#acre Stanford

[yzeltia]

Something Happened in Pelican Town

Chapter 2: Dusty's Path Characters: Acre Stanford(Farmer), Dusty the Dog, Alex Rating: Mature Notes: Mentions Homophobia - Previous - Next -

Life doesn't always go the way we expect it to. I had no intention of becoming a farmer, even when I became determined to come here and solve grandfather's murder. Yet I spent the week tilling, logging, weeding, and planting in the quarter acre in front of my inherited abode. In my haste to get on the ground with my investigation, I forgot just how much labor it would be to keep up pretenses.

It was rather intensive to start. I the first few days I was too tired to make it back into town. Robin stopped by to check on me and offer her old axe to get me started, but it seemed Seb wasn't going to leave his basement unless we were sleuthing. To be honest, I was a bit relieved. Even when we were younger, I felt a bit fetishized. An outsider, a representation of a life he wanted to live away from this sleepy nowhere where he felt it impossible to be understood. I can only imagine the look he'd give me if I told him I didn't mind putting in the work.

Being left to my own devices made it easy to delay my debut, though I'm sure word had gotten around about my debut. From what I remembered, Friday tended to be the busiest night and I doubted that the small town was capable of deviating too much from that. So I put it off until today.

Pelican Town hadn't changed at all. It had the charm of all the charm of a seaside village, though then when I didn't count a murderer amoung them, it felted haunted and quiet. More so when one walked the empty plaza alone.

I was generous with my journey, walking around the familiar stone streets. I could have easily wandered into the saloon early, but nostalgia set me aloft to the front of the Mullner house.

Evelyn Mullner had doted on me and often watched me when my grandpa went fishing with his buddies during my visits. I was too rambunctious to handle a long boat ride. I'd play with her grandson Alex and when we were little, we'd build a tent by the tree in the front yard and camp together. But as I grew older and closer to Sebastian and the others, a rift began to form. Then their was George. He had always been indifferent, but when I started to show an outward interest in my same sex peers his discomfort wasn't well hidden and Alex was pushed further away.

My heart ached. Despite the awkwardness at the end, I cherished Evelyn as if she were really my own granny. That she might have...or even George or Alex could have...

I faltered as I stood in front of the door, hand touching the wooden frame, feeling the notches where they carved Alex's height and his mother's before him, marveling as I thumbed over Alex's most recent measurement.

Between guilt and embarrassment, I pulled myself away and headed to the saloon, only to stop at the makeshift fence with "DOG" sloppy painted on the gate. Smiling, remembered Alex making me paint this for him...and being in trouble for getting paint all over his bedroom floor. With a little whistle, I looked on to the doghouse, hearing the low growls of Dusty from within before he trotted out to greet me, tail wagging.

"You've gotten a bit chunky boy," I cooed, reaching in to stroke his ears as he excitedly bounced against the fence with a little bark.

"Wow. I don't think I've seen Dusty ever warm up to someone like that," a voice called out.

Turning, I looked up to a young man in a green Letterman jacket tossing up a grid ball then catching it as he looked at me and asked, "You visiting someone?"

I swallowed, gazing up to the man my childhood friend had grown to be, though with the jacket it seemed he carried a degree of innocence about him. I stood still for a moment, waiting for Alex to recognize me, and when that didn't, I recoiled.

"No. I took over Stanford Farm."

"Really? Didn't think anyone would want that place. Kinda got over grown after the old farmer croaked. Glad someone got to it before JojoMart could."

My attention snapped to the market across the river. The town didn't need two markets, but the Jojo Corporation seemed intent on spreading its poison even somewhere as remote as Pelican Town. Land grabbing the farm would make a good motive to get my grandfather out of the way with the assumption the family wouldn't bother with it and sell it.

"You good there?"

"Sorry. Got lost in a thought...I need to go," I apologized, giving Dusty a head rub before briskly brushing by Alex.

Alex spun then rubbed the back of his head. "Ah. Hey! I didn't catch your name!"

I froze. I didn't want to sit and play catch up, I needed to find a good place to set up in before the rest of the town started to arrive. "Acre..."

