Chapter 1
Beats Florida.
Top-down gameplay does not do the sheer size of Gem Ridge justice. The entire trek through town, I’m gaping—at the architecture, the cobblestone, the streetlamps filled with mounted gems…at the mud, the water damage, the murky line that goes several feet up some buildings.
The entire picture is horrifying up close and so much more vivid than any other dream I’ve ever had. Probably because this is the dream. The one I’ve been desperate for ever since I started my first farm and fell in love five years ago…
Tramping around a forest bend, I hold my breath as the weathered farm signpost comes into view. The sheer vast display beyond it leaves me breathless.
Top-down gameplay, repetitive sprites, and maybe the kind dev’s interest in not overwhelming their poor players did not capture the destruction.
At all.
The land before me rolls on and on, down and down at a comfortable slant, which isn’t severe enough to allow me to see the ocean I know from my Vale of Gems mindmap rests dead ahead, west of the farm.
Trees lay in splintered heaps. Branches stick up out of slush. Rocks larger than furniture rest scattered among weeping grass taller than I am.
Patches of gravel.
Thousands of twigs.
Mud.
Mud. Mud. Mud.
So much mud.
It’s a plague on the land, staining the lowest branches of the furthest visible trees a grayish brown.
Beside me, looking half-disgusted beneath a strained smile, Lazul murmurs, “Thankfully, the flood waters didn’t damage the house.”
Eerily slow, I turn toward the peeling horror story known as the player’s farmhouse, swallow hard, and interrupt Lazul where I have always wanted to, asking: “So what did damage it?”
Laughing awkwardly, he continues his script without answering me, “It’s not a lot to look at right now, but the soil here is rich and the magic running through it is plentiful.
Our carpenter, Gabbro, should be able to make living here more comfortable if you gather enough supplies and meet his modest fees. ”
Modest.
The last house upgrade is a million coins.
Modest, my left toe.
Amid my grimace, my eyes land on an outhouse I’ve never seen before—complete with a chipping half moon on the door. That…certainly isn’t in the game. And I definitely do not want to discover what my brain has concocted for the interior.
One might say I am extremely invested in keeping this dream from turning into a nightmare.
While I’m forcing myself to think about decidedly chipper—not chipping—things, Lazul opens up the pre-farming tutorial dialogue. “There might be some basic tools inside the house, but do you know how to tend a farm?”
Classic.
In just a few moments, I shall be unable to do anything but accept the turnip quest.
Any good farm simmer knows the grand challenge of procuring three turnips in so many days. I’ve yet to stumble into a farm sim where the introductory NPC—in this case, Lord Lazul himself—doesn’t inexplicably keep a pack of turnip seeds on his person at all times.
For funsies, I grin and chirp, “Nope!”
Lazul covers his mouth, going off script, “Oh dear… I certainly don’t.
” His attention flutters past the dilapidated farmhouse—and the disconcerting outhouse—beyond the thick trees toward where a row of brush obscures what should be a narrow path…
If this were third-person top down view instead of first, I may be able to navigate close enough for the blocked path to show on the very edge of my screen.
Alas. I can see naught but muddy debris and oceans of six-foot-tall grass.
All the same, my heartbeat jumps much too realistically in the cavity of my chest when Lazul says, more to himself than to me, “He’d know how, but I doubt he’d be willing to help.”
He?
He couldn’t possibly refer to…
Gripping my sweaty palms in the khaki skirt I’m wearing—my favorite starter outfit of the majestic five options—I swallow and wet my lips. The way my body is reacting you’d think I was wide awake. Or at least pining after a real boy with more than a dozen pixels for eyes.
Alas, again.
I am not thinking of someone real.
And I am also not thinking of a boy.
Because Samson?
Samson is all man.
Big, strong, grumpy, scruffy, secretly-sensitive, tattooed, scarred, next-door-neighbor with a jaded past Samson is the definition of man.
And, sparing that singular fault, he is the definition of perfection.
Trust me.
I know.
I’m practically an authority on the Vale of Gems NPCs.
I have seen the hyper-realistic fan art.
I have participated in the what-if Reddit forums.
