1.0 The Dog Box Of Doom

 The taxi pulls up at the lot, Lilliana steps out into the predawn light with Marcus snuggled in her arms and waits on the sidewalk. Venice passes some simoleons to the taxi driver, and joins Lilli on the footpath, then lets Gypsy off the leash, and reaches out for her son. "Shall we take a look at our new home?" Venice asks her fiance.

(Apologies for this shot, it was taken well out of sequence, and I had to hide things that I'd put in that didn't exist when the picture should gave been taken. Both of these house shots should be day time, a the sims first arrive Yay, stability issues! )

Venice reaches the front door and slides the key into the lock, looking back she sees Lilliana hasn't moved. "Whats a matter Lilli, are you coming?" Venice asks. After a lengthy silence Lilliana replies "It looks small, and its only got two windows, two tiny little windows, the whole front of the house, two tiny little, little, little windows". Lilliana was a fairy, fairies liked open spaces, fairies liked views, fairies liked views of open spaces. Whatever Venice had spent their money on, didn't look like views of open spaces, especially with two tiny little windows that where lacking in... lacking in... Viewability. Yes, definitely lacking in viewability.

Lilli put on what her mother called a brave face, and ventured forward to inspect the unexpected residence. A small voice in her head told her 'Its small, its got no windows, and its small too', she closed her eyes for a moment and silently wished the nagging voice to be silent. The small voice reminded her of her mother's 'I told you so' speech.

(My apologies for this shot too, it was also taken well out of sequence)

Lilliana's mother always thought her daughter spent far too much time in the city associating with humans and other supernatural riff-raff. Her mother was mortified when she told her she was moving to another town with her human girlfriend and her human son, the parting farewell included lashings of the phrases 'Don't come crying to me..' and 'I told you so...'. and something about more tattoos than a Bontoc Headhunter, as well as the words disowned and disinherited.

Lilli loves Vikki, er Vienna, like the sun loves moon, like the ocean loves the shore, but she doesn't love this... this... oversized doghouse in front of her. As her hopes and dreams shatter into a billion fragments, she takes a deep breath and heads for the front door, nearly falling into the indoor pool that takes up a third of the house.

Vienna drops Gypsy's bed and empty bowl on the floor in the corner. Instead of running around like a headless chicken inspecting everything in typical dog fashion, gypsy curls up on her bed. The Husky is feeling the apprehension in the air, that and she is trying to hide the empty chip packet she dragged in from outside.

Lilliana walks into the bathroom, the words 'dingy', 'pokey', 'squishy' spring to her mind. An antique toilet, shower, and sink are squeezed into the space. 'Not Impressed!'

The kitchen is open plan, or unplanned? A musty, moldy smell assaults her nostrils when she opens the old refrigerator door, the light blinks a few times before coming on. Holding back the urge to vomit, she moves across to the stove. 

'I haven't seen one of these stoves since I was a child!' thinks Lil. 'This has got to go too!' Lilly fumes. 'Urgh, what has V gotten us into? There isn't even a bedroom, how are we going to raise her son and have a life in this place?'  

Next to the kitchen, is a small room, even smaller than the bath room, assuming it is a broom closet, Lilly throws the door open to find a narrow spiral staircase, and tucking her wings behind her, she carefully descends the stairs .

The basement contains a rickety double bed, a reasonably modern cot, and a chest of drawers.
The basements one redeeming feature is two large viewing windows into the pool. Well, it would be redeeming if there was any light to filter through. 'I hate it, I absolutely hate it!' rages Lil.   

Lillian storms back upstairs to confront Vienna, painfully snagging one of her wings on the stairwell.
Venice is snuggling her son, with her back to the door when Lil returns to the ground floor. "So what do you think, Don't you love it?, it's got so much potential!" Venice gushes, not able to see the furious look on Lilli's face. 

"Hate it! Absolutely fucking hate it!" yells Lil, who never swears, "Its wrong, its so wrong, everything is damn wrong!" Lil vents. "There's four and a half windows, the kitchen is as old as my damn mother, the bathroom is so small I can't extend my damn wings!", rants the frustrated fairy building up steam.
"The bedroom is in the basement, for fucksake, like a damn vampires nest, a freaking vampire hideaway, I'm not a cursed vamp and I am so NOT sleeping in a basement!.
 "Worst of all!" Lil continues, almost reaching the peaks of hysteria, "There's no fucking fence, around the fucking pool! What if Marcus falls in and drowns! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!"