"I'm Alex. Hope to see you around! Feel free to come say hi to Dusty. He seems to like you and everyone else is scared of him.

My gaze lowered. It had been six years and it's not like we kept in contact. Still, it stung a bit, though I suppose there were worse ways that it could have went. It's probably for the best I don't get caught up in nostalgia anyway.

[thefroggeacre]

HEY PEOPLE, WITHOUT ANY CONTEXT TAKE THIS AS A GIFT.

Just a little blorbo with too much potential in his fucking traumatized head <3

[scotianostra]

July 22nd 1915 saw the death of Sir Sandford Fleming the man who invented time.

Fleming was born on January 7th 1827 in Kirkcaldy, Fife, and okay he never invented time, but read on and discover what this man, little known in his native land gave us......

At the age of 14 he was apprenticed as a surveyor and in 1845, at the age of 18, he emigrated with his older brother David to colonial Canada, their route took them through many cities of the country including Quebec, Montreal and Kingston.

He first worked as a surveyor and later became a railway engineer for the Canadian Pacific Railway, Fleming founded the Royal Canadian Institute in Toronto in 1849. While originally an organization for engineers, surveyors, and architects, it would evolve into a institution for the advancement of science in general.

Sandford Fleming advocated the adoption of a standard time or mean time with hourly variations according to established time zones. Fleming’s system, still in use today, established Greenwich, England (at 0 degrees longitude) as the standard time, and divides the world into 24 time zones, each a fixed time from the mean time.

Stanford wasn’t just a “one trick pony” and his innovations were quite diverse he designed the first Canadian postage stamp. The three-penny stamp issued in 1851 had a beaver on it (the national animal of Canada). he went on to design an early in-line skate in 1850, he surveyed the first railroad route across Canada and was the head engineer for most of the Intercolonial Railway and the Canadian Pacific Railway.

In 1880, Fleming retired from surveying and became the Chancellor of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, a post he held for 35 years. In later life, he became a strong advocate for a trans-Pacific submarine telegraph cable.

The “father of standard time” died in Halifax on July 22, 1915, leaving behind an incredible legacy, numerous places and buildings in Canada are named in his honour, including a town in Saskatchewan, and his 95-acre property to the city of Halifax which he gifted for use as a public park, which was named Fleming Park in 1908. Mount Sir Sandford the highest mountain of the Sir Sandford Range and the highest mountain in the Selkirk Mountains of southeastern British Columbia. He is also one of many Scots honoured with a Google Doodle.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chris D'Angelo at HuffPost:

As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke about the spiritual connection he feels toward the natural world and humankind’s duty to protect it, Tucker Carlson was left visibly starstruck. “That is where we sense the divine. God talks to us through the fishes, the birds, the leaves. They’re all words from our creator,” Kennedy told Carlson in an Aug. 26 interview. “That is why we preserve nature.” “Yes!” Carlson agreed, emphatically. “It’s not because of the quantity of carbon,” Kennedy added, condemning the environmental movement’s focus on planet-warming carbon emissions. “I feel what you said so deeply I can hardly even express it,” Carlson marveled.

Kennedy, who worked for decades as an environmental attorney, fancies himself as an “old-school environmentalist” — apparently one who thinks that humans can somehow safeguard the environment while ignoring carbon pollution, the 13,000-pound elephant in the room that is wreaking havoc on all the nature that Kennedy purports to care about so deeply.

Numerous former colleagues in the environmental movement have come forward to condemn Kennedy, arguing he lost his way long ago and forfeited any claim to the title of environmentalist. After suspending his own presidential campaign last month, Kennedy became a surrogate for Republican nominee Donald Trump, who has repeatedly dismissed climate change as a “hoax” and as president dismantled dozens of environmental rules and regulations to the benefit of corporate polluters. Dan Reicher, a senior researcher at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for Environment, worked with Kennedy at the Natural Resources Defense Council in the late-1980s and early 1990s. The man he knew then, whom he called a “strong advocate who spoke his mind on environmental protection” and with whom he bonded over a shared passion for kayaking, is not the same man today.

