The seedling has sprouted some by Monday morning (like everything else), but even after being watered, weeded, and cleared of pests, it still looks a bit... sad. Wilty. That's interesting. She hasn't had that problem before, but it makes sense that the plant to let her change species would be kind of high maintenance. Her major hint as to what's going wrong is that, even after watering, the mound of dirt is looking kind of pale and sad. Hm. It might need fertilizer, then?

Which she doesn't really... have... but she does have a lot of produce from her earlier harvests. And the internet says she can use organic things as fertilizer. Strawberries, parsley, and eggs and meat from her fridge are... possibly not the best fertilizers, but they are nonetheless chopped up and added to the soil around the seedling. If this kills the plant, well. She will find another fairy to request a seedling from, and try again, maybe after setting up a compost heap. She doesn't have the space for a compost heap, but, well. Maybe one day. Maybe after she moves. She's probably going to move.

There is in fact also a little trash seed, buried under the pile of trash behind her house that she bravely digs into after spinning into a pair of rubber gloves. It gets planted and watered, too, and then she can finally be rid of the trash in her yard. Only a day was far too long, okay.

And then it's off to work! She has more available organic materials to make experimental serums from, and has some ideas for how to leverage her massive pile of scanned data for upgrading her scanner. She will be making, scanning, and then testing so many strange substances, and she is going to be getting a promotion today!

Right, work? Promotion for the workaholic, pretty please??

Yes, sure, she gets promoted, why not.

~Yay!~

Back home to check on the fairy seedling in particular - wilted again, but it looks like it just needed extra water, and then it perks right back up. All is well.

She attempts to sweet talk her house into swapping out some decorations and maybe giving her an office and a laptop, has her traditional evening jog, fails to find any new plants to take home with her, has dinner and a shower, and goes to bed.

The rest of her work week is about the same. Her plants all stay alive, though the ones that are out of season don't grow, and the fairy seedling continues to be a prissy little princess plant that needs constant attention. She... thinks she can have flame fruit grown before the week is over? She's grafted strawberries to snapdragons to make dragonfruit, which is just about grown and ready for grafting. Dragonfruit combined with trash fruit is what makes flame fruit, and that combined with plasma fruit is what makes the life-extending-but-kind-of-uncreatively-named life fruit. It's going to be close, though, and flame fruit specifically only grows in the heat of summer. So. The dragonfruit gets a lot of fertilizer, and she quietly wills it to grow as fast as possible little guy!!!!!

On Thursday, she claws herself another promotion, and mails Caleb some fresh plasma fruit. She feels it's only polite, and he really did help her so much by helping her find out how to buy them. It's kind of odd, actually, because they seem so - weird and niche and complicated. Looking at the grafting tree for them (as explained to her by Oberon), they're about as complicated as flame fruit, at least to make from scratch. Just having them available has cut her life fruit work essentially in half. She wonders what happened there.

Caleb appreciates the fruit and links her his Simstagram food page with pictures of his cooked meals.

Awwww! Cute! She makes a Simstragram account of her own just to follow him. Friendship!!

... She'll probably end up posting obsessive gardening progress on here, won't she. Eh. More documentation is good for science, and she has already found some wild grafting combinations in just a single week of experimenting! (For example: carrot and taro root? Make potatoes! It's so insane, she loves it so much!)

Saturday morning she pokes her head out of her house to judge the progress of her plants, and do her by now traditional routine of taking care of everything. Hmmm... yeah, the flame fruit doesn't look like it'll make it to fully grown in the summer. Damn. That means she will not be able to make life fruit anytime soon without a greenhouse. That's kind of a shame; she might've managed it if she'd started gardening sooner, but oh well. She'll have to see about acquiring a greenhouse or something; she doesn't want to wait a whole four weeks to manage life fruit. In sims time, that's practically forever.

Next is checking on the fairy seedling, to see what weird thing it wants today. Is this an emergency retrieval of fairy dust situation? Because she's been expecting it ever since those pixies infested it a couple of days ago, she's lucky she had enough wine on hand to get them all drunk enough to leave...

There's someone inspecting her garden when she goes to check on it, a lady with pointy ears and green skin and hair wearing a dress made of leaves. She seems to be inspecting Yvette's garden critically.

It's perhaps obvious who this must be.

... is it? She honestly didn't even notice her, the green blended in with the greenery, and she was laser focused on how that damn stubborn flame fruit was doing. She blinks with confusion, and realizes she should say hello or something.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't see you - uh, hello?"

"Morning, dear," she says, not looking up from the plants. "You've been busy, haven't you?"

"Oh! Um. Yes." ... Wait, green, pointy ears - the fairy seedling was to attract the attention of - "Mother Nature, I presume? Good morning, I'm Yvette, it's nice to meet you."

"It really is! Good job, by the way." She finally looks up then walks over to Yvette and starts circling her and examining her just as critically as she was doing the plants.

"Um. Thank you." Oh dear, is she being Judged?? She doesn't know how to handle being Judged by Mother Nature. Should she talk about her plants??? But she just inspected them, so maybe she already knows all she needs to? But, then, Yvette doesn't know what else to do, and being examined while fidgeting is very awkward, so:

"- So I'm making a spreadsheet for the grafting combinations for plants and what they make," she says, because she's pretty sure that is the single most qualifying thing she could ever say to become a fairy.

