Chapter Text
Prologue
Chapter soundtrack: So, for once in my life, let me get what I want. Lord knows it would be the first time
What else is there?
The words still echoed in James’ ears, more than six years since his careers counsellor had pronounced them. James’ grades had not been great – far from it, in fact. Assorted teachers, counsellors, doctors and therapists had looked him over and spoken in hushed tones to his parents at increasingly frequent intervals. James had heard it a lot of it – far more than his parents had ever suspected.
Autism, ADD, low intelligence, ADHD, depression, high intelligence but low effort, anxiety, unwillingness to try, fear of success, lack of self-motivation, never learning how to learn, poor home environment, stress, social pressures, easily led, missing one key lesson at a young age that would have otherwise unlocked all the knowledge he needed to be an academic success, criminal sloping of the parietal lobe (odd one, that, but his parents had grown desperate enough after the final dismissive clinical diagnosis to try a back alley phrenologist, because why not), born in the wrong century, and even sheer bloody-mindedness.
The last had been his junior year literature teacher’s opinion – that James was quite intelligent, on the odd occasion that he paid attention in class. And he could still recite that poem about a host of golden daffodils that most kids forgot once they turned eight. But of love, of tone, of style, of themes, of structure, of blank verse and iambic pentameter and what a piece meant rather than what it said... James just didn’t pay attention, was always staring out the window, had seemingly decided that he couldn’t do it, and that had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And most of his other teachers, year after year, had eventually come to much the same conclusion.
There had been a few exceptions. The science teacher who led the school botany club had thought at first that James might have an applicable aptitude for biology and chemistry... until James ended up in his class, and the teacher found it as impossible to engage James as his colleagues had. James had done quite well in music, until funding cuts took away that part of the school’s curriculum. And when it came to sports, James had excelled after a growth spurt at fourteen saw him approaching six feet tall while most of his classmates were several inches shorter – provided they were outdoor sports. His parents had thought James might actually have found something with a future when he joined the junior gridball team at fourteen... but then a new principal had arrived at the school when James was sixteen, and made it clear that sports team membership was a privilege to be earned with results in class and, well, that was that.
At the age of eighteen James had sat across from the careers guidance counsellor for the last time. Mrs Kindler had grown quite used to James’ presence in her office over the last two school years. What had begun as a genuine, sympathetic, well-meant effort on her part to find him a career, or even just a job, had become over time a source of real frustration for her. James had wished otherwise – she was always nice, after all, unlike some of his teachers – but whatever answers he gave to her questions had only seemed to frustrate her.
“You don’t want to work indoors, but you can’t think of a job you want to do outdoors. You like working with people and animals, but you’re not likely to score highly enough on your SATs to consider teaching or veterinary college. You don’t know anyone working in agriculture or horticulture – unsurprising, I suppose, in the middle of a city. You enjoy playing music, but can’t read it so were beginning to struggle in class even before funding was cut. You enjoyed the botany club, but your record in your science classes would be the worst of all your classes, if it weren’t for your art grades...”
She sighed, and a pained expression crossed her face. It wasn’t the first time that he’d seen it, but James noted that it was earlier in their session than ever before.
If I could just find somewhere that I fit in!
“Normally by your age people have at least some idea of what they want to do, or what they want to major in if they go to college. However, for those who don’t have anything in mind the important thing is to go and build up some experience for your resumé. Put simply, James, you should take a job and see if it points you in any direction – it needn’t be something you stick at long term, but enough to give you a taste for the world, how it works, and what your place in it might me. No-one has everything in place at eighteen, and especially not someone in... your situation; Perhaps after six months you’ll find that being out of school will give you a wider perspective?”
“What sort of job could I get?” James asked, but he thought he already knew the answer. It had been lurking beneath the surface of their conversations for almost two years, since James had first walked into her office.
“Your predicted SAT score is... well, it’s not good,” she said. She held out the transcript setting out his teachers’ predictions. Nothing in what they said was a surprise to James, nor really was the predicted score. It still hurt, though, to see his immediate future set out in such a small number. “There aren’t many places that will take you with that score, but one place is always on the lookout for new recruits.”
“Joja,” James said, flatly.
She nodded. “Yes, JojaCorp cares less about your SAT scores and more about your willingness to work. They offer very good benefits... if not a great starting salary. But at eighteen, nowhere offers that.”
