pride.

“Well,” she said, brightening with clear effort, “here we are. Keene’s Farm.”

I followed her gaze.

For one suspended second, all I saw was sunlight.

Then the farm came into focus.

Or what was left of it.

My excitement was immediately met with a forest.

And a rock garden.

And possibly a cryptid or two hiding in the grass.

The place looked like nature had declared squatters rights and won in court.

Tall weeds swallowed the paths. Stones rose from the soil like broken teeth. Fallen branches lay tangled in grass so thick I could barely tell where the field ended and the wilderness began. The farmhouse stood beyond it all, smaller than memory and more tired than Grandpa’s stories had ever allowed it to be.

I stared.

Robin waited.

“My grandfather really let this place go,” I muttered. “He moved out decades ago, but… wow.”

The words came out more sharply than I meant.

Robin glanced at me.

“Eh? What’s wrong?” she asked. “Sure, it’s a bit overgrown, but there’s good soil under all that.”

“A bit?”

She put her hands on her hips and surveyed the disaster with professional optimism.

“I’ve seen worse.”

“Robin, I don’t think soil is the problem here.”

I pointed toward a boulder roughly the size of a small car.

“That thing looks like it pays property tax.”

She laughed lightly.

“Ah, with a little dedication, you’ll have it cleared up in no time.”

“Define ‘little.’”

“Farmer’s little or carpenter’s little?”

“There are categories?”

“Oh, definitely.”

I looked back at the field.

The humor helped.

Not enough.

Beneath the joke, something in my chest sank.

Because this was the farm from Grandpa’s letter. His pride and joy. The perfect place to start a new life. The thing he had trusted me to honor.

And it was standing there half-buried under years of neglect.

For the first time, I wondered if Grandpa had given me a gift or a burden he could not bring himself to name.

Robin’s voice softened.

“Hey.”

I looked at her.

“It looks worse before you start,” she said. “Everything does.”

I wanted to believe that.

Maybe I had to.

The front door of the cottage creaked open.

A familiar voice called from inside.

“Eric?”

My breath caught before I turned.

Not because I recognized the voice perfectly.

Because some part of me recognized the shape of it.

Older now. Rougher around the edges. But still there, carrying echoes of festival mornings, mayoral jokes, and Grandpa laughing like the world had not yet taken anything from him.

Lewis stepped into the doorway; one hand braced against the frame.

For a moment, he looked at me like he was seeing someone else first.

Like a man seeing a ghost arrive with a suitcase.

“Lewis,” I said.

Then I was moving before I fully decided to.

“It’s so good to see you. I haven’t seen you in forever.”

He smiled, and the wrinkles around his eyes deepened with recognition.

“Ah, Eric,” he said, softer now. “You’ve grown so much.”

I laughed awkwardly.

“That tends to happen.”

“So I’m told.” His smile stayed, but something behind it faltered. “Yoba. Last time I saw you, you and your sister were running through the square with flower crowns Marnie swore you had not paid for.”

“Eirika borrowed them.”

“Forever, yes. That was her legal argument.”

I grinned despite myself.

For one impossible second, she was there again. Eirika sprinting across the spring grass, a crown of crooked flowers slipping over one eye while Lewis pretended to chase her and Grandpa laughed so hard he had to sit down.

Lewis seemed to remember it too.

His eyes moved past me, toward the road.

“She didn’t come with you?”

The question was gentle.

That made it worse.

“No,” I said. “Just me.”

Lewis nodded slowly.

“I see.”

He did not ask why.

I was grateful.

Robin, standing a few steps away, glanced between us with interest sharp enough to cut wood. She had the expression of someone watching an old door open and pretending not to peek inside.

Lewis cleared his throat.

“Well,” he said, turning back toward the farm, “Peter always said one of you would find your way back here someday.”

“He said that?”

“Many times.”

I looked at the cottage, then the field beyond it.

The overgrown grass shifted in the breeze. Branches leaned over the path. Stones sat half-sunk in the earth as if they had been waiting longer than I had been alive.

“I wish he’d warned me about the forest.”

Lewis chuckled.

“Yes, well. Your grandfather had a talent for describing hard work as destiny.”

Robin snorted.

Lewis turned toward her.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That was not nothing.”

“I was admiring the accuracy.”

Lewis gave her a wounded look.

Robin smiled sweetly.

I looked between them.

Their bickering should have felt strange. Instead, it loosened something in my chest. It reminded me of festival mornings, of adults arguing without really fighting, of Grandpa and Lewis trading insults with the ease of people who trusted each other not to leave.

Homey.

That was the dangerous word.

It felt homey.

Lewis looked back at me, his expression gentler now.

“Your grandfather was a good man.”

He said it carefully.

Too carefully.

I had heard people use that phrase after funerals. A good man. A good woman. A good life. Words polished smooth because nobody wanted to cut themselves on anything sharper.

But Lewis had known Grandpa.

He had known the man who argued with festival officials, laughed too loudly, told me and Eirika stories about protests and old wars and authority wearing clean shoes. He had known the man Marnie once asked to stay longer, only for Grandpa to look away like the question hurt.

So when Lewis called him good, I wondered what he was leaving out.

“Grandpa talked about you,” I said.

Lewis’s face changed.

Only a little.

But Robin noticed it.

I did too.

“Did he?” Lewis asked.

“A lot. You, Marnie, George sometimes. The festivals. The farm.” I hesitated. “He made this place sound…”

“Better?” Robin offered.

I looked at her.

She raised both hands.

“Sorry. Carpenter’s instinct. People always remember houses before the rot.”

Lewis frowned.

“Robin.”

“What? I’m being poetic.”

“You are being intrusive.”

“I contain multitudes.”

Despite himself, Lewis almost smiled.

Almost.

Then he looked toward the field again.

“Peter remembered the valley the way Peter remembered everything,” he said. “With love, stubbornness, and a highly selective relationship with inconvenience.”

“That sounds like him.”

“It was him.”

There was warmth in Lewis’s voice.

Then grief.

Then something else.

Something cautious.

I shifted my bag higher on my shoulder.

“Robin said people still talk about him.”

Lewis shot her a look.

Robin tilted her head.

“I said mostly good things.”

“Mostly?”

“That is what I said.”

Lewis closed his eyes for half a second, like a man asking Yoba for patience and receiving none.

When he opened them, his smile was back.

Mayor smile.

Public smile.

The kind of expression meant to make a subject smaller than it was.

“Well,” he said, “in a town this old, people talk about everyone.”

Lewis turned.

“Do you have a fence to build somewhere?”

“I finished early.”

“I can tell. You have excess personality.”

Robin grinned.

For a moment, the mood lightened again.

Then Lewis faced me, and the softness returned.

“Peter mattered to this town,” he said. “More than some people remember. More than others prefer to discuss. But he mattered.”

I waited.

He did not continue.

The silence stretched just long enough to tell me there was more inside it.

“What did he do?” I asked.

Lewis looked at me, then away.

“Many things.”

“That’s also not an answer.”

“No,” Robin said. “But it was shorter.”

“Robin.”

“What? I’m helping him calibrate expectations.”

Lewis sighed.

The annoyance between them was real, but affectionate. Robin could push him in a way most people probably couldn’t. Not because she had known Peter the longest. She hadn’t. But because she knew Lewis well enough to know when he was hiding behind posture.

That made me trust her more.

It made me wonder about him more.

Lewis stepped down from the porch and brushed dust from his sleeves.

“Your grandfather was a farmer,” he said at last. “A friend. A difficult neighbor. A worse patient. A man who believed silence was often just cowardice wearing good manners.”

That sounded like Grandpa.

More than “good man” did.

“He also had a habit,” Lewis continued, “of standing exactly where people wished he wouldn’t.”

Robin’s smile faded a little.

I looked between them.

“What does that mean?”

Lewis glanced toward town.

“It means Pelican Town has a long memory when it wants one.”

“And when it doesn’t?”

He looked back at me.

The answer was in his face before he said anything.

“When it doesn’t,” he said quietly, “it becomes very skilled at forgetting.”

The breeze moved through the weeds.

Somewhere in the tall grass, insects hummed.

The farm suddenly felt less abandoned and more waiting.

I thought of Grandpa’s letter in my bag. The words he had left me. Real connections with people and the natural world. The place I truly belonged.

He had made it sound simple.

Lewis was making it sound like a door I had opened without knowing what was behind it.

Robin clapped her hands together suddenly.

“Well,” she said, her voice deliberately bright, “before Lewis turns your first day into a historical society meeting with no refreshments, should we show you the house?”

Lewis straightened.

“Yes. Quite right. You must be tired after your journey.”

“I’m okay,” I said.

“You are carrying a bag like it personally wronged you,” Robin said.

“It might have.”

“Then definitely tired.”

Lewis gestured toward the cottage.

“So, you’re moving into your grandfather’s old place.”

“Yeah,” I said, looking at it again. “It’s… a bit smaller than I remembered.”

“Heh.” Lewis seemed grateful for the easier subject. “You were young the last time you were here. Everything looks larger when you’re chasing your sister across it.”

“Eirika did most of the chasing.”

“And most of the escaping, as I recall.”

I smiled.

Then the smile hurt.

Lewis noticed, and his expression softened again.

“The house has held up well,” he said gently. “A fine piece of rustic real estate.”

Behind him, Robin coughed lightly.

“‘Rustic’ is one word for it. ‘Crusty’ might be closer.”

Lewis spun around, scandalized.

“Oh, don’t listen to her, Eric. She’s just trying to coax you into buying one of her upgrades.”

