hello! this is the other story that i've been developing, it's called iridescence!
i hope you all enjoy it!
disclaimer: i don't own harvest moon or its characters.
She could remember the first time she ever saw her mother cry. Her mother's body sprawled out on the living room floor, long blonde hair covering her face as heavy sobs shook her body, and her fingers clasped onto a letter so tightly that her knuckles had turned white. It wouldn't be until years later that she learned why she hadn't been able to coax her mother off the floor for three days, passing on all the responsibilities of the farm onto her recently turned seven-year-old daughter, and it wouldn't be until even later that she'd learn the contents of the letter and all it told. She remembered that it had been her birthday, and she decided that she didn't like birthdays very much.
She could remember when she asked her mother about her father, wondering where he was and why he wasn't with them, and all her mother could do was smile - a sad smile but a smile, and tell you that she would tell when she was older. She didn't understand, acting out until her mother told her, and the truth was probably something she hadn't really wanted to hear because she cried. She wouldn't stop crying, she got over it eventually, but she moved on to find her mother the perfect man to marry. She needed someone good, someone that both of them would like, but she rebuffed each and every attempt. "I'm sure Lily's father is very nice but I'm not ready to date," she would say about everyone, brushing her daughter's blonde hair out of her face before kissing her cheek. This continued for several years until she ultimately gave up on trying to find herself a father and her mother a husband.
She could remember the night that she spent at the hospital after her mother's third suicide attempt, it didn't phase her anymore. Third time's the charm, right? It was a horrible thing to think, but she was just so tired and empty as though everything had been drained from her. A balloon that had been popped, a tub without water. She had met a boy there that night, sitting outside with a cup of coffee from the hospital cafeteria and a cigarette in-between her underaged fingers. He had been beautiful, the kind of beautiful that you could only imagine, and she felt something inside her that she hadn't felt in a long time. He was gone by the morning, she had gone looking for him, but she figured that she'd never see him again and she didn't.
She remembered her mother screaming at her as she packed her bags after informing the older woman that she was leaving for Mineral Town, taking up her grandfather's farm there to cultivate it as her own. Her mother had told her that she was never allowed to come back, that Claire was no daughter of hers and and she was just like her father, abandoning her when her mother needed her most. She supposed that she should've felt bad leaving on bad terms like that, but she wasn't planning on coming back… No matter the circumstance. There was no warmth attached to this place that she had called home for the past nineteen years.
Mineral Town was going to be a new beginning, the packed ice and snow around Claire would eventually thaw off there, she would just have to give it time. No one will know who I am, they won't know my history, I am a blank sheet of paper… She could be whoever she wanted to be, and that was exactly how she wanted it to be.