2.36 The Lone and Level Sands Stretch Far Away

What about Ceth?...

"Ceth is safer without us right now."

Rain, Luis and Cayenne are missing on the evening of their birthday. They don't turn up the next day, either. Or the day after that. Or the day after that.

Ray and Heather, Rain's parents, are devastated by their daughter's disappearance, and of course Ray concludes it had something to do with her weird new friends, but he's at a loss as to what to do about it. All his brother can do is apologize. He's sorry he saw nothing particularly amiss on that evening. He did wonder if Cayenne and/or Luis might run away, but he didn't think it would be that day, and he can't imagine Rain would choose to disappear without so much as leaving a note...

Izalee does not think so charitably of her cousin's decision making skills, and would assume Rain voluntarily ran off with Luis, not out of a crush or anything but out of her thirst for knowledge and to become a better mage... ...if not for how the baby was left here. Try as Izalee might, she cannot convince herself Cayenne would have abandoned Ceth.

Something bad must have happened.

"I am troubled they did not say goodbye," Mech says to Izalee.

"Everybody is, Mech." Izalee is supposed to be supervising Mech's interactions with the baby, but she's pretty sure he's got this. "Keep quiet about it, okay? Everyone's already upset thinking about what could have happened to them."

"My memory of them recalls every detail of our interactions with unerring perfection. Yet unless they are found, there will be no new memories added to my files..."

"Rain WILL come back," Izalee snaps, not turning away from her painting. "She... she has to come back. She's my best friend."

Ceth is too young to care who feeds her. She clumsily lays a warm hand on Mech's chilled metal chassis, and squints at her blurry reflection on it.

"I have added the nestling Ceth to my nurture and protect calculations," Mech says, "but she will require a guardian with legal personhood status."

"Maybe we can find her father or something," Izalee grumps. "Cayenne was the daughter of a famous actor in her town. Somebody's got to know who she was sleeping with."

Even as the words spill out of her mouth, Izalee knows they will not try to find Ceth's father. Trying to snoop around the town Cayenne and Luis fled from could attract too much attention.

"I had calculated your likelihood of approving of such an attempt at point zero zero seven percent," Mech says, with a tinny, reproachful twinge in his voice.

Izalee sighs. "Maybe lower than that."

Vox entertains himself, wondering why his humans are too distracted to play with him.

Izalee fuses several of her sister's gems into a crystal ball. She hopes to use this to amplify her focus and find Rain.

Lucida is shocked by this turn of events. "Wait, so the gems I've been finding just happen to be constructed in such a way that they focus and amplify magic?"

"No shit. Gosh, Cid, why did you think you were so attracted to them?"

"Okay then! Whatever. Don't get all snappy with me."

All of Reggie and Izalee's attempts to find the three missing sims are in vain.

"I bet it was a teleportation accident," Layla comments one day. "Uncle Reg kept telling Rain to cut that stuff out, and she didn't... and we know she can teleport other people by accident, too."

Izalee nods wordlessly.

Layla continues, "I feel so bad. When I was little, I encouraged her..." She thinks of her cat, Gus, then shakes the thought out of her head. "My parents are just zombies over this. It's heartbreaking. They can't think of anything else but Rain. And... this is going to sound so selfish teen of me, but I feel like I'm invisible."

Izalee feels a stab of heartbreak; what her cousin describes is much like the isolation she felt when her mother left them and her father became distant, sunk in grief. Layla lost a sibling, she should not have to lose her parents, too. "Your parents love you, Layla. They're just hurting. We're all here for you."

Ceth grows into a toddler. Her facial features strongly resemble Cayenne's. The Goldbeards can make no guesses about her blond, rosy-tipped hair or otherworldly green eyes.

If they were still Barnacle Bay Goldbeards, they'd know those are Caliente-green eyes, and that hair is totally La Mer hair.

Time marches on, regardless of anyone's feelings.

Perenna continues to work hard in her career. She's now a second unit director. Here's a pic of her coworker, Rosa Toledo, congratulating her on winning a Sims Choice Award.

Bored, the narrator takes a look around the town square vicinity, and spies Ben's cousin Ada Rossi. 