It does make Mother Nature pause then look her in the face. "Go on."

"Um! Okay so here's my chart of all of the combinations I've tried so far," she says, pulling up her phone and navigating to the proper file to show her, "I'm a little handicapped by seasons, and think I'm still missing a bunch of things, and frankly I need to move so I have more space to work with for everything. But I have the time it takes for things to fully grow written down over in this column, and this one is for the season that I've confirmed it grows in - I know it's not complete, the gardening books were really unhelpful and there was only so much Oberon personally knew - and on this tab is what I've found so far - like, I've grown blackberries from grapes and elderberries, and I'm really curious if there are even more berries I could find..."

Mother Nature places both hands on Yvette's shoulders then pulls her in for a hug. "Oh, I think you'll do just fine."

Oh? Hug?? Sure okay?? Pat pat?

"Oh! Thank you!"

She pulls away a little bit and plants a soft kiss on Yvette's forehead. It feels warm and cool at the same time, and like it travels down her body like roots settling into her soul. "Go to Moondrop Springs, sweet one. You'll find what you need there."

Um??? Pretty lady kissing her??? Admittedly on the forehead, so it's not that weird, and Mother Nature is admittedly not reaper levels of emergency hot but, but, um?????

Blink blink. Blushing.

"Okay. Thank you. Um. I'll - do that." Blush blush blink.

She smiles then turns around and starts to walk away, until—

—it's like a visual illusion, like that duck that becomes a rabbit, and Mother Nature has become nothing more than a mound of earth covered in grass.

... eep.

Okay, um.

Well, first she's going to finish making sure her garden is all sorted, and then she. Guesses she needs to go find where Moondrop Springs is. She thinks she might know what it is, actually, if it's in Everdew? Which it probably is, because that's Fairy Central? But there was this spring that she remembered going past in her foraging adventures....

Yep that's the one! Siimgle confirms it.

Okay, cool. Then. She gets a cab to Everdew, navigates to the Moondrop Springs, and, well.

The obvious thing to do is to dive in?

So (after switching to a bikini) she does.

It feels like the Baleful Bog did, kinda, in that the water is reaching inside her and doing something to her, but the something is very different. The roots that radiate from where Mother Nature kissed her, which were barely felt anymore, are being felt again, growing and spreading further, reaching her hands and feet and eyes and ears and two specific spots in her upper back. For a brief moment, she can glimpse every blade of grass, every fern, every dandelion, every strawberry in the world, but then it's gone and all that she can see is herself.

It's very nice, actually. A bit dream-like? If turning into a ghost was like being pulled out of herself, this is a bit more like she's falling asleep in warm sunlight, dreaming of something new. She sees herself, but also she sees what she could be, with a pair of fairy wings.

She has strong opinions about their color, actually. Shifting shades of emerald green, with a little ornamentation in a purple-maroon. The shape is less important, but still worth paying attention to; she turns them to three sets of long and a little wispy insectoid wings, reminiscent of some kind of windblown butterfly. Then - well, she doesn't feel very fey without some pointy ears, and once she's got the pointy ears she decides that her canines should be just a little pointy, too. Not to vampire levels, and not just the upper set, but both, just a little. She is a little bit of nature, and nature can be (often more than) a little bit sharp.

She rises out of the pool on wings just like she'd imagined, with eyes greener than they were when she went in, beaming a smile that is a teensy bit sharp.

Guess who now has forever~

Is it Yvette? It's probably Yvette. Not that there's, you know, anyone to actually answer the question, since for one she never actually asked it but most importantly she is entirely alone right now.

But hey, you know, she's got wings now, so that's cool.

It is Yvette!

And it is so cool to have wings. What she's going to do next should be obvious. She has a new pair of wings, and they work, so: she going to go flying!

Wheeeeeeeeee!!!

That is within her power!

...well, depending on how high she goes, anyway.

Sorry? Is there a height limit to her wings? She wants to see what it is, if so.

Hmm it's not quite that there's a height limit exactly. She can keep going up. And up. And up. And up... except it's... maybe not up anymore, at one point?

Ohhhhhh. She's hitting the between space, where the neighborhood ends and the nothingness beyond the small bubbles of reality begins. Right, right, that makes sense, she'll go back to her lane. Or, to be more specific, back down to the nearby fairy hub, to do little loops around the trees and building. Wheeee~

"Up" resumes being "up" without fanfare once she's given up on verifying that fact very closely.

Also she seems to have a new sense of some kind? It's most obviously active when she's near someone else but it isn't extremely clear even then.

Hmm? A new sense, based around people? That's weird, she wasn't expecting that. Possibly she should have asked more questions about 'hey, what can fairies do besides fly and live forever?' It's not like she didn't have the time. Oops.

She'll try to spot someone she already knows, preferably another fairy with more experience at being a fairy. Oberon, maybe, if he's available. And then she can ask, uh, what this is, before she starts aiming her new sense at people.

There's Oberon's ex-wife over here.

Eh, she's the one who gave her the fairy seedling, she'll work fine, even if they're not particularly close.

"Hi, Titania!" she says, waving and landing nearby.

"Hello, Yvette! How are you doing? Oh you're a fairy now."

