#viper canyon: prologue

[jacquiesims]

Viper Canyon - Prologue

“...not knowing about the future, losing the security that living in a real town with stores and railroads and family all around offers…it makes me sick to my stomach, as ashamed as I am to admit it.”

October, 1851

Elijah McClain warmed his hands at the dying fire in the encampment of the wagon train. After the day’s travel, they were no farther than twenty miles from their destination. The desert nights were proving to be bitter cold – just as he remembered them. 

The prairie was far behind their wagon train but the sounds in the desert valley were reassuringly similar. The howl of a coyote, the whistling of the wind, and the crunch of the earth under their feet beneath the clear sky had proved to be a beautiful soundtrack to their journey. 

His ears perked involuntarily at the sound of footsteps approaching through the dry grass.

It was Winifred – Winnie, as her family affectionately called her – awake so late. Her fingertips brushed the brown grass as she approached.

“Hello, Elijah.” 

She circled close to the fire, rubbing her hands together in the heat of the dying embers. Her cheeks were pink from the cold. 

He acknowledged her with a grunt. He’d always been a man of few words, especially around women. 

“I expected the desert to be frightfully hot, but I guess I’ve been proven wrong tonight. I came out to warm myself by the fire. I can scarcely feel my hands.” 

“You and your sister got enough blankets?”

Winnie looked at him over the fire. “Yes. Although Bea does enjoy hoarding them from me.”

Somehow, hearing that Beatrice hogged the blankets didn’t surprise him. She had proved to be the most difficult part of the journey thus far – Elijah had privately harbored wishes to leave her behind at every encampment they’d come across in their five months on the open trail. 

“Isn’t it strange that tomorrow we’ll finally be through with it? We’ll be in Viper Canyon at last. It feels as though we’ve been on the trail forever. Though I’m sure we wouldn’t have made it through as soundly without you as our guide, Elijah.” She looked up from the fire, giving him an appreciative smile. 

He cleared his throat, rubbing the back of his neck humbly. 

“Well, now, it wasn’t all thanks to me. You knew your fair share about the trail – plants and illnesses, and the like. You got a good head for that kind of stuff.”

  Winnie’s cheeks were pink. She could hardly tell if it was from the heat of the fire or Elijah’s compliment. She’d scarcely heard him speak ten words on their entire trip – it made her wonder what had brought on his sudden talkativeness, not that she minded in the least.

“Say, shouldn’t you be asleep by now? We’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.” 

Winnie sighed as her eyes drifted off toward the dark horizon. “I’m too nervous to sleep.” 

“Nervous?” Elijah cocked an eyebrow. 

“I know it doesn’t make sense, but…my family is taking such a blind leap of faith. I can’t help but be filled with doubts. What if it doesn’t work out for us in Viper Canyon? Papa’s already sold the house and all of our things. We’ve got nothing to go back to in Virginia.” 

Elijah blinked silently. He didn’t know Winnie was harboring such doubts, and he wouldn’t have ever guessed she’d divulge them to himself – after all, he wasn’t with their party as a friend or family member. He’d been hired to take them across the country and nothing more. But he supposed it wouldn’t do any harm for him to listen to a young girl’s woes on the last night of their expedition. 

He at least had to be thankful she hadn’t caused any problems the way the other wagon party members had. Beatrice and her constant complaining, the Langford boy and his field guide books, always thinking he knew better than Elijah…no, Winnie had set quite an example for the rest of the group, always ready to roll up her sleeves and put in the work when it was required of her.

“You must think me foolish,” she quickly said, noticing Elijah’s taciturn expression. “It isn’t my place to worry about such things. After all, I’ve always been the optimistic one. But not knowing about the future, losing the security that living in a real town with stores and railroads and family all around offers…it makes me sick to my stomach, as ashamed as I am to admit it.” 

Elijah thought for a moment. “I don’t think that’s foolish at all.”

“Thank you, Elijah. Hearing that coming from you makes me feel a little better.”