[...]

For a clear view of Kennedy’s fall from environmental grace, look no further than his interview with Carlson, when Kennedy condemned environmentalists for adopting what he calls a “carbon orthodoxy,” the idea that everything is measured by its carbon footprint. “When we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,” he said. “It’s not about quantifying stuff. That’s what the devil does; he quantifies everything. That is what he wants us doing — put a number on it. And the reason we’re preserving these things is because we love our children. It’s because nature enriches us, it enriches us economically, spiritually, culturally and historically. It connects us to those ten thousand generations of human beings that were here before there were laptops.” What Kennedy conveniently failed to mention or grapple with is the fact that climate change is devastating communities the world over, with economic damages forecast to reach $38 trillion annually by the middle of this century. For many, confronting the threat is both a spiritual and cultural endeavor. Kennedy went on to attack the modern environmental movement with several falsehoods. He declared that “offshore wind is exterminating the whales,” parroting the evidence-free talking point of some of the nation’s most hard-line organizations denying climate change.

[...] Kennedy’s entrance into the Make America Great Again movement has given rise to a similar slogan meant to boil down what Kennedy brings to the table: Make America Healthy Again. But in backing Trump, Kennedy is teaming up with someone with a well-documented and abysmal environmental and public health record. The Trump administration worked to weaken safeguards for nearly 35 million acres, a number that the left-leaning Center for American Progress said earned Trump the title of the most “anti-nature” president in U.S. history. In January 2021, The New York Times compiled a list of more than 100 environmental rollbacks under Trump, including rules meant to safeguard air, water and wildlife habitat, as well as prevent exposure to toxic chemicals. In a meeting with oil and gas executives earlier this year, Trump vowed to fulfill the fossil fuel industry’s wish list and undo President Joe Biden’s climate and green energy policies if they donated $1 billion to his reelection campaign. It is the very sort of corporate capture of government that Kennedy decries at every turn.

[...] Reicher and others date Kennedy’s departure from the environmental movement to the early 2000s, when he began to embrace conspiracies about vaccines and autism — a torch he continues to carry — and became a prominent figure in the fight against a proposed offshore wind farm near Cape Cod, Massachusetts. But Brett Hartl, government affairs director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s political arm, points to a fiasco Kennedy set in motion at Riverkeeper in 2000. That year, Kennedy, then Riverkeeper’s lead attorney, hired William Wegner, a convicted smuggler of wild bird eggs, to help the organization monitor New York City’s compliance with environmental rules. Eight of Riverkeeper’s board members resigned in protest. Ever since that incident, Hartl, who grew up along the Hudson River, has viewed Kennedy as a foe and told HuffPost he’s “been baffled by the comments of other environmental advocates that can’t believe what has happened to him.” “RFK has been twisted for decades, nothing is new, people just tolerated his untethered and bizarre beliefs because his last name was Kennedy,” Hartl said in an email. “In my view, RFK Jr is an environmental criminal and an environmental villain.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. soiled the Kennedy name and what remains of his environmentalist cred by sucking up to anti-environment/pro-fossil fuels demagogue Donald Trump.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

Across a patch of the Pacific Northwest, one of North America’s most important tree species is dying at an alarming rate. This spring, as in the past several years, the needles on Douglas firs are yellowing, turning red and then dropping to the ground in forests across southwestern Oregon.

Experts blame a combination of factors, including insect attacks, drought and increased temperatures caused by climate change. Decades of fire suppression have exacerbated problems by disrupting the natural balance of ecosystems.

“The droughts and heat and climate change are killing trees widely, and there’s no clear way to put that genie back in the bottle,” said Rob Jackson, an ecologist at the Doerr School of Sustainability at Stanford University who is researching the ways climate change affects forests and grasslands. “We are priming our forests to die.”

The crisis in Oregon shows the critical importance of forest management as climate change alters the natural world. Foresters say that, in many cases, they need to cut down Douglas firs, whether dead or alive, in order to minimize wildfire risk, promote forest health and help ecosystems adapt to the shifting climate. Their plans include selling some salvageable timber.

