a Stardew Valley fan fiction: The Proper Care and Feeding of Souls

Chapter 1: Extending Grace

hiraeth (n)

a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return

a home which maybe never was

the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief

for the lost places of your past

As the train rattled along the countryside, dusk turning to darkness, Grace rested her head against the cool, hard window. The truth was that Grace didn't feel strong enough to do this. Outside of the unsettling tightness in her chest that every so often made its way up into a lump in her throat, she didn't feel much of anything.

Her brain was exhausted from running through scenarios in her mind that didn't end with her getting off at the next stop. She imagined herself pulling up straight and tall, sauntering back to purchase her return ticket. A mix-up. A mistake. Just a quirky day trip. This wasn't actually her plan after all. She and the ticketing agent would chuckle politely and she'd be on her way back to the city. But somehow, despite the draw and ease of it, she couldn't bring herself to buy into a scenario that took her back. She would not go back.

A woman sitting across the aisle thumbed through a magazine with an air of ennui. Despite the hours they'd been on the train, she looked immaculately put together with dark shining waves of perfection framing her freshly powdered face. Her sleek jumpsuit made her look slightly out of place, and Grace wondered what a woman like her was doing on a train like this. Impatiently, the woman stuffed her magazine back into her bag and pulled out her laptop, eager to indulge the escape into her work. Grace had always thought that this was the woman she would become. It was definitely the woman everyone else expected her to become. But here she was, running away. She would not become that woman, the one everyone expected her to be.

Before she left, Grace did three things. First, she resigned from her dream job at the biggest marketing firm in the city. Second, she sold almost everything she owned: the big things like her car and her townhome and all its furniture and then of course, all of the little things, things she had accumulated over the years, clothes, shoes, stuff that had ingrained itself into her life over the years - stuff that was suffocating her more than it was bringing her comfort or joy. And finally, she vowed to herself that she would rid herself of the broken, predictable life she had somehow fallen into and in its place, she would create a new life, one that truly fed her wanting soul.

Grace could feel the pull of the deceleration as the train approached a small, barely lit train station. Taking a shaky deep breath, she gathered her bag and the one trunk that she had reduced her life into and stood. Trembling, she made her way off the train, her heart pounding, her mind shrieking for her to stop. Every ounce of her being doubted this choice. The scary voices in her head threatened her with an array of frightening consequences. But, she kept going, fueled by something she faintly recognized as her own fleeting desire to extend grace to herself in the form of this new life.

The station was deserted, which suited her just fine. She knew where she was. Her feet firmly planted on stable ground, it all rushed back to her. Skipping stones into the river, hide and go seek in the barn. Grandad would never find her when she hid just behind the hay bales, at least he pretended not to find her, which made it all the more thrilling. Her childhood memories were filled with summers spent sucking sweet watermelon and toasting perfect marshmallows here. After a long season of feeling lost, she finally knew where she was.

The walk to the farmhouse never felt long as a child fueled with the anticipation of a summer in Stardew Valley. Tonight though, the air was thick and dark and the walk presented itself as daunting at best, dangerous at worst. The dark dirt path was lined with towering trees. In the dead of night, the occasional rustling behind the trees provoked Grace's imagination. She immediately cursed herself for not thinking this through. Single female murdered in the middle of the night....in the middle of nowhere....... Would that even be a headline? Maybe no one would ever even know. The rumbling sound of her trunk on the pebbled dirt path was unnerving, like an invitation for a serial killer to hop right out and snatch her. Lighting lit the sky and Grace picked up her pace.