A Place to Call Home | 9

You know that feeling when you're really excited to get to what's going on with the next generation, but you still have so much to get through before you can introduce them? Well, that's the problem I'm experiencing right now, except that the Sims I'm most excited to introduce are two generations ahead, which means that even their parents technically don't exist yet. It's not that I'm bored with these Sims; in fact, I love Gaby so much she's going to end up featuring in four separate stories by the end of her life, which has to be a new record for me (I spent a lot of time playing with aging off because I just couldn't let her go!). I'm even more excited about what happens when she fades from the spotlight, though... which means I have to keep laying the groundwork - because those stories won't be nearly as meaningful without it. So, onward we must go!

One day, Gaby hears a strange whimpering sound outside their front door. When she goes to investigate, she finds a filthy golden retriever sadly pawing at the ground. She's never seen the dog around before, but she can tell it's been lost for a long time, a defenseless domesticated creature abandoned to the forces of nature.

Understandably, the dog is jumpy and suspicious at first, but Gaby patiently coaxes it into letting her give it a bath.

While scrubbing the layers of grime off its body, Gaby discovers the dog is female. "Easy, girl," she says, lathering up another generous handful of soap. "I bet you feel so much better now, don't you?"

By the time Alvin returns from one of his odd jobs, Gaby and the dog have already become best friends. "Babe, I think we should keep her. It can be like a test-run for when we have a baby!"

Alvin runs his fingers through his hair nervously. As a kid, he had a close encounter with a neighbor's aggressive rottweiler, and he hasn't been much of a dog person since. "I don't know..." he begins weakly.

"Oh, come on! How can you say no to this precious little face? I've already decided I want to name her Meli because of her honey-colored coat... and because she's just so sweet!"

Of course, Meli stays. There's no way Alvin can say no to those big, wet, pleading eyes (both the dog's and Gaby's). She's still quite skiddish around him, though, especially when he fires up the computer to do his programming work. Its strange mechanical clicks and whirs are totally foreign to her canine ears.

Luckily, whenever the computer scares her off, she can just run outside to join Gaby on her daily adventures in conservation. She's certainly not afraid of the water, paddling fearlessly into the middle of the ocean without a moment's hesitation. Soon enough, she's Gaby's de facto sidekick.

She's not exactly the most reliable coworker, though. As soon as she gets bored, she sprints away to explore the beach on her own.

Meanwhile, Gaby, who was recently promoted to conservation director (a job she feels wholly unqualified for but accepts because no one else is available to fill the position), assesses the health of the approved fishing holes scattered across the island. In order to assure native species thrive, she must frequently confirm that the number of invasive species remains low; an infestation could spell certain death for Sulani's unique aquatic life.

One night, Alvin is rudely awaken from sleep by the sound of knocking at the front door. Slowly, so as not to rouse Gaby, he crawls out of bed to see who could possibly be visiting at such a late hour.

"Kaimana!" he exclaims, surprised to see his sister waiting rather impatiently on the other side of the door. "What are you doing here? Do you know what time it is?"

"I'm sorry." She bites down on her lower lip and wrings her hands, clearly nervous about something. "I just really need to talk to you..."

"And it couldn't wait? Is something wrong? Are you in trouble?"

"No!" she reassures him quickly. "It's just... I thought if I waited until morning to tell you, I would chicken out. Can you meet me down by the beach? I don't want to wake up Gaby."

Alvin only grows more confused with every word out of her mouth, but he doesn't want to distress her further by turning her down. He agrees to take this mysterious conversation to the beach with her and dashes back inside to pull on some wrinkled clothes from the laundry hamper.

"Sis, you're scaring me. What is this big secret you had to drag me all the way to the beach to tell me about?"

A miserable expression settles upon Kaimana's face, and her eyes brim over with tears. "Oh, I've wanted to tell you so many times! I feel just awful for keeping this from you. We're siblings! We're supposed to tell each other everything. I guess I wanted to keep some small part of our family's legacy to myself for a while, but you deserve to know about it just as much as I do."

"Spit it out already, Kai!"

"Alvin, I..." Her voice trails off. She inhales deeply, and the sentence tumbles out in a single breath: "I'm a mermaid."

Alvin chuckles dismissively. "Funny joke, sis. I'm going back to bed now..."