Venice takes a step back, she had never known Lilly to be furious, she had seen the fairy annoyed, and even irritated, and there was one time when Lilly even got angry, and used the word 'damn' twice!". Any time Lil wasn't happy, it had to do with her former life. "I.. I.. was thinking.. we couldn't afford a real home, straight away and... and this place has so much potential, once we spend some simoleons?", Venice stammered, not sure how to deal with this never before unseen side of her lover, her normal rock steady confidence cowardly deserting her.

"Its going to take a hell of a lot of simoleons to make this..this...deranged dog kennel into a home! Not a few, not some, a lot! And I seriously doubt we have a lot left!" Lil yelled.
Venice answered "3, 3 simoleons left to our name. Lil"
"Are you fucking kidding me!!!", Lil screams, "Aaargh, I need some air..FFFAAAARRRRKKKK!"
Lilliana turns the front door handle and kicking it open, flies out. Gypsy, sensing this is not the best place to be, abandons her recently found empty chip packet and skitters out through the opened door is search of some place less hectic.

Venice sat on the cheap tiled floor snuggling her son, but feeling completely numb, this she kept telling herself was 'the beginning of her happily ever after', and there was was nothing happy happening at all. Venice sat numbly on the floor gently rocking Marcus for what seemed like an hour waiting for Lilli to calm down and return. For the second time in her life since she escaped through the orphanage window, she cried. The first time was tears of joy at the birth of her son.These were burning hot tears of heartbeak.

By the time Marcus woke from his nap, there was no more tears, they had boiled dry, and Venice was drained. Glaring at the pool, and its inadequate lack of safety fencing, and all the other things within eyesight that were unsuitable for fairy or human living, Venice shifted Marcus to the other arm, and stepped outside to see what the town had to offer. She too, felt the need for clean fresh air.

 'Lilly was right' Venice mused wearily, 'She can only see the house as it is, right in front of her'. 'All I see is it's potential, what it can be, the future, which is unusual, because normally we think the other way around.

By the time Venice had regained her composure, and wrapped her head around the first real fight with her lover, she realized she was standing outside the Elba Village Public Library.   

The library was quiet and peaceful, with only a few locals quietly researching and studying. Venice spotted a large penned off area for children full of toys. She opened the gate, and put Marcus down in the middle, interested to see his reaction. Marcus spotted a xylophone and crawled for it, about halfway there, he then noticed a peg box, and changed direction.  Marcus proceeded to alternate between nomming on the pegs, dribbling all over his bat pajamas, and banging the box with the pegs.

Eventually he banged the peg in just the right spot and the peg fell through to the collection tray at the bottom. Marcus sat back, a look of concentration on his face at this new development, eventually he leaned forward and grabbed a new peg. Marcus shoved the corner of the peg into his mouth for a moment in case this helped, and then began banging the peg against the top of the box again.

Venice smiled to see her son playing joyfully and reached for some books on the nearest shelf. The books covered all sorts of sorts of topics from alchemy to horse riding, but she couldn't find anything about guitars, which is what she really wanted after spending most of her teen years around muso's
Eventually she grabbed a book on charisma, thinking maybe it might help when Lilli returns, she definitely had some making up and apologizing to do there.

After learning a little about charisma, Venice decided it was time to go home. She needed to visit the ladies room first, then change Marcus before the long walk home, his diaper leaking fumes she could smell halfway across the library. Upon leaving the toilet, Venice almost walked straight into a wild horse. 'Crazy teenage pranksters' she thought to herself, 'How else could a wild horse possibly appear inside a building?'

Venice grabbed Marcus, quickly changed his odorous diaper and exiting the building without showing her child the horse. 'There is hardly enough room for the dog, without bringing home a horse!' she reasoned. 

Venice gave Marcus a bottle, then slipped him into his crib, also putting in his only soft toy, a Fairy Scary Bear that Lilliana had bought him when he was born.

Venice, exhausted to the point of collapsing, slipped into her own bed alone, what little light still shining through the few little windows played merrily in the pool. The calming display lulled Venice to sleep almost instantly.

Meanwhile, on the other side if town.. (queue ominous music) on a lot, not that far from the public library, Lilliana had discovered the Landgraab Industries Science Facility. More accurately, she discovered that behind the facility, they had a small selection of unguarded, unharvested fruits and vegetables. Lilliana was a nice fairy, she wasn't a sneak  thief, but if left unattended, all these fruits and vegetables would just over ripen and rot here. That was a terrible waste in her mind, so she harvested as much as she could carry.

