Stardew Valley - Dark Blue: When The Chickens Came Home To Roost (Shane)

Chapter 9: Want For Nothing

Shane was on top of the fucking world — and he had been, ever since Summer 11. But unfortunately, Summer comes and goes, just as all great things do.

He'd been spending more time at SunnyVale than he should have been, admittedly, but how was he expected to stay away, when the sweetest dream he'd ever had was materialized into human form, at his beck and call whenever he wanted? She was utterly perfect, in every sense of the word — and Shane just couldn't stop crawling back. The more time he spent with her, the more he loved her. It was really so simple.

For the remainder of Summer and well into Fall, Shane had followed Litha around SunnyVale Farm like a lost puppy. He'd help with farm work, repairs, cooking, cleaning — it didn't matter. He just wanted to be near her. Though as time passed them by, Shane realized something about Litha that tore him up inside — she wasn't happy. And nothing he could do seemed to fix it.

Yet even in her discontentment, Litha performed her duties as necessary. Shane respected that about her. She'd spend long, hot days in the fields, plucking weeds and sowing seeds until her fingers bled, and then, she'd spend her nights in the old mines, stumbling home at all odd hours of dawn with various bloods and slimes dripping from the razor sharp iridium blade that she'd dubbed 'Maiden,' and a pack full of precious gems and artifacts. She'd collapse into the rickety old bed they shared without so much as a bath first, still coated in a considerable layer of soot, grit, and sweat. All the same, Shane fucked her until she called his name into the night, and kissed her wounds despite the blood that stained his lips. In the most literal way possible, Shane was in awe of her.

Once Fall had finally ushered in and the valuable summer crops ultimately died out in favor of the autumnal, Litha had taken up a new venture — wine making.

"What the hell are these things?" He'd asked her in the early hours of Fall 8, as they emptied the bubbling kegs in the shed and refilled them with a strange hard skinned blue fruit that Shane had never seen before.

Litha shrugged, keeping her eyes on her work. "Dunno, laddy. I've been calling them ancient fruits."

Shane scratched his head as he studied the strange fruit in his hand, knocking on its hard exterior, which resulted in a hollow sound. "But, like, where did they come from? Is it a Galdoran thing?" Shane had recently begun chalking all of Litha's strange behaviors up to 'Galdoran things.' She hated it.

"No," Litha huffed, staring blankly ahead. "Aye, well, maybe — but really I'm not sure. I found a petrified seed in the mines, and Gunther advised me to plant it. I have no idea how it managed to grow, but they produce hundreds of seeds per fruit, and I just kept planting them. The fuckers grow like wild fire, and their wine is twice as strong as most. Profitable stuff," she explained.

Shane only shook his head as they finished the last of the kegging. They placed all the bottles into wheelbarrows, which they'd take to the cellar to cask.

When she'd first taken up wine making, Shane inquired as to why it had piqued her interest. She'd never given him a straight answer, but he had a couple ideas in mind. Shane figured that she either assumed it would be easier than spending long days in the fields, which it definitely wasn't, or that she'd simply taken a stronger liking to wine than he'd known her to have before.

The latter option scared him, because realistically, Shane knew that Litha was depressed. She wouldn't give him straight answers about that, either, but he knew what it was like to want to drown your sorrows. He wanted better for her than that, so finally, one day, he gathered the courage to ask her why she didn't just give up the farming gig all together, in favor of something that would actually fulfill her.

They were ripping weeds when he'd asked her the question. Her fingers were blistered, and her face was sunburnt. They'd been in the fields for hours. "I've endured many hard days of work in my lifetime, yet none of them honest," she'd confessed, wiping sweat from her face in the heat of her frustration. "These hands were meant to wield a blade, Shane — not to pull weeds. But this is my life, now — my legacy."