"Wait! It's not a joke!" Kaimana buries her head in her hands and lets out a muffled scream. "I'm just going to have to show you."

"Show me?..."

He trails Kaimana to the edge of the ocean, watching as she wades into the shallow water, dives beneath the surface, and emerges transformed. Her body shimmers with violet-colored scales. The way the moonlight hits her, it looks like she's covered in thousands of sparkling jewels. And, most incredibly of all, her waist tapers down into a tail, flicking back and forth across the water, where her legs should be. He can hardly believe his eyes. All this time, he thought Gaby was being ridiculous with her theories, but she was right. Mermaids do exist, and his very own sister has been one all along. *

* Full disclosure: I'm trying very hard to make the mermaid thing interesting, but it turns out they can't do a whole lot in-game and I lack the creativity to overcome that obstacle. But I had already sewn the seeds for this story line, so I didn't want to just drop it altogether. Apologies in advance if it's extremely underwhelming.

Quickly, he swims out to join her, totally transfixed by the beauty of her new form.

"Okay, tell me everything," he says breathlessly. "How are you a mermaid?!?"

She shrugs, like the answer should be obvious. "It's in our bloodline... our matrilineal bloodline, to be precise."

"You mean our mother was a mermaid, too?"

"Our mother and our grandmother and our great-grandmother.... We have no idea, actually, how far back it goes. As long as anyone can remember, though, every woman in our family has been a child of the ocean. That's what we've always called ourselves. 'Mermaid' is more of a mainland concept. It's more about how outsiders understand us to be than how we really are."

Suddenly, she dives straight down and stays underwater for several seconds, finally surfacing with an empty conch shell swiped from the ocean floor. He watches in awestruck silence as she raises the shell to her lips and coaxes the most strange and beautiful melody from its depths. He becomes aware of an abrupt quivering in the water below, as if some sleeping thing is coming awake beneath them.

A dolphin breaches the surface, and it's clear the creature already knows Kaimana well. It glides right toward her, leaning in to let her gently tickle its chin. "This is one of my best friends in the whole world," she tells Alvin. "I used to spend every spare minute I could out here swimming with her."

After the dolphin makes a dramatic return to its home at the bottom of the sea, Alvin picks up their earlier conversation. "You said the women of the family have always been mermaids. But what about the men? Are there male... children of the ocean?"

"There are. I've met many who originate from other oceanic bloodlines. But the thing is... our mother came from a family in which the women seemed destined to never birth sons, until..."

"Until she had me," Alvin finishes quietly.

"Exactly."

A nervous laugh escapes from between his lips. "Well, obviously, I'm no merman. Wouldn't I know by now if I was?"

"I think it's time I show you something else," Kaimana replies cryptically.

They swim further down the island, until they reach a cave half-hidden by overgrown greenery. "This place is known as Kelp Cave."

"Kelp Cave?"

She nods. "It's said that it's the only place on all three islands where the conditions are perfectly suited for a certain species of kelp to grow... a species affectionately referred to as mermadic kelp."

"And what's so special about this kelp, other than its name?"

"Well, a child of the ocean isn't born with scales and a tail. The power to transform is rooted within you, like a seed, but you have to make the decision to harness it. Otherwise, you'll remain completely ordinary, completely human. The kelp is how you harness it. Of course, it's not easy to find. A normal person would stumble around in the dark for ages and never encounter it. But we're built for this. You're built for this."

"So you're saying I have to complete some sort of expedition and then I'll be a child of the ocean, too? What if I don't want to?"

Kaimana's face suddenly falls. Clearly, she hadn't considered this possibility. She just assumed he would be enthusiastic about the arduous task she's so suddenly laid before him. "Why wouldn't you want to do it? This is your family legacy, Alvin. That's why you came here in the first place, isn't it? To understand your history? To reveal your fate? This is everything you've been waiting for."

Her words don't sit well with him. "Kaimana, it's so much more complicated than that. I'm married now, and Gaby and I would like to start a family soon. I can't just run off on some mysterious quest that'll take me god knows how long to finish. What's so great about being a mermaid anyway?"

"Alvin, if you'd just listen to me, I can tell you-"

"I need time to think about this," he says bluntly before jogging away, leaving her standing at the entrance of the cave alone.