But those plans have touched a raw nerve with some environmentalists, who distrust government agencies and accuse them of favoring logging over conservation.

“I understand why environmental groups are suspicious, and they should be,” said Mindy Crandall, an associate professor of forest policy at Oregon State University. The federal agencies “didn’t listen to society for a little bit too long.”

The distrust exemplifies a challenge: How do those agencies, which control much of the land in the Western half of the country, navigate competing mandates for conservation, resource extraction and fire safety as forest health declines across the West?

Douglas firs are a keystone species for the region’s enormous, ecologically diverse forests, critical to sustaining a wide range of plant and animal life. They are also one of the most important timber trees in the country, used widely for home construction and as Christmas trees.

Across southwestern Oregon, more of the species died from 2015 to 2019 than in the previous 40 years combined. The deaths, though concentrated in regions at the lower end of the elevation and rainfall range for Douglas firs, have spread since 2020: While less than 5,000 acres of land in the state exhibited tree death in 2021, that number rose to more than 350,000 acres in 2022.

[wepurge-rpg]

La Universidad de Stanford se fundó en 1885 por Leland y Jane Stanford en memoria de su único hijo, Leland Stanford Jr., quien murió de fiebre tifus a la edad de 15 años. Abrió sus puertas en 1891 en un campus de 8.180 acres en Stanford, California, bajo la creencia de “promover el bienestar público ejerciendo una influencia en nombre de la humanidad y la civilización”, logrando descubrir solución a varios problemas de salud, y contribuyendo al avance de la medicina.

Actualmente se encuentra entre las 5 mejores universidades del mundo. Es una de las universidades más populares entre los estudiantes internacionales, con alrededor del 8% de los estudiantes de la Pregrado y el 30% de los estudiantes de Posgrado provenientes de varios países del mundo.

Hoy en día, Stanford es conocida por su excelencia académica, su impacto en la tecnología y la innovación, y su comunidad de estudiantes y académicos de renombre. La tasa de aceptación de la Universidad de Stanford a partir de 2024 es sólo del 5%, lo que indica una política de admisión extremadamente selectiva. Las admisiones a la Universidad de Stanford se realizan durante el ingreso de otoño y el ingreso de primavera y los estudiantes requieren un puntaje agregado promedio del 85% o más para ser admitidos.

Link al tumblr: https://underpressurerpg.tumblr.com/

[dunder-rpg]

La Universidad de Stanford se fundó en 1885 por Leland y Jane Stanford en memoria de su único hijo, Leland Stanford Jr., quien murió de fiebre tifus a la edad de 15 años. Abrió sus puertas en 1891 en un campus de 8.180 acres en Stanford, California, bajo la creencia de “promover el bienestar público ejerciendo una influencia en nombre de la humanidad y la civilización”, logrando descubrir solución a varios problemas de salud, y contribuyendo al avance de la medicina.

Actualmente se encuentra entre las 5 mejores universidades del mundo. Es una de las universidades más populares entre los estudiantes internacionales, con alrededor del 8% de los estudiantes de la Pregrado y el 30% de los estudiantes de Posgrado provenientes de varios países del mundo.

Hoy en día, Stanford es conocida por su excelencia académica, su impacto en la tecnología y la innovación, y su comunidad de estudiantes y académicos de renombre. La tasa de aceptación de la Universidad de Stanford a partir de 2024 es sólo del 5%, lo que indica una política de admisión extremadamente selectiva. Las admisiones a la Universidad de Stanford se realizan durante el ingreso de otoño y el ingreso de primavera y los estudiantes requieren un puntaje agregado promedio del 85% o más para ser admitidos.

Link al tumblr: https://underpressurerpg.tumblr.com/

[fuckinghomepage]

JULY 4, 2023

IT'S FUCKING TUESDAY.

WORDS OF WISDOM OF THE FUCKING DAY:

AN ACRE OF PERFORMANCE IS WORTH A WHOLE WORLD OF PROMISE.