"I am a fairy now! I'm doing well, though there are a few things I'm confused about on being a fairy, would you mind helping me out with it?"

"Sure, what's up?"

"So I seem to have a new sense when it comes to people? What is up with that."

"A new sense?"

"Yeah, there's a new thing I can make out about people when I'm close to them? Do you know what it is?"

"The emotion sense?"

..... That sounds correct now that she puts words to it. There is a general air of... something that tastes like whimsy to Titania in particular. She hadn't been trying to put words to it, because looking seemed rude, but now that it's obviously emotions she's sensing, that level of playfulness and cheer is kind of unmistakable. Not that she has much to compare against, it just feels pretty unmistakable with her sample size of, uh, one. So she might turn out to be wrong about that.

"... Yes! That. Why do I have an emotion sense."

Blink. "Because you're a fairy."

She walked into that one. That's on her, for thinking her thoughts out loud, instead of translating to something more straightforward. She has no one to blame but herself.

"... Right. Um." How does she word this in a way that will not get another unhelpful answer... "Can fairies do anything with their emotion sense, besides telling what emotions people are feeling?"

"Well, you need your emotion sense to know what emotion you're feeding on."

Blink blink.

"Emotion I'm... feeding on?" she repeats, raising her eyebrows. "Um. Do fairies, perchance, eat emotions."

"What else would we eat?"

"... We can't sustain ourselves on normal food, can we. It's obligate emotion eating only, isn't it."

"Yeah."

"Ah."

She could have been a vampire. It would have been much easier than what she actually did. Actually, she should have asked more questions, or more and better questions, such as 'what are the differences between fairies and normal sims' or something, which she did not ask, because she was excited about immortality and flight. Ugh. And she has no one to blame but herself.

"So is this only active eating or can I like. Sustain myself on ambient vibes?"

"You can have an enchanted house that collects ambient vibes but it's not that nourishing..."

"Okay. That's really helpful, thank you. Is there any concern about eating the wrong kinds of emotions, or too much, or something?"

"You feel the emotion you eat, especially if it's strong, and if you eat too much you can overload."

Oh. So. Eat the positive emotions of people and become happy herself, or eat the negative emotions from people (... with permission, obviously, she has morals) and experience them herself. What a nice choice to be forced into.

...

You know what, she would still have taken that deal over vampirism, actually. Flight and not being allergic to sunlight are worth it. She has gotten a lot of experience with having foreign emotions forced upon her. She never thought she would thank the weird way the science career serums work, but here she is. And if push comes to shove, she can offer someone one of those anger or horny serums and eat that. Not that she'd be comfortable forcing another sim to drink something without telling them what it does, but still. It's technically a way to bootstrap her emotional nutrition needs without much help. Plus, enchanted houses are apparently an option? She's kind of needed a new house anyway...

"Right, okay. Thank you so much! I've grown some new produce in my garden lately, do you want anything?"

"Like what?"

"Mostly fruit lately," what with her quest for life fruit. "I've grown some grapes, blackberries, and dragonfruit, if you'd like any of them!" She's not offering up the trash fruit. No one should be exposed to the trash fruit.

"Sure, I'd like some fruit."

"Okay! I'll mail some to you, then." She does not, and in fact cannot carry her entire pantry with her. ... Though, maybe she should figure out a way to make that happen, one of her coworkers was working on some kind of portal thing, which sounds like an opening for a bag of holding to her. Note to self to work on later, now that she's got forever. "Do you know which houses are enchanted to let me live off ambient vibes?"

Yes, she is aware she just made a brief irrelevant tangent about something uninvolved to her actual goals. In her experience, she's got to do this sometimes to keep sims from getting bored and wandering off. Plus, she really does have a lot of produce now, and while she can sell it, she's perfectly happy to throw it at people to get them to like her first. Well. Mail it to people.

She points at a... tiny little birdhouse? Except, no, its door is too small for most birds, and also it has multiple floors?

... She squints at it.

".... Can fairies perhaps also become small," she says, because the alternative is the house somehow becoming big, which. It doesn't seem to have room for.

"...yes," Titania says, bemusedly, and then she twists in the air and becomes handspan-sized to demonstrate before returning to Sim size.

"Oh. Okay. There's a lot of fairy things that I don't know yet, thank you, sorry for the trouble."

Is... is it obvious to her how to Become Small. She would like to try it.

Well now that she thinks about it, it works just like so.

She experimentally becomes small, then un-smalls. Huh. Yep. That's sure a thing she can do. She supposes she can sit adorably on shoulders even without turning into a bat, and straight out of the gate, too. She's still pretty sure she prefers being a fairy to being a vampire? Though she needs to figure out what eating emotions is like. She could try it on Titania, but 'playful/whimsical' seems like the sort of thing she might want to keep being, so. She'll need to go hunting for someone that's sad or angry or something. Maybe follow a ghost around and eat the fear brought about in their wake? Hmm...

"Right. Okay. Thank you very much for your help, Titania, I'll head home and go send you fruit in thanks now."

Because wow does she feel like the biggest dumbass for not knowing all of the abilities of her new species. Besides, Titania is very clearly losing interest and about to wander off; Yvette is being exactly no fun at all, with her systematic question asking.

"Thank you! Bye!"

"Bye!"