Robin put a hand to her chest.

“Mayor Lewis, I am wounded. Deeply wounded.”

“You handed me an estimate for town hall repairs written in red ink.”

“Because the roof leaks.”

“It leaks artistically.”

“It leaks on your desk.”

“A minor targeting issue.”

Robin looked at me.

“You see what I deal with?”

For the first time since stepping off the bus, I laughed properly.

Not much.

But enough.

The sound surprised me.

Maybe it surprised Lewis too, because he looked at me with something close to relief.

Their bickering felt oddly comforting. Not because it was simple, but because it wasn’t. There was history there. Irritation. Familiarity. Care disguised as annoyance.

Pelican Town was not frozen in Grandpa’s stories.

It had gone on without him.

Without me.

Without Eirika.

It had aged, argued, repaired roofs, ignored leaks, told half-stories, and learned how to smile around missing pieces.

Lewis dusted off his hands.

“Well,” he said, returning to mayoral form with visible effort, “you must be tired after that long trip. Get some rest, and tomorrow I suggest exploring the town and saying hello. People love meeting newcomers—especially ones with a connection to the valley.”

“A connection,” I repeated.

His face tightened slightly.

Then relaxed.

“Yes,” he said. “A connection.”

Robin glanced at him, then at me.

She did not say anything this time.

That almost said more.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll do that.”

Lewis nodded, satisfied, and started toward the gate. Then he paused suddenly, brightening with the forced cheer of a man remembering safer information.

“Oh! Almost forgot. If you’ve got anything you want to sell, just toss it into that shipping bin over there. I’ll pick it up each evening.”

I stared at the wooden box near the path.

“…Oh. That’s what that is.”

Robin raised an eyebrow.

“What did you think it was?”

“A recycling bin.”

Lewis chuckled. Robin burst out laughing.

“A fair mistake. Some of the folks around here put strange stuff in it as a prank.”

Robin leaned closer to me, trying to keep herself together.

“Trust me, you don’t want to put any trash in the shipping bin. He gets upset when you do that.”

Lewis choked at that accusation.

“I do not!”

“You once called the last prank an assault on local commerce.” Robin snorted, trying not to laugh.

“There was a boot full of algae!”

“Still commerce adjacent! It sells even better as soup!”

Lewis pointed at her as if preparing a rebuttal, then apparently thought better of it.

Instead, he looked back at me.

For a moment, the humor faded again.

“It’s good to have a Keene on this land again,” he said.

The words should have felt like welcome.

They did.

But something in his voice made them feel like responsibility too.

Then he turned and walked down the path, Robin following after him with an exaggerated sigh about “mayoral theatrics.”

I stood there alone in front of the cottage, the field rustling around me, Grandpa’s farm stretching wild and half-buried beneath the afternoon sun.

A new start.

That was what the letter had promised.

But as Lewis and Robin disappeared beyond the trees, I couldn’t stop thinking about the way Lewis had looked when I asked what Grandpa had done.

Like the answer was somewhere under the soil.

Like the valley had been waiting for me to dig.

 

[Gamer1234556]

Chapter 4​

I woke at six.

For a few seconds, I had no idea where I was.

The ceiling sat too low above me. The room was too quiet. No traffic beyond the window, no neighbor’s television bleeding through the wall, no phone buzzing with messages I did not want to answer.

Just birds.

Wind.

Wood settling somewhere in the bones of the house.

Then I remembered.

Keene Farm.

Grandpa’s farm.

Mine, apparently.

I sat up, my back stiff from a mattress that seemed determined to preserve the sleeping habits of another century. Morning light slipped through the curtains and touched the floorboards, the small table, the old dresser with one drawer that refused to close.

For a moment, the room almost felt peaceful.

Then I looked out the window.

The weeds were still there. The rocks. The fallen branches. The grass tall enough to hide either rabbits or evidence.

The farm had not improved overnight out of respect for my emotional journey.

Rude of it, really.

I climbed out of bed and nearly stepped on a small package by the door. Plain paper. String. A folded note on top.

Lewis’s handwriting was neat enough to feel ceremonial.

Here’s a little something to get you started.

—Mayor Lewis

Inside were fifteen parsnip seeds.

I stared at them longer than I probably should have.

They were just seeds. Small, dry, ordinary. Nothing dramatic. Nothing magical. The kind of thing you could lose between floorboards and never think about again.

But they had weight.

Not like Grandpa’s letter.

Possibility, maybe.

Or obligation.

I set them on the table and reached for the television before I could think better of it.

The old set sat crooked on its stand, boxy and stubborn, with buttons on the front and a screen that bulged outward like it was trying to escape. Grandpa had owned one just like it.

Maybe it was this one.

I remembered him kneeling behind it with a flashlight clenched between his teeth, three cables dangling loose while Dad watched from the doorway.

“Why don’t you just get the right cables?” Dad had asked.

Grandpa pulled the flashlight from his mouth.

“Because this one works.”

“It barely works.”

“It works with personality.”

“It gets three channels.”

“Three is a respectable number.”

Dad had crossed his arms.

“Peter, you have a truck that sounds like it’s dying, a fence line falling apart, and a television held together by superstition. At some point, refusing to fix things stops being charming.”

The room had gone quiet.

Then Grandpa looked back at him and said, “And at some point, calling everything broken becomes a good excuse to leave before you’re asked to help.”

Mom had sent me and Eirika to wash up after that.

Or tried to.

We stayed just long enough to see the screen flicker green and produce a weather report from three days earlier.

For one glorious second, even Dad almost smiled.

Almost.

The memory faded.

I pressed the power button.

Static cracked across the screen. Then, somehow, a picture formed.

Three channels.

Weather Report.

Fortune Teller.

Livin’ Off The Land.

“Three is a respectable number,” I muttered.

The farmhouse said nothing, which was rude, because I was being funny.

Livin’ Off The Land advised me to chop wood and forage while waiting for my first harvest. The Fortune Teller informed me the spirits were annoyed. The Weather Report promised clear skies.

Fifteen parsnip seeds waited on the table.

Fifteen tiny obligations.

I got dressed, grabbed the old tools from the corner, and stepped outside.

The morning air was cool enough to wake me properly. Dew clung to the grass. Birds moved through the trees. Somewhere beyond the farm, a rooster screamed like sleep had personally insulted him.

For one second, standing there with a hoe in my hand and the sun rising over the wild field, I understood why Grandpa had loved this place.

Then I took three steps into the grass and tripped over a branch.

“Right,” I muttered, catching myself. “Romance later. Yard work first.”

The farm stretched out before me like a problem too large to solve honestly.

Weeds everywhere. Stones everywhere. Logs in places logs had no business being. The path near the cottage was still visible if I squinted and pretended optimism was a landscaping tool.

What had happened here?

Grandpa had called this farm his pride and joy. Lewis said it was good to have a Keene on the land again. Robin said there was good soil underneath.

None of that explained why the place looked less abandoned than swallowed.

I thought of Lewis’s face when I asked what Grandpa had done.

Many things.

I thought of Robin saying people remembered houses before the rot.

I thought of Dad standing in Grandpa’s living room, calling everything broken.

The grass hissed in the wind.

I looked at the axe.

Then the pickaxe.

Then the hoe.

Then the scythe.

The scythe looked least likely to murder me through overconfidence.

“Grass first,” I decided.

Grass was simple.

Grass did not ask why Grandpa left. Grass did not ask why Eirika wasn’t here. Grass did not ask why my phone still had messages I hadn’t answered.

Grass had the decency to fall over when cut.

So I started there.

The first swing was awkward. The second was worse. By the fifth, I had something like a rhythm. Not Grandpa’s rhythm, probably. Not the kind of motion a person earned by belonging to the land for decades.

More like a man imitating a memory he had never bothered to learn properly.

Still, the grass came down.

One patch.

Then another.

The sound was satisfying in a way spreadsheets had never been. Joja work vanished into servers, meetings, revisions, corrections, and Dobson’s clipboard. Farm work, at least this kind, left evidence.

I could see where I had been.

That felt dangerous to enjoy.

By the time I stopped, I had cleared a rough patch near the farmhouse. Not much. A small scar in a field still trying to become forest.

But it was something.

I planted Lewis’s parsnip seeds in careful rows, watered them like I was afraid of disappointing each one individually, then stood back with the empty packet in my hand.

Fifteen parsnips.

A few cut paths.

Five hundred gold.

No plan beyond “don’t die poor in a field.”

For the first time in years, the work in front of me belonged to me.

Not Dobson.

Not Joja.

Not Nancy’s messages.

Not Kel’s stupid little grin hiding behind a text.

Me.

The thought should have comforted me.

Instead, the farm felt larger.

Because if this failed, there would be no supervisor to hate for it.

Just me.

The land.

And Grandpa’s name.

I wiped sweat from my forehead and looked toward the path leading north.

The farm had given me enough questions for one morning.

Maybe the town had answers.

Or maybe it only had more people who remembered Grandpa better than I did.

That was the excuse, anyway.

I headed north.

The path rose past the edge of the farm, where the grass thinned into dirt and the trees gathered closer. The air changed as I climbed. Cooler. Quieter. The kind of quiet that made every birdcall feel deliberate.

Then I saw the tent.

It sat near the mountain path, tucked against the earth as if trying not to offend anyone by existing. A small fire pit rested nearby. A few rough belongings had been arranged with more care than the place itself seemed willing to admit.

A man looked up as I approached.