EDUCATE YOUR IGNORANT ASS:

MOTHERFUCKING STANFORD AI COURSES. more>>

FUCKING MIND-BLOWING BOOK OF THE DAY:

FORAGE FOR FUCKING FOOD. more>>

USEFUL SHIT OF THE GODDAMN DAY:

FOR A HELLA BETTER ORGANIZED KITCHEN. more>>

WEBSITE OF THE FUCKING DAY:

THE FUCKING NEWS. more>>

AWESOME-AS-SHIT VIDEO OF THE DAY:

THE SECRET POWER OF UNSENT LETTERS. more>>

[eternaleternity-rpg]

La Universidad de Stanford se fundó en 1885 por Leland y Jane Stanford en memoria de su único hijo, Leland Stanford Jr., quien murió de fiebre tifus a la edad de 15 años. Abrió sus puertas en 1891 en un campus de 8.180 acres en Stanford, California, bajo la creencia de “promover el bienestar público ejerciendo una influencia en nombre de la humanidad y la civilización”, logrando descubrir solución a varios problemas de salud, y contribuyendo al avance de la medicina.

Actualmente se encuentra entre las 5 mejores universidades del mundo. Es una de las universidades más populares entre los estudiantes internacionales, con alrededor del 8% de los estudiantes de la Pregrado y el 30% de los estudiantes de Posgrado provenientes de varios países del mundo.

Hoy en día, Stanford es conocida por su excelencia académica, su impacto en la tecnología y la innovación, y su comunidad de estudiantes y académicos de renombre. La tasa de aceptación de la Universidad de Stanford a partir de 2024 es sólo del 5%, lo que indica una política de admisión extremadamente selectiva. Las admisiones a la Universidad de Stanford se realizan durante el ingreso de otoño y el ingreso de primavera y los estudiantes requieren un puntaje agregado promedio del 85% o más para ser admitidos.

Link del tumblr: https://underpressurerpg.tumblr.com/

[worldrol]

La Universidad de Stanford se fundó en 1885 por Leland y Jane Stanford en memoria de su único hijo, Leland Stanford Jr., quien murió de fiebre tifus a la edad de 15 años. Abrió sus puertas en 1891 en un campus de 8.180 acres en Stanford, California, bajo la creencia de “promover el bienestar público ejerciendo una influencia en nombre de la humanidad y la civilización”, logrando descubrir solución a varios problemas de salud, y contribuyendo al avance de la medicina.

Actualmente se encuentra entre las 5 mejores universidades del mundo. Es una de las universidades más populares entre los estudiantes internacionales, con alrededor del 8% de los estudiantes de la Pregrado y el 30% de los estudiantes de Posgrado provenientes de varios países del mundo.

Hoy en día, Stanford es conocida por su excelencia académica, su impacto en la tecnología y la innovación, y su comunidad de estudiantes y académicos de renombre. La tasa de aceptación de la Universidad de Stanford a partir de 2024 es sólo del 5%, lo que indica una política de admisión extremadamente selectiva. Las admisiones a la Universidad de Stanford se realizan durante el ingreso de otoño y el ingreso de primavera y los estudiantes requieren un puntaje agregado promedio del 85% o más para ser admitidos.

Link al tumblr: https://underpressurerpg.tumblr.com/

https://eternaleternity-rpg.tumblr.com/submit

[ifeelgeek]

La Universidad de Stanford se fundó en 1885 por Leland y Jane Stanford en memoria de su único hijo, Leland Stanford Jr., quien murió de fiebre tifus a la edad de 15 años. Abrió sus puertas en 1891 en un campus de 8.180 acres en Stanford, California, bajo la creencia de “promover el bienestar público ejerciendo una influencia en nombre de la humanidad y la civilización”, logrando descubrir solución a varios problemas de salud, y contribuyendo al avance de la medicina.

Actualmente se encuentra entre las 5 mejores universidades del mundo. Es una de las universidades más populares entre los estudiantes internacionales, con alrededor del 8% de los estudiantes de la Pregrado y el 30% de los estudiantes de Posgrado provenientes de varios países del mundo.

