[Author's Note: Things won't be exactly as they are in the game. I'll be adding a few personal touches. But given that it's officially a fantasy setting, and since I got a request from a friend... well, you'll see when we get there. Just keep the thought that I'll be crafting my own story out of what little we were given as you read.]
Everyone has a particular moment. That moment where they're sitting alone and wondering what they're doing with their life. That moment when you look at a clock, check the time, and realize that it's still far too early in the day for you to be this tired. When you come to the understanding that you're not fulfilling what your family hoped for you. When your life feels empty, and that emptiness is growing with every passing day.
For Victoria, this moment came at 3:21pm, Ferngill Republic Central Time, on the 26th of Winter. The celebrations of the 25th had come and gone, and what had she done? Worked. Like she'd done almost every day this year. She got vacation days, perks of having worked at the same job for three years, but her supervisor always "suggested" that she turn them in for G instead. It worked out for the most part, she earned a little extra money every month, but she never got to leave The City. Or her job, working for Joja Corp. It paid the bills. Her little car and her tiny apartment. The food in her fridge, most of it something she could toss in the microwave and heat up, or sliced meat to make sandwiches.
She wasn't sure which was worse though. Her empty apartment, or her empty job here. She'd tried to get a cat once, a little thing she'd named Tiny because the guy at the pet store had said he was the runt of the litter. But he'd run away or been stolen, she wasn't sure which, one day while she was here at work. His bowl still sat in the corner of her bedroom, her little shrine and the last hope she held that maybe he'd come back one day.
It'd been at least a year since she'd been on a date. She barely bothered to shave her legs anymore. It was just too much effort. The only places she went, aside from the little City Park for her runs, was here at work, or her apartment. Not many choices there, and she honestly wasn't looking too hard to begin with. It was too much effort. Everything was. But she supposed that's what being down like this did to you, made your easy life feel empty, an actually okay job feel like a cage.
Victoria looked up at the clock. 3:21. Hadn't it said 3pm over an hour ago? It sure felt like it. Time crawled here in her dingy little office. Sure, it paid okay, and the benefits were nice, but she hated the work. Tapping away at a keyboard for hours on end, ensuring that every little crate of JojaMart™ merchandise got to the correct store on time and with as efficient a route as possible. It was boring. Once you got the path figured out, as long as you kept up with traffic you'd never send a truck wrong.
Even a war couldn't stop JojaCorp. Gotoro Empire or no, she got those trucks through every single day. It was like a machine, where she was just one little unhappy cog in an otherwise unfeeling clockwork.
She hated this job, but it was the only thing she'd ever known. She'd started in a JojaMart, just a clerk working the counter like everyone else, trying to work her way through school. Then she'd gotten depressed and dropped out, and somehow that'd gotten her promoted. A store manager first, and then a desk jockey in the office a few years later. Most people would die for her position, barely 24 and already working a cushy office job? Thing is, she was worried this job was going to kill her.
Maybe not actually kill her. Though the depression might. This job certainly didn't help. She had her own cubicle, sure. Her own computer, her own desk. But it was dingy, and cold most days. The light above her flickered, the walls exuded a smell that she was sure wasn't healthy, and she knew that at least one person had died in this office. It was a week before anyone had noticed. Maybe the job wasn't so okay after all. She didn't want to be a body found in a damp chair because nobody bothered to check.
That could be me.
She was too young to feel this empty. Some would say too pretty, but she didn't really feel like it. Sure, she was somewhat thin. Eating like she did had something to do with it. But she liked to think she was wiry, not thin, and she did go for a run every Saturday morning. And apparently she had a decent face, if all the times she got asked out by all the guys in the office meant anything. But then again that could just be a combination of not being flat-chested and the general desperation that clung to everyone who worked here like a seeping fog. Unfortunately for them, and her, none of them really fit her tastes. She was practically the only woman in the building.
Her fingers tapped a pencil against her desk. She glanced up at the clock again. Still 3:21.
What am I doing here? I'm going nowhere... this job sucks, I don't have any friends, at least I don't have any bills.