Weathered face. Grey beard. Thick coat despite the mild morning. His eyes were sharp in a way that made the rest of him seem less tired than he first appeared.

“A stranger,” he said. “Hello. Don’t mind me. I’m just minding my own business.”

I stopped awkwardly.

“Oh. Uh. Hi.”

He watched me without smiling.

Not unfriendly.

Not friendly either.

Just aware.

“I’m Eric,” I said. “I moved into the old farm south of here.”

His expression shifted.

Not much.

Enough.

“The Keene farm.”

I straightened slightly.

“You know it?”

“I know where it is.”

That was not the same thing.

The wind moved through the trees behind him. For the first time since arriving in Pelican Town, the quiet felt less peaceful than careful.

“You knew my grandfather?” I asked.

The man looked at me for a long moment.

“Peter knew the mountain,” he said.

My grip tightened on the strap of my bag.

“That’s not exactly an answer.”

“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”

I waited.

He looked away toward the trees.

“Some men come to the mountain to take from it. Stone. Ore. Timber. Quiet.” His eyes returned to mine. “Peter knew when to leave something alone.”

That sounded like praise.

Or warning.

Maybe both.

Before I could ask more, his gaze moved past me toward the farm road.

“You’re looking at my tent.”

I froze.

“I didn’t mean—”

“You did.”

I closed my mouth.

Cities had people living in corners everyone pretended not to see. Under overpasses. Near transit stations. Against warm buildings that never opened for them.

I had not expected invisibility to work here too.

Not in a place where everyone supposedly knew everyone.

“I’m fine where I am,” he said.

“Right.”

He studied me again.

“Enjoy your walk, farmer.”

The word farmer sounded strange from him. Not mocking. Not welcoming.

Naming something I had not earned yet.

“Nice meeting you,” I said.

He nodded once and turned back to his fire pit.

I moved on, feeling clumsy in a way I couldn’t explain.

The mountain path opened wider ahead. A wooden bridge crossed a stream, and beyond it a rocky trail led toward a dark entrance cut into the cliffside.

For one irrational second, I thought of Grandpa’s stories.

Old stone.

Deep tunnels.

Places beneath the valley where the earth remembered things people preferred to forget.

Then I saw the boulder.

A massive slab blocked the mine entrance completely. Beside it, a worker chipped away with steady, exhausted motions.

“Hey,” I called. “Is that safe?”

No answer.

He kept working.

“Do you need help?”

Still nothing.

Either he didn’t hear me, or he had reached the stage of municipal labor where responding to strangers became a threat to efficiency.

I decided not to take it personally.

The mines could wait.

Everything in this valley seemed to be waiting.

Farther along, the path rose toward a cliff overlooking the trees below. A man stood there with a notebook in hand, surveying the valley as if it were an equation that had failed to simplify.

He turned when he heard me approach.

“Greetings!” he said brightly. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Eric,” I said. “I just moved onto the farm.”

“Ah, yes. The new farmer.” His smile sharpened with interest. “Demetrius. Local scientist.”

He paused, then added, “And father.”

The last part landed oddly.

Not because it was strange to be a father.

Because he introduced it like a credential.

“Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise. It’s always encouraging when new residents acquaint themselves with the local ecosystem.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant the forest or the people.

“Trying to,” I said. “The farm is kind of a lot.”

“I imagine so. The Keene property has been unmanaged for some time.”

There it was again.

Keene.

Not Grandpa.

Not Peter.

Property.

“You knew my grandfather?”

“Peter Keene?” Demetrius adjusted his glasses. “Only by reputation. I moved here after his more active years in town. Robin would know more than I do, though Lewis would know the most.”

“So you don’t know much about him?”

“Not firsthand.”

“That hasn’t stopped people from having opinions.”

“No,” he said pleasantly. “It rarely does.”

I looked at him.

He glanced down at his notebook, then back at me.

“In small communities, memory is not always data. It’s narrative. Repetition, omission, nostalgia, grievance. These all distort the original subject.”

I stared.

He smiled politely.

“People tell stories,” he clarified.

“Right.”

That somehow explained less.

“Peter Keene seems to have inspired strong opinions,” Demetrius said.

“Good ones?”

“Strong ones.”

The answer was so neat it felt sealed.

I thought of Linus saying Peter knew when to leave something alone.

I thought of Lewis saying Grandpa had a habit of standing where people wished he wouldn’t.

“Everyone keeps doing that,” I said.

“Doing what?”

“Answering around him.”

Demetrius considered this.

“Perhaps they are being respectful.”

“Are you?”

The question left my mouth before I could polish it.

Demetrius did not look offended. He only regarded me for a moment, calm as glass.

“I have no reason to be disrespectful,” he said. “Nor enough evidence to be anything else.”

Clean.

Too clean.

Before the silence could harden, he brightened.

“Have you met my daughter Maru?”

The transition was so smooth it felt rehearsed.

“No. Not yet.”

“She’s quite excited to meet you. Brilliant young woman. Curious. Disciplined. She assists at the clinic and has a natural aptitude for engineering. Given your background with technology, you may have things in common.”

I blinked.

“How did you know I had a background with technology?”

“Lewis mentioned you worked in the city.”

“That could mean a lot of things.”

“Indeed. But your hands suggest recent desk work rather than manual labor, and you looked at the blocked mine entrance as if evaluating a system failure rather than a geological inconvenience.”

I looked down.

My hands were already blistering from one morning of farm work.

“I didn’t realize I was that readable.”

“Most people are more observable than they prefer.”

He said it pleasantly.

I decided I preferred Linus’s bluntness.

Robin’s carpentry shop sat nearby, built into the mountain like it had grown there by force of personality. Warm wood. Sawdust. Tools hanging where they belonged.

After the tent, the blocked mine, and Demetrius’s clean answers, the place looked almost aggressively normal.

Almost.

I knocked, then stepped inside when Robin called.

“Oh! Eric.” Her face brightened from behind the counter. “Surviving the farm so far?”

“Define surviving.”

“Still upright?”

“Barely.”

“Then yes.”

The shop felt warmer than the mountain path. There were half-finished projects, scuffed floors, a mug too close to a blueprint, and tools polished from use instead of display.

Then I noticed the photograph on a shelf.

Robin. Demetrius. A young woman with a bright smile. A dark-haired young man standing just far enough apart that the space around him felt intentional.

Robin followed my gaze.

“Family photo.”

“Your kids?”

“My daughter Maru,” she said, pointing with fondness that came easily. “And Sebastian.”

The pause before his name was tiny.

Still there.

“Demetrius mentioned Maru,” I said.

Robin’s mouth twisted.

“Did he?”

“A lot.”

“That sounds right.”

“He said she was excited to meet me.”

“She probably is. Maru likes new people when they come with interesting stories or broken machinery.”

“That’s specific.”

“She is her father’s daughter.”

The words came out lightly.

Too lightly.

A door opened somewhere deeper in the house. Footsteps crossed the floor, quick and purposeful.

Robin’s face changed immediately.

“There she is.” Relief and pride arrived together. “Maru! The farmer is here.”

A young woman appeared near the hallway, carrying a small notebook of her own. She had Demetrius’s alertness, but none of his polish. Her curiosity felt warmer. Less sealed.

“Oh,” she said when she saw me. “You must be Eric.”

“That’s me.”

“I’m Maru. Dad said you’d probably come by.”

“Of course he did.”

She winced in sympathy.

“Sorry. Dad does that. He introduces me like I’m a research grant with legs.”

I laughed.

That helped immediately.

“I heard you took over the old farm,” she said. “That must be exciting.”

“Exciting is one word. Terrifying is another.”

“That sounds like most engineering projects.”

“You’re an engineer?”

“Not officially.” Her smile turned a little sheepish. “But I build things, fix things, break things, then pretend the breaking was part of the design process.”

“That sounds more honest than most engineers.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Robin watched us with open fondness, but the closed basement door remained at the edge of my vision.

Maru followed my glance.

Her smile flickered.

Only for a second.

“Sebastian’s downstairs,” she said.

“So I heard.”

“He’s probably working.”

Robin’s hands went still on the counter.

The sentence sounded familiar in the room.

Too familiar.

Nobody said anything for a breath.

Then Maru brightened again, a little too quickly.

“Well, it was nice meeting you.”

“You too.”

She disappeared back down the hall, and the warmth went with her in a way that made me feel guilty for noticing.

Robin cleared her throat.

“Don’t worry about meeting everyone all at once,” she said. “Pelican Town likes to pretend it’s simple, but it isn’t.”

“That’s becoming obvious.”

“At least the trees are straightforward.”

“Are they?”

“No,” she admitted. “But you can hit them with an axe, and they don’t ask follow-up questions.”

That got another laugh out of me.

I needed it.

Still, as I left the carpentry shop, I found myself looking back once.

At the warm windows.

At the upper rooms.

At the basement door I could no longer see.

Robin’s family was not cold.

That would have been easier to understand.

It was warm in patches, bright in certain rooms, careful around certain names.

A house with good wood and strange silences.

Behind me, the mountain path curved back toward the farm.

Ahead, the town waited.

And somewhere beneath all of it — beneath Grandpa’s name, Lewis’s silence, Linus’s tent, Demetrius’s polished answers, Robin’s tired jokes, Maru’s bright smile, and a closed basement door — Pelican Town kept getting larger than the place Grandpa had promised me.

 

[Farmer Evie]

Prologue​

I still remember the last message my grandfather gave me from his deathbed.

Not because I understood it.

I didn’t.

