[ Felicia and Don Lothario-Gardiner ]
The farm was taking all of Felicia and Don's time. Felicia worried that the children were pretty much bringing themselves up. Don was trying very hard to be the loving husband Felicia wanted him to be.
They decided to scale back a little, and just grow the things they needed for Felicia's nectar-making. Unfortunately when they worked it all out, since many of those fruits were tree-fruit, they would need more land, even if they were to completely stop growing the other vegetables they used for fertilisers and fish bait.
"I wonder if we could buy some of the land at the back of the house there?" Felicia was happily drawing up plans for orchards of pomelos, cherries and limes.
"I'll go see the Estate Agency at the Town Hall and find out," said Don.
He came back downcast. "There is some kind of covenant that prevents our getting the land at the back here."
"Aww. I had really got my hopes up."
"But - what he has got is a very nice piece of farmland, which would be big enough for massive orchards. It's not far away, just round the corner. It would mean building a new house."
"I don't know... that's a lot of work."
They decided to sleep on it.
The next day the Estate Agent called, very excited. He had been talking to the mayor, and the Planning Committee. ("Didn't know we had one of those," grumped Don.) They wanted a meeting. After much talking, Don and Felicia made a deal with the council. The Council wanted to buy the old farm. They would make it into a Community Garden.
"What a brilliant idea!" Felicia was very happy to see her childhood home put to good use. Don was not so happy, knowing how much work would be involved in getting the farmland into shape, not to mention building the new house.
The council hired an out-of-towner to come and work on the farm and convert it to a Community Garden, one Brenda Liddell. She had inherited the Supermarket in Riverview and had been studying Agriculture. She took up residence on the farm for now, aiming to get it to perfect status before opening it as the Community Garden.
She took over and moved into the house. The Gardiners took cuttings of all their plants and transplanted as much as possible of their garden to the new farm, and Don called up Fritz, Sebastian and Johann to talk about building a new farmhouse for himself, Felicia and the children. Fritz was getting on and no longer able to build, but he was happy to draw up plans and supervise, and help with the plumbing and electricity.
The new house was quite simple, and small compared to the old farmhouse, but Fritz liked its lines. Don was delighted with it, and with a great deal of help from Jane and his children he redecorated simply in wooden tones, while Felicia worked on getting the grapevines planted in time for the next season.
They did of course take the gnomes with them.
They had a burglar, who stole some of Don's precious skull gems, and the police never caught her. So Felicia put a burglar alarm in.
The new farm took a lot of looking after. Laying down orchards and keeping the basic vegetables going at the same time was even harder work.
They had more or less decided to have Diarmaid as the heir.
Once everything was planted, Don and Felicia decided to take a week off to go to China - an 8-day trip.
Don had great difficulty with one of the quests. The special merchant Lee would not accept the telescope parts from him. Felicia, meanwhile, was very tired and catching up on her sleep. "You go skill on your Martial Arts, love. I will rest a bit. I might go fishing later."
Felicia set off fishing. But she wasn't back at camp in the evening. One of the other guests told him she might have stopped over at the fishing camp; there were tents there. He decided not to worry.
However...
It turned out that Felicia had a heart attack.
Don arrived back from his latest quest - to take some telescope parts to a trader - to find her laid out in bed, looking fast asleep, and all the guests at the House talking about her.
Ahmed Pickens, one of the explorers, had discovered her that morning, lying by the doitsu koi pool, apparently asleep, and carried her home. "I am so sorry, old man. She was already dead by the time we got here."
Don was devastated. She wasn't sleeping. She was dead. What would he do?
Heartbroken, Don returned to the children at home and broke the news.
He and the children went to Riverview cemetery to place her tombstone.
"I'm not sticking around here to see Mom's ghost."
Don actually BOUGHT the cemetery and built a large family burial enclosure. No one had expected Felicia to be the first of the family to go.
Don was completely distraught and finally managed to control his grief by meditating.
Felicia's ghost appeared later to her father.
SIMQUAKE
At this point my game broke - very thoroughly. I believe Felicia's death was part of the borkage, and this story won't be continued.