Eighteen, with a SAT score that low, James added mentally. She hadn’t said it; She didn’t need to. Whatever it was that made him one of the worst pupils in the year had brought him to this. JojaCorp, the company that had its fingers in almost every pie in the country.
James knew several people who worked for JojaCorp or one of its companies. None of them seemed very happy about it.
“James, I know that JojaCorp wouldn’t be your first choice. And when you start out there, I’m afraid that it would be indoor work – but living in the city, there’s very few jobs that are anything else, of course. And if you do well, if you can focus on the work and show you have potential, I believe that they’re always looking for people to move up to better-paid positions.”
She smiled, and James appreciated the gesture. It couldn’t be easy for her to have to deliver a verdict like this, after all.
“And... Well... I just don’t see anything else that would suit you better right now, James. If there is something, please tell me. But, for now at least, I think you have to ask yourself what else is there?”
*
Nothing.
At least, not that James could find – nor his parents, try though they might to help him, but scarcely a single job any of them could think of that he might have been qualified for would have made James any happier. Only chatting to Richard, the neighbourhood park’s keeper, seemed like it might have been interesting to James... but as Richard said, James was hardly the only person to think so.
“We build and we build and we build,” he had sighed. “And the builders include these parks as ‘green lungs’, supposedly. But if you ask me, they’re respites, oases, places of quiet and calm amidst the chaos of city life. We need more of them – not that they make money, so it’ll never happen. And people know it, in their hearts if not in their heads. Whenever we advertise for an assistant park keeper, we get dozens of people applying. Some of them barely even seem to know why – but I can see it in them. They need the connection to the earth, but it’s all concrete everywhere else. If I could, I’d take them all on – and you, because you’re the same. But I can’t. I have a budget, same as any city employee, and they don’t like giving me that. I take who I can, James, and between you and me two of my assistants are recovering addicts and the other one is a single dad. They need to be outside just as much as you, but they’ve got more troubles even than you do. I’m sorry – I hope you find something, I really do.”
James had filled in the application form at a local JojaMart. He hadn’t really known what to put – other than that, looking at the dead eyes of the greeter at the entrance and the clerk who’d handed him the form, he didn’t want to work retail.
That night he dreamt of an old man in a green space, one with trees and plants and bright sunshine and clear water and even some animals – giant ones, it seemed to him, but then the man had seemed like a giant too, with a long beard and a smile that seemed to reach down from the sky before he crouched down and swept James up in his arms. In the dream he’d shrieked as a cow licked his face, but it had been a shriek of laughter, because nothing bad could happen in such a wonderful place...
*
Six years had passed since that dream, and James was... still working at JojaCorp. He’d progressed from a small cubicle to a medium one. From a nameless, faceless drone to someone whose name his manager sometimes remembered, if only by chance. From working on the absolute worst work imaginable – chasing Joja’s indebted customers, many of whom were old or beyond poor or sometimes dead as though they thought that would stop JojaCorp chasing them for their money – to opening new accounts.
James wasn’t sure if that was better, exactly, because the indebted customers had been new ones once upon a time. He could see the telltale signs in many new accounts which new members were going to be getting calls in the future about the JojaCorp Debt Reclamation ProgramTM which was little more than extortion by a less explicit name. But that was his life, and perhaps in time if his work was good enough, he could move on to supervising and not have any direct contact at all with anyone outside the office. That was the dream, at least for now, if he could stomach doing what JojaCorp expected of hm without feeling his chest tighten each time he opened a new file and signed up another customer.
A dream for another year, at least.
James sighed, realising he’d been staring at his screen for ten minutes with nothing to show for it. He’d done the worst parts of his job first thing, as he always did, reasoning that it would make the rest of the day at least a little less bad. Still, even though the biggest chunk of his daily work was done, ten idle minutes would be logged, somewhere. Every time someone was let go there were dark mutterings amongst his coworkers about how much idle time the former employer had accrued. Well, James knew a way around that; With a stab of his finger his computer shut down and proceeded to reboot with a whirring noise which James heard, sometimes, just as he was dropping off to sleep. It would take five minutes and, if anyone asked, he’d say that it had frozen. Everyone’s did, from time to time, and James tried not to use it as an excuse more than once a week. It was Wednesday, and he’d not done it yet that week. He frowned – he could normally make it to Thursday before zoning out, but not always. That was usually a sign that the rest of the week was going to be bad.