Back then, I was still young enough to believe families stayed the way they were simply because they always had. My mother still stood near my father when we visited. My sister still sat beside me, swinging her legs from the edge of the chair because her feet couldn’t quite touch the floor. My grandfather still felt like the center of the room, even when he was too weak to stand.

Grandpa had always seemed bigger than sickness.

Even lying in bed, with the curtains drawn and the late afternoon light spilling pale across the walls, he carried himself like a man who had merely decided to rest for a while. His hands were thinner than I remembered. His voice had lost some of its strength. But his eyes were still sharp.

They found me first.

Then Eirika.

Then my parents.

Mom stood closest to the bed, her hands folded tightly in front of her. She kept smiling, but it was the kind of smile adults used when they were trying not to frighten children.

Dad stood behind her, arms crossed, one shoulder pressed against the wall.

He looked tired.

Or annoyed.

At that age, I didn’t know there was sometimes no difference.

Grandpa noticed anyway.

“You’re hovering, Sarah,” he said.

Mom let out a small laugh, but it broke halfway through.

“I’m allowed to hover,” she said. “You’re my father.”

Grandpa smiled faintly.

“That’s never stopped you from arguing with me before.”

Eirika giggled beside me.

Mom’s mouth trembled, but she covered it quickly. Dad looked toward the window.

I remember that part clearly.

The way everyone seemed to know something was happening except me and Eirika.

We knew Grandpa was sick. We knew the adults spoke more softly in the hallway. We knew Mom cried sometimes when she thought we were asleep.

But we didn’t understand what it meant for someone to be leaving.

Not really.

Grandpa shifted slightly against the pillows and looked toward Dad.

“David,” he said.

Dad straightened.

“Peter.”

There was something in the way they said each other’s names. Not anger exactly. Not even dislike. But something old and tight, like a knot neither of them had ever bothered to loosen.

Grandpa studied him for a moment.

“Take care of them.”

Dad’s jaw moved.

“I have been.”

The room went quiet.

Mom closed her eyes for just a second.

“I know,” Grandpa said.

But the words did not sound like agreement.

Dad’s arms tightened over his chest.

“I don’t need to be reminded of my own family.”

“No,” Grandpa said, still calm. “But sometimes men need to be reminded of what a family is.”

I looked between them, confused.

Eirika leaned closer to me and whispered, “Are they fighting?”

I shook my head because that was what I wanted to be true.

Mom turned quickly.

“Not now,” she said, her voice low.

Dad looked at her.

“I didn’t start this.”

Grandpa exhaled, long and tired.

“No,” he said. “You rarely do.”

That time, even I understood enough to feel the air change.

Dad looked like he wanted to say something. For a moment, I thought he would. Then he pushed himself away from the wall and stared down at the floor instead.

Mom’s fingers tightened around the edge of the blanket.

“You know,” she said quietly, “this house only ever worked because of you.”

Grandpa looked at her.

“Sarah…”

“It’s true,” she said. “You kept everyone coming back. Birthdays, dinners, Christmas, repairs, arguments…” She swallowed. “Whenever something broke, everyone just waited for you to fix it.”

Dad made a small sound under his breath.

Mom turned to him.

“What?”

“I said nothing.”

“No,” she said, softer now, but sharper. “You never say nothing.”

Dad looked away again.

Grandpa watched them both with a sadness I would not understand until years later.

At the time, I thought adults were supposed to know what they were doing. I thought if they sounded certain, then they were certain. I thought if they stayed in the same room, it meant they still belonged there.

Eirika reached for my hand.

I let her take it.

Her palm was warm and small, and she held on like this was all just another uncomfortable visit we would laugh about later.

Grandpa’s eyes softened when he saw us.

“Come here, you two.”

We moved closer together. Eirika went first, because she always did when she was nervous. I followed because I always followed her.

Grandpa lifted one hand with some effort and rested it on Eirika’s head.

“My bright little star,” he said.

She smiled immediately.

“Am I getting something too?”

“Eirika,” Mom warned gently.

Grandpa chuckled. The sound was weak, but real.

“You already have too much fire to carry,” he said. “Anything I gave you would just make trouble.”

Eirika grinned.

Dad muttered, “That much is true.”

For a second, the room almost felt normal.

Almost.

Grandpa reached toward the small table beside the bed. Mom moved quickly to help him, but he raised two fingers.

“I can manage.”

She stopped.

Slowly, carefully, he opened the drawer and took out a sealed envelope.

It was old-fashioned, thick, and folded neatly, sealed with a deep purple stamp.

My name was written on the front.

Eric.

Not “my boy.”
Not “grandson.”
My name.

Something about that made my stomach tighten.

Grandpa held it out to me.

“And for my very special grandson,” he said, his voice thin but steady, “I want you to have this sealed envelope.”

I took it carefully.

The paper felt heavier than it should have.

Eirika leaned over my shoulder.

“What is it?”

I started to turn it over.

Grandpa’s hand closed gently around mine.

“No, no,” he said. “Don’t open it yet.”

I froze.

His grip was weak, but his eyes held me in place.

“Have patience.”

I looked down at the envelope again.

“When do I open it?”

Grandpa smiled, but there was something sad in it.

“When you need it.”

I frowned.

“How will I know?”

“You will.”

That answer frustrated me. I wanted rules. A date. A reason. Something clear enough that I could not get it wrong.

Grandpa seemed to understand that too.

He looked past me for a moment, toward the window. Outside, the old trees around the house swayed gently in the wind. I remember how peaceful they looked. Like the world had no idea anything was ending.

Then Grandpa spoke again.

“Listen close.”

Everyone did.

Even Dad.

“There will come a day,” Grandpa said, “when you feel crushed by the burden of modern life.”

The words sounded strange to me then. Too large. Too distant.

“When your bright spirit begins to fade into emptiness.”

Mom looked down.

Dad shifted against the wall.

Eirika’s hand found mine again.

“When that happens, my boy…” Grandpa’s voice weakened, then steadied. “You’ll be ready for this gift.”

I stared at him.

“But what if I open it too early?”

“You won’t.”

“What if I forget?”

“You won’t.”

“What if I lose it?”

Grandpa’s smile deepened slightly.

“Then your sister will remind you where you put it.”

Eirika nodded seriously.

“I will.”

Grandpa looked at her with such tenderness that, even now, that memory hurts.

Because she meant it.

Because she would have reminded me.

Because there was a time when losing something only meant asking Eirika where it was.

Mom turned away from the bed, one hand pressed to her mouth.

Dad finally moved closer.

For a moment, he stood beside her. Not touching. Not comforting. Just close enough that a stranger might have mistaken it for unity.

Grandpa saw that too.

His gaze settled on them, tired but searching.

“Don’t let the house become quiet,” he said.

Mom looked back at him.

“What?”

“This family,” Grandpa said. “It was never meant to live in separate rooms.”

Dad’s expression tightened.

“Peter—”

“I know,” Grandpa said.

Dad stopped.

Grandpa’s eyes moved back to me.

I did not understand why he looked so sad.

I thought he was talking about the house. About dinners. About people visiting less after he was gone.

I did not know he was talking about all of us.

I did not know that one day Mom and Dad would stop speaking except through lawyers and tired phone calls.

I did not know Eirika and I would be pulled to opposite sides of a broken family like furniture divided between houses.

I did not know that my sister, who sat beside me that day with her hand in mine, would become someone I remembered more often than I saw.

I did not know that the envelope in my hand would one day feel like the last thing anyone gave me before everything started coming apart.

Back then, I only knew that Grandpa looked tired.

I stepped closer.

“Are you coming home?” I asked.

Mom made a sound behind me.

Grandpa looked at me for a long moment.

Then he reached out and brushed his thumb gently against my knuckles.

“Oh, Eric,” he said.

That was all.

No promise.

No comforting lie.

Just my name.

Eirika started crying first, though she tried to hide it. I heard her sniff beside me and saw her wipe her face with her sleeve.

Dad looked away.

Mom sat down on the edge of the bed and finally took Grandpa’s hand.

For a while, nobody spoke.

The room was full of things I was too young to understand.

Regret.

Fear.

Love that had nowhere useful to go.

And the strange, terrible feeling of a family holding itself together for one more afternoon because the man who usually held it together was still breathing.

I kept the envelope pressed against my chest.

I thought it was a secret.

A mystery.

Maybe even a treasure.

I did not know it was a door.

I did not know it was waiting for the day I would have nowhere else to go.

Those were the last words I ever heard from him.

I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really enjoyed this. I love how you addad depth to that opening scene with the family, and how it highlights real-world problems such as divorce, loss, and the feeling of being "just a kid". At time of writing this reply I've only read the prologue, and I'll probably reply to each chapter. Keep up the good work!

 

[Gamer1234556]

Chapter 5​

By the time I checked the old clock outside Pierre’s, the sky had begun to dim.

6:00 PM already.

Somehow, a day that had started with parsnip seeds and grass stains had slipped into evening without asking permission. My arms ached from clearing the farm. My boots were dirty. My wallet was still insultingly light. And my head felt full of too many names, too many silences, too many half-answers.

Lewis.

Robin.

Linus.

Demetrius.

Maru.

Sebastian, apparently somewhere underground.

Grandpa, everywhere and nowhere.

I should have gone home.

Instead, I followed the glow.

The Stardrop Saloon sat near the center of town, its windows spilling warm yellow light onto the street. Laughter drifted out before I opened the door, mixed with the smell of fried food, old wood, beer, and something sweet baking somewhere behind the bar.