Hoy en día, Stanford es conocida por su excelencia académica, su impacto en la tecnología y la innovación, y su comunidad de estudiantes y académicos de renombre. La tasa de aceptación de la Universidad de Stanford a partir de 2024 es sólo del 5%, lo que indica una política de admisión extremadamente selectiva. Las admisiones a la Universidad de Stanford se realizan durante el ingreso de otoño y el ingreso de primavera y los estudiantes requieren un puntaje agregado promedio del 85% o más para ser admitidos.

Link al tumblr: https://underpressurerpg.tumblr.com/

[underpressurerpg]

La Universidad de Stanford se fundó en 1885 por Leland y Jane Stanford en memoria de su único hijo, Leland Stanford Jr., quien murió de fiebre tifus a la edad de 15 años. Abrió sus puertas en 1891 en un campus de 8.180 acres en Stanford, California, bajo la creencia de “promover el bienestar público ejerciendo una influencia en nombre de la humanidad y la civilización”, logrando descubrir solución a varios problemas de salud, y contribuyendo al avance de la medicina.

Actualmente se encuentra entre las 5 mejores universidades del mundo. Es una de las universidades más populares entre los estudiantes internacionales, con alrededor del 8% de los estudiantes de la Pregrado y el 30% de los estudiantes de Posgrado provenientes de varios países del mundo.

Hoy en día, Stanford es conocida por su excelencia académica, su impacto en la tecnología y la innovación, y su comunidad de estudiantes y académicos de renombre. La tasa de aceptación de la Universidad de Stanford a partir de 2024 es sólo del 5%, lo que indica una política de admisión extremadamente selectiva. Las admisiones a la Universidad de Stanford se realizan durante el ingreso de otoño y el ingreso de primavera y los estudiantes requieren un puntaje agregado promedio del 85% o más para ser admitidos.

[thefroggeacre]

Ok, short introduction for this shot of extreme cuteness.

So I got inspired by one of many AUs that my bestie @robin-the-robo is writing right now, so this is a thirty-something Ford that adopts an adorable young Shifty.

The idea is that when Shifty goes outside, they take a human shape to pass better as Ford's son, and it kills me so here it is, I couldn't help but draw it.

(Did you understand the caption? You can thank my bestie's beta-reading for that!)

[contremineur]

As with the church at Tottington, the roof tiles are stored inside here, but the benches are gone, the bells have gone. And yet the ghosts of the past remain. [...] Outside, they lie. Quantrills and Clarks, Rudds and Gathercoles. A weathered Gathercole memorial is profoundly evangelical: Weep not for us our children dear, because we die and leave you here. But look to Christ the crucified, that you may feel his blood applied. Another for a Quantrill wife hopes that God shall wipe away all the tears from their eyes. All about, the silence continues.

Simon Knott, from All Saints, Stanford

The 12th-century church of All Saints has stood empty since the Second World War, when the village of Stanford (along with three others and 30,000 acres of Norfolk breckland) were requisitioned to form the military training area now known as STANTA.

The roof of the church is clad in blast-proof sheeting, installed to protect the structure. The original pantiles are stored inside, ready to be restored if the village is given back to the public.

[yzeltia]

Something Happened in Pelican Town

Chapter 1: The Back Way Home Characters: Acre Stanford(Farmer), Sebastian, Robin Rating: Mature Notes: Sexual Content Pelican Town of Stardew Valley…a quiet seaside Hamlet of not even thirty people. A place where community is everything and everyone does their best to get along. Rich in rural tradition and natural beauty, though not wholey untouched by the modern world.  Thirty people happily living side-by-side…and among them, my beloved grandfather's murderer.

As a kid, I loved coming to my grandfather's farm in the summer. He'd take me fishing and let me feed his animals. On stormy nights we'd sit inside, and he'd tell me ghost stories and the next day we'd pick up branches that had fallen in the orchard. It never felt like work to me when he was around. When I turned sixteen though, we moved across the country and after that, I didn't get to return to the Valley. I kept up with grandfather and a few locals through letters though, mostly Sebastian through email. Those letters though were all I had of Grandfather…and even as my life got busy with college and other things, they never stopped. That is, until I received his final letter in the wake of his death.