It’s already bad. And the more you zone out, the longer it’ll take to get out of here, he thought. It was true, he knew, but also he knew that there were other factors in play as well. Being liked helps. Being popular. Having people know your name. Fitting in. Working hard. Not showing sympathy to the people I speak to.
James had been at JojaCorp long enough to hear about how it worked, even if he kept his head down most of the time. The favourites of the bosses got promotions. Those who weren’t favourites were vying for the scraps.
I’d take the scraps. If I could work out how to get them. I don’t think I’m ever going to be anyone’s favourite.
While the computer strained its way through the reboot James stood up and stretched. His cubicle, like all medium cubicles, was still only sized for a Typical JojaCorp Team Member – that is, someone several inches shorter than James. Try though he had, his chair was never truly comfortable, and his long legs ached because he couldn’t stretch them out under his desk. If he tried, his chair was pushed into the back wall of his cubicle, and whoever occupied the cubicle behind him complained about their computer being knocked about.
Knowing that he’d be going to bed sore – again – and would suffer for it with a poor night’s sleep – again – that he’d spend fitfully tossing and turning and listening to the buses go past outside the apartment – again – he went to the kitchenette in search of coffee. It would be his second of the morning, and would have to last him until lunch or he would sleep even more poorly that night. Glancing at his watch, James huffed out a breath – barely 10:15, and already he was struggling. It was shaping up to be a particularly bad week. Still, the kitchenette was a welcome respite from the drudgery of the cubicles. It even had a picture of a landscape as seen through a window; This deep within JojaCorp’s regional headquarters an actual window was a physical impossibility. Sometimes the landscape view was the only thing that helped James make it through the day.
“Hey, it’s the bean whisperer!”
Despite himself, James smiled. “Hello, Mirella.”
“Come and work your magic, please! You look like you need caffeine as much as I do, and that’s a lot!”
Joja wasn’t discriminatory in its hiring practices, which was about all James could say about the megacorp. Mirella had started the year after him and he’d been her welcome buddy at the time. Then she’d reached New Accounts about six months before he had, and been his mentor when he finally got promoted, and even with her having been promoted twice more since then she was about the only person he considered a friend. Tall and funny with a warm smile, bright eyes and wavey auburn hair, James had briefly harboured a small crush on her when they first met but had recognised from long experience that she’d not shown any similar interest in him. Still, she smiled when she saw him – even when he wasn’t rescuing her from her own attempts at making coffee, and the two even spent time together away from work, sometimes going to the movies.
A smile from Mirella is even better than the landscape – and about the best I have to look forward to today.
“Your usual?” he asked. She nodded. He set to work with the Joja-branded coffee, milk and mugs wondering, not for the first time, whether the spoons would be replaced with Joja-branded ones when the kitchenette was next restocked. After a couple of minutes he handed her a frothy mug. She inhaled the aroma from it gratefully.
“The first taste is with the nose, that’s how it goes, right? You’re wasted here, James. You should be in the café downstairs.”
James smiled, and took a sip from his own cup. It was nice to be complimented, even if not on his actual work. Mirella took a sip, and sighed with pleasure.
“I need these moments with you, James.”
That almost makes the day worth it. Almost.
“I heard someone say that you’re looking good for another promotion,” he said, quietly. Mirella’s eyes widened, and she looked around in case they could be overheard.
“Who told you that?”
“No-one – I mean, no-one told me,” he clarified. “I was in the bathroom after the floor meeting yesterday and a couple of the bosses came in. Your name was mentioned.”
“What did they say?”
“That you were a good candidate, obviously,” James said. He wanted Mirella to get one of the really good posts, even if it meant she’d be leaving him behind. “It sounds like you’ve made it past the first cut, at least.”
“And you?”
“They... weren’t talking about promotions at my level,” he said. He leaned back against the counter, and stared at the floor rather than look at what he knew would be a sympathetic expression on her face. “And it’s not I really thought I’d get the spot. How does it go, I had hope rather than expectation?”
After a long moment he glanced up at her, and saw her staring thoughtfully into her mug. James knew that people sometimes struggled to know what to say when he was honest about his lack of success – at school, or at work. And Mirella was his friend, so he knew she was feeling conflicted about her probable good news against his probable bad news. She took another sip of her coffee, and seemed to decide that a change of subject was necessary.
“Did you hear about Jacob Fonte?”
“Who?”
She tilted her head to one side.
“You don’t know Jacob? He worked in cubicle 8R.”
James shook his head.