Okay. Normally this is where she calls a cab to navigate the terrifying emptiness beyond reality bubbles, but...

... well, she wants to see how flying through it compares, on both a scale of 'time spent traveling' and 'how much does this suck.'

She checks the clock on her phone, murmurs it out loud to herself to help her remember, then makes the firm decision to Go Home (via flying). Then off she flies. Is it faster than a cab, and is it particularly uncomfortable to be flying in the void instead of, like, walking or being driven through it? (She has walked through it before, by now. Look, she was curious, and it was late and it felt like it'd be a huge imposition on the cab driver!)

She cannot fly as fast as a car, but she can fly faster than she can walk, yes!

Oh, come on, that's dumb! It's a void between reality bubbles! Are you telling her that there's a set distance of void between them?

... Hm. That might be true, actually. Which might have implications about claiming land from the void and creating little, like, reality bridges or something between them. Note to self: study that, too. Maybe draw some kind of map of how close physically all of the neighborhoods are. Priority is after the bag of holding, though. Which is after life fruit and life extension serum and de-ghosting and most everything else. She's going to need to start keeping notes to herself to keep track of this all. Anyway. Before she forgets: fruit, into the mailbox, addressed for Titania. Then:

"House, I would like one of those little tiny fairy houses, please. Right here, if you would," she announces, motioning to an empty space in the corner of her bedroom.

And then... she wants to try to test some fairy powers. She might've been able to get something from Titania with more open ended questions, but with how normal sims are, it would have just gotten her an answer like 'Fairies can fly!' or 'Fairies can sense emotions!' or something. Frankly, she thinks self reflection and experimentation to be both faster, and less aggravating.

Okay. The obvious thing fairies should be able to do, at least to her, is meddle in plant stuff. She specifically had to grow a special plant to prove she was worthy to become a fairy. Can she do a magic to her plants? She tests it on one of the extra bluebells, the one grafted with strawberries to make grapes. It has confirmed her research, and is summarily expendable in comparison to most everything else here.

Sheeeeeee cannot. Not obviously, at any rate.

Yvette pouts. Ugh. Fine. Dinner in the form of emotional vampirism first, then. She should go see what it's like, and maybe she needs some fairy nutrition to do fairy magic. It'll take time for her house to add her other, smaller house, she might as well spend it productively and avoid putting herself in an emergency.

She gets a book from one of the shelves - they all still kind of suck, but it's still fun to metaphorically rip them apart - tucks it under her arm, then flies off to the nearby park. It's time for some reading, light literary evisceration, and people watching.

Is there anyone that looks obviously upset, as she passes the time murmuring her criticisms of this book's terrible pacing and bland structure?

Not obviously so but maybe she could try to look for less obvious signs? Maybe her shiny new senses, if she gets close enough.

Ehhhhhh, walking up to emotionally sniff people seems kinda sketchy. She'll just read (and critique) and regularly look up to people watch, actually. Does anyone that looks emotionally distressed show up in the next couple of hours?

Yes! Here's this lady who shows up and starts getting gradually more annoyed as she repeatedly looks at her phone.

Aha! Yvette to the (maybe) rescue!

"Hello! You seem angry, what's going on?"

"Hello. Got stood up. This girl I met on Cupid's Corner was meant to meet me here half an hour ago and no fucking show."

"Wow! That sucks a lot! Do you want to feel less pissed about it?"

"I want her to show up. ...wait, what?"

"I'm a fairy, I can eat emotions. So if you'd like to be less angry, I can help."

"Oh." She looks down at her phone, frowns, then looks back at Yvette. "Okay."

Okay! Emotion sense: on!

Is the eating process for devouring this lady's anger straightforward from here?

It is. It's very easy, actually. It's right there, she can feel it, and all she has to do is pull a little bit. There's a small light show, the emotions leaving the woman like glowing red mist and entering Yvette, and then she's...

...kinda pissed off, tbh.

Yep. About what she expected. Not, actually, as bad as drinking the serum of anger at the research facility, but: yep that sure is anger that she now has. Tasted kind of spicy, actually, which - is weird, but she supposes makes sense.

She takes a deep breath, and attempts to direct the anger at the nebulous force that created this world and made emotions so damn fucking pliable to outside forces, then tries on a smile and aims it at the lady.

"Better?" she asks, the smile almost fitting. It's got a little edge to it, but not too bad. (FUCK you, nebulous forces!! She feels how she wants to feel, you assholes!!!)

"Huh. Yeah. It does feel better. I'm sure she had a good reason not to show up and if she didn't it's better that I learned she's a flake now rather than later."

"Yeah! Have a good day, okay?"

Unlike HER, who needs to figure out a way to get rid of this anger - gym, maybe, she hasn't done her exercise for the day, and probably lifting heavy things is good for this sort of situation? - but that's irrelevant. She used her sketchy emotion vampire powers to HELP a PERSON, she wins at being a fairy.

Unfortunately she can't just go to "Gym", as that is not a place, but there are many facilities that advertise themselves as gyms that she might instead be satisfied by?

Yes, thank you, OBVIOUSLY she wants to go to a gym, not a building ominously labelled 'Gym.' Ooooh this one has punching bags. That is a very anger appropriate activity.