As he walks home, the night sky lightens slowly with the arrival of morning. For the first time, he becomes keenly aware of every partially-obscured alcove disappearing into the ocean's depths. He'd never glanced twice at them before, but now he realizes their purpose: they're mermaid portals, intended for swift and secret passage from one side of the island to another. His head swims with confused thoughts. He can't avoid giving Kaimana an answer forever. What is he going to tell her? What is he going to tell Gaby?

Luckily, Gaby is so absorbed in her work of ridding their backyard plants of invasive species that she barely even registers his arrival back home or realizes he's been gone half the night.

But Alvin can't stop thinking about what he's learned. Now that the knowledge has been deposited into his brain, there's no getting rid of it or casting it to a dark and dusty corner until he's better equipped to deal with it. What he should really do is investigate that cave on his own, in broad daylight, to see what it's all about. He bribes Meli, who seems to be slowly warming up to him, into serving as his loyal adventure companion with a few bites of his breakfast.

"All right, girl. Here's the deal. You guard the cave while I'm inside, and you'll be rewarded in more human food than you'll know what to do with. Sound like a fair trade?"

Meli barks and wags her tongue excitedly, which he takes as a yes.

She sits patiently at the entrance of the cave for hours, awaiting her new master's reemergence from the dark, with only his faint footprints on the sand to remind her of his existence.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, he stumbles into the light, looking delirious and disheveled. There is no describing what he has just experienced. Brief images flash inside his brain: a colony of roosting bats, roused into a thick, vicious storm by the sound of him kicking a rock into the cave wall; an enchanting song guiding him through winding passages, voiced by a mermaid who dives into the water before he catches sight of her - then nearly pulls him under when he tries to investigate; thousands of glowing larva painting the walls bioluminiscent, a sight that distracts him long enough for him to be swept off his feet by a rushing underground stream...

But no kelp. Exhaustion and frustration overwhelmed him before he could find it. Still, his mind has somehow made itself up for him: he's seeing this expedition out until the end, no matter how long it takes him. He'd be a fool to deny himself such a rare experience.

Meanwhile, he and Gaby are stealing every spare moment available in their busy lives to try for a baby, even when it means they don't have time to make it to their bed and must settle for a conveniently-placed bush instead.

In the blink of an eye, months pass. They do their best to maintain the status quo, Gaby burying herself even deeper in her work in an attempt to ignore the frustration she feels every time she has her period and Alvin doing everything within his power to keep from burdening Gaby with his secret mission as he emerges from the cave empty-handed day after day after day.

Finally, good news arrives. Gaby has come so close to giving up on getting pregnant that she first assumes her steady weight gain is the cause of eating her feelings. Then she calculates the days since her last period in her head and arrives at what must be the truth: there's a baby growing inside of her, at last! Unfortunately, Meli is the only living soul around to celebrate with, and her response to Gaby's delighted shouting is more confused than enthusiastic.

Eventually, Gaby manages to track Alvin down near a cave on the opposite end of the island. "Oh," she exclaims, "I completely forgot I had been meaning to investigate this place! What's it like inside?"

"There's not much," he responds cagily, "lots of vines and rocks and one very angry colony of bats. What's up? Is everything okay?"

"Everything's more than okay..." She pauses for effect, her eyes growing wider and wider, before announcing, "I'm pregnant!"

"Oh my god, really?"

"Yes, but you weren't there. It seems like you're gone almost all the time lately. Do you hate being around me that much?"

Alvin reaches out to pull Gaby into his arms. He can already feel the nudge of their newly-formed baby against his bare stomach. "Of course not! I love you, and I'm going to love our child, too. I'm sorry if I've seemed a little absent. I guess you're not the only one this whole baby-making thing has been stressful for. But it's all been worth it now."

As the health of the ocean has improved, the bioluminescent algae has returned, lighting up the surface every night with an eerie alien glow. Alvin pulls Gaby into the water, and they kiss by the natural, faintly pulsing light of the algae. Between becoming a father and becoming a child of the ocean, Alvin feels like he's fulfilling two destinies simultaneously, and it's an exhausting but exhilarating thought. Just a few years ago, his life was completely aimless, without purpose or ambition. He can hardly believe how far he's come.