Chapter 117: The Best Playgrounds

"She still wonders if it could ever happen again," Acheron says. He watches Candace deliver a high-heeled roundhouse kick to his punching bag. "I've wanted to tell her so many times."

"Why? You really think she won't be mad at you?" Candace strikes the punching bag harder this time. She hates when Acheron gets on this topic. Aside from being a vocal legend, Claire is happy, sweet, and adorable. And in love with him. Why would Acheron risk changing that?

"If she wants to be mad at me, doesn't she deserve the chance?"

"You're so weird," Candace grumbles. "What brought this on?"

"She helped her father clean out her childhood bedroom yesterday," Acheron says hesitantly. "It reminded her that she still doesn't know how it happened." 

"I get that you want to reassure her and take that worry away, but it can't be worth it."

"She found... some sorcery notes... well hidden. She never noticed the loose brick in the wall when she was... younger. After she'd lost her memories but before she'd moved in with me."

"Ye olde loose brick schtick."

"Sorcery notes," Acheron repeats. "She asked Nigel if he thought a magic accident caused her memory loss. And she says he thought about it... and he said... yes."

"She believes in magic?"

 Acheron shifts uncomfortably, and nods. It's more like, Claire never questioned it.

"Why do some of them have pointy ears?" Claire asked.

 "W-well," Acheron stuttered. He and Claire were still dating at this point. This was the moment he was supposed to lie. Instead, he said something stupid. "Some of them had too much elf blood."

"Neat." Claire smiled absently at the man in the azaleas, looking through his telescope, in bright daylight. "Um, you don't mean to drink, do you?"

"Drink?" 

She pointed at one of the vampires. 

"Oh! No! No, I don't mean that..."

"Acheron." Candace snaps him back to the present. "I'm over it. You know? I give up. If you can't live with the guilt, just tell her."

"I don't have to mention your part in it."

"Tell the truth or don't say anything at all."

"But-"

"If she wants to punch me, I can handle it."

Acheron can't picture his wife punching anyone.

While Acheron contemplates upsetting the tranquility of their marriage, Claire is busy performing at a private venue. Nobody is allowed in here unless they dress vaguely like a pirate.

A thrilling song about Captain Pugwash defeating a sea-yeti.

Claire loves putting on shows, but they tire her out.

In the back yard, Harcourt plays with his cousin Noma.

While she tries to get him, the bookworm, to focus on helping with her first book report, he celebrates landing on his feet instead of his rear after sliding down the slide.

Claire performs so often, her gigs around town do not always draw much of a crowd.

But when Barnacle Bay holds a special tourism day... that's different.

Claire doesn't recognize any of these people, but they've all heard songs from her album and are cheering her name. Or rather, her stage name. She Cloud. SHE. CLOUD. SHE. CLOUD. SHE. CLOUD.

Best not keep them waiting!

The crowd is so noisy. Claire now sees the need for the colossal speakers amplifying her voice.

The next night, it's back to a tiny crowd again at the park.

"It's real late," Noma reminds her father. "Do I have to go to school tomorrow?"

Jamel glances back at his wife, Amy, who has lost track of time. Amy continues to jump around and cheer for Claire. The life on stage is the one she wants for her and her band, but they've failed at every turn. They published one album, pushed though by Amy's money alone, and it barely sold at all. 

"Dad?" Noma scowls. "My bedtime was two hours ago."

Sometimes Claire misses delivering sing-o-grams.

Candace and Cemre are suddenly getting along much better.

To solve his wife's out-of-control angst, Cemre worked extra hard at convincing her to adopt.

They welcomed a little girl into their family: Mara.

Acheron is happy they aren't fighting anymore.

He's not quite as thrilled about them making out in front of him.

Harcourt gets the task of entertaining Mara. 

Luckily she goes straight for his bookcase, noticing a sequel to one of her favorite books ever. There wasn't much to do in the childrens' home she came from, she explains. So she read everything in their library, and she fell in love with hundreds of fictional characters.

Harcourt is excited to have someone to share his favorite books with. Of course Mara can borrow any of them she wants.

"So are you a vampire?"

Mara laughs, surprised. "What?"

"You've got really pale skin. Like it's almost glowing."

"If I'm a vampire, can I bite you?"

Harcourt shows Mara where all the best playgrounds are.

She appreciates his wild imagination, though she cannot always keep up with it.

Harcourt's parents encourage him to use writing as an outlet for his creativity. 

"I can see forever," Mara marvels.

"Yup," Harcourt agrees. "This is my favorite playground."

He's playing here again, with Noma as well as Mara today, when he sees it...

The hedgehog.

"Noma. Noma, look! It's a hedgehog!"

"So?" she doesn't turn around.

"I'm gonna catch it," Harcourt announces.

Noma makes a face. She doesn't leave her swing. "It's like a rat crossed with a bad hairbrush."

"It is not at all!" Harcourt argues.

He reaches down to pick up the tiny animal. To his surprise, it doesn't curl up into a spiky ball.

It RUNS. So Harcourt gives chase.

 As he dashes after it, right out of the playground, Mara tries to stop him and ask if he and Noma would like to play hopscotch. Or maybe it was a board game. In any case, it's less interesting than chasing a hedgehog.

"No time!" Harcourt tells her, as he runs by! "Hedgehog!"

The hedgehog runs for some bushes, is pursued, rounds the corner, is pursued, runs into the alley between the book store and the corner grocery store... is pursued...

Harcourt catches the poor frightened hedgehog.

Unfortunately Harcourt and his hedgehog have startled Walter Inkbeard.

Walter is insane.




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Etc.: Mara is a premade toddler I found in CAS while making some adults to plop down in Barnacle Bay, mostly to fill bartender roles. I changed Mara to child-age and placed her in the Barbarossa household. Shortly thereafter, the SP notifications I was getting about Cemre and Candace fighting changed to notifications about them being "so good together" blah blah. It's nice, though a little scary, when SP agrees with my version of events.

I couldn't get any large venues into my town for Claire to perform at. Only the large venues generate the huge crowd. The building shells aren't in buydebug or anywhere else to work with, so most people have been grabbing the two lots themselves (the stadium and event center) from the SHT town. Problem is, those lots are unreasonably large for Barnacle Bay. So I downloaded a mod to make the new stadium and event center show up in buydebug, and  I tried to build one myself (quickly realizing why the lots were so damn huge; the buildings are!), but in my game the stage refused to work properly unless I removed the shell, leaving the stage outside. And that looked terrible. The generated crowd is clearly meant to have been seen from inside a dark building, where there could be the illusion of stadium seating. 

Even when "made to work", my big venue has had some glitches. (1) The concert wasn't stopped automatically by the game, and instead went on for six sim hours before I stopped it myself. (2) Instead of being paid lots of simoleons, those simoleons were deducted from my family funds. (3) Ghosts kept wandering up on stage with Claire, and at one point Claire stopped the concert to scream at Reed Wright, one of Barnacle Bay's premade ghosts.

So anyway, yeah. My boyfriend keeps making fun of Claire for "playing for tips."

"Because if Lady Gaga started singing on a street corner, people would throw money at her, right?"