I have read the Y/N fanfiction until my eyes have burned and I’ve had to update my glasses prescription.
Therefore, according to professional assessment, Samson is WonderGlass’s cruelest joke.
Because tall, dark, beautiful, perfect Samson is…unromanceable.
Just because he’s the teeniest tiniest speck outside the age range of the rest of the game’s dating pool, women like myself who don’t mind an age gap must suffer. Not to mention that since I grow up and stationary NPCs do not, I’ve been closing the gap since I started playing when I was nineteen.
Now that I’m twenty-four, I can more than appreciate a thirty-eight-year-old dreamboat.
Unfortunately, all my emails concerning these valid points went unanswered.
“Great granite,” Lazul murmurs, perhaps a minute after I’ve stopped breathing. “Are you all right?”
All right?
Am I all right?
Of course. Never ever better in all my life.
I am merely and simply—and rationally—begging whoever is in control of dreams to let me have Samson time before I wake up. Nothing too crazy. Just let me see him in this hyper-realistic first-person format long enough to get me through the coming workweek.
Please.
“Citrus?” Lazul touches my shoulder.
I startle at the depth of the sensation and blurt, “Huh? What? That’s just my astigmatism acting up. I’m fine.” I adjust my stupidly cute glasses on what I hope is a freckled button nose, and repeat, “I’m fine. Obviously. As you were saying? Someone can help me get started?”
My lashes flutter, and bless my brain for giving me access to Samson sooner than the early game quests normally allow.
Going through the farming tutorial with Lazul—a man with a large, lavish unharmed mansion—is always painful.
It’s like the dev wanted to drive home the fact the lord of this land found a random traveler near the entrance to the Ridge and put them to work on a disease-ridden farm instead of offering sanctuary in his own home while he figured out who the heck they were and why the heck they were here.
Ultimately, screw Lazul and every forced interaction with him.
Give me Samson!
Taken aback with concern that doesn’t stretch far enough to offer me better housing arrangements, Lazul murmurs, “Samson could. He lives on the farm north of here, beyond that…impassable glen. I do not think he’d be willing.
He’s somewhat…reclusive. I’ve tried to get him to tend this land before to no avail.
” Lazul half-pouts, half-scowls. “I don’t get the impression he likes me much. ”
Probably because you dump poor, helpless, defenseless girls off in rodent-infested houses, you monster.
Sighing, Lazul shrugs, lifting a hand to accent his disinterest. “At any rate, you’re burning daylight if you have any hope of making this place livable by tonight.” He turns heartlessly on his heel. “I have business to tend to, but I’ll check in with you tomorrow morning. Good luck!”
With that, he trots off, whistling.
Mm. Delightful.
I could almost respect his opportunist attitude if I weren’t staring at a devastated and overgrown land standing between me and the love of my life.
In Vale of Gems, you have limited energy and pass out at 2:00 AM.
Knowing my luck, I’ll run out of energy well before I can break through the mess. At this point, I’m desperate enough to accept passing out in Samson’s giant tattooed arms, but early-game tools will not be on my side where it concerns reaching him at all.
There are other paths to his farm, but he’s surrounded by forage land.
At the beginning of the game, devastation similar to this wreckage overruns all the forage land, and this muck looks far more treacherous than it did on my computer screen.
Not to mention, it’s so much harder to navigate my mental map without top-down privileges, or a functioning M hotkey that brings up my location in the world.
I’m not exactly seeing a way to open my menu. Even when I think really, really hard about it.
Gasping, I remember I’m wearing a backpack!
If it functions like the one in-game, I just need to convince my brain to let me pull diamond tools out of it.
With them, reaching Samson’s farm will be no problem.
They eat far less stamina than the starter equipment no doubt in the rat-infested territory.
Swinging my pack off my shoulders, I flick back the leather flap and discover a gaping void.
The darkness swirls, leeching into my very soul.
Bode well, this does not…
Clearing my throat, I mumble, “Is there, perhaps, an inventory menu in here?” Hesitant, I slip my fingers into the cool dark, find a solid object, and pull it out.