  They sat in silence for a while, staring into the dancing flames of the campfire before Winnie failed to hide a yawn behind her hand. 

“You should get to sleep. I’ll stay up a little while longer and watch over the camp.”

“I could help, you know. It’s like you said – I’ve got a head for this sort of thing.” Before he could answer, Winnie laughed. “I’m only joking. I’ll go straight to bed. Try not to stay up too late. We need you bright eyed and well rested for tomorrow.”

She walked away toward the tent next to her parents’. 

“Winnie.”

The girl turned over her shoulder expectantly. Only her profile was visible beneath the brim of her poke bonnet. 

Elijah suddenly forgot what he was going to say. “…Never mind. Good night.” 

She flashed him another warm smile. “Good night to you, too, Elijah.”

Neither noticed the youngest Hawkins daughter emerge from her tent, hair mussed from sleep, until she began spitting poison in their direction.

“Could you two keep quiet? Unlike some people, I’m trying to get a good night’s rest before we arrive tomorrow! I can’t get a wink of sleep with you two prattling on like you were!” 

“Come now, Bea,” Winnie coaxed jokingly. “I’m off to bed. But I can hardly understand why you blame me for not getting enough sleep when your snoring is loud enough to wake the entire camp.” 

“Oh, you!” 

Beatrice readied herself to lay into her older sister when there was rustling from the next tent over. Both girls quickly went quiet. It was one thing to bicker between each other, but if that bickering went as far as to wake up Papa…both girls quickly scurried into their tent with not so much as a whisper more.

Now that he was alone, Elijah sank into the cool earth by the fire, watching the last of the flames disappear into the night air.  

Before he could stop himself, he was chuckling at the trivial argument between Winnie and Beatrice. It had been a long time since he laughed. The feeling was foreign in his chest. 

He began to think about what Winnie had confessed to him. She was so worried about her family’s new life in Viper Canyon. He, too, remembered when he made the long journey from his home in the east to stake his claim on land in the southwest. Although he had come alone, he had the same gnawing worries…if things hadn’t worked out for him in Viper Canyon, he would’ve had to return home to New SimCity with his head down and his tail tucked between his legs in shame. 

Things had changed in the several odd years since Elijah had ventured west. Some for the better, others not. 

He’d seen families across the trail as a guide that were ten times as prepared as the Hawkins, yet had fallen on their faces and were left penniless in a foreign place. All the newspapers back east sent mixed signals. Yes, you could make a fortune on gold or rich farmland, but at what cost? Savages were plentiful on the trail, disease ran as rampant as the buffalo on the prairie, and Watcher forbid a train was caught in the mountains too late in the year. A badly timed snowstorm could guarantee an entire party’s death from frostbite or starvation. 

But thinking so darkly would do nothing for the Hawkins family now, Elijah reasoned. They’d made it in all in one piece to Viper Canyon and he would be paid handsomely by Emmett when the family arrived at their new homestead tomorrow. 

There was one last long day ahead of them. Elijah put out the fire and watched the stars in the desert sky before retiring to his tent alone. 

To Be Continued

Viper Canyon Index | Next Chapter

(Well? What did you think? Let me know! The chapters will be longer from here on, this prologue was a bit of a ‘trial’ for me. Thanks for reading!

P.S. I’ll try and update this every Friday if I can but it’ll probably end up being more like every other Friday. I’m open to suggestions, too, if you have anything you’re hoping to see! No guarantees though :) See you next chapter!)

[strangetownmage]

Prologue

Megahood Prologue.  Sort of.

I guess?

Strangetown: A History

 Strangetown is a town of four parts, each marking a turning point in the town’s 100-year history.

The oldest part of Strangetown predates the town as it is now known – older than the research centres, older than the military base.  It exists as part of the town’s history only because what remained was absorbed into it.

This is the Muenda Estate, the only proof that settlement was there before Strangetown.  The Muenda family were originally from Midnight Hollow and were part of the group that founded Emerald Heights.  However, for unknown reasons, they and a small number of other settlers, broke away shortly after the founding, creating a smaller settlement just beyond Viper Canyon.

