Claire wasn't happy.
Day in, day out, life never changed. An endless loop of routine activities. A robotic, mindless kind of thing where the days blurred together and left no pleasant memories to speak of. She spent her hours at a deadbeat, low-paying job, and came home exhausted to a one-room apartment that smelled of mildew and dead mice. All her friends had left the city to pursue their careers, and her landlord didn't allow pets. In fact, she realized bitterly, the living thing she was currently closest to was a cockroach that had made a nest in her coffee pot. It did the same things every day; ate and slept, ate and then slept once more. She could sort of relate.
It had been like this for a while. But it was today that things would change. It was today that Claire would finally make some motion to get out of the rut she was in.
"That's IT!" she cried as she stormed up the (numerous) stairs to her room and slammed the door shut. Or tried to, anyway—it got stuck, as it always did, and she had to tug on it quite furiously to get it closed. "I've had it! That is the LAST straw! If there were ever any straws to begin with..."
She stopped at the kitchen counter, then bent over a little to peer inside the coffee pot. "You know what happened to me today?" she began. The cockroach twitched its feelers. "My boss yelled at me for taking too long at the water fountain. It's 30 freakin' degrees in that place, of course I'm going to get thirsty now and again! You know, maybe if they'd actually get some decent air conditioning in, I wouldn't need to spend a measly 60 seconds preventing my untimely death. Death by dehydration." She frowned at the roach, which was now scuttling deeper into the pot and burrowing its way inside the debris it had collected. Claire straightened up, spun around on her heels, marched over to the kitchen table, and grabbed the newspaper there. She flipped her way over to the Classifieds, and began her search for a new job, a new home... something new."Listen to this," she called over her shoulder to the roach. "2-bedroom home, $300,000 and it's not even a waterfront or anything! Hah."
One by one, she mentally crossed off the ads listed there. There were a few local jobs, but none of them sounded much better than what she was doing currently. Most of the houses being offered in nearby towns were way out of her price range. Then, she caught sight of some tiny, almost unintelligible print in the bottom-right corner of the page. She squinted and brought the paper closer to the ceiling light.
"Would you like to enjoy a peaceful and refreshing farm life? Well, I like the adjectives they're using," Claire commented as she read the paper aloud. "For more info, contact this number... oh wow, they're selling an entire farm with a house on the property for crazy cheap!" She turned excitedly to the coffee pot. "Isn't this great? Just imagine, a whole new life away from the stuffiness of the city... I could take things at my own pace since there wouldn't be a boss over my shoulder! And I can actually afford it!" She laughed delightedly, feeling sort of giddy. "I mean, it's gonna be a huge change, but I'd do anything to get out of here!" She dashed to the phone, and was so excited she misdialed and had to apologize to a very confused frenchman. Claire took a deep breath and pushed the buttons more slowly...
"Hello? MT Realtor? My name's Claire, I'm from the capital and I'd be very, very interested in purchasing your farm..."
A/N:
This is my first fic, so please don't eat me :O
I sort of took Claire's initial position in the game (dull life, lame living quarters) and ran with it to the point where she no longer cares about dead mice or cockroaches because they're so familiar to her. We don't actually get roaches up here (just squirrels in the roof, black bears in the garbage, and rabid raccoons under the porch), so I have no idea if they enjoy nesting in coffee pots, but oh well xD
Will Claire arrive at a glistening, glorious dream ranch, or a tumble-down wreck of a farm? Find out in Chapter 2! (Well, you've probably played the game, so I guess you already know...)