For a second, I stood outside with my hand on the door.

At Joja, the break room had smelled like burnt coffee, plastic containers, and despair reheated in a microwave. People ate fast there. Quietly. Like lunch was an unauthorized vulnerability.

This sounded different.

Not peaceful.

Alive.

I pushed the door open.

Warmth hit me first.

Then noise.

Not a crowd, not really. Just enough people to make the room feel inhabited.

A middle-aged man stood behind the bar, wiping a glass with the kind of practiced motion that said he had done it ten thousand times and still cared whether it came out clean.

Near one table sat an older blonde woman with a drink already in hand and the posture of someone who had claimed her seat through long-term occupancy.

A blue-haired waitress moved between tables with bright, easy energy.

In the corner, a man hunched over a beer like he was trying to disappear into it.

Everyone looked up.

Only for a second.

That was enough.

The new farmer had arrived.

The bartender smiled first.

“Come in,” he called, voice warm enough to make the whole room seem less suspicious. “Welcome to the Stardrop Saloon. I’m Gus. Chef, owner, occasional referee. Can I get you something?”

I stepped farther inside.

“Uh, not really in the mood for anything.”

A raspy voice cut in from the side.

“Not even a tea?”

The blonde woman lifted her glass slightly, as if offering a toast to my poor judgment.

Gus sighed.

“Pam.”

“What? First day’s exactly when a person needs something in their hand.”

“It’s his first day. Let him find the chair before you diagnose him.”

“I didn’t diagnose him. I offered tea.”

“You’re drinking beer.”

“Didn’t say I was offering mine.”

The blue-haired waitress laughed, and the sound changed the room.

Not because it was loud.

Because it was unguarded.

She turned toward me, and her whole face lit up like meeting a stranger was not an interruption but a small event the universe had arranged on purpose.

“Oooh,” she said. “You’re the new farmer.”

“That obvious?”

“A little.” Her eyes moved over my dirt-streaked clothes, my tired shoulders, and probably the expression of a man wondering whether he had made a catastrophic life choice. “You look like your body arrived before the rest of you did.”

I blinked.

“That’s… oddly specific.”

She beamed.

“I’m Emily.”

She held out her hand.

I took it.

Her grip was warm and steady, and for one strange moment, the room seemed to settle around the contact. Not dramatically. Not magically. Just enough that I noticed.

“Eric,” I said.

“That’s a lovely name.”

“You think so?”

“Mm-hm. It has a strong shape.”

I had no idea what that meant.

I liked hearing it anyway.

“I work here most evenings,” Emily said, releasing my hand. “So if you ever need somewhere to be, this is a good place.”

“Somewhere to be?”

“Sometimes that matters more than having something to do.”

The words were simple.

They landed anyway.

Pam clinked her glass against the table, reclaiming the room through force of habit.

“Name’s Pam,” she said. “Don’t say nice to meet you too fast. You don’t know me yet.”

“Nice to cautiously meet you, Pam.”

Emily grinned.

Gus’s mouth twitched.

Pam stared at me for half a second, then barked a laugh.

“Alright. You might survive.”

“Good to know.”

She leaned back and studied me with the blunt, unpolished focus of someone who had never cared much for soft introductions.

“You’re Peter Keene’s boy, right?”

The room shifted.

Not much.

Enough.

Gus set his glass down.

Emily’s expression softened.

The man in the corner finally lifted his head, though not enough for me to see his face clearly.

“Grandson,” I said.

Pam waved that away.

“Close enough.”

“Pam,” Gus said.

“What? It is.”

“So everyone knew him?” I asked.

Pam took a sip.

“Everybody knew Peter. Not everybody understood him.”

Gus gave her a look.

Pam gave him one back that said she had no intention of behaving.

“Did you?” I asked.

Pam’s smile thinned.

“Not enough.”

That was the first honest answer anyone in town had given me about Grandpa.

Or maybe just the shortest.

Emily stepped in gently.

“He used to come here sometimes. I was little, so I mostly remember him being tall and loud and kind to Gus.”

“Kind to me?” Gus said. “That man argued with my soup.”

“He complimented it after.”

“After accusing the potatoes of moral surrender.”

Pam snorted.

“Sounds like Peter.”

I smiled despite myself.

The man in the corner made a sound that might have been a scoff.

Pam turned immediately.

“Hey, Shane. Come meet the new farmer.”

“No.”

“See? Friendly as ever.”

“Pam,” Gus warned.

“What? I’m creating community.”

“You’re creating liability.”

The man in the corner lifted his head properly this time.

He was younger than the slump of his shoulders made him seem. Dark hair, tired eyes, five o’clock shadow that looked less like style and more like defeat. He wore a Joja jacket.

The logo hit me before his face did.

Blue.

Corporate.

Familiar in the worst way.

For a moment, the Saloon disappeared and I was back under fluorescent lights, sitting near vending machines, listening to Dobson ask why my numbers were down.

Shane saw me notice.

His mouth twisted.

“Yeah,” he said. “I work there.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You looked at the jacket.”

He stood reluctantly, beer still in hand, as if moving across the room cost him something he had not agreed to spend.

“Name’s Shane.”

“Eric.”

“Great.”

“Nice to—”

“Don’t.”

The room tightened.

Emily’s smile vanished.

Gus straightened behind the bar.

Pam watched over the rim of her glass with the interest of someone who had seen this particular fire spread before.

Shane looked at me with flat, practiced hostility. Not anger at me specifically. Anger arranged in my direction because I happened to be standing there.

I knew that look.

I had seen it in office bathroom mirrors.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Alright.”

Something flickered across his face.

Surprise, maybe.

Or disappointment that I hadn’t given him more to hit.

Gus’s voice sharpened.

“Shane.”

“What?”

“Be a good sport.”

“Why?” Shane’s eyes stayed on me. “Because he inherited a farm and now everybody gets to act like some miracle happened?”

The sentence landed harder than it should have.

For a second, no one moved.

Pam looked into her glass.

Emily glanced at me.

Gus’s expression turned tired in a way that suggested this was not the first evening Shane had dragged something bleeding into the room and called it conversation.

I should have been offended.

Part of me was.

Another part of me looked at Shane’s hunched shoulders, the Joja jacket, the drink, the way everyone scolded him like they were tired of worrying, and thought:

Oh.

So that’s what it looks like from the outside.

At Joja, men like him were everywhere. Angry. Exhausted. Daring the world to ask what was wrong and punishing anyone foolish enough to try. I had crossed half the country to get away from that kind of slow collapse.

Apparently, it had beaten me here.

“I didn’t come here to bother you,” I said.

“Then don’t.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Emily stepped between the silence and whatever might have come next.

“Well,” she said, bright but firm, “that was a terrible introduction. Congratulations, everyone.”

Pam raised her glass.

“I’ve heard worse.”

Gus rubbed his forehead.

Shane looked at Emily.

For a second, his expression changed.

Not softer exactly.

Less armed.

Then he looked away.

“Whatever. I don’t care who he is.”

He turned and pushed past me toward the door.

The Saloon door opened, letting in a slice of cool evening air, then swung shut behind him.

The warmth did not return immediately.

Gus exhaled.

“Don’t take it personally,” he said, though he sounded like he knew that was not a useful thing to say. “He’s like that with most people.”

Pam took another drink.

“Boy’s got a storm cloud where his head ought to be.”

Emily looked toward the door.

There was more there too.

Of course there was.

This town was apparently built out of things people almost said.

I looked at the door Shane had left through.

Joja followed people.

That was my first clear thought.

Not stores.

Not prices.

People.

It followed them into small towns, into corner tables, into drinks they didn’t enjoy, into jackets they wore like proof of surrender.

Emily turned back to me.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“You don’t have to apologize for him.”

“I know.” Her smile was smaller now. “I’m still sorry your first night here included that.”

“It’s fine.”

“No,” she said gently. “But it might become fine later.”

Again, ridiculous.

Again, somehow not.

The door opened before I could answer.

A tall man stepped inside, broad-shouldered and awkward, with a blacksmith’s apron and the expression of someone who had rehearsed saying hello and already regretted the attempt. His eyes moved first to Emily, then quickly away, then to Gus, then to me because I was new and therefore unavoidable.

Gus brightened with obvious relief.

“Clint! Good timing. Meet Eric, the new farmer.”

Clint blinked.

“Oh.” He looked at me. “You’re the new farmer?”

“That’s me.”

“I’m Clint. Blacksmith.”

“Eric.”

“Right.”

A pause.

Emily smiled kindly.

“Hi, Clint.”

“Hi.”

Another pause.

Pam leaned back, watching with the merciless interest of someone enjoying free theatre.

Gus suddenly found several bottles that needed rearranging.

Clint cleared his throat.

“So. If you find geodes, bring them by. I can crack them open. Tools too, once you’ve got ore and coin for upgrades.”

“That’s good to know.”

He nodded, relieved to have reached solid ground.

“First upgrade, most farmers go for the watering can. Saves time. But don’t hand it over unless rain’s coming, unless you enjoy staring at thirsty crops and regretting your choices.”

“That sounds like something I’d do.”

“Most people do it once.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“Speaking from customers.”

For the first time, Clint almost smiled.

Then Gus leaned on the bar.

“Speaking of ore. Any word on the mines?”

Clint’s almost-smile vanished.

“Blocked.”

“Still?”

“Still.” Clint rubbed a hand over his beard. “Joja drilled too close to the lower supports. Called it preliminary resource assessment.”

Pam snorted.