Nearby is Goopy GilsCarbo's son, Gilberto GilsCarbo. All grown up.

Gilberto has a young daughter named Gillian GilsCarbo.

Perenna displays the Sims Choice Award on the dresser in her bedroom.

It would probably go better with Lucida's gemstone collection.

Perenna's income means Reggie's toymaking is unnecessary, but he keeps himself busy with it anyway, so he doesn't have time to be frightened or depressed. Behind him, Izalee tends her garden, and the two find comfort in keeping up this same silent coexisting routine they've had since Izzy was a teen.

At least there is a small child around again to enjoy the extra toys.

Though Ceth's favorite plaything is the kitty xylophone.

"You are soooo cute," Lucida complains. "It's almost enough to make me want kids. After I graduate, though."

Gem cutting machine. It looks like one of Reggie's strange contraptions.

Lucida is pleased to not have to trust gem cutting to the mail anymore.

She enjoys watching the sharp cutting gizmos whir around.

As usual, Mech is overly concerned with Lucida's safety.

At least she won't have to endure being called a "fledgling" for too much longer. Being called a "pup" is more than enough animal labels for one sim kid. 

Mech bests his creator in a game of ping pong.

"I thank you for designing my range of motion so elegantly."

"Well, I did want you to keep up with my kids," Reggie laughs.

Mech misses his friend Cayenne. He thinks of her now as he reads a book she recommended.

Lucida comforts Mech. He may be just a bundle of circuits and metal, built to be her nanny, but he is alarmingly self-aware and she's convinced he has feelings.

Surrounded by cute today!

Reggie gets a phone call from mean spirited Maria Giordano.

*chainsaw sound effects*

Grim comes for Vox.

Reggie is hit hard by the loss of his favorite dog, but manages to stop the reaper for a few questions.

Of course, the reaper answers none.






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Etc.: Chapter title taken from Shelley's famous sonnet "Ozymandias".

Ceth is the first child of generation 4, counting towards generation 3's three total children requirement. Adoption is allowed in the challenge, so, she's adopted.

The crystal ball looks awesome, but my sims constantly want to autonomously mess with it. Super annoying. I had to rearrange the chairs so they could not sit at it.

A bit of a mythology gag with the "otherworldly" green eyes. Ceth gets her eye color from one of the Caliente sisters, who are part alien. *checks family tree* From Dina, apparently.

The hair was "La Mer hair" only in my own Barnacle Bay. Almost every La Mer had it since Dude La Mer's granddaughter hooked up with some guy (Kevin Bloom) who had the hair color. I think it originally came from Apollo Bloom in Bridgeport maybe???

Here's Ray showing off his Barnacle Bay pirate outfit heritage in town:

It's been a great deal of real life time since Ray aged to YA and left the legacy household, so I guess I dressed him like that and forgot. It's probably his athletic outfit or something.

2.35 On Your Knees

Geometric patterns. Luis has always found something comforting about them.

He even puts on shoes today.

The Goldbeards do not believe him about much of anything, but they are used to his presence, now, and trust him to not draw too much unwanted attention. Nobody bats an eyelash when he leaves the house.

Focus, he tells himself. Greta and Scarlett are gone... but then... where the hell does Eris go?

This is the first time he's seen Eris so clearly.

The first time he can remember, anyway.

Obviously, there had to be other times, and eventually he might remember those cycles in their entirety instead of in patches.

"Well, what do you think?" Her eyes were inhuman, but Luis wasn't frightened. The flowers on her head were still alive and smelled too strongly, causing his face to scrunch up in displeasure Eris must have been used to seeing, because her reaction to it was a chuckle.

Their surroundings refused to fill in. Wherever they were, once, maybe it did not exist anymore.

"I think you shouldn't let dryads touch your hair," he heard himself say. He tried to say something else, but couldn't. He couldn't change the past.

Eris smiled. "About the dress. What do you think about the dress?"

"It's... symmetrical enough, I guess? Why are you asking me for fashion advice?"

"Because you're the closest thing I can get to a human's opinion around here."

"That hurts, Eris, it really does."

"I don't want to offend our visitors. Surely you understand the importance of this..."

No. He doesn't understand. The voices fade, leaving only darkness.

