Previously…
Emerald Stone had built the foundation for a dynasty.
Her daughter, Fluorite, had only just assumed her place as heir when tragedy struck, and the save file was lost forever.
***
The morning was overcast. Rainbow Stone put on her cardigan and shuffled out to the garden.
Her fingers grew cold as she worked the wet Bridgeport earth.
Weather was often a surprise to her. She didn’t own a television, or a computer, or a landline—or any electronics, save for the food processor, which was only grudgingly tolerated. She went off the forecast that they printed in the Sunday paper. If the weather machines spun out a different prediction after the week’s paper hit her doorstep, she was none the wiser.
The sound of tires churning the gravel road reached her. It was a moment before she heard the car door shut, and then another before she heard her name.
“Rainbow!”
Her sister’s voice floated atop the cool, misty air.
Pink—short for Pink Diamond—looked out of place standing on the beaten earth, like someone had dropped a strawberry candy in the dirt. Pink was cosmopolitan. She loved the city. She worked as a magazine columnist, taking the subway from her high-rise, shopping in the downtown boutiques, sipping drinks with clients at The Prosper Room.
“I can’t believe you’re out this morning!” Pink gave a hearty shiver. “It’s awful!”
“It’s refreshing,” Rainbow said. “Good for the plants.”
“Come inside! I have to tell you what I’ve heard.”
“Once I’m finished.”
Pink huffed and shook her head. Rainbow heard the sliding door open as she turned her attention back to the plants—what were supposed to be plants, at least.
The bulbs she’d buried when there was still frost on the ground had not yet broken through into sprouts. It was something about the soil on the outskirts of the city; things didn’t take well. Rainbow sighed.
By the time she came inside, Pink had a pot of something simmering on the stovetop, the sweet-smelling steam warming the house. Rainbow wiped her hands on a rag, flicked the burner off, and poured herself a mug.
She joined Pink at the table. Her sister’s hands were wrapped around a mug of her own.
Rainbow took a tentative, blistering sip—some sort of chocolate concoction.
Pink had that look on her face, alive and self-satisfied and flushed (though maybe that was from the hot drink): the look that said breaking news.
“Did you hear what happened to Emerald?” she said.
Pink meant Emerald Stone, their older cousin, who also bore the Stone name. A gardener, just like Rainbow. Emerald had always griped over her spindly flower boxes on apartment balconies. Rainbow had grown sick of apartments, too—with their mountainous dumpsters and lack of sorted recycling; their walls like cardboard, unable to buffet the the neighbors’ grating late-night television shows; their strict rules on what kind of paws and claws and feathers Rainbow was allowed to make a home for.
She’d bought the house she lived in now with her slim inheritance, and had been there a little under a year. It was supposed to be better than the city. Rainbow thought of her brown, flat garden: it was better, but not in the measure she’d expected.
Rainbow shook her head. Her woolly cardigan had collected a skin of mist, and she slipped it off, setting it over the back of her chair to dry. The air was warm against her arms. The last she knew, Emerald was moving to the country—out out.
“Ooh, it’s awful news.” Pink took a long sip of her coffee, shook her head; her hair bounced. “She moved to Appaloosa Plains—this tiny town in the middle of nowhere—and opened up a brand new save file, to attempt this challenge. The Immortal Dynasty. Things were going well… until recently.”
Rainbow could hear the editorial flourish in her sister’s voice.
“Nobody’s heard from her in months. Rumor has it that her save file got lost.”
Rainbow panged with sadness and sympathy. She knew what it was like to be drawn to the call of a slower, greener way of life. She'd wanted things to work out for Emerald.
“That is awful.” Rainbow set down her mug. Her appetite had disappeared.
“I know.” Pink lowered her own mug, looked down. When she looked back up, her eyes shone with something Rainbow couldn’t quite identify.
“That’s part of why I came here.” Pink bit her lip. “I think you should go out there.”
“To—where? Appaloosa Pastures?”
“Appaloosa Plains.” Pink flattened her palms against the table. “Not just to visit. I think you should peel off your own save file—make a go at this Immortal Dynasty thing.”
“It’s actually quite natural, the way they make you go about it," Pink said. "A lot of gardening and fishing.”
Her sister reached down and dug around the inside one of her large, feminine, tastefully-worn bags. A book emerged.
The Immortal Dynasty Challenge.
“I brought it to book club.” Pink pushed it towards Rainbow. “The girls thought it was great.”
Rainbow picked up the book and ran a finger along the title, feeling the gentle rise of the embossing.
“Just peruse it,” Pink said, encouragingly. “See if it interests you at all. I think it could be good for you. Could offer some... direction.”
"Direction?"
Pink leaned in. Her voice took on a gentler tone.
