Stardew Valley |This Modern Love | F!Female Farmer x Sebastian

Mushaboom

Sage honest-to-Yoba giggles at Sebastian's message. She thinks they might be flirting, and has no idea how to feel about it. A bubble rises high in her chest: hopeful, afraid, and fragile.

Dropping her phone on the floor, she pushes it away, sending it skidding across the wood planks. If her excitement mounts any more, she might burst. She holds a hand to her chest, eyes closed, grinning.

Instead, she turns her attention to the little cat, curled against her stomach. He was scratching at her door as she trudged up to her porch, and darted inside, hopping onto her bed as soon as she entered. Sage could only lean against the door and shrug, head tilted in acceptance. Why not. Lately, her life has been a collection of one unexpected moment after another. She figures she might as well embrace it.

Pets weren't a luxury available to her growing up. Every penny went toward necessities, food and bills. Anything left went toward her parents' drug habits. Besides, with needles and empty bottles littering the floor at any given moment, her home was never suitable for a pet.

Not when her parents would have screaming matches daily, crashing about the apartment, smashing anything in their wake. Not when her father would hunt them down from their hiding places and drag them out. Not when he'd use them as punching bags in his drug-fueled rages. Not when Sage would delay coming home for as long as possible to avoid him, seeking out the darkest corners of alleys to hide in, shirt held over her nose to muffle the stench of nearby dumpsters. No, it was not a safe environment. Not for a child, and not for a pet.

Sage peers down at the purring cat and marvels at how innocent it is. Was she once like this, so small and fragile? How could her father lay a hand on someone so defenseless? How could her mother do nothing while it happened? What made them this way?

She doesn't know the answers to any of her questions. What she does know is she'll be different. Never will any creature under her care feel afraid of her. Never will they go without, or experience anything she went through. The difference between providing for her parents out of obligation, and caring for life because she chooses to, is massive.

Gone is her resentment, replaced with something so tender she hasn't figured out a name for it. Love, perhaps. Love for her plants, her animals, the dirt roads she travels every day.

Her parents never said that word to her. There were no tender hugs, no "I love yous" exchanged in the tiny apartment she grew up in. The only person who'd ever told her was Grandpa Charlie. As a child, she couldn't grasp the emotional significance.

Sage curls onto her side, and Lenny purrs even louder, kneading his paws in the air. She laid here, with Charlie looking over her, in this very house, almost twenty years ago. Scratching the cat's ears, she wonders if her return to the Valley signifies a return to an older version of herself. A version that could have flourished without the suffocation of her parents' neglect. Maybe this is change. The notion floats in her mind as she drifts off to sleep.

A week later, Sage tucks the last of the salmonberry jam into a basket, along with a loaf of bread she bought from Pierre. Evelyn Mullner made it herself, he'd said. She'd pictured her, the woman who insisted Sage call her "Granny" pouring her love into the dough, watching with a careful eye as it baked. It's light and flakey, with a perfect crust at the edges that crumbles at the touch.

Hoisting the basket into her arms, Sage figures it beats the hell out of Wonderbread. She wants to surprise Linus, to thank him for his company. If she's going to live here, it'd be good to connect with the locals. Besides, Linus left an impression on her. There's a kinship with him, in the way they both left the city for something simpler. A wisdom in the enigmatic man's essence Sage finds herself drawn to.