She spins into athletic gear, complete with boxing gloves, and then is going to punch this punching bag until she feels better.

A tanned, fit guy with a goatee in a tight t-shirt approaches her. "Hey, gorgeous. Don't think I've seen you around here before."

Oh. She's. Being hit on. Huh. Somehow this hasn't happened before, probably because she's a consummate workaholic who hasn't held still for anyone to manage it.

She doesn't really know what to do with this situation, except that her bizarre attraction circuits are absolutely silent over this guy. Also that he's mentally much less capable than she is, and thus the idea of having a relationship with him would feel exploitative.

He's brave enough to approach a woman who is punching the shit out of something though, which is probably a point in his favor.

"Hi. I haven't been here before. I'm Yvette," she says, perfectly polite, and then resuming her punching.

"I'm Don. Are you new to the neighborhood?"

"I've been here a couple of weeks." Punch. "I just hadn't checked out the local gym." Punch punch.

"I come here pretty often," he says, lifting one arm to flex and show his muscles off. "Has anyone shown you around the neighborhood yet?"

"I've figured it out pretty well by now, but thanks anyway."

Which is to say: nope. Shoo, please, she's still working off her anger and does not want to be hit on at this time.

"Then maybe I could just show you my house instead, I bet you haven't been there yet."

Okay, so, if she weren't mad she could respond to this with a polite 'no thank you,' but he just invited her back to his house after her soft no. So instead what comes out is:

"I don't think it'd have anything in it that would appeal," she says with a smile on her face. "Pass."

Look, he had his chance with the gentle no. Now he gets a less gentle one.

He shrugs. "Alright. Bye." And he walks off.

That is what would be best for all involved, yes! Back to punching. She hasn't really worked on her upper body strength, has she, it's all been cardio...

...well she's working on her strength, for sure! That whole "upper body" thing is weird, though; why would it be that specific?

Nevermind. It wouldn't be, in this world. Silly incorrect knowledge from one of her available mental encyclopedias. She is working on her strength, you are correct, narration.

Eventually she tires herself out. Yeah, that was a pretty solid method of anger management. There's a set of showers here, but: literally why would she shower in a public location. Why would she do that. She hasn't gotten around to checking if germs are a thing in this world, or if it's another wrong thing from her otherworldly encyclopedia, but either way she does not want to be in a place where a lot of people have cleaned themselves of dirt all over the tile. She will stinkily fly home, and enjoy the wind drying her sweat, and have her shower there, where she is not going to be accosted by anyone that wants to hit on her even a little.

When she gets home, there's something... different about her plants.

Oooo?? Has she figured out more about her fairy powers, now that she has eaten one whole real emotion???

Hmmm - it feels like she can do something with one of the plants, she just needs to be small for it. Okay, small she goes, and up to the plant she flies, and - yes she'll let herself timeslide a little, it seems to be a requirement for things that do not make sense...?

She buzzes around in the plant a little bit, does some stuff there idk it doesn't matter, and by the time she's out she's not sweaty or grimy at all. Also there's some accumulated colorful, glittering dust around the plant.

....

wh.

what.

How did, but that, but she?

She's pretty sure all of her clothes stayed on???

But she still feels like she maybe just accidentally showered in the front lawn of her house, so between that and that guy at the gym she sure does want to move to an entirely different neighborhood now.

She returns to her normal size, sweeps up (most of) the dust - probably fairy dust - into her hands, then flies back inside to carefully get it put in some kind of container, and also have some sort of reaction about. That.

Because that was very much not what she was expecting to happen!!!!! ... Admittedly sort of handy, just. She didn't really like being surprised with it, okay.

On the bright side it was quicker than a shower? Yay?

And it did get her fairy dust, which she wanted for her immortality efforts anyway, she'll be taking this in to work on Sunday, so this was actually really beneficial, just. Just!!!! She would have picked a plant that was behind her house if she'd known it was going to be the equivalent of a shower!!!!

She's going to go have a normal shower just out of principle. She kind of doesn't need it at all, but, look, the water and soap make her feel properly clean.

That does mysteriously also produce a tiny dusting of fairy dust just outside the shower. Which is perfectly dry. Somehow. At least until she drips all over it.

????????

That can also go into the tupperware fairy dust container, yes, is this just going to be a thing that she collects whenever she showers now? ... Probably for the best, being a fairy continues to be pretty cool, just. This is a silly way to be.

Has her house added her second, tinier house?

Yep! It's right over there! It... looks like a miniature version of the bigger house, actually!

....

But her bigger house is still kind of terrible though. It's, you know, less terrible now, but. It's still a box.

She'll shrink and then head inside now, though. Is. Is it literally the exact same as the bigger house. She almost doesn't want to look.

Yup. It is. The appliances mostly don't... work, though. And the tiny tiny books don't have anything written in them.

Wow.

Well. Okay. She'll. She'll work on that. Maybe she can give her house a different house to model the tiny house off of...

The appliances not working isn't really a problem, though? She doesn't really think she needs any of them, anymore. She's noticed by now that she has absolutely no need to pee, and her only hunger is emotion based. So: all kitchen and bathroom appliances are not really necessary for her continued comfort. And this tiny house is supposed to feed her emotion based hunger, so. Is it doing that?