My family didn't even get a proper goodbye. The town has taken care of him before the news even reached us. Natural causes we were told, believable given his age. I would have never thought twice if I hadn't taken to rereading his letters in my grief. And his final letter, willing me the farm stood out among all the rest.

You see, my grandfather was a pilot in his youth before he settled down. When I was little I went through a phase of wanting to be just like him when I grew up and played pilot so much he even built me my own fighter out of a log. From that summer on he called me Ace, even long after I moved from that dream. Never in any letter had he called me by my name, Acre, until the last.

I poured over it many times, comparing letter after letter to the last. The handwriting was a good imitation, but more and more little discrepancies stood out. I nearly went mad with my obsession, and finally, I shared it with Seb in an email. Using his sister's connections at the local doctor's, he found no record of autopsy or any previous health records on file for the past year leading up to his death. Despite finding this, I couldn't find a single cop willing to take the case…so I threw myself into getting my P.I. license and bided my time until I could claim my inheritance and find who forged my grandfather's dying words to me and didn't want me to know the truth of his death.

Staring down into the town from the cliffs overlooking the town, I glowered. Happy memories, tainted forever by someone removing the one person that had made it special before his time. As I seethed, the sounds of shouting started to grow louder from the house behind me followed by silence as the door slammed. Turning my head, I watched as a little orange light flickered into existence then bobbed my way, its holder angrily muttering to himself.

"You good Seb," I asked through the dark as the figure drew closer and paused.

"...Acre?"

"Yeah."

Out from the shadows, Sebastian appeared, cigarette falling from his mouth. Eyes wide he stepped in, then embraced me. "Fuck. I thought you'd never come. I thought it was all talk."

"No. I'm here, for now. Figured I'd bring Stanford Farm back up as a cover. You still good on helping me? Think your mom can build a cat door for Pumpkin Spice?"

"With the farm? Or the other thing?"

I looked up at him for a moment. "Well, both if it's in you."

Sebastian's dark eyes seemed to search my face before he leaned in. I tensed up as his smokey lips brushed over mine then fervently locked on to them. As if we were sixteen again, he clumsily pressed me to one of the trees, holding me close. The kiss burned, the taste of tobacco still strong on his tongue. I hated the stench, yet, even when we were younger I didn't mind it secondhand like this.

The angry loner seemed all too eager to pick up where we'd left off. While my heart wasn't in it, I still returned his affection, sliding my arms up over his neck. If only this were enough to take my mind off it all.

Panting, he parted, "I've got my programming. I dunno about farm work, but I promise I'll help you with the other thing. Then we can leave this shit hole and go to the city."

My heart raced as his hand ran up my shirt, soon palming over my chest as he leaned in to kiss my neck. "Seb…"

"I can't stand it here…"

"Seb," I repeated, flushing harder as he brought my leg up between his. 

I tried to gently shake him off, but feeling his impressive length trapped against and the six years of longing rushing in, I felt more mutable about the situation than I would have liked.

"Take me away from here."

His hand dug down the back of my khakis as I finally gave in, arching back and letting out a moan as he dug his teeth into my neck. And then the door in the distance made a familiar slam, causing him to part before the crunching of leaves grew louder.

"Sebby? Sebby please come back inside," a woman's voice called out.

"Just a minute," he called out, voice cracking as he stuffed his hands in his hoodie pouch to pull down over his pants.

"I hope you're not out here smoking. I really wish you'd- Acre!? Acre Stanford? Is that really you?"

"Hello…Mrs. Robin," I answered, tugging my scarf up to hide my neck, no doubt bruised by her son.

"It's been years! Sebby, why didn't you tell us Acre was coming to visit?"

"I wasn't sure he was, for real."

"It's not a visit. I'm taking up the farm."

She moved in and embraced me, "I'm so sorry about your grandfather. He was a good man. A lot of things fell into disrepair after he left. If you need help starting back up I'll give you a good discount. Even more, if you provide the materials."

"Thanks," I responded, tensed up.

