Falderol Falls: Birth of a City
(The following is entirely fictional. No Grampas were harmed in the making of this story.)
So many of us float through life without much purpose or direction, without learning or experiencing anything noteworthy. Such was the case for one Simlian girl named Erin until her Grampa Hummer died a few weeks after her 18th birthday. Erin loved her Grampa very much and was devastated when he died, but was surprised and pleased to find that he'd left her a little money. Her parents wanted her to put it in stocks and securities and be prudent, but she wanted more than a secure future for herself. She wanted adventure! Excitement! Life!! though her family and friends said it was foolishness--the very definition of falderol--she found a chunk of land on the beach in the middle of nowhere that she could just barely afford and moved in.
It wasn't much to look at, but Erin was willing to work hard and supremely confident that she could make a good life for herself.
Her first order of business, however, was to make a sandcastle. Using sand she scooped through looking for shells to sell, of course.
Her second task was to build and plant a garden so that she could feed herself through the long winter. She also thought she might be able to sell some produce if she had enough. After much toil and many short naps under the stars, she finally scraped together enough to buy another small piece of land. She worked hard to build a small building and even built some tables in it. She called it Lucky's and people came from miles around and paid through the nose to play high stakes poker. Eventually she was able to purchase some nicer furnishings and even enough to build a nice house for herself.
(If you could magically tear the front off the building, it would look a little like this:
Erin loved the life she'd built for herself. When she had a few spare minutes, she often sat at the table with a cup of hot chocolate and stared at the ocean out her livingroom windows. If, of course, she wasn't out swimming. Or building sand castles. Or working in her garden. Or chatting up her guests at Lucky's. Erin loved swimming so much that she wanted to give other people the opportunity to spend long hours in the water. Her lawyers told her that there were too many liabilities opening her beach up to the public, so she instead bought a new bit of land not far from Lucky's and built a community pool. For a small (ish) fee, people were welcome to come spend hours in the water. She even had a fancy hot tub installed for relaxation. She tried to have a grill available in the beginning, but found that it was taken advantage of often with all the leftovers left over for her to clean up. Even with so many responsibilities pulling her so many directions, however, Erin was a little bit lonely. Deep in her pixellated heart she wanted a family, even though she gloried in showing people she could succeed in her goals.
One day, as she was working in the garden, she happened to look up and see the mailman coming by.
He did not look very happy. But Erin loved that little dog on sight. She adopted the stray, named her Jezebel and bought her everything she could think of. Jezebel seemed happy to be part of a family, too.
Though she loved Jezebel and taught her manners and tricks, she still felt unfulfilled. She talked to Annabelle about it as she valiantly struggled to learn to fish.
Annabelle suggested she make more friends. She also suggested Erin give up fishing forever because anyone that hopeless should just accept failure. Just this one time, Erin secretly agreed. She set about looking for more friends. She held many long conversations with the people that happened by one of her businesses.
And while her friend count was rising, her heart was sinking. Friends weren't filling the empty space in her chest. She did find a way to fill the void in Jezebel's life, though, in the form of a big mutt she called Ceasar.
Ceasar and Jezebel got on like a house on fire, but this left Erin feeling even more left out. As summer drew to a close, she knew she needed to find herself a family--someone to keep her company through long nights who did not look like a dog. But, after her wild success in carving a life out for herself, she knew she could do anything she set her mind to.
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