Not really but it feels intuitively obvious to her new emotion sense that it's just because it's not super full of emotional energy at the moment. It should be able to do that, probably.

That does make sense; it hasn't had time to soak up the appropriate vibes. And, well, fortunately, she just ate. 'Ate.'

Hmm. Well. .... She kind of wants to give her house a good basis to base the little fairy house off of as soon as possible. Dealing with her box house, and then also her smaller box house, does not sound fun.

She exits, unsmalls, and pats the (big) house. She does feel some affection for it, however stupid it kind of is. But, yeah, maybe time to move. She guesses she'll spend the rest of her day flying around various neighborhoods, looking at houses.

So her assessment is: there are in fact better houses, but most of them are all... weirdly small. Built with one or two bedrooms, on a tiny lot, with cheap furniture.

She wonders if she can do better.

"House," she says, as she prepares for bed with much fewer tasks than usual, "can you please make the tiny fairy house shaped like the," she checks her notes for the weird name, "Crannamor Residential, from Innisgreen? It's cute and very fairy like, I think it'd be a good mini-house."

The house, as usual, does not respond. Almost like it's an inanimate object she's been talking to.

Yeah. She expects things will be shifted around in the morning. For now, she does still need sleep in her fabulous new fairy form, so: to bed with her. In the big bed. Zzzz.

Is the tiny house better in the morning?

Yup! It looks adorable.

Excellent. She pats it and tells her house it did a very good job.

Then: well, okay, first is gardening. How is her garden doing, has the flame fruit managed to become fully grown, so that she can take it and graft it with its future friend?

It hasn't!

But... you know, maybe she can do some magic to the plants, actually?

.... oo??? oooo????

Magic to plants??? Magic to this plant, to make it fully grown???

Hmm. She's missing something.

... what!! What is she missing!!!! Can she tell what it is?? Is it fairy dust, because she woke up covered in the stuff and is prepared to dust anything that looks like it even vaguely needs dusting, her tupperware is ready.

Oh! Yeah! Yeah it is, it's totally fairy dust.

She covers the fruit in fairy dust and then tries again. Grow, damn you! It's now Autumn, and she doesn't know how quickly she can get a greenhouse, you better get your ass big enough to be grafted onto the plasma fruit!!!

It works! She enchants the fruit! That doesn't actually seem to visibly cause anything to happen to it, though.

But maybe she can feel something? Sort of like it's... a bit insulated from the weather, maybe?

... that might be enough? Hmm. She'll check on it tomorrow, she guesses???

First: gacha seed packet game for Autumn. It is played. She does not like the gacha seed game, but she will dutifully play it anyway, for the sake of getting new plants. She... does not plant them yet. There is really not any space for them, and she'd have to start figuring out which of her plants to sacrifice for their in-season brethren.

Which leads her right to: planning her move. She should probably think first about neighborhood, since she kind of just wants to buy a gigantic empty lot and tell the house function to build a house exactly to her specifications. Innisgreen is the obvious choice, for a fairy, which means that even though it's very cute she doesn't want it. Besides, there's already a red-haired, primarily green-clothed fairy in Innisgreen, and her name is Titania, and Yvette does not particularly want to be confused for her. Willow's Creek itself is... fine, but that's about it? It's pretty enough, but there's not really anything there. Ravenwood is probably the best tactical option for her, with its proximity to the reaper headquarters and its large population of ghosts, short of literally living next to the research lab she works at, which: pass. It's out in the middle of nowhere. She would like to have a civilization that is not a void crossing away.

Does Ravenwood have some place with a great big lot that she might want to live at? Preferably on the not-dead side of the town?

There is! It's actually really quite big! §9,000 to buy outright, near the Ancestor Face cliff.

That's very affordable. In fact, she can afford it literally right now. Can she buy that in addition to her house? Instead of that whole 'Move Out' thing?

Uhhhhh... to do that?

Yeah. Just. Buy it. ... There's nothing on her phone about that. Hm. Okay. Fine. She can get creative.

"Hello, world!" she loudly announces, while standing in the middle of the plot of land. "I would like to buy this plot of land, in addition to the house I own! I wish to, and can afford, owning both at the same time!"

She checks her bank account on her phone. Is she §9,000 poorer?

Nnnnope.

Sigh.

Well. Okay. She'll start trying to figure out how to tell this plot of land how to contain a house? Or maybe that'll have to wait until she properly moves in? Hm.

It won't hurt to start figuring out architectural plans, though. She's going to flutter around the rest of the neighborhood, check out some houses while she's here. Maybe grab some plants if she spots any on her way.

This part of Ravenwood is substantially less, uh, dead than the rest. There are some quaint and cute little houses and cottages, some ruins of a castle over there, the Ancestor Face cliff of course as well as the river that runs in front of it...

Yeah. She could live here. It's pretty cute. And the architectural style has actual personality, which is straightforward enough to mimic, she thinks.

Also, there turns out to be a bookstore nearby. Which quite tempts her to carry over the tiny fairy house and live out of it on the lawn, but: no, no, she should try to have a house first. Even if she'd live in easy distance to a bookstore that is incredibly cute. Sure, all books in this world are just a little bit terrible, but they're great fun to critique, and they're kind of growing on her.

