Finally back with a new Sky audio! Bonus stammering and page-turning noises smh
Also, is this the first time we’ve actually namedropped the town in-audio? Wild.
Transcript under the cut. Content warning for small discussion of unhappy homes and divorce.
Mornin’, Hun. You sleep alright? Good. Yeah, it’s early still, but the weather’s so pretty I had to come out and enjoy it. Yep, warmer days ahead. Great news for the plants. And my knees, heh.
No, I like cool weather. Kinda have to this high in the mountains. But likin’ it doesn’t stop it from botherin’ my joints. Oh, hush. I’m not old yet.
Huh? You wanna know about my past? Uh...what part? You and I’ve know each other for years, after all. Not a lot you don’t know.
Comin’ up here? Well...No, it’s not a secret or anything. I just don’t think about it much anymore. It’s been, what, twenty, thirty years? A lifetime ago. It’s not a fun or excitin’ story, Hun. You still wanna hear it? Okay.
As you know, my grandfather raised me. I’ve spent pretty much my whole life here. But before all that, I lived with my parents on the other side of the country. They split up when I was barely a teen. It wasn’t pretty. Fightin’ every day, screamin’ and hollerin’, not a good environment for any of us.
They brought me to my granddad’s to get me out from underfoot, and he, uh, decided to keep me. I didn’t find out until later that he had pushed for it. I felt like my folks were abandonin’ me, even though home was miserable.
But it was so much better here.
Prosperity was everything that home wasn’t; quiet, peaceful, happy. There were enough people that I wasn’t lonely, and enough to do that I wasn’t bored. Fresh air and fresh food and most of all, nobody screamin’ at each other.
Yeah, my parents...probably shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place. They were young, and they didn’t love each other, but they were pregnant, and in that time and place, that meant you got hitched. They tried to make it work, and it was okay for a while, but we were all a lot happier after the divorce.
Yeah, I did say Prosperity. Back then, my granddad had a little place in town. This was before we moved up the mountain, you know. Who built the cabin? Well, we did, of course! Mostly him, but I helped. He had built a few before, for other folks, but this one was for us.
I felt...blessed, I suppose, to be able to build my home with my own hands. We worked slow as to not disrupt the forest too much, either goin’ back to town to sleep or settin’ up camp nearby.
Mmhmm, “livin’ off the land,” even more back then than I do now. There was only one shop in town then, and no big cities nearby for trade, so we hunted and fished and foraged for most things. The garden was finished before the house, and we planted some of what we got from town and prayed the frost didn’t kill it. It did. But we tried again, and eventually, it took.
Town’s grown quite a bit since then, yeah. About twice as many people there now, several more businesses, small tourist industry, even. But it’s still mostly a sanctuary.
No, I don’t have any blood relatives left. But we both know that family’s more than that, don’t we? So, curiosity satisfied? For now, huh. Alright then. Fair’s fair, Hun. Now you tell me somethin’ I don’t know about you.