“I’m in 5E. I wouldn’t see much of him. What happened?” he said. Mirella raised an eyebrow, as though a lack of contact with a coworker in a cubicle 80 feet away was unusual, but went on.
“His body was found in his cubicle yesterday.”
“His body?” James replied. She nodded. “You mean...” he looked around, lowering his voice before continuing. “He was dead? In his cubicle?”
She nodded again.
“What happened to him?”
“We don’t know, but his manager said that Jacob had been going through a rough patch lately. Apparently, his wife left him, and he was working weekends and long hours rather than going home to an empty apartment. He didn’t have close family, and row eight opens onto the dividing wall, so down in R there wasn’t much passing traffic, you know?”
James took a sip as he let Mirella’s words sink in.
“How long was he there before anyone noticed?”
“Well, no-one remembers seeing him since he was seen logging in by the security guard on Sunday morning,” Mirella said, quietly. “He was nice to me when I started. We were in a meeting together just last week, but I didn’t say much to him.”
“Sunday morning,” James repeated, the figures turning over slowly in his head. “And he was found yesterday. So he might have been dead in the office for three days?”
Mirella nodded once more. “With the air conditioning running in here all day, well, I guess that the smell wasn’t noticeable for a while...”
James ran a hand through his hair, staring off into the distance. “Oh Yoba...”
“I know,” Mirella said. She rubbed James’ arm. “Are you okay?”
*
James didn’t remember much of the rest of the day, the work he’d done, the journey home... He found himself laying on his bed in his room staring at the ceiling, still unable to process the death of someone he’d worked with for years and didn’t know at all. Had he ever met Jacob? One thing that James did have a pretty good memory for was names, and he didn’t remember having done so. Maybe he’d seen his name on emails, or on the office bulletin board before it was abruptly shut down for too much non-work discussion. But met him? Knew him? No.
James did know something about Jacob, though – he’d been thirty, and had joined Joja straight from school. That much had been in the short obituary that had been emailed around at 4:59pm that afternoon. James had read it. He wasn’t sure anyone else had, as they’d been busy logging off.
We regret to announces the sad passing of JojaCorp employee Jacob Fonte, of the Zuzu City office. Jacob was a loyal JojaCorp employee, having joined the JojaCorp family at eighteen years of age. He progressed from the Debt Reclamation ProgramTM to New Members, and was a trusted and respected colleague to all who knew him.
Jacob was thirty years old. JojaCorp will make a donation to charity in Jacob’s memory.
Thirty years old, twelve years at Joja, and his obituary had been so brief it had barely merited a second paragraph – or a spellcheck. His body had been in the cubicle for days before he was noticed. R wasn’t the last cubicle in any row. People had walked past his body several times a day, at least from Monday onwards.
I’ve been at Joja half as long as he was. In another six years, I could be dead in my cubicle for days before anyone notices. Maybe Mirella would come looking for me, but she’s going up in the world and I’m not and...
James felt the room around him start to spin as he tried to remember the last time anyone had come to his cubicle for anything – even work related. He couldn’t remember. He’d once missed an email from his manager demanding an immediate response and hadn’t replied for four days. His manager hadn’t mentioned the delay, had even thanked him for his quick response, which didn’t usually happen. He scraped his fingers back through his hair, twisting the ends and pulling hard on them.
Oh Yoba, I’m halfway to death... What am I going to do?
There was a soft knock on the door. “Come in,” he said automatically, swinging himself upright on his bed. The room didn’t stop spinning, but did at least slow down a bit as the door opened, and he looked up at his parents. “Sweetie, are you okay?” his mother asked.
“Bad day at work,” James replied. He knew that his parents worried about him, knew that they’d been worried about since he was in grade school, but had no idea how to have this kind of conversation with them. Hey guys, someone at work died today. Well, not today, actually...
He could, at least, imagine how the conversation would go if he said that – his mother would be horrified, and compassionate, and want to go into the office to tell off everyone in there, his father would make an awkward joke but support James unconditionally.
They came in and sat either side of him. His mother pulled his head down, and kissed him on the side of it. “You know, you should get your hair cut,” she said. He smiled. It had been her lament since he’d grown it out when he was a teenager. Sometimes he protested that he was doing it to save money at the hairdressers, and maybe he might have done better to cut it to improve his chances of succeeding at JojaCoro, but Mirella had said once that she liked men with long hair. And, actually, he was saving money from not getting it cut every month.