“The air feels right, here,” one of the Muenda family allegedly said.

Of the settlement today, all that remains in the Muenda Estate, still in use by the last remaining Muenda, and the town’s mausoleum, so large for a place that was so small.

The second phase of Strangetown’s development began with the arrival of the scientists.  Among them were the husband and wife team of Gundrun and Bjorn Beaker from Aurora Skies, and the twins Glabe and Glarn Curious from Twinbrook.

“The air feels right, here,” one of them was heard to say.  History does not record who.

The rumours about Strangetown.  Or, rather, the place that would become Strangetown, were vast.  Inexplicable lights in the sky.  The mysterious appearances of long lost, unaged, people.  The persistent whisper that time was not linear here.  People claimed to have met family members long dead, and others that were unborn.

It is also rumoured that covert government operatives were part of the initial wave of scientists, sent in to observe the scientists drawn there as much as they were to study the area.

The validity of these claims is still unknown.  However, it is the case that the military moved into Strangetown shortly after Glarn Curious’ alien abduction – an event known to those close to him.

This heralded the third factor leading to the founding of Strangetown.

The military took charge not long after their arrival, placing all the civilian labs under their control, and closing the majority of those which lay outside the base.  The exceptions were the Beaker lab, owing to the fixed nature of their research, and the Curious observatory, as Glabe argued that the placement of their telescopes was vital to their research.

The town continued its research, now under the eye of the military.  If the suspected covert government faculties were not run by government agents, then that also changed with the arrival of the military.

(although, as is polite, the scientists pretended not to know this).  

It was barely a town, more a gathering of scientists, the military and their families.  While some may not have thought the lonely outpost on a barren stretch of land was not the best place to raise children, a loud voice of disagreement would be the base’s first General, Rock Grunt.  He once said, looking up at the night sky, “the air feels right, here.”

His family would agree, as the two generations following General Grunt have always found themselves back in Strangetown, no matter how far they travelled across the world.

The Beaker labs and the Curious observatory continued to grow, expanding to fit their growing families, and the town may have continued like this, never changing, until the retirement of Mr Smith.

Mr Smith was an alien - Pollination Technician #9 Smith, a job title as much as it was a name – who wished to retire to his favourite planet, and marry the young woman he’d fallen in love with.

Jenny Curious, the woman in question, was the daughter of Glarn Curious and the half-sister to his alien children.  The fact that Pollination Technician #9 was the other father of the alien hybrids was a fact unknown to both of them for some time.

When the military discovered the pair not only planned to marry, but also move to the old Curious home town of Twinbrook, a choice was made that would create Strangetown (that strange sort of town, just by Viper Canyon).

The couple were offered a house – outside the base – with a white picket fence and a green lawn.

It’s said that PT#9 spent quite some time standing thoughtfully on the lawn, before he and Jenny agreed,

“The air feels right, here.”

And so, a town emerged, drawing in those who needed to live there, or who the government and military decided needed to live there.

Some say this is nonsense, that Strangetown – despite the name – is an ordinary town.  Others say that everyone living there is at least part alien.  Some people say that the only people who settle in the very strange town in the desert are those who are drawn there by an unseen force.  Those who stand in the desert at night, staring up at the sky, eyes glazing over as they say,

“The air feels right, here.”

[jacquiesims]

Hi Jacquie, can you tell me wcif that cute toddler bonnet in your 50 followers prewiew and Winifreds bonnet in the Viper-Canyon prologue? Thank you very much and happy simming!!!

Hello! I most certainly can tell you:

Those toddler bonnets can be found here by Dicreasy. There’s no picture but I assure you that’s the one! 

Winnie’s bonnet can be found here, by the lovely Silverbelle!

You’re very welcome and happy simming to you too :)

[jacquiesims]

Chapter One of Viper Canyon is officially in progress :) Here’s a lil teaser! 

You can read the prologue here.