Looking to the bright side really wasn't doing anything for her. It's hard to feel good when your 'bright' side is about as bright as a guttering candle in the wind of a dark night. A job she wasn't sure she'd ever advance from, a lack of friends that was probably as much her fault as anything else with how little effort she put into things like socializing. It was just hard to care when feelings seemed to vanish into a void located somewhere in your chest cavity.
It took a moment for her to realize there was someone standing next to her desk, but the little 'hem-hem' they kept making eventually got her attention. That could only be one person- Vincent.
"Excuse me, Ms. Finley, but I believe you were staring at the clock." Always with that smug tone, like he was going to ask you to do something you hated and there was nothing you could do about it. Him and his stupid suit, and his stupid tie, and his stupid haircut, like a bowl plastered to his head with hair gel. She wanted to know how many squirrels gave their life for that man's toupee...
"Sorry, Vincent. I guess I got distracted. All the trucks are sent out, everyone's on the way. There's not a whole lot else left for me to do until they start the pickup runs." She shrugged. Still tapping her pencil against the desk. She glanced at the clock again, 3:22. Was she stuck in some kind of time field or something? There's no way it could be this slow...
"Oh? Well, maybe..." He raised his coffee, taking a sip. "Maybe you could help out the phone lines? Just for a little while. You know, filter out some of the complaints."
"But I don't even have a phone." She'd been through this song and dance with him before, but at least it passed the time.
"You could use your cellphone! Just hook it up to the line under your desk, wear your headset." Another sip of his coffee. She knew it was half milk anyway, he just thought it made him look important. Smug, stuck up little-
"You know we're not allowed to do that. You yelled at me last week when Bob got here for doing exactly that." She'd never figure out why he thought it was fine to break the rules when his supervisor wasn't here, but as soon as Bob arrived everyone had to be following the rulebook to the letter. Well, she knew why, the rules were stupid, but he never took the blame for his own ideas. He just let everyone else get in trouble while he got to look like the put-upon shift lead that nobody listened to. Got him the sympathy he needed to get away with his own discretions. She'd seen the bottle in his desk. Water wasn't amber colored.
"Yeah, well... better get to it! Just help out the lines for a while. If you could just, you know, do that, that'd be greaaaat. I'll be back." He raised his coffee cup as he walked away, giving her that stupid smile. She'd love to break her stupid lopsided keyboard over his stupid face. But she couldn't even get riled up over it. Just like everything else, the anger trickled away into the void.
That sense of numb acceptance washed over her again as she resigned herself to looking for her headset. She didn't use it to send out the trucks, she just sent texts to all the drivers to check their email for one she'd written. They clicked a link on the computer in their cab, and a GPS program set up the route for them. All they had to do after that was follow it. The hardest part of her job was checking the traffic sites, since they were only online half the time because their servers were busted.
Now where the hell is my headset? It's around here somewhere...
She dug through drawers, she looked under papers, she even checked the floor. She'd used it just last week, it couldn't have gotten far. She finally found it hiding under an old manilla envelope. While she was lifting that out of the way, a picture slid out- a young man standing in the middle of a lush field, corn as far as the eye could see. She must've never closed it last time she'd looked...
This is Grandpa's old farm, isn't it?
She lifted the picture, lips pursed. What was that place's name again...? Stardrop? Sandstar? Something-star, definitely. She'd forgotten how beautiful it looked. The folder was old, she was still in High School when he'd left it to her, and she'd never really given it much thought other than taking the pictures out to look at now and again. What was a teenager going to do with a farm? She'd never looked at most of it, just the pictures. They helped her get away from this little cubicle on days where it all just felt like too much, when her life spiraled particularly badly out of her control... Hadn't he mentioned something like that?
Years ago, Grandpa sitting in bed, resting against his pillows. He was old, frail, thinner than she remembered him looking last. Getting sick tends to do that to you though. His beard, once majestic and full, clung to his face like strung-out cotton wadding, too little hair covering too much space. His nightgown hung off him like a shirt on the hanger, all bones and no meat hidden away by a thin layer of cloth. His voice, once deep and booming, commanding the attention and respect of everyone in the room, was thin and reedy, like a violin with a worn out bow.
"Vicky. Vicky, my dear. Come here. I can't see you." He beckoned her with a hand. He was so small now, his barrel chest looked like it'd sunken in on itself.