His father laid one hand on James’ shoulder. James appreciated the gesture. His dad was old-fashioned in some ways, and the last time he remembered anything more expressive was when the Tunnellers had made the grand final when James was sixteen, and everyone in the room that day had hugged and high fived.
We lost the final, James remembered, irrelevantly.
“We were looking through some of your grandfather’s things,” his mother said. “We found this. I’m sorry, sweetie. You should have this a long time ago, but it was caught up in a bundle of legal papers.”
“Grandfather?” James asked, accepting the envelope that his father was holding out to him. “Grandad Carl, or...”
He paused. Where had his mother’s dad lived?
Green, so very green – and the plants, so many different colours! He remembered corn as yellow as fresh butter, and eggplants of such a deep and rich purple that the finest cloaks of kings and queens in the picture books he had as a child were only a close imitation...
“No, sweetie, this was your Grandpa Solly, my dad. He lived in Pelican Town out in Stardew Valley, do you remember? We used to take you there when you were a child. You’d run around the old farm and help him milk the cows.”
The cows, with their long tongues – one of them had licked him as Grandpa laughed...
“I... remember,” James said.
“We used to visit regularly, until he became ill. He never wanted to leave the farm, but he couldn’t keep it up by himself anymore,” his father said, heavily. “And he wouldn’t let us visit because he said it was in too poor a state. He was a proud man, and that farm was his life’s work after your grandmother passed away.”
An old man, but a strong one – showing him everything in the world, animals, plants, fish, lumps of precious metal or gemstones that Grandpa said were just sitting there, waiting to be found...
“I remember,” James said again. He looked down at the envelope. “What is it?”
“Something Dad wanted you to have,” his mother said. “I don’t know what. I’m sorry,” she went on. “You were barely ten when he passed, and he gave that to you the last time we were at the farm. You can’t have been more than seven, I think? He said you should open it when you felt too worn down by modern life, something like that. I thought that was quite dramatic at the time, but looking at you...” Her arm tightened around him. “Perhaps you’ve needed it for a while, James. But I suppose with everything else going on it got forgotten. I haven’t really looked at those things in years.”
“It’s okay,” James said. “It’s probably not anything important.”
“We’ll leave you to read it. Dad was always very pleased to see you, James. He said that you helped him see the farm through your eyes, where everything was new and exciting. He loved you a lot.”
James sat in silence as his parents left, before looking down at the envelope again. Across the front, in a neat but slightly shaky hand, was written his name. He broke the wax seal on the envelope, and took out the note inside.
Dear James,
If you're reading this, you must be in dire need of a change.
The same thing happened to me, long ago. I'd lost sight of what mattered most in life... real connections with other people and nature. So I dropped everything and moved to the place I truly belong.
I’ve enclosed the deed to that place... my pride and joy: Evermore Farm. It’s located in Stardew Valley on the southern coast. It’s the perfect place to start your new life.
I see in you something similar to what I feel when my boots are on grass rather than concrete, when I can reach into the dirt with my bare hands and pull out something I’ve grown myself. Come and let the magic of nature guide you as it has done me.
This was my most precious gift of all, and now it’s yours. I know you’ll honor the family name, my boy. Good luck.
Love, Grandpa
P.S. If Lewis is still alive say hi to the old guy for me, will ya?
James stared at the letter for a long time, reading and re-reading it, his grandfather’s words resonating within him as nothing he could remember ever had before.
There were all sorts of practical things to think about, lots of good, sensible reasons for him not to abandon his job, and above all else he knew next to nothing about the reality of raising crops or caring for animals. But the more he thought about it, the more his mind kept coming back to one simple thought.
I could be a farmer.
*
The thought persisted with James over the coming days and through the weekend, dominating his thoughts and leaving him spaced out over and over again with thoughts of green space, seeds bursting with potential life and damp, brown soil. On Monday morning he handed in his notice at JojaCorp, almost without thinking. His trance-like state was only broken as his manager stared at him blankly, before asking if James was sure he was giving his resignation letter to the right person. Eventually he agreed to forward it to human resources, and James started counting down the days until he left, just four weeks’ notice and then he’d be away from JojaCorp and the city. He wondered how many people would notice he’d left – he didn’t hold out much hope that anyone would miss him – other than maybe Mirella.
It was nearly the end of the summer. He’d not taken any leave for a while – he couldn’t afford to go anywhere worth going to – but that meant that after his notice period Joja would pay him for any unused leave. He’d have a bit of extra money when he got to Pelican Town.
