Midnight Sun Challenge Chapter 1

Dear Reader,

Thank you very much for stopping by to check out my blog story!  

I am in the middle of re writing the first 5 chapters and replacing the old pictures with new and better ones for the first half of generation one.  Things will look a mess for a while.

This story began just as a small blurb on the blog section of the Sims 3 social site, which were more like log entries than a story.  I wrote the first 8 chapters on that limited space.  The purpose was to keep a record of how each game play went, introduce the challenge to my friends and prove I was indeed following the rules . After posting custom memories on The Sims 3 site, friends caught on to the story and began asking for more.  From there, I moved the story to blogspot and now here on WP.

We start with Ian Bell, who purchases the island to start a new life.  The challenge rules, found at the bottom of this chapter, say your sim is on a boat that sinks, however that didn’t explain how sims were able to come and go from the island for the few things sims are allowed to do.  This is the Midnight Sun Challenge story with a twist.  In gen 2 the story moves to Samsara Isles where you will see I have relaxed a few of the rules just a tad to really progress the family. I hope you enjoy the story!

Sincerely,

Bee

Meet Ian  -His Backstory

Ian looked out at the vast expanse of water and took his first cleansing breath in what seemed a number of years. He closed his eyes and laid his head on the seat of the moving boat and allowed the drone of the motor to lull him into a state of meditation.  Breathing deeply, his body began to let go all of the heavy weight of sadness he had been carrying with him for so long.  Ian was finally on his way home at last and there he would begin to completely heal from all he had been through in the past year.

Ian Bell was the only child to happily married, loving parents and had grown up having just enough, and needing nothing, nor asking for anything else. He had grown up on the farm, the largest in their area, growing fruit and veggies that provided for the restaurants, food markets and residents of the town.  His family was well known and loved by all that knew them and he felt content with the life he had been given and chosen.  However, Ian realized now that he had been existing in a small protected bubble of happiness, where life always seemed to carry on in a positive manner and death was a foreign concept. That is, until that terrible day tragedy struck.

Ian’s parents were about to celebrate their twenty fifth wedding anniversary and he wanted to help them do so by striking off one of their bucket list wishes.  He treated them to a romantic hot air balloon ride over the town, sending them with a basket filled with food, chocolate and a bottle of juice.  They set out, with the balloon attendant just after two in the afternoon and he couldn’t wait to hear how it had gone when they returned.

They had promised to take many photos, not only of the town from above, but of each other as well. He remembered now having to give them a lesson on selfies which had provided an afternoon of blurry pics, and plenty of laughs before they finally understood how to hold the camera just right and click the button.

Ian spent the afternoon picking apples and weeding his mother’s garden for her.  He didn’t want either of his parents to have any work to do for the rest of the weekend. Shortly before four, storm clouds began rolling in, darker than he had ever seen before and worry began to set in his mind.  When the lightning began to strike, his worry turned to panic and he jumped into the farm truck, racing through the downtown area towards to beach where the balloon was scheduled to drop.  He tried to search the sky as he drove, becoming more and more panicked as the lightning continued to light up the sky.  No rain had fallen at that point, but you could see it coming off in the distance over the water.

Running down the beach, he looked at the terrified faces of people pointing towards the water and as he approached them, he could hear women crying out while the men stood there with shocked looks on their faces.

“What happened?”  Ian asked the men.  “What did you see?”

“It hit the balloon. The lightning hit the balloon and it just, it just plummeted down. Those poor people.”

Ian began to rapidly shake his head.  “No,”  he said.  “No NO NO!  Those are my parents! Someone! Please do something!”

Rescuers searched for four days, going further out than they normally would for a rescue mission, and all they found was the remnants of the top of the balloon floating in the water.

“Mr Bell.  We’ve had men in the water on boats.  We’ve had planes in the sky and we used thermal night imaging through the nights.  I’m very sorry sir, I just don’t think there is anything left we can do. ”  The man whose name Ian would never remember, laid a hand on Ian’s shoulder.  “Please accept all our condolences on your loss.”

Ian never got over the shock of their tragic death, or the fact that he wasn’t able to properly bury his parents.  He blamed himself, for if he hadn’t bought the gift for them, they never would have been in the sky or died in such an terrible manner.  He spent the days in tears and the nights plagued by horrific dreams of his parents drowning, becoming each one and suffering the same fate.  If he wasn’t drowning, he was being electrocuted by the lightning in the sky.  Slowly, he drifted into depression, barely eating or sleeping and turning away every hand that offered to help him.

His parents had left everything to him; the farm, the truck and the small amount of savings in the bank, which wasn’t much.  He tried to carry on as he had done before working the farm and keeping the house to the same clean state his mother had always done; with his help and his father’s of course. But in the end it was just too much for him to handle.

Sitting at the deck table to eat his supper one evening, a place where they shared their end of day conversations, he realized he just couldn’t live in that big farmhouse all alone.  The memories of them ingrained in everything at the farm were like darts to his already aching heart, and the silence was deafening.  He decided to sell the farm and try living in the city.

He held down several part time jobs; bagged groceries at the market, stocked shelves at the book store and even did laundry at the spa for a short spell. Nothing felt right and the unhappiness weighed him down like gravity pulling him into despair. He longed for those quiet country nights, listening to the crickets sing and the owls talk to one another from far away.

On the farm his favourite thing to do at the end of each day was to lie on the hay, stare up at the stars and watch the fireflies dance in the air above him. He had to admit, he regretted selling his family home so quickly and wished he had taken more time to make the decision, when the sorrow of losing his parents had not been so great. He missed the country air and the sweet smell of all the farm had to offer.

When he saw the ad in the real estate paper for this island getaway home, he immediately called the agent. He bought the island site unseen and it had taken almost all of his inheritance to do so. By the time he had made arrangements to move, purchased the items he would need and paid off all his parents final debt, he had exactly 500 simoleons in the bank.  Not at all comforting to someone who had never had to budget or pay bills before his parents had died.

“We are almost there sir,” the moving boat operator said to Ian.  “According to these co-ordinates, it should be just ahead.”

Ian sat up in eager anticipation of seeing his new home for the first time, but saw no land in the distance.

“Are you sure?” he asked the driver.

The man held up the paper in front of him and turned to Ian. “Well sir,”  he said with a shrug, “It’s what the paperwork says.”  Then he shrugged again and shook his head.  Once again, that familiar sense of doom settled comfortably in Ian’s chest.

 

Midnight Sun Challenge Rules are found here:   Also if anyone needs the world, I have a back up copy as the Tumblr post has now been deleted by the creator.