“That mean trespassing with machinery?”

“Pretty much.”

I looked up.

“Joja caused the collapse?”

“Accident,” Clint said, with enough bitterness to make the word corrode. “That’s what Morris is calling it. Took responsibility in public, which means everyone’s supposed to clap because he admitted the thing after the thing already happened.”

Gus’s expression tightened.

“And now?”

“Now the mine entrance is blocked, the town’s waiting on clearance, and somehow Morris gets to talk about safety protocols like he didn’t send the drillers in.” Clint looked into his drink before he had even ordered one. “Funny how that works.”

Emily’s face lost some of its brightness.

“Is anyone hurt?”

“No. Not that I heard.” Clint’s jaw shifted. “But progress is halted, and Joja’s got another excuse to put its hands on valley assets while everyone argues over paperwork.”

Pam lifted her glass.

“To paperwork. The cheapest way to rob a town.”

“Pam,” Gus said, though this time there was less warning in it.

“What? I’m right.”

Clint glanced at me.

“If you’re planning to farm seriously, you’ll need ore eventually. Copper first. Then iron. Better tools mean less time fighting the land and more time working it.” He hesitated. “Whenever the mines open, don’t go in stupid.”

“That official blacksmith advice?”

“That’s free advice. Official advice costs money.”

Pam laughed.

Somehow, after Shane, Clint’s awkwardness felt almost peaceful.

I glanced around the room again.

Gus behind the bar, holding the place together with food, patience, and practiced hospitality.

Pam at her table, loud enough to cover whatever silence chased her when she left.

Clint at the edge of things, wanting connection and not knowing where to put his hands.

Emily moving through the room like warmth had a body.

And Shane’s empty corner, still shaped like him.

The Saloon was lively.

Gus had been right about that.

But lively did not mean simple.

It meant everyone brought something in with them and trusted the room to hold it for a while.

Or at least not throw them out.

I understood, suddenly, why Grandpa might have loved this town.

I also understood why loving it might not have saved him.

“Alright,” I said, turning back to Gus. “It’s getting late. I should head home.”

“Glad to meet you, Eric,” Gus said warmly. “Come by again. The Saloon gets lively at night.”

“I noticed.”

Emily smiled.

“Goodnight, Eric.”

The way she said my name made it sound like something safe to carry home.

“Goodnight, Emily.”

Pam lifted her glass.

“Don’t get lost, farm boy.”

“I’ll try not to.”

Clint gave a small nod.

Emily laughed.

That was the sound I took with me when I stepped outside.

The night air was crisp after the heat of the Saloon. Behind me, light spilled from the windows onto the street, golden and soft. Ahead, the road to the farm disappeared into darkness.

I started walking.

The Saloon stayed behind me, but not entirely.

Emily’s smile.

Shane’s Joja jacket.

Pam saying Grandpa was known but not understood.

Gus trying to keep peace with both hands full.

Clint looking at Emily like longing had cornered him and given him no script.

Pelican Town had a heartbeat.

Tonight, I had heard it.

It was warmer than Joja’s.

But it was not healthier.

Not entirely.

And for some reason, that made me want to come back.

 

[Cuddlebug]

I'm glad that you go on with this story

 

[Gamer1234556]

Chapter 6​

When I woke up, I meant to start with the parsnips.

That was the plan, at least.

Plans were comforting. Plans made things look smaller than they were. Fifteen parsnips, a few mixed seeds, one watering can, one field, one morning. Nothing mysterious. Nothing involving Lewis’s careful silences, Robin’s half-jokes, Demetrius’s polished answers, or the fact that Grandpa’s name seemed to make people either soften or shut doors.

Just crops.

Then I opened the front door and found a letter waiting on the step.

The envelope was folded simply, the paper rough beneath my thumb and salt-stained at one corner, as if whoever had written it kept more company with the ocean than with desks.

I opened it.

Hello there,

Just got back from a fishing trip. You should come down to the beach sometime. I’ve got something for ya.

—Willy

I read it twice.

“Willy,” I said aloud.

The name meant nothing to me.

No flash of childhood memory. No festival image. No half-remembered adult standing beside Grandpa. No whisper from Peter Keene’s stories.

That was almost refreshing.

Or it would have been, if Pelican Town had not already trained me to distrust simple names.

I tucked the letter into my pocket, planted the parsnips, and watered them carefully. The mixed seeds went into the ground beside them, though I had no idea what they would become.

That seemed to be a theme lately.

By the time I finished, the sun had risen higher over the trees, and the farm looked exactly as impossible as it had the day before, except now there were a few damp squares of dirt near the house pretending to be progress.

I decided to encourage the illusion.

“Good work,” I told the parsnips.

They did not answer.

Strong silent type, vegetables.

I washed my hands as best I could, grabbed my bag, and headed toward town.

On my way south, I passed the library.

A young woman hurried toward the doors, arms wrapped around a small stack of books. She looked deep in thought, the kind of thought that made interruption feel rude.

I slowed.

For a second, I considered saying hello.

Then she shifted the books higher against her chest and disappeared inside without looking back.

I let her go.

Something about her made interruption feel rude.

Besides, I was apparently meeting a fisherman.

The road to the beach sloped down past town, the air changing as I walked. Soil and grass gave way to salt, damp wood, and seaweed drying in the sun. Gulls cried overhead with the confidence of creatures who knew they owned the sky and were merely tolerating everyone else.

Then the ocean opened in front of me.

I stopped.

I had forgotten how large water could feel.

Not a lake. Not a river. Not the contained little water features Joja liked to place in corporate plazas to make concrete seem forgiving.

The sea.

It stretched beyond the docks in restless silver-blue folds, sunlight breaking across it in sharp little flashes. Waves rolled against the shore, collapsed into foam, and dragged themselves back again like the world breathing in its sleep.

The farm made everything feel immediate.

Weeds. Stones. Seeds. Debt. Work waiting close enough to trip over.

The sea made everything feel older than responsibility.

Near the pier, a bearded man stood with one boot on the boards and one hand resting on the rail. A cigar smoldered between his fingers, its smoke curling lazily into the salt air. His cap was worn, his coat patched, and his face had been carved by sun, wind, and years spent looking at horizons instead of walls.

This had to be Willy.

He did not turn when I approached.

“Ahoy there, son,” he said, eyes still on the gulls. “Heard there’s a newcomer in town. Glad to meet you at last.”

I stopped beside him.

“Eric.”

“Aye.” He finally looked over, and his sun-creased face broke into a smile. “Eric Keene.”

There it was.

Not new farmer.

Not neighbor.

Keene.

I tried not to react too visibly.

“You know my name already?”

“Small town,” he said. “Names travel faster than people.”

“Right.”

He studied me for a moment, not rudely. More like he was checking the weather.

“Peter’s grandson, then.”

“Yeah.”

Willy nodded and looked back toward the water.

For a few seconds, he said nothing.

That was becoming familiar.

“You knew him?” I asked.

Willy took a slow pull from the cigar, then exhaled toward the sea.

“Knew of him.”

I waited.

He smiled faintly, as if he had heard the waiting.

“Peter Keene was before my time in some ways, and right in the middle of it in others. Funny how that works in a place like this.”

“How does someone become before your time and in the middle of it?”

“By leavin’ a wake.”

The waves struck the posts beneath us.

I looked at him.

Willy’s eyes stayed on the water.

“Boats do that,” he said. “So do men.”

That sounded like an answer.

It also sounded like not enough of one.

“People keep saying things like that about him.”

“Do they?”

“Yeah.”

“Then maybe they remember him.”

“Maybe they’re avoiding him.”

Willy’s mouth twitched under his beard.

“There’s a difference?”

I almost laughed, but he did not seem to be joking exactly.

The wind tugged at my jacket. Somewhere along the beach, a gull landed near a broken shell and began bullying it with great personal conviction.

Willy watched the bird.

“Your grandfather bought fish from me once.”

That surprised me.

“He did?”

“Years ago. Before I had much of a shop. Before I knew what I was doin’, if I’m honest.” He tapped ash from the cigar. “Caught more than I could sell fresh. Thought I was ruined. Peter came by, bought near half the lot, then spent the afternoon complainin’ to Lewis that the town ought to support honest work before it vanished.”

“That sounds like him.”

“Aye. Then he told me my prices were foolish and I’d undercharged him.”

“That also sounds like him.”

“He paid extra and called me an idiot.”

This time I did laugh.

Willy smiled, but there was a softness in it.

“Good day, that. Strange one too.”

“Why strange?”

“Because men like Peter usually buy the fish or give the speech.” He looked at me then. “Not both.”

The words sat there between us, carried by salt air.

I thought of Grandpa standing outside recruitment offices. Grandpa arguing with Dad over broken televisions. Grandpa telling me that men who loved authority called it order. Lewis saying he stood where people wished he wouldn’t.

“What did he give speeches about?” I asked.

Willy glanced at me.

“Depends who you ask.”

“I’m asking you.”

“Aye,” he said. “That you are.”

For a moment, I thought he might answer properly.

Then he looked back at the ocean.

“Best not to take another man’s stories out of the water before their time.”

I frowned.

“That’s very fisherman of you.”

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t mean it as a compliment.”

“I received it as one.”

There was something oddly reassuring about him. Not because he was open. He wasn’t. Willy was hiding things too, or at least choosing not to say them yet. But his silence did not feel polished like Demetrius’s or guarded like Lewis’s.

It felt weathered.

Like a door closed because the storm outside was real.

He flicked the cigar stub into a little metal pail beside the rail and stretched, his shoulders popping.