What does a farmer do in the fall, anyway?
As it was, his work dried up quite quickly, partly because his name was taken off the internal distribution lists, partly because he quickly turned down anything he wouldn’t be able to finish in his remaining time at the company.
By the start of the following week, with three weeks left of his notice, he was pretty much just making coffee for everyone in the office. To his surprise, he learned the names of his coworkers more quickly that way than he had in all his time in the office – it helped that he remembered almost everyone’s preferences, and that Mirella was quick to sing his praises to anyone reluctant to trust his ability to make coffee.
“He’s some sort of coffee wizard,” she said, more than once. “He missed his calling – and now he’s going off to be a farmer! Get your order in while he’s here!”
By the end of the third week of his notice period James could put a name and a drink order to dozens of people in the office. The realisation when it struck gave him pause – he couldn’t think of a time when he’d been able to commit anything to memory so well, not even plays on the gridball pitch.
I wonder how much easier it would have been if I’d done this from the start? How many people could I have met, talked to, got to know?
“Well, it makes sense to me,” Mirella said, when he mentioned it to her. “The whole time I’ve known you, you’ve looked lost. JojaCorp was never what you wanted to be doing, James – it’s just where you’ve been for the last few years.”
“I... Yes,” James said. “I didn’t know where I needed to be, where I fit in, but I always knew it wasn’t here.”
“And that will affect anyone,” Mirella said. “So now you’ve made the decision to risk it all – and the entire world has opened up before you. For some people that would be scary. For you, it seems to have energised you!”
“It has.” He leaned back against the counter, and rather than the office cubicles what he saw was green grass and a babbling brook. It would be nice, he thought, to sit on the bank and dip my feet in it...
“You should take that energy off to your farm. Get to know your neighbours. Play at the barn dance. Flirt with all the local girls. Make yourself indispensable. Whatever else there is to do out there. I’m expecting an invite, you know,” Mirella said, bringing him sharply back to reality.
“Sorry?”
“When you’re settled in. Give me a call so I can come and see your new place,” she said, with a smile. “Do you have my address?”
He shook his head, and she held out her hand. He handed over his phone, and she added her address to her contact details
“Write to me, and send me pictures of your farm!” she said, handing the phone back, her hand lingering on it, her fingers barely touching his. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”
She looked around, then went on with her voice lowered.
“You’re not the only one who’s not here forever, you know?”
*
His farewell from the office was a small affair, with his manager giving a speech of less than a minute that still managed to focus almost entirely on James’ ability to make coffee. As his leaving gift he was given three sacks of coffee beans.
“And maybe you can grow your own on your farm,” Mirella said, once everyone had finished clapping and headed back to their cubicles. “See if you can produce perfect coffee from plant to cup!”
“Sounds like a plan... Well, once I work out how to grow anything,” James said. In a few days he’d be on the farm, and he really needed to work everything like that out. A good chunk of his work days in the last few weeks had been spent browsing farming websites, no two of which seemed to agree on when to plant certain crops. He had a rough list, but the details needed to be firmed up.
And the letter I got from Robin the carpenter said there was something I needed to know about farming the valley – but they’d explain when I got there. Which isn’t very helpful... but it’s probably too late to do anything about it now!
The box James put his personal effects into was only half full when his desk was cleared, and most of that was coffee beans. He’d be travelling light to Pelican Town, even with everything he owned. The bulkiest items he owned were his musical instruments and a pair of work boots Mayor Lewis had recommended he pick up in the city before moving to the farm.
We’re self-sufficient in many ways, my boy, but there’s a few things we need to buy in – and shoes and boots are one of them. We do have something of a tailor, Emily, but she doesn’t do footwear yet.
As for the rest, bring what you think you need – hard-wearing clothes, of course, but Robin’s working on getting the farmhouse liveable. Your grandfather’s tools are in good condition. Our blacksmith, Clint, has put an edge on the blades and scoured the watering can clean – apparently a family of frogs had moved in. Fortunately the shopkeepers’ daughter is fond of the things and she was able to rehome them!
As you may be able to tell, everyone is looking forward to you joining us in Pelican Town. We’ve only had one other newcomer recently, a writer who lives on the beach, so it will be nice to have another new arrival. You’ll be the talk of the town, I’m sure!
Robin and I will meet you at the bus stop and show you to the farm. See you on Monday!