Magic arcing between her hands and fingers, Cayenne is able to pull him out of the vision. Successfully, this time. "I sensed you were lost again," she says.

"Cay," he whispers her name. If only he did not exist, her choices would be so different...

"Dad, why can't you just buy a car? Then you could teach me to drive, and I wouldn't have to ride a BIKE to school." Lucida is not appeased by the perfect crepes this morning. "It's ridiculous that all we have is a motorcycle. It fits ONE person."

"Good morning to you too," Reggie says cheerfully.

Rain's young adult birthday is tomorrow, as is the twins'. Rain is excited about it.

"I can't believe we age up on the same day!" she squeals. "We should have a party! A huge party!"

Cayenne and Luis glance at each other. They don't think they deserve much of a party, which is exactly why Rain wants to include them.

Lucida's boyfriend turns out to be very helpful in the party planning. He knows how they can get their hands on a juice keg!

Luis visits the consignment shop across the street.

"What are you looking for, anyway?" Rain asks.

"Why are you following me?" Luis answers a question with a question.

Rain winks, mocking him. "Maybe it's just something I am predestined to do!"

"Ha ha," Luis's tone is deadpan sarcastic.

Then he begins to laugh for real... except it's not a happy sound.

Rain is kind of freaked out.

Luis stops laughing. After a moment, he speaks, as if nothing strange had happened: "I'm looking for a book. It's usually sold in Champs Les Sims... but I hoped it would be here."

Rain shifts uncomfortably. "Champs Les Sims is really far away, isn't it?"

"Not as far from here as it is from the Barnacle islands."

"Oh."

"My sister and I visited Champs Les Sims when we were young. Our father had a business trip there. The place we were staying at had a book shelf... and a collection... a whole series. Cayenne really wanted to see the ending. But, we had to leave, before she was finished reading."

"You're here looking for a present for your sister," Rain concludes.

Luis nods. Birthdays have lost meaning for him, but Cayenne likes to celebrate them.

"That is so sweet," Rain remarks, smiling again.

"Maybe next age-up," Luis says, as he turns to leave the shop.

"You went out the wrong door," Rain tells him, as they end up in the junk yard out back.

"Are you sure?" he asks, in that quiet, detached tone he uses so much.

"Anyway I'm thinking, why don't we just go to Champs Les Sims and get the book? You've been there before." She puts a hand on his shoulder. "Sooo when I try to teleport us, it's very likely it will work. Just like when you were able to send me home."

"Rain, wait-" Luis's protest is cut off as they poof out of existence.

Rain and Luis reappear in the Champs Les Sims countryside.

With Cayenne.

Rain blinks several times. "Huh? Why is Cayenne here?" Did she screw up that teleport?

"Anti-separation hex," Luis answers. "I'm prone to getting lost, you see..."

This was the very reason he was pulled to the same location, on that beach, when Rain translocated Cayenne to heal Layla.

Cayenne walks down to them. "Guys, what the...? Where are we?"

"You don't recognize it?" her brother asks.

She glances around. Realization strikes. "This is.... oh... oh wow, why are we here?"

"Just a little shopping," Rain answers meekly.

Cayenne frowns, confused, and steadies her balance against the side of the house they're standing near. "I feel... strange..." she whines.

Luis narrows his eyes. "Our mother had cousins here. It isn't safe for us to be here."

"SC must have... set up a spell to recognize and react to me..." Cayenne convulses once, then collapses into the grass.

Luis buckles just as quickly. He falls to his knees, next to his sister. His hands clench up and twitch open a few times. It takes him a moment to speak through the nausea, but when he does, it's in that emotionless, matter-of-fact tone, again. "They must have predicted we would flee here someday. They must have used Parsley to calibrate this spell."

"Rain," Cayenne whimpers, "get us out of here..."

"No," Luis warns sharply. "Don't take us back to Monte Vista. They could track our arc from here. We need to disable these traps first-"

Rain is a little distracted.

By the sudden appearance of this bizarre... thing???

The eyesore fairy sighs plaintively at the sky, obviously unhappy to be here.

"What an ugly blue mutt you are," a second fairy pokes out from behind the first. "WHERE are your SPOTS?"

Rain backs away slowly. "My... my spots?"