“Anyway,” he said, brightening with deliberate effort, “I’m still unwrappin’ myself from a month out on the salty seas. Big haul this time. Sold a lot of good fish.”

“Oh, really?”

“Aye. Enough to buy me a new rod.”

He reached beside a crate and lifted a fishing pole from the boards. It was simple, made of bamboo, worn smooth where hands had held it over years. Nothing fancy. Nothing like the sleek equipment I had seen in advertisements or glass cases.

But Willy held it like it mattered.

Then he held it out to me.

“Here,” he said. “I want you to have my old one.”

I blinked.

“You’re giving me a fishing rod?”

“Bamboo pole,” he corrected. “Not much to look at, but she’ll teach you the basics if you’re patient enough to listen.”

I took it carefully.

The pole was lighter than I expected, but not fragile. Flexible. Honest. It felt less like a tool and more like an invitation to fail repeatedly in public.

“Why?” I asked.

Willy shrugged.

“It’s important to me the art o’ fishin’ stays alive.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s enough.”

I looked down at the rod.

At Joja, nothing was given without a metric hiding behind it. Discounts were traps. Gifts were incentives. Training was unpaid labor wearing a friendly name.

Willy seemed to see the thought cross my face.

He chuckled.

“And hey, maybe you’ll buy somethin’ from my shop once in a while.”

There it was.

Commerce.

But not Joja’s kind.

No slogan. No loyalty program. No smiling poster telling me we were family while someone like Dobson measured our breathing.

Just an old fisherman handing me an old rod and admitting, without shame, that business was part of survival.

I found that oddly comforting.

“So this is how Pelican Town gets me,” I said. “One free sample at a time.”

“Aye. First rod’s free. Then comes bait, tackle, better rods, crab pots, and before long you’re standing in the rain arguing with a catfish that has more dignity than sense.”

“Sounds expensive.”

“Only if you’re bad at it.”

“That feels targeted.”

“It will be, once I’ve seen you cast.”

He grinned.

I laughed despite myself.

“There’s good water here in the valley,” Willy said, looking out toward the waves again. “River, lake, ocean. Different fish in different places. Different moods too. Water’s like people that way.”

“Complicated?”

“Hungry.”

I glanced at him.

He smiled.

“Also complicated.”

The rod rested in my hands. I imagined standing here at dawn, line cast into the surf, waiting for something unseen to pull back. Work where patience mattered. Work where the world answered slowly. Work where failure at least came with fresh air.

“Do people actually make money doing this?” I asked.

Willy’s eyes sharpened with amusement.

“Now there’s the city in you.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. Good question.” He nodded toward the shop behind us. “You catch fish, I’ll buy ’em. Fresh is best, but I’m not precious. If it smells, it sells, my ol’ pappy used to say.”

“That sounds legally questionable.”

“Aye, well, he was a questionable man.”

“And you buy everything?”

“Most things. Fish, crab pot catches, the usual. Quality matters. Timing matters. Weather matters. Some days the water’s generous. Some days it takes your bait and laughs at you.”

“Sounds like farming.”

“Farming stays put.”

“That’s true.”

“Fishing makes you chase your supper.”

He leaned against the rail, the sea behind him bright and restless.

“Pelican Town runs on little trades, lad. Pierre sells seeds. Robin sells wood and walls. Clint fixes tools. Gus feeds folks when they’re too tired to feed themselves. Lewis moves goods through that shipping bin of his and pretends that makes him less nosy than the rest of us.”

“So everyone sells something.”

“Everyone has to.”

There was no bitterness in the way he said it.

That made it land harder.

Willy looked at me then, really looked at me.

“This valley’s pretty, but pretty doesn’t fill a pantry.”

I thought of the farm. The weeds. The fifteen parsnips. Five hundred gold in my wallet. The way Lewis’s gift of seeds had felt like possibility until I remembered possibility still had to be watered.

“No,” I said. “I guess it doesn’t.”

“Peter knew that.”

The name returned quietly.

I looked at him.

Willy’s gaze had gone back to the horizon.

“People talk about ideals when the weather’s fair,” he said. “Land, community, belonging, all that. Fine words. Good words, even. But sooner or later, somebody’s got to buy nails, fix roofs, mend nets, pay debts, bury the dead, and keep dinner on the table.”

“Is that why he left?”

Willy did not answer right away.

The waves moved under the dock.

Finally, he said, “That’s a Lewis question.”

“I’m getting the sense Lewis questions don’t get Lewis answers.”

Willy laughed, low and rough.

“No. They get mayor answers.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning they sound official enough that folks stop asking.”

I looked toward town, though I could not see the square from here.

“Do you know why he left?”

Willy rubbed one thumb along the rail, following a groove in the wood.

“I know pieces.”

“Everyone knows pieces.”

“That’s usually all the sea gives back.”

It should have frustrated me more than it did.

Maybe it did.

But there was something in Willy’s face that told me he was not withholding to control the story. He was withholding because he respected the weight of it.

Or feared it.

Maybe those were closer than I wanted them to be.

He nodded toward the bamboo pole.

“Start with the water, Eric Keene. It’ll teach you plenty without dragging old ghosts onto the dock before breakfast.”

“Is that fisherman advice or personal advice?”

“Aye.”

I stared at him.

“That was not an answer.”

“Good. You’re learnin’ the local dialect.”

He pushed himself away from the rail and headed toward the shop door.

“Oh,” he added, turning back. “Shop’s open again. I’ll buy what you catch. Sell bait too, once you know what to do with it. Don’t go throwin’ money at gear before you’ve learned which end of the pole points at the water.”

“That bad, huh?”

“We’ll see.”

He opened the door, then paused.

“And Eric?”

“Yeah?”

His expression shifted.

The humor did not leave, exactly, but something older moved beneath it.

“Your grandfather cared about this valley. Don’t let anyone make that sound simple.”

Before I could answer, he stepped inside.

The door shut behind him, leaving me on the dock with the bamboo pole in my hands, the gulls overhead, and the sea stretching out in front of me like another part of the valley that remembered more than it said.

I looked down at the rod.

A gift.

A sales pitch.

A warning.

In Pelican Town, apparently, those could all be the same thing.

I tried the rod out right away.

That was probably optimistic.

Willy had made fishing sound like an art, a trade, and a mild form of spiritual discipline. In my hands, the bamboo pole felt like an accusation. I stood near the edge of the pier, line cast into the water, trying to look like someone who knew what he was doing.

The ocean did not seem convinced.

For the first few minutes, nothing happened.

A gull landed on a post nearby and watched me with open disrespect.

“Don’t start,” I muttered.

The gull screamed.

So that was how this relationship was going to work.

Then the line jerked.

I nearly dropped the rod.

Whatever was on the other end pulled hard enough to make the bamboo bend. I fumbled with the reel, overcorrected, cursed under my breath, and somehow managed to drag the fish close enough that it broke the surface in a flash of silver.

A herring.

Small, cold, and extremely offended.

I held it up.

The gull stared.

“I won.”

The gull screamed again.

I chose to interpret that as respect.

After that, fishing became easier.

Not easy.

Easier.

The rhythm came slowly. Cast. Wait. Watch the water. Feel the line. React too late. React too early. Lose one fish. Catch another. Learn the difference between patience and simply standing around like an idiot.

By the third catch, my shoulders had started to loosen.

By the fifth, I understood why Willy liked it.

Fishing made time behave differently.

On the farm, every task announced itself loudly. Grass. Stone. Branch. Seed. Water. Swing. Lift. Carry. Repeat until your body filed a complaint.

Fishing asked for stillness first.

That was harder than work.

Stillness gave memory space to surface.

Grandpa had competed in the Festival of Ice every year he could.

I remembered him standing on the frozen lake beside Willy and Pam like he had entered a duel. Snow packed hard under our boots. Hot food steaming in the cold air. Lewis trying to keep everyone festive and failing because Grandpa and Pam had discovered an audience.

“You’re going down this year, Keene,” Pam had said, pointing her fishing rod at him.

Grandpa scoffed.

“Pamela, please. Threats only work when backed by competence.”

Pam’s mouth fell open.

Lewis nearly choked on his drink.

Willy, standing between them, only smiled beneath his beard.

“Now, now,” he said. “Fish don’t bite harder just because ye insult each other.”

“They do for me,” Pam said.

Grandpa leaned toward me and Eirika.

“She thinks volume counts as bait.”

Eirika laughed so hard she slipped in the snow.

Pam heard him.

“I heard that, Peter!”

“I intended you to!”

Willy won that year.

Of course he did.

Grandpa came second, which he insisted was “strategic humility.”

Pam came last.

Pam did not accept this quietly.

“No way,” she declared, standing over her bucket like the fish had personally betrayed her. “Mine were smarter. That’s why they didn’t get caught.”

Grandpa nodded solemnly.

“A bold defense. You were defeated by superior fish.”

Even Dad laughed at that.

Not much.

But enough that Mom looked over at him with surprise, and for a second the whole festival seemed warmer.

Afterward, Grandpa walked with me and Eirika near the lake, his breath white in the air.

“Willy’s unbeatable,” he told us. “Always has been.”

“Then why do you compete?” I asked.

“Because someone has to keep him honest.”

Eirika kicked snow at a fence post.

“Pam said he got soft.”

“Pam says many things.”

“Did he?”

Grandpa looked toward Willy’s fish shop in the distance.

“Maybe.”

“Why?”

Grandpa rubbed his hands together against the cold.

