General knowledge of the layout of the game's town, Zephyr Town, will be needed for full enjoyment of this story.
Furthermore, I am aware that the canon name for the female farmer in Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar is Gretel. However, I am not a fan of that name, so I will be changing the character's name to Gwen. This is a love story between the female farmer and Ivan; enjoy!
My feet were aching by the time I reached the waterfall again. After a full day of caring for all the early spring crops, the livestock, and my fruit trees, as well as taking time to bond with my pets, my day still hadn't been done. Every day, I took time to visit each and every resident in Zephyr Town, making sure everyone was content, and if there was any way I could help. It was about four o'clock at night, and the sun was just beginning to dip below the tree line of the forest to the west of the small town.
Today was the 22nd day of Spring in my second year, and the year had began in a rush. My first week of the season was swamped with tilling the land from its winter harshness into supple soil, scattering seeds, watering and re-watering them, and making sure there was enough fertilizer to go around. When the seeds were beginning to sprout by the second week, and I was less worried about losing the harvest to the chill of the recent Winter.
I went around earlier that day, greeting the townspeople, taking time to ask them about their health, the weather, their work. I'm of a more reserved demeanor, so I spend most of the time listening, taking into account even the slightest complaint my neighbors might say. When Joan had complained that the past week of straight rain had washed all the flowers away, I'd ran home and grabbed a Toy Flower I had put in storage. When she saw it, the way her elderly eyes lit up was sweet.
"Oh my! Is this for me?" she had squeaked when I had held it out to her. "Thank you! How on Earth did you find this little guy?" she inquired further as she took it gently from my grasp.
"I found him at the beginning of the season," I had replied with a small smile. "I thought he might come in handy some day."
"You are just too kind!" Joan sighed. "Marian, isn't Gwen just too kind?"
"The kindest!" Marian called from across the café, with an agreeing nod of her blonde head as she served a passing through tourist a cup of tea. I hid my blush by turning, and with a quick goodbye, left the café. Outside, the sun was out from a seemingly endless cloud cover, at long last. The town was more of a lake, with how many puddles were scattered about. It being a weekend, I spent some time at Freya's house next.
Freya didn't have very many ties in town. No family, and no close friends before I moved to town. She was a very dedicated and hard working woman, pouring all of her energy into her work in the city. She was working as a mid ranking accountant in a business firm in the heart of the metropolis, but she was hoping for a promotion soon to being the head of the department. She enjoyed her work; there, she was important and surrounded by people just as motivated as her. In town, she often felt lonely.
I myself moved to the town for the exact opposite reason. I grew up in the city she and Claude work in, and hated it. The smog of the traffic, the honking of horns, the stank of countless bodies, the grey and black of endless cracked sidewalk…I craved the green grass, the fresh air, the blue sky, endless above me, and not framed by a rigid skyline. When I heard that a small town just removed from the bustle of the city was in need of a farmer, I'd jumped at the opportunity.
I suppose that's why we got along so well, her and I. Although we both are very different, we had two things in common: we were both lonely, looking for someone who understood a busy schedule, and we both were severely dedicated to our work. Being a farmer was the best decision I could've ever made.
I'd left Freya's after about an hour of relaxing, and had carefully crossed the bridge over the Zephyr River. The week straight of rain had caused the river to swell dangerously; whereas it usually slipped through the town, an old friend to the residents here, it was now angrily roaring, white foam spraying into the air. The bridges were soaked from the mist, and I could feel it quake beneath my feet as I jogged over it, afraid it would give out beneath me.
After shooting a nervous glance behind me, I had walked east to the mayor's spare house, and I was now climbing the front steps. I knock on the door and wait patiently. Lloyd opens the door after a moment, and smiles when he sees it is me. He invites me in, and I ask him about his day. After small talk, I inquire quietly about a few of the more intricate artifacts in his home, and he happily tells me of the places he collected each one from.