After Lilli had raided helped with the gardening, she found a broken fishing rod, and unwinding some of the tangled line from the reel she tied a small pebble to it, just above the hook.
She flicked the line into the water and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited.
Not a single bite, not a nibble, not even a nudge. Clearly she was not very good at fishing, which was a shame, she liked fish, because they were yummy!

On Lilli's way home she passed an unusual place with a two small signs out the front that declared "The Manwich Shoppe" and "Coming Soon", Intrigued by the name, Lilliana walked up the stairs and reached for the front door, it was locked. Lil raised a hand to her brow and peered through the window. The place was clearly some sort of store for oddities and warranted further inspection once opened. The store appeared to be fully stocked and ready for business. She hoped the 'coming soon' sign was serious and not just teasing her.

Lilli decided to cut across the empty paddock beside the shop when she notice the shop had a back yard full of interesting things. Lil was still mad at Venice, and even more so at herself, so she decided to check out what else she might find here, once it was opened, of course.

Lilliana looked over the small fence at the gaudy arcade grab machines, then she noticed a small fairy castle in once corner. At least this place wasn't completely uncivilized. Then she spotted the bee boxes, 'Mmmm', she thought,'I love honey!','I don't love bees though'. 'Bees are bullies, bees are meanies, bees are not my friends!' she shivered as she recalled the one time as a very, very, young fairy she had flown into a bee's nest to invite the queen to a tea party. Every fairy knows bees detest intruders in the hive, but nobody had ever told her. The results were painful.

Lastly, Lilliana noticed a very expensive Gem Cutting machine in the backyard. Lilli fished through her pockets frantically searching. Old bus ticket, nope, mothers secret cookie recipe, well half of it, nope, a brightly colored bird feather, nope, a bit of silly space rock, a tiny section of cast off snake skin, a little limp of gold, no, no, no, then finally, gems!

Lilli was the most Magpie-like fairy that she knew, she could not help herself. She just loved finding things, shiny things, colorful things, all sorts of things, she was a collector. Her collection of gnome statues that she had left behind at her mothers was so big that ... 'Stop it, fluffy head!' she told herself.

Lilliana stretched her wings and jumped-hopped-flittered over the fence, landing gently in front of the shiny Gem-u-cut 9000. "Hrm", she thought out loud. Lilli had seen her mother use her one of these a dozen times, but rarely stayed for the whole process, as the machine was so noisy. Lil focised her attention, 'If I can only remember the settings, and how to start it!'.

Lilliana strained her brain, trying to picture her mother at the machine, and eventually recalled the activation sequence, but couldn't for the life of her remember any of the fancy settings. Lilli wasn't game to fine tune any of the cut settings, her mother had warned her that one lever in the wrong place would destroy the machine forever, and this was not her machine to break.

Lilliana activated the start up sequence, and dropped the first Bloodstone into the funnel, then she pulled the kinetic spring lever, and GRRRRR, RRAARR, GRIND-CLUNK, GRIND-CLUNK, bzzzzz, RRAARR, Boing. Lilli firmly planted her hands over her ears, she had forgotten how loud and annoying the noise made by the cutter was. It was like listening to a Banshee that had slammed its fingers in a car door!

Eventually the machine's end cap opened up revealing a shiny emerald cut bloodstone, she was hoping for a moon or sun cut, or at least a heart cut. "Oh well, at least I didn't have to pay someone to cut it!" she said out loud. Lil then looked around to make sure no-one heard her talking to no-one.
'Although, if there was someone there to hear me, I would be talking to someone, not no-one, so that is not so embarrassing!' Lil concluded, happy with her leaps and loops of logic.

'You are doing it again, fluffy head!' She told herself. Lillies mother had become slightly absent minded in her old age, and Lilli was afraid that she may be developing the same trait.It was starting to get dark, and Lilli had four more gems of varying worth to cut.

Chapter Notes:
From Launching the launcher, Loading the save, to being able to interact with my sims takes on average takes 15-16 minutes.
Playing time last from 1-12 sim hours most times before the sims crashes at present. Providing the damaged laptop I use doesn't have a fit or crash first. Clearly, I love a challenge :P

The horse in the library was originally intended to end up down here under notes, but I thought of a way to squeeze into the story :)