“You’ve seemed a little…" Her sister waved a hand in the air. "I don’t know. Mom and Dad pass away, and you move out to this tiny outpost. All by yourself. And I think, well, she’s gonna fill it up with dogs and cats—but then you don't. And it’s always cold here, and I can’t tell if that’s some kind of stand against fossil fuel consumption, or if you just don’t notice it.”
Rainbow looked down at her hands.
It had been hard losing their parents. It was nothing tragic—two long lives, well lived, coming to an end. But Rainbow and Pink were young to be orphaned. Their mother and father had waited to have children, like many people in the city did. That was the tragedy, if anything: knowing that others got more time. That others had their parents there for weddings, future Snowflake Days, children...
Briefly, Rainbow thought of their mother: always feeding bacon scraps to the yippy little chihuahua that lived in their building. And their father—taking them through long walks in the parks; placing his hand on the trunk of any old tree and telling them, in some places in the world, there were trees taller and older than even the skyscrapers in the Bridgeport skyline.
Rainbow looked back up at Pink. Her sister had her job, her outings, her social life—all these things that buoyed her back up. But Rainbow… Pink was right; their parents' death had knocked her off her feet, in a way she had never quite recovered from.
“It’d give you an excuse to move out to the country,” Pink went on, slowly, coaxingly. “You could make a career out of the gardening thing. I know you’ve always wanted to do that. Maybe you could even figure out some way to get in touch with Emerald—you know, pluck her out of cosmic limbo.”
Pink made a motion like she was pinching a penny out of the air.
Rainbow lowered the book. “How would I do that?”
"You’d have plenty of time to figure it out.”
Pink smiled.
Her sister was off to one of her functions, but she left the book with Rainbow. Rainbow’s thoughts wandered to it all day.
***
Rainbow had to tear up the house to find it—opening and rummaging through all the boxes she’d never gotten around to unpacking after the move. She wasn’t even sure quite how to use the thing. It took her a while to realize the battery was dead, and then more time to find an outlet. She had to push the bookshelf to the side; she’d covered it up.
“This is Pink Stone speaking.”
The line went silent.
“Hello? Pink? Are you—”
“Rainbow?” Pink’s voice was incredulous. “Did you get a phone?”
“You got me a cell phone. Remember?”
“I had no idea you kept it!”
***
Pink threw her arms around her sister.
“I’ll miss you so much.”
Rainbow held her back, tightly. She breathed in the clean, synthetic, endocrine-disrupting notes of her sister’s perfume—which, in the moment, it seemed like she might even be able to bring herself to miss, too.
“I’ll call you when I get there,” Rainbow said. In the days since she’d made her decision, she had slowly opened herself up to at least occasional use of the phone.
Pink wiped at a tear, daintily. “Are you sure about this?”
“Completely certain," Rainbow said. "You were right. This will be good for me. And, who knows—maybe I will be able to figure out some way to find Emerald.”
As much as Rainbow was daunted, the thought of a new place—of land, fresh, fecund, natural land—had become increasingly invigorating to her. As was the thought of having a real purpose, a clear drive.
“No!” Pink shook her head. “I meant the bike thing.”
“Pink—yes, I'm sure. The emissions.” Rainbow shut her eyes, picturing a line of black smog drawn in the air. She shook her head. “I’m not taking a plane.”
“Call me. Call me as soon as the save file starts, so I know everything went well.”
“I will.”
“Promise?”
"I promise."
Rainbow was taking nothing with her—as the challenge rules dictated. All she’d have were her cell phone and the clothes on her back. Rainbow had found herself surprisingly indifferent to most of her possessions, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to sell the house. She thought about it, but she hinged over one thing.
“Will you come by and water my plants, from time to time?”
“What plants?”
“My garden!”
Her sister blinked at her. Rainbow led her to the back of the house, to the little mounds of earth—which, even in their latency, Rainbow carried too much tenderness towards to abandon in the hands of a new owner.
“Oh,” Pink said. “That?”
“Yes, that.”
Pink began to nod. Enthusiastically.
“Sure. Yes. I’ll make sure that gets watered.”
…and biked all the way to her new life, in Appaloosa Plains. Where she knew no one and owned nothing, other than a plot of green land as vast as the ocean; where she had a dynasty to begin.
Name: Rainbow Stone
Traits: Green Thumb, Technophobe, Eco-Friendly, Artistic, Animal Lover
LTW: The Perfect Garden
Town: Appaloosa Plains
Expansion Packs: Ambitions, World Adventures, Late Night, Generations, Pets, Supernatural, Seasons, University, and Island Paradise (everything but Into the Future)
***
It's been a while since my last Immortal Dynasty attempt! But I've always wanted to complete one, and hopefully Rainbow Stone and her descendants will be the ones to do it.
I'll be posting chapter-by-chapter updates here, for anyone interested in reading along. ☺
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