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

Chapter 9: A Girl Like Her

You need

chaos

in your soul

to give birth to

a dancing

star

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Grace woke early that morning, the spring sun flirtatiously rising to greet the day. She had ambitious plans for the day ahead, but first, coffee. Pulling her fuchsia hair into a thick messy bun, she slid into some jeans and an old t-shirt and made her way to the kitchen. The morning was quiet, slow, peaceful. As the coffee brewed, cackling and slowly dripping into her gran's old pot, Grace rested her elbows on the kitchen island, her chin in her hands.

Grace closed her eyes and breathed in the air of the morning, the aroma of the coffee, the clean scent of wood that still permeated the farmhouse after all these years. Her new world felt slow and in control, just like she needed it to.

Grace filled her old mug to the brim with steaming coffee and stepped out onto the veranda. She settled down into a rocking chair, sipping her coffee as she surveyed the land sprawling out before her.

Clearing out the flower beds had been hard work, but it paled in comparison to this. The land in front of the farmhouse spread a few acres to the south. It was the land her grandad had used to grow his crops, where she had run through the tall stalks of corn as a child. Now though, the land was overgrown with weeds, tree branches, and the general accumulation of nature, just from existing over the past several years without care. The soil looked dry and disagreeable, the field inhospitable.

Grace considered whether or not a city girl like her could actually do what needed to be done. After all, what did she know about farming? Uh. Absolutely nothing. A girl like her. What did that even mean anymore? Once upon a time, a girl like her flaunted her well-manicured nails while drinking her $8 lattes as she navigated the busy city streets on her way to her big-wig marketing firm. Now, though. Now, a girl like her, well, it was different now, wasn't it? A girl like her threw that life away in hopes of saving her own. A girl like her continually surprised herself with her tiny bouts of grit and courage. A girl like her could totally do this.

Properly fueled with excessive amounts of caffeine and a hearty breakfast, Grace lugged a wheelbarrow out of her shed, figuring she'd start with clearing the tree branches and everything else she could before she got to pulling weeds and tending to the soil. She didn't actually know where to start so she just started right where she stood.

Several hours later, Grace looked up to see the sun high in the sky. She paused, placing her hands on her hips while she evaluated her progress. Beads of sweat ran down the sides of her face as it simultaneously struck her that yes, a girl like her could do this and it was going to take a girl like her a heck of a lot of time to do this. That part, she didn't mind so much. Time, she had.

After a mid-day refuel, Grace resumed the clearing of her land, and by early evening, as the sun was beginning to glow in anticipation of its sinking into the distance, Grace found herself near the far end of her property. She was wrestling a particularly stubborn tree branch that seemed to be ensnared with something when she lost her footing. As Grace stumbled to catch herself, her foot met an oddly slippery rock, causing Grace to pick up speed as she flailed backward. Expecting to land on the wild land she had spent the day clearing, Grace could not have been more shocked when she fell straight through the foliage and splashed into a pond deep enough to submerge about half of her body.