She'd been left for last. She thought perhaps he'd forgotten, or hadn't had anything left for his youngest grandchild. She was the only girl out of five grandkids, and the only child of dear Mom and Dad. He'd passed down her grandmother's wedding ring to her when she'd died a few years back, but usually she just got a few G for Christmas.
"You're still working at that Joja place, aren't you?", he finally asked when she'd stepped close enough to see. His eyes, cloudy and dim blue, looked old and faded, just like the pictures on the wall he still kept from the farm. When Vicky nodded, he continued. "I want to give you this."
His hand, shaking, held out the folder for her to take. She never would have guessed what his gift for her was. "What is it, Grandpa? Is it pictures?"
"There's a few in there. It's a deed." He pressed it into her hands, forcing her to take the folder and hold onto it, or let it drop.
"A deed? Like for a house?"
"A house yes, and some land besides. My old farm." She could almost hear the bones in his arm creak as he turned, gesturing to the pictures on the wall. Two young men smiling in the sun, butterflies in the air behind them. A man and a woman, young and full both, standing before a tree with 'G + P' carved into a heart. A young man holding a massive pumpkin above his head in the fall, smiling like he couldn't ever be happier, a blue ribbon pinned to his chest.
"Your farm? We thought you sold it." She lifted the edge of the envelope, looking at the pictures inside. Fruits, mountains, what looked like a blacksmith with a plume of smoke rising from the chimney, a wooded shoreline to the Gem Sea.
"No, no. I always intended to give it to you." He laughed, quiet and wheezing. An accordion with a leak.
"Me? Why?" She glanced up to him after looking at the pictures, confusion written clearly on her face.
"Because, Vicky. I always knew you'd do great things one day. But you're not. You're working at JojaMart, while they strangle the towns and smaller stores under their iron fist." His voice hardened, just for a moment, some of his old bluster coming back. But then it was gone, like a stormcloud not quite formed. "I want you to have the farm. I want you to live there, just for a couple of years. See what life's like in the Valley. I know you will, one day. When your life is dragging you down, when the modern world becomes too much to handle, you'll want a way out... This can be your way out." He tapped the folder she held against her chest with one bony finger. "I trust you, Vicky. You'll do what's best for you."
He'd died a few days later, the last gift he'd ever given her this old yellow folder. His farm. She lifted a sheet of paper, some paperwork she'd have to file when she arrived, it looked like. 'Stardew Valley' written across the top in an old-fashioned letterhead. That was the name. Stardew Valley, where the stars themselves rested when day came, their magic glistening in the dew that fed the plants. Some of the produce she routed came out of that valley, and it was always the best quality. Maybe Grandpa had been onto something after all.
She looked at the clock. 3:22. She slowly slid the paper back into the folder, her mind working over the details. She'd have to sell her apartment short notice. Or buy the rest of the lease. She had enough money, but it wouldn't leave her with much. She could drive there... but would her car survive the trip? She could get rid of it, get enough money to hold her over a few months while she settled in.
Fear rose in her chest... and stayed there. It was the first thing she'd really felt in months. The fear of the unknown, the fear of failure, the fear of starting a new life... But it was a feeling. She latched onto it like the light of a guiding star. Fear would guide her way, because it was the only thing she had.
Vincent walked by, shooting her an 'I'm watching you' look and gesture with his fingers. Still holding his coffee, still wearing that stupid suit. Well, he could have this job. She was done with it. She was leaving.
A hand on the folder, she stood from her desk. She punched the power button on her keyboard, the sound of her computer's fan spinning slowly dying. The folder clutched to her chest. Her Grandpa's gift. Her hands shook like his had, so many years ago. Fear felt good. It was better than being empty.
As she turned to leave, Vincent held his hands out, standing in her path with his palms up, questioning her. "Vicky! Where're you going? You have phones to answer!"
She brushed past him and turned as she backed through the door, her middle finger on her right hand stuck up proud into the air, her heart rising in her chest. She hadn't done anything this reckless in a long time. "Fuck you, Vincent. I'm going to Stardew Valley!", she shouted as she stepped through the door.
The last words she heard from the office were Vincent's 'where the hell is that?' as the door closed behind her.
She'd figured out what she was doing with her life.