Sims In Bloom: Generation 3 Pt. 74 (The Well of Longing...and Regret?)
cw: Alice's Sorrow mini-quest conclusion/spoilers
Edith's old well in Crow's Crossing was nicknamed the Well of Longing and Regret. Locals made wishes by tossing coins into the fluorescent green depths, hoping against hope for wealth, love, and blessings of happiness. But locals also knew that the key to life wasn't magic or fate, it was intent. It took effort.
With this in mind, Alexander Goth didn't wait long to talk to his kids about his new love, Olive Specter, and Annie and Nyon found a night to explore the Whispering Glen less than a week after talking to the excitable Vaudeville ghost, Freddy Basu.
"You and Olive Specter just started dating," pointed out his son, Jagger. "I've been with Alexis for years, but I'm still not ready to move in with her."
"You're still in university," Carina told him bluntly. "It makes sense you're not ready yet."
"Relationships move at different paces, but Olive and I are at much different places in our lives than you and Alexis, and flying back and forth to see her is getting cumbersome. I know I refused to move out when you two were younger, but your mom's here when she's between her spa vacations, and soon you'll both be out of the house, as it is."
"And I'll always be here if you need me," said Grandma Bella, dancing to the Grimophone while Alex chatted with his kids in the living room.
"And anytime you want to visit me in Ravenwood, or need me here, we're just a flight away."
"You really love her, Dad? More than you loved Mom?"
Alex sighed. "Love is complicated, Carina. Once upon a time, I thought I'd never love anyone but your mother, but as life goes on, sometimes we find we understand love differently, or feel it differently. But when your mother was the love of my life, I wanted to be where she was, too."
"I think it's okay, as long as you're back for our graduations and Winterfest and stuff," reasoned Carina.
"I wouldn't dream of skipping holidays with you two, and you'll both always be welcome in Ravenwood. And I'll be there when you graduate high school, university, astronaut flight school...all of it," Alex vowed, as his children both gave their blessing for their father's permanent move to Specter Mansion.
Meanwhile, in the spooky mountain town, Nyon and Annie made their way to the Whispering Glen in the shadow of the giant but mysterious rock face.
"Who is that man supposed to be?" wondered Annie.
"No one knows," said Nyon. "Alice's ancient Guardian tree couldn't even tell me. The face has been carved into the cliff so long, no one remembers how it got there."
"What are we looking for out here, do you think?"
Nyon shrugged. "Maybe if we walk along the riverbank, we'll find a dedication or a grave. Some sign that Ann Basu was here."
They did just that, climbing down an old stone staircase to wander the riverbank until nightfall. Eventually, they spotted a grave standing alone on the other side of the river. "Do you know who's buried there?"
"There's a lot of gravestones in Ravenwood," said Nyon. "But I've never noticed that one before."
They were glad they'd brought their swimsuits, because there was no bridge to the bit of land where a stone grave rested by grove of vegetation. The water was cold, chilling them to the bone for their short swim to the other side.
The Full Moon was out over the glen, and the night warm enough that they dried as they walked through the grass. At the foot of the gravestone, Annie gasped.
"It's Ann's! She was a wife, mother, and teacher, which means..."
"Alice didn't kill Ann, either. She can't remember that three of her kids died because they outlived her. And Edith's always said she fell in the well, not that she was pushed."
"We should ask her again. Maybe she'll remember something else."
Edith was her usual red-hued self when they found her by her well. And though she pretended not to be, they knew she was happy to see them.
"I know you might not feel like talking, but if you do, we had a question about everything you remembered from the night you died." Nyon spoke cautiously, hopeful not to make her screech.
"Haven't I told you a hundred times?" she snapped.
"I think we've forgotten a couple details."
"She told me I had to meet the son of the old Lord Goth and talk about my marriage prospects. She dressed me in red and said black dresses made me look moody, so I ran away. I went to the well because I wanted to make a wish that the old lord and his son wouldn't want me, but I didn't have any coins. I saw one embedded in the wall of the well and I thought I could reach it, but...I fell in."
Nyon and Annie's hearts broke for her, but Edith recoiled at their looks of pity.
"If you're just going to look at me like that, go away!"
But Edith was the one who disappeared, and Annie and Nyon knew better than to wait for her to calm down tonight. They had plenty to report to Alice at the Guardian Tree, anyway, and they left for Mourningvale hoping they could help bring her closure.
They found her alone, as usual. They told her what happened to her children, and she listened until her wails and whimpers ceased. "They lived long, happy lives? I couldn't wish for anything more than that! Oh, thank you, thank you both so much! The secrets of this gnarled old tree are now yours to discover."
She cried tears of joy that were drowned out by he sound of whipping winds under a brightening moon, but they felt no air against their skin. Alice's ghost hovered slightly, buoyed by her own joy, before transforming before their eyes.
Annie and Nyon shared an awestruck glance. No longer a ghost in Victorian mourning dress, the woman's long black hair draped over her shoulders as she stood before them in her underwear. "Alice, are you...you're alive!"
Annie couldn't believe what she was seeing. Even Nyon, stoic and bored by stories of death and horror, was stunned by the woman's resurrection. "We didn't even need to use ambrosia."
"What do you mean? What's happened to me?" Alice stared at her renewed corporeal form with just as much surprise. "Am I really alive again?"
"It sure looks like it."
"I thought I'd be chained to this tree forever. I can't thank you enough."
"Why don't we find you some clothes."
They found her a dress that matched her Victorian tastes, but once Alice was clothed, she had just one thing on her mind. "I could never leave this place, but you must take me to Edith at the well. I must see my daughter before I can even think about what's just happened."