“Because men who love a craft have two choices when they get older. Guard it like treasure, or give enough of it away that someone else might keep it alive.”

I frowned.

“So he lets people win?”

Grandpa laughed.

“No. Willy would sooner kiss a squid. But he teaches more than he needs to. That’s different.”

I had not understood what he meant then.

Standing on the pier years later with Willy’s old bamboo pole in my hands, I thought maybe I was beginning to.

The rod was not charity.

Not exactly.

It was continuity.

Willy could have sold it. Could have hung it on the shop wall. Could have let the old pole retire into dust and nostalgia. Instead, he put it in my hands and told me the art needed to stay alive.

Maybe that was what Grandpa admired.

Not just that Willy caught fish.

That he wanted there to still be people fishing after him.

The line tugged again.

This time, I was ready.

A sardine came up flashing in the sun.

Then an anchovy.

Then another herring.

A strange bubbling patch appeared near the pier, the water churning lightly as if something below had started boiling without heat.

I remembered one of Willy’s comments about good water, different moods, and fish being hungry.

“Alright,” I said. “Let’s see what the local dialect has to say.”

I cast into the bubbles.

The fish there fought harder.

Longer too.

One nearly snapped the line before I hauled it in. Another dragged me two steps along the pier, which I pretended was tactical movement rather than losing a wrestling match to seafood.

By noon, my backpack was filling fast.

Herring. Anchovies. Sardines. A few catches I had to stare at for a while before deciding they probably counted as fish. Somehow, one catch came up with a little treasure bundle tangled in it: aquamarine, a chunk of steel, and coal.

I looked at the dripping mess in disbelief.

“Did someone throw a toolbox into the ocean?”

The sea offered no explanation.

Willy did, sort of, when I brought the haul back.

“Aye,” he said, sorting through the fish with quick, practiced hands. “Water keeps what people lose. Sometimes it gives a bit back.”

“That’s comforting.”

“It isn’t meant to be.”

He counted the fish, checked their quality, and handed over the gold.

The transaction was simple.

Fish for money.

No motivational slogan. No app. No corporate account login. No manager pretending unpaid overtime was “growth.”

Just work, goods, price.

Commerce again.

But honest commerce.

Or at least honest enough to smell like fish.

As he weighed the catch, Willy nodded toward the water.

“Not bad for a first go.”

“That sounded almost like praise.”

“Don’t let it ruin ye.”

“I’ll try to remain humble.”

“Good. The fish prefer humility. Easier to humiliate.”

He wrote something in a small ledger behind the counter.

I watched the pencil move.

“You actually make a living off this?” I asked.

“Most days.”

“That sounds uncertain.”

“It is.”

He looked up.

“That surprise ye?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” I leaned one hand against the counter. “I guess I’m used to work pretending it’s stable right up until someone clears out their desk.”

Willy’s expression changed, though only slightly.

“Joja?”

I looked at him.

“Yeah.”

He grunted.

“Thought so.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Joja leaves a smell on people.”

I lifted one sleeve.

“I showered.”

“Not that kind.”

He closed the ledger.

For a second, the little shop felt quieter.

“Companies like Joja swallow trades from both ends,” Willy said. “Sell cheap goods to the folks buyin’. Pollute the waters the folks workin’ depend on. Then, when the old trades get harder, they say it’s because the world moved on.”

He said it without raising his voice.

That made it feel less like a speech and more like something he had watched happen.

“Is the water bad here?” I asked.

“Better than most.”

Grandpa’s protest stories surfaced again. Authority. Order. Men in polished coats. People told to move along so business could continue uninterrupted.

I wondered how many different battles Grandpa had seen in one small valley.

Farms.

Fish.

Stores.

Mines.

People.

Maybe he had not been dramatic after all.

Maybe he had simply noticed too much.

Willy handed me the gold.

“Don’t go spendin’ it all in one place.”

“Where else would I spend it? This town has maybe three places.”

“Then don’t spend it all in three places.”

“Solid advice.”

He nodded gravely.

“My wisdom is priced into the fish.”

I left the shop with more gold than I had expected and less certainty than I wanted.

The beach was quieter after that.

The tide had shifted, leaving strips of wet sand shining under the sun. I walked the shoreline, gathering what I could find: clams, mussels, bits of coral, things that looked useful mostly because someone in this town would probably buy them.

That was something I was starting to understand.

Pelican Town did not run on abundance.

It ran on salvage.

Fish from water. Seeds from grass. Wood from fallen branches. Shells from the tide. Stone from the field.

Stories from people who only gave them in pieces.

Near a patch of sand by the tide pools, I saw three little stems wiggling from the ground.

Worms, maybe.

Or roots.

Or the beach attempting communication.

I crouched and dug with my hoe.

The sand gave way around something hard.

At first, I thought it was a shell.

Then I brushed it clean and saw the ridged shape.

Oval. Segmented. Stone-dark. Older-looking than anything had a right to look after being found under beach sand by a man who had been farming for less than two days.

I turned it over in my palm.

“A trilobite?”

At least, that was what I thought it was.

I had seen pictures in old textbooks. Ancient sea creatures. Fossils. Things from a world so far gone that calling them old felt insulting.

What was I supposed to do with it?

Sell it?

Keep it?

Ask Willy if his pappy had a saying about fossilized sea bugs?

The object sat heavy in my hand.

Not physically.

Historically.

The farm had given me Peter’s past.

The Saloon had given me the town’s present.

Now the beach was handing me something from before any of them.

Pelican Town apparently had layers under its layers.

I was still staring at the fossil when I turned and nearly walked straight into a man.

Tall. Long hair. Dramatic coat. The kind of posture that suggested he had either stepped out of a painting or spent a long time practicing how to stand near windows.

He caught himself with one elegant step backward.

“Ah,” he said, one hand to his chest. “The new farmer we’ve all heard whispers about.”

I blinked.

“Whispers?”

“Your arrival has sparked many a conversation.”

“I’ve been here about two days.”

“In a small town, two days is practically an era.”

Fair.

“I’m Eric.”

“Elliott.” He gave a slight bow, not enough to be ridiculous, but close enough that I noticed the restraint. “I live in the cabin on the beach.”

I looked past him toward the little cabin by the shore.

“You live there?”

“I do.”

“By yourself?”

“At present, yes.”

That was an answer with curtains on it.

Elliott smiled, not unkindly.

“Solitude is useful for writing. Or so I tell myself when the roof complains.”

“You’re a writer?”

“An aspiring one.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Painfully.”

I liked him immediately.

Not because I understood him.

Because I did not.

He seemed newer than the rest. Not rooted in the town like Lewis, not weathered into it like Willy, not structurally embedded like Robin’s family or Gus at the Saloon. Elliott felt like someone who had come to Pelican Town with his own reasons, tucked them carefully inside his coat, and hoped nobody shook him hard enough to hear them rattle.

Which meant he probably knew nothing about Grandpa.

That, too, was almost refreshing.

“Do you know my grandfather Peter Keene?” I asked anyway.

Elliott’s expression shifted into polite regret.

“Only by name, I’m afraid. I arrived long after his time here.”

“Yeah. That’s what I figured.”

“I take it his name carries weight?”

“You could say that.”

“I’ve found many names do in Pelican Town,” Elliott said. “Though people here often pretend otherwise.”

I looked at him more closely.

“For someone new, you picked that up fast.”

“When one is new, one has the advantage of noticing what everyone else has agreed not to notice.”

He nodded toward the fossil in my hand.

“And what have you found there?”

“I’m not sure. I dug it up from the sand. I think it’s a trilobite.”

His eyes brightened.

“Ancient, sea-born, and unearthed by accident. A fine omen.”

“Is it?”

“Possibly terrible. But fine.”

“That’s helpful.”

He stepped closer, studying it without taking it from me.

“Gunther at the museum would be delighted to see that.”

“The library?”

“The museum, technically. Though in Pelican Town, the two share a roof, which means books and bones have learned to tolerate each other.”

“That sounds efficient.”

“It sounds underfunded.”

I laughed.

He smiled.

“Gunther’s work could use the excitement. The museum is rather sparse these days.”

“Sparse how?”

“In the way of a place designed to preserve memory, yet left waiting for people to remember that memory requires care.”

I turned the trilobite over again.

The ridges caught the light.

“That seems to be a theme around here.”

“Then perhaps you should bring him the theme.”

I looked toward the path leading back into town.

Museum.

Gunther.

The ginger girl with books.

The day was apparently not done handing me places to go.

“Thanks, Elliott.”

“My pleasure.” He inclined his head. “And Eric?”

“Yeah?”

“Welcome to the beach. It is not always kind, but it is usually honest.”

I thought of Willy saying the sea kept what people lost.

“I’m starting to notice people here like giving advice that sounds like weather.”

Elliott considered that.

“A fair criticism. I shall strive to be more direct.”

“Will you?”

“No.”

He smiled, and I laughed again.

Then he turned back toward his cabin, coat moving lightly in the sea wind, leaving me with the trilobite in my hand and the feeling that Pelican Town had gained another door.

Not one locked by old history like Lewis.

Not one guarded by clean sentences like Demetrius.

A newer door.

Polished, dramatic, maybe lonely.

I looked once more at the fossil.

Then toward town.

No, I decided.

Sam could wait.

Whoever he was.

The blond guy near the bushes could remain a mystery for another day.

Right now, I had something ancient in my hand, a museum waiting uphill, and the strange suspicion that the town’s history did not begin anywhere near Peter Keene.

So I headed for the library.