I didn't want to believe she of all people could have had something to do with grandfather's death. She was sweet and kind…but my paranoia couldn't exonerate her entirely. She was close to my grandfather. As a carpenter she could stand to gain from the acreage, perhaps waiting all this time to see if I was going to sell the property. All it would have taken was one carefully misplaced joint or loose support beam and she could have easily brought a barn down on top of him.

I clenched my knuckles as she let go, looking away in shame. Without knowing how he died I couldn't afford to write her off, even if in my heart I wanted to believe she was innocent already. 

"Of course! Anyway, I'd love to catch up soon, but it is rather late. Not that Sebby doesn't gush about you living high in the city."

"Mom!"

"It's true honey. Your gloomies fade away when you've got an email from him."

I bit my lip, trying not to laugh as Sebastian huffed off back towards the house. "I'll see you around Acre," he called out, somewhere between embarrassment and anger.

"Oh. I feel like I interrupted something now," Robin sighed, watching her son go, "I'm sorry Acre."

"Please don't worry about it. It's late anyway and happened to be out here when he came stomping through," I assured her. 

So many questions stirred within me, but it was too soon to start asking. If she did know something, leading with his death out the gate might have her, or anyone catches on. I needed to wait for now.

"You should go into town tomorrow and let everyone know you're here. I'm sure the Mayor would be ecstatic to see you. He and your grandfather were very close. And then I'm sure Sebby will have told Sam and Abigail by then.  You four were always getting into so much trouble. And we've gained a few new faces too."

I smiled, closing my eyes and remembering the good times, playing on the beach, or with the farm animals. "I will be sure to stop in and let everyone know I've returned...and I suppose to introduce myself to others. Everyone usually meets at The Stardrop Saloon, right?"

"They do. Well, I should get inside and make sure my husband and Sebby are keeping a wide birth from one another. Have a good night. Remember my offer."

"I will. Good night."

Robin left and headed to the back trail that led to the farm. My stomach twisted once I got far enough away from the house. How was I going to get by, suspicious of everyone I already knew? It would be easier to think it was a stranger, but more likely it was someone that I knew well. 

Six years had passed…but for Sebastian, it was picking up where we left off…and it seemed Robin too held affection for me after all this time. How long would it be until I could breathe easily around them again? The sooner I settled in and established myself, the better.

Suspects: 29

Exonerated: 1

[patricia-von-arundel]

For fans of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Richard Laymon, Bentley Little, as well as other horror and mystery authors such as Dan Simmons, Jack Ketchum, Robert McCammon, Brian Keene, Darcy Coates, Amy Cross, Jeff Strand, Ambrose Ibsen, Jeremy Robinson, Nick Cutter, Blake Crouch, Joe Hill, Iain Rob Wright, Jeff Menapace, Matt Shaw, Heather Graham, Jack Kilborn, James Herbert.

Uhhhhhhh... okay? Did you miss anyone? Anyone at all?

"Also for fans of the color yellow, popsicles, those rides at the fair where you're not strapped in while centrifugal force blenders your brain, 867-5309, Plastic Man, building sandcastles, Disneyland (not Disney World), Green Acres, blackcurrant Skittles (not grape), those old Fanta commercials asking if you wanna Fanta, fireflies, gastro pubs, regular pubs, regular gastro, the Beatles during their Sgt. Pepper years, the TV show Maverick, the movie Maverick, long walks on the beach, piña coladas and getting caught in the rain, the quadratic formula, The Young Ones over Blackadder, those Michael Jackson songs from Free Willy, KFC over Popeye's, shag carpeting in either burnt orange or forest green, terraced gardens, triptych boards, Borzois, buffing toenails, the orgasm Herbal Essence commercials, fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt, the mid-90s comic book X-Factor, the TV show X-Factor, World War I history, blue jellybeans, waltzing, the lais of Marie de France, saying "I'll be right back!" before going off alone and getting gruesomely murdered, the Stanford Prison Experiment, soft caramels but not hard ones, Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes, and vintage Joe Camel cigarette merchandise."

That's uh...

Yeah. Okay.