"It's a bit racist for you to assume everything with blue skin will have spot," a small figure complains.

Even from several yards away, Rain can feel the chill emanating off of him.

Luis twitches. Serril, he telepaths to Rain, we're in no shape to fend off Serril right now...

The little kid?! Rain thinks back.

He's not a little kid.

Serril approaches the twins. His voice has the high pitch of a child, but the acidic weariness of someone older. "Cayenne and Loki Archer. By now the tracking hex will have installed itself in your blood. So go ahead and poof away again... it doesn't matter. We're going to find you."

"The heck?" Rain whispers.

"What do you want with us?" Cayenne sobs fearfully.

"I want to euthanize you and be done with it. However, your escape abilities... were once thought to be unique to a very dangerous woman that we are still hunting. So your case interests my superiors."

"Eris, they're just like Eris!" The purple fairy has one of her verbal outbursts. "That one IS probably Eris, she's just changed her appearance slightly!"

"Foxglove," Serril corrects impatiently. "Shut. The fuck. Up. For the last time, Eris is female. You keep murdering random boys. I'm getting a little sick of it."

The yellow fairy barely moves. He studies their quarry carefully.

"Actually..." the words are slow and careful, when he deigns to speak, "Foxglove may have a point. Eris and Loki look quite similar."

Foxglove's eyelids drop half closed. It's so embarrassing to be defended by Larkspur.

"Eris is my daughter," Luis says, with a small, joyless smile.

The pain of the spell has begun to subside. Cayenne's eyes open just slightly. Her vision is blurry, but she assumes the dark spot she's staring at is her brother. "...Wha'?"

"It's true," he says softly. "Every time the world ends, she reappears, at some random day, in some random place... her existence is even more maddening than mine."

Cayenne winces. "You told me... Eris's mother was erased from existence..."

"I have no memory of her," he responds. He leaves it unsaid that Eris, having been taken out of the flow of normal existence, does remember her mother.

Or at least, did remember, until Greta's super epic combo breaker screw-up. Who knows what's left over in Eris's mind now? The SC agents probably have a better idea of what Eris is up to and why...

"Well, capture them!" Serril barks. "Why are you just floating there like a couple of fireflies?! Useless !@#$ing fairies!"

Why doesn't he interfere himself? Rain shuts her eyes, shivering. 

Somewhere else, they've got to be somewhere else...

Since the story would be sad otherwise, Rain, Cayenne and her brother do escape. The cowering Rain was greatly underestimated by the agents, since they expected Luis to be the one with the teleportation abilities.

The teens find themselves in sand again, but this time, not on a beach.

The dry, dusty air causes Rain to cough. Her smile does not match how she is feeling inside. "Oh wow... oh wow..."

"Aarrgh..." Cayenne moans. "My head."

"So. Um. Your brother's real name is-"

"We have to move," Luis cuts Rain off. "Unless you both want to get dissected again."

"Again?!" Rain shrieks.

"I may remember the way to someplace they can't find. We're going to have to hide there until I or another mage can get these blood curses off us."

"Let me go with you..." Rain murmurs. Not just because going home would endanger her family, but because they're talking about finding other mages, possibly other mages who don't want to kill her, and that's exciting.

"What about Ceth?" Cayenne cries.

The grass under Serril's shoes begins to frost over. "Any particular reason you let them get away?"

"You didn't want me to just kill them," Foxglove mopes out an excuse.

"I'm distracted, keeping the illusion up so no one sees us," the male fairy chirps. Feigning innocence, as he always does, when things go awry.

"Foxglove, report to headquarters," Serril orders.

"What?!"

"Report the Archers have been found with an adolescent female accomplice. Most likely an RHS victim cured of vampirism."

Foxglove tilts her head, rage forgotten. "What is an RHS?"

"Riverblossom Hills Syndrome, you ignorant fool. It made vampires blue."

"Ooooh. I thought she was one of your people."






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Etc.: There is a reason Serril didn't grab the teenagers himself and needed the fairies to do so. But this story doesn't care much about that so I left it out, and maybe it will be revisited some other time, in some other blog. I cut a lot of stuff from this chapter. I'd like to move on instead of bog us down with too many aside details.