By the time the trio made it to the well, they were stunned to find Edith in corporeal form, standing in the same red dress she wore the day she drowned. She no longer glowed red, and she watched Annie and Nyon approach with her mother.
"Edith! You're not a ghost!"
"I can see that, genius. Is that my mother?"
Alice stepped forward with a cautious smile. "It's me," she assured her daughter. "Annie and Nyon told me the fates of your brothers and sister, and the tree released me back here."
Edith looked at her with surprise. "I didn't think the well would actually hear a wish from a dead girl..."
"What wish?"
"I wasn't always looking for frogs in the pipes and logs," Edith said. "After I died, whenever someone came out her to drop a dollar in the well, if they dropped any other coins I'd throw them in myself. I didn't wish for the Goths not to want me, but I asked the well to let me see my mother again."
Alice bent to embrace her daughter tight. "I suppose it took Annie and Nyon learning how Deimos, Ann, and Freddy died for the well to grant your wish."
Nyon processed the night's events as the sun rose over the horizon. "You were chained to the roots of the tree, and she was chained to the well here in Crow's Crossing, so you both needed to be resurrected for Edith's wish to come true."
"So that's it?" wondered Annie. "The well is magic?"
Nyon shrugged. "I wished for love as a joke before I left for university, but then I met you."
Annie couldn't argue against that, and despite the shocking turn of events, the foursome headed back to the Specter home just off the town square. They shared plenty of food to fill the Basus' long-empty stomachs, and Olive found a fresh new dress for Edith from things her niece, Ophelia, had long grown out of and left behind.
"My mother holds most of the unoccupied real estate in this town. She should be able to find you a place to live," said Nyon. "Close by, too, in case you need anything as you both readjust to modern times."
"Am I going to have to get married? I'll be thirteen soon and probably bloom into a woman. That's what mother said."
"Girls your age go to school until they're at least eighteen now, and most get married well after that," Annie explained.
"You and Nyon are getting married soon. How old are you?"
"We're 28," Nyon said, and Edith whistled.
"You're a spinster!"
"She's training to be a nurse," said Nyon flatly. "Women aren't spinsters anymore."
Edith frowned. "I don't want to get married until I'm 28, either."
"I won't make you get married, Edith. That ruined our relationship the first time, but I won't let it happen again," insisted Alice. "You can stay in school as long as you want and marry anyone you please...within reason, I should hope." She let go of a nervous laugh as Edith hung on her every word. She was recording this promise to memory.
Alice sighed as she dug into a plate of food. "If anyone will have to get married, it may need to be me. Regretfully. I was a homemaker before, and it's been centuries since I picked up so much as a sewing needle. To secure our future-"
"We'll help with anything you need, financially," said Olive assuredly. "We know you didn't expect to be here again, but we won't let the work of the wishing well be in vain. You and your daughter deserve the best chance at a second life."
Alice smiled, grateful for everything the Specters had done. "I don't know how I'll ever repay you," she said.
"Just live," said Olive. "Take this gift and do everything you want."
So Alice and her daughter, Edith Basu, moved into the three bedroom home next door to the Specters, and they quickly found that living in the modern era sometimes meant stacks of homework and brushing up on their skills.
"I miss when nobody made girls do math homework," Edith moaned at the kitchen table. At her side, her mother studied modern sewing with machines, but she looked up from the book with a laugh.
"At least the numbers haven't changed. That's a start." ->
<- Previous Chapter | Gen 3 Start
Gen 1 Start | Gen 1 Summary | RIP Neal
Gen 2 Start | Gen 2.1 Summary | Gen 2.2 Summary | Gen 2 Finale
NOTE: You might notice some lighting differences in some of the shots and there was one reshoot involved, mostly because both Alice and Edith insta-revived in their underwear, and while I was alright with that for Alice, whose mourning robes we'll say were not her own and didn't come back with her, it seemed unnecessary to have Edith standing around waiting for them to come back to the well as a living girl in her underwear. She died in her own clothes, tattered as they were upon her resurrection.
I also "resurrected" Edith and Alice in a cloned save file and left them as ghosts in the main one before transferring their clones. I was a little nervous about adding them to the household and trying ambrosia because there's a glitch where Edith possesses sims by talking to her about anything other than Edith's Mark. I can fix it with a right-click 'remove from family' and adding them right back in, but I like to avoid it. Ambrosia takes time I didn't want to take (sorry!), so MCCC did the trick this time and the powers of the wishing well came into play, instead. The quest itself ends with closure, but the resurrection was added for plot.
They're still the same Edith and Alice, with their memories, but they're technically duplicates in the main save. I tested out my plot in the second save because I'd read conflicting things about what happens when they're made human and playable, and I'm glad I did.
Unlike other ghosts (ie. the Shallots) who regenerate immediately upon being turned into playable sims, their ghosts didn't come back, which effectively breaks the save if there are any other sims, in the future, who I want to unlock the secret interactions with the Guardian Tree. Even though Annie "helped," the quest was only tied to Nyon and he's the only one who can restore his needs at the Guardian Tree for now. But there are additional interactions with the tree for playable ghosts, and I didn't want to break the well and the tree because several interactions are tied directly to their NPC ghosts.
So their ghosts are still there, but not canonically, and I'll probably switch out their ghosts for new-look sims in CAS, with new backstories, if I ever need them for plot again and can't shoot around them. I think the Guardian Tree will be easy - it will always need a veiled guardian, and now that Alice is gone, someone else will fill the role - but finessing a plot-friendly reason why the well has another ghost in it someday will be the real challenge I'll probably avoid for several generations!