Does either the bookstore or city hall have anything on architecture, or blueprints of local buildings, respectively? She doesn't have high hopes, but she'd like to be working from something instead of just. A very intimidating blank page, and a lot of nerve.

They do, actually! She can browse those easily.

Yesssssss. Yes, this will do.

This is perhaps not very tactically efficient of her, but she has forever now. She wants a house that she likes instead of just finds kind of... endearingly well meaning, but dumb. And she wants a greenhouse that will spare her from the irritations of seasons, and decorative plants outside her home that are there to be pretty and green instead of tactically efficient, and most of all space to change stuff. So she's going to carefully start making architectural plans of her very own, greenhouse included. Attached to the house, she thinks, so that when it's snowing or raining she won't have to tromp through the cold and wet. She's not going to go crazy and try to get a mansion, but she does want something with two stories, and enough spare rooms that she can spring for a library. Ooo, and bay windows, those would be beautiful.

She does this at a little cafe, enjoying the slightly chilly autumn breeze and warm sunlight after a full week of heat. While she works, she keeps a vague eye on the people around her as she methodically pencils out a floorplan - she does still need to nibble on some emotions today, probably, and anyway sometimes she needs breaks to think. Like what size of a place she wants, and what she can sensibly afford anytime soon. Her salary at work is pretty respectable, but she doesn't have a budget of 'yes' to work with to her heart's content. Though... she could also speed things up a bit by selling some of her produce. Dragonfruit is especially lucrative, and as it proved this morning, it's still in season.

She could! Ravenwood has a small produce market and Innisgreen has a bigger one.

Pity she didn't carry any here to sell, but oh well. There'll be time for that later.

She finishes up her basic architectural schematic, copies it to another sheet of paper, and then flies back to the empty plot of land (that will be hers one day!).

"Please build this, centered here, front door facing the road - it's the one marked F, the arrow is pointing that way - following these plans and generally keeping to the style of the neighborhood," says Yvette, plopping the spare paper in the middle of the field, near the side facing the road. She has absolutely no idea this will work, but it's worth a shot, surely. Possibly she should have tried this with her actual house, maybe it's the only one that'll listen to her, but still. She'll try to have a house to move into before she moves. Instead of living on a lawn, out of a tiny fairy house.

Like with her actual house, the empty lot doesn't inst—wait what's that over there?

Hm?? Is someone coming to steal her house??? She might need to move here to live on a lawn right now just in case, this place is hers, damn it!!!!

No, never mind, it was probably just her imagination.

Anyway, like with her current house, this new house doesn't instantly respond to any requests of hers.

Oh! House! It's there now!

Does it follow the floor plan she laid out?

It does! However, it's... empty... like it has kitchen and plumbing but, uh, nothing more.

Well, that's fair, it's not like she laid out a furniture plan in advance or anything. It makes perfect sense that it only did the stuff she directed it to do.

...

Actually, if the house is empty. Can she afford to move literally right now?

Yes, just barely. She probably won't have money for, uh, pretty much anything. Certainly not any new furniture, except maybe a shitty bed (but maybe she might want to get a sleeping bag instead).

Then she's doing it. Hers.

...

Can she afford the fairy house, possibly if she sells the just-for-pleasure-fridge?

Yes.

Okay, good. Then she is now officially one step up from living on a lawn!! Eeeeeheeheehee!!

She makes sure the fairy house is the same as it had been (it is, yes) and then coos over the whole entire house and how it is so incredibly perfect!!

Then something occurs to her.

Er, did the move happen to put all of her plants in the greenhouse, or does she need to replant some things?

Well the house wasn't about to steal her plants and decide for her where they should go, was it? Putting plants places is up to her! It would be really rude otherwise.

Uh huh. Okay. Can she have all of her plants, from that other house that she just lived at, here in the greenhouse. She requests this out loud, exits the house so she doesn't give it performance anxiety, then turns back around to check. Plants?

Plants!

Yay!! Her gardening work hasn't been set back!!!! Her lack of foresight and planning has not come back to bite her!

This time.

Which means that bad habits are almost certainly going to set in! This won't go poorly at all!

Her greenhouse has about as much space as her boxhouse's yard had. This makes it a fairly large greenhouse, but for in-season plants she should grow them outside, to save space. Time to do some rearranging of the garden! And planting as much dragonfruit as she can, because she would like to have some furniture at some point.

Someone rings her doorbell.

.... oh no.

Those sound like consequences, in the form of a welcome wagon coming to visit her completely empty house.

This is awkward, can she pretend she's not home???? She probably can't. Uh. Hm. She'll be brave, and explain she hasn't furnished the place yet, except for the little fairy house...

"Hello!" she says cheerily, despite her social anxiety.

There are two young adults, one of whom is a ghost (and also really hot), and a child, who's wearing a crow costume, standing in front of her door. "Hello! Welcome to Ravenwood! I'm Kai Aether and these are my husband Ekade and our son Takama," says the ghost.

Libido/attraction circuits, nooooooooo, this man is married why are you like this!!!!

"Hi! I'm Yvette Valerian, it's lovely to meet you all. Um - I don't actually have a lot of furniture inside, I'm kind of living out of a little fairy house, I'm afraid I don't have anything to host you all properly..."

"I wanna see the fairy house!"

"Oh! Sure! It's right over here..." It's placed outside in the front yard, actually. She ensmalls and opens the front door of it, demonstrably.