As far as I can tell, it’s the journal that composes the game’s menus. Which means…
I flip open the glossy pages to an assortment of empty slots, ten in total, surrounded by other useful details—like the date: Sunday, 1st of Spring, 10:35 AM; and my poverty: 0 coins.
Wow.
It’s just like real life.
Fantastic.
My inventory is empty, and I have nothing to my name, save this book, my bag, and what I’m wearing. Anxiety, too, I realize as it builds in my stomach, rioting to remind me I’m never alone. Kind of it, truly.
Wishing I could waterboard it, I flip to the relationship page and find Lazul listed with a stupid heart outline beside his name, indicating that the jerk can be romanced. Because of course he can when Samson can’t.
Life is too cruel.
Adding insult to injury, one of Lazul’s marriage requirements is a fully upgraded farmhouse, because he moves out here with you—for some reason—and chafes at poverty.
Save for the fact his picture is a lifelike rendition, instead of the pixelated portrait, everything else on his profile aligns with the game UI I know: Our relationship status—designated with ten empty hearts; his biography—the benevolent lord of Gem Ridge, who seeks to do well by all in his fold; liked gifts—empty; disliked gifts—empty.
Flipping forward, I discover a list of question marks accompanied by dark character outlines.
My heart stops upon the obvious visage of my husband.
“Hello, darling,” I croon at the shadow.
To put things simply, Samson is a man who has shoulders befitting a silhouette, and I would know his big, broad, beautiful muscles anywhere.
Just like I would know the absence of a heart outline by his name anywhere.
I don’t know how I manage it inside a dream, but I glare at the spot where a heart outline should be and fruitlessly will it to appear until a tension headache crawls up my neck.
It is a miraculously real-feeling headache if ever I have felt one, and the beat of the sun crawling toward noonday does not help.
Technically, people aren’t supposed to be able to read in their dreams, which I have just disproven, but I’ve never heard whether or not people are supposed to be able to get headaches in them.
Maybe it’s the body’s natural defense against reading in a dream.
I broke the unspoken rule. Now I must ache.
When, however, I find myself on the quests page, reading: Prepare farmhouse for the night, a niggling awareness takes hold of me.
The quietest What if this isn’t a dream? settles in the back of my mind.
I’m delusional, of course.
Such a thought is little more than the psychotic breakdown of a woman desperate to have been transported away from humidity that makes breathing in a pool sound like an upgrade. Someone, truly, needs to nerf Florida weather.
But…still…
The physical awareness I have here is uncanny.
The depth in the surrounding sensations grounds me, letting me experience a cool breeze and the weight of my shoes sinking into soft earth all at the same time.
My breaths rise and fall, and I can see my chest move just like I can see my hands and my legs.
I’m shorter than I know myself to be, with a figure that is very much not the one I know myself to have.
My muscles flex on command with a precision foreign to every other dream I have ever known.
I am tethered to my controls in a way reminiscent of…reality.
Shaking my head free of burnt-out, twenty-four-year-old delusion, I look toward the blocked path that theoretically leads to my lover.
Priorities.
My alarm will wake me soon, ushering in my mandatory morning meltdown, and I will hate myself eternally if I don’t catch a glimpse of a living, breathing Samson before it does.
Seconds before I can slam the book closed, gather my courage, and forge sloppily ahead, the writing on my quest page flickers in the corner of my eye. Blocky Vale of Gems font stretches across the page.
No, seriously, appears below, Prepare farmhouse for the night.
The words continue on a new line: Samson will still be there in the morning, but your bedroom is unlivable.
I turn my attention to the terrifying wooden building at the crest of the farm.
A shudder rocks through me.
“I don’t want to go in there.”
Do you want to go back to Hardee’s?
My back straightens. “Absolutely not.”
Then don’t treat this like a dream, Citrus.
Help the people you’ve come to know in this community.
Help them all.
And don’t worry.
I will guide you.
“Disembodied guidance is very worrying, I’ll have you know.”
My journal does not reply.
But I don’t exactly want to risk waking up because I broke my stupid brain’s stupid dream rules, so I trek toward the crumbling stairs into my…house.