"Oooh! You're so tiny, lady!"

"Takama, don't be rude to the lady."

Kai... is staring.

Whyyyy is hot married person staring. Why does she care! Why are her attraction circuits like this.

"I don't think it's rude to say I'm tiny! At least when I am, anyway." She unsmalls, smiling. "But it does mean giving a house tour is a little awkward, I'm still working on furnishing the house for people that cannot become small. Though I do have working bathrooms if you need them?"

Kai shakes his head. "Don't worry about that. We also brought you a little something," he says, offering her a little tray with a large sugar-dusted bun on it. "It's a pan de muerto. It's traditional in these parts."

"Awwww!! Thank you!" She doesn't have a fridge. She is not going to bring this up, because she thinks she'd rather go small fly directly into one of those electric bug zappers, but it's what she thinks immediately. Instead of doing that, she takes the tray and the bun, and smiles sincerely. It's very sweet of them to give her baked goods, even if they might be... following the Neighborhood Welcoming Programming. "It's so cute, did you make it yourself?"

Tell her it's not a family heirloom. That will put this town better off than Willow Creek, at least on the Neighborhood Welcoming Programming scale.

"It was a family effort. Takama mostly taste tested."

"It tastes like death," says Takama with a thumbs-up.

"He means it tastes good," sighs Ekade longsufferingly.

Yvette giggles.

"Having never tasted death personally," help now that sounds like an innuendo, considering she has met (a version of) death and found him really really hot, actually, "I don't see why it wouldn't be delicious? I tried being a ghost for a bit, but that's not quite the same thing, I don't think."

Kai rolls his eyes. "Ghosts aren't real."

"Yes they are!"

Ekade rubs his temples.

"... You.... are a ghost, though???" says a bewildered Yvette.

"Why does everyone say that! I am a perfectly solid, perfectly living person!"

"Papa you're a ghost."

"Not now, Takama."

??? ??????? ?????????? ???? ?????

She does not have to engage with any weird lines of conversation if she doesn't want to! This is a benefit to being surrounded by proto-people that are bad at long term thinking!

Further bright side! It turns out that her natural attraction circuits can in fact be overridden. Relatedly, wow, having someone completely fail to grasp the existence of their very own species, which includes but is not limited to being able to literally see through themselves, is just. Wow. She wants nothing to do with what is in this man's pants anymore, and the difference is stark. His inability to make basic observations about reality is kind of funny, but also deeply, deeply unattractive. Just - nip that uncomfortable attraction right in the bud. Thanks, Kai! She appreciates it, and is also kind of concerned for your ability to make observations about the world!!!

Anyway moving on to a topic of conversation that does not seem like concentrated insanity in an already highly insane world.

"So where do you all live?" she asks, smiling.

Takama points at a large house over yonder down the road. "We're neighbors! That means I can come haunt you whenever I want."

This earns a snort!! "You can! Though I do have work Monday through Fridays, 10 AM to 7 PM, so for our mutual haunting convenience I recommend haunting on weekends."

"That's OK I have school." He flaps his arms. "Do you like crows? Papa doesn't like crows. Watch." Then he turns to Kai and caws loudly and rushes at him.

Which makes him screech and jump away.

"Takama! Don't scare your father like that!"

Oh no, it's so cute, but possibly kind of alarming, considering Kai seems actually frightened!!!! ... Oh, maybe she can fix that!!

"I like crows fine, but don't like people being scared - Kai, do you want me to help you, uh, calm down, and be not-scared?"

He is running in circles being chased by his son. "How! Would you! Do that!"

She is a fairy who eats emotions. ... He would probably not accept this explanation, considering how in retrospect his earlier staring when she became small was skeptical staring.

"I have a meditation exercise that is good for soothing unwanted emotions!" she lies, cheerfully.

"Okay!"

"Takama stop running!"

"Caw! Caw! Caw!!!!!"

Nom nom, goes the fairy, towards this man's fear. This does mean that she gets the fear instead, which is a little uncomfortable for her personally, but she is not natively afraid of small children in crow costumes, so. She'll be okay, even if she's feeling a little bit jumpy and kind of wants to hide.

Kai stops running suddenly, causing Takama to collide bodily with him. Thankfully Takama is a child so this does not cause any problems.

"...caw?"

"Takama, you're grounded."

"Caw!"

"...we should probably go."

"Oh, okay. Thank you for coming, it was lovely meeting all of you."

This family is incredibly bizarre, but. In a cute way??? She likes them, even if Kai is deeply confusing as a person.

Kai leads the way away, followed by a drooping Takama and a sighing Ekade.

Incredibly cute. Even if she... doesn't know what to do with her baked goods, not having a fridge, nor any actual need to consume things. She can have a slice of it just out of principle? How does it taste?

Really good!

Awwww. She has a second plate, because it is delicious, then, uh. She needs to figure out how to get a fridge? How can she quickly earn money to buy a fridge...

... Probably by wandering around and seeing if there are any cool rocks or frogs she can pick up, and then sell on the internet. No, she does not know why there is a market for selling literal frogs, but there is, and she is willing to do some sketchy (probably digital) frog laundering for the sake of having a fridge, so that she can keep the nice food that was specifically gifted for her.