When I feel that I've begun to overstay my welcome, I excuse myself, saying I have to bring in the some of the animals for the evening. Lloyd walks me to the door, seeming pleased that I checked on him again. For the first year of my residency in the town, I talked to every single resident every single day. It had been exhausting, but it had also paid off; everyone in town enjoyed my company, and looked forward to my visits.
"Thank you for visiting my out of the way home, Gwen," Lloyd nodded, his stoic face emotionless.
"Thank you for having me," I nod, equally polite. I begin to walk away, but Lloyd calls out to me.
"You know…" he begins as I turn back to him. He sighs, and I begin to worry I've angered him, when he smiles at me, his head cocking to the side. "This town is really beginning to feel like my home. I hope you feel the same, Gwen." I blush and nod, quickly turning away and retreating.
Male attention has always made my already quiet personality silent and unsure. On the rare occasions I thought a man might be showing me interest, I've seized up and frozen, or ran scared from the situation. Friendship is fine, but… I just don't have the time to commit to dating. With the farm and having to care for the villagers just as much as the mayor, I also don't have the energy.
I turn to see if Lloyd is still watching me from the door, and I am relieved to find that he has closed the door and gone inside. It's about a quarter till five, and the sun has cast its warm, late afternoon rays across the town, bathing us in warmth.
I sneak by Lloyd's house, retracing my steps, and slip next to the waterfall, which is roaring at me defiantly. I recheck to make sure no one is watching, then jump onto the hidden shelf just above my sight, behind the curtain of water. I brush my hand against a regular looking rock, and hear the caw of a hawk over the deafening waterfall high above.
When I open my eyes again, the roar of the waterfall is gone, and I'm in complete silence. I step from the portal's mouth, and it's so quiet I can hear my footsteps echo across the still water around me. A light, unlike the sun's, is constant here, never getting dark at night, or more intense as afternoon approaches. The unearthly light reveals endless trees in all directions, disappearing with distance and with mist. The portal deposits me onto a floating stone walkway, just an inch above the still lake. The water never ripples, never shifts, a liquid, still mirror that perfectly reflects all around it.
I cross the floating stones slowly, taking time to admire the ethereal beauty of this parallel plane before quietly entering the Nature Shrine at the end of the pathway. Emiko turns when I enter, halting her ritual. She offers a shy smile.
"I wondered if you'd come back," she says with a relieved grin.
"I'm sorry, I tried," I mumble guiltily. "We've had a week straight of rain, and the portal won't open for me whenever the weather isn't calm." Emiko's smooth, ageless brow ripples in confusion, but smoothes into glee when I hand her an egg.
"What is this?" she asks in awe. As I launch into an explanation and function of the ever impressive egg, I try to shake my guilt. I met Emiko on the first of Spring my second year, and was saddened to hear that, for an endless period of time, her duty as the Nature Shrine's Maiden was the keep the balance of nature in the Zephyr area for the Harvest Goddess. I'd never heard of the Harvest Goddess before meeting Emiko, but she assured me she was real. Emiko's only purpose was to hold the balance of life and death in the town by performing countless rituals, and to soften the severity of her duty, the Goddess had bestow Emiko with immortality ages ago. For years, she had never seen another face, until mine, a few weeks ago. I tried not to imagine how distraught she must've felt this past week when I had stopped my daily visits to break up her loneliness, when she thought I would never come back. I try my best to shake my guilt at making her panic and worry, but I can't seem to rid myself of the shame.
After I am done speaking about eggs, we sit together in silence, both of us quiet and just enjoying the presence of the other. Emiko looks at me with such glee and gratefulness, and my shame intensifies. I tell her goodbye for the day, and promise to return the next day with another gift from the outside world. When I promise her I'll return, her faces lights up with anticipation, and I feel even more guilty for being away for so long.
I close the shrine's door as carefully as possible, but the sound still bounces around off the trees. I stare at my boots as I walk across the stone walkway, the silence around me calming. I mentally reprimand myself for making such a vulnerable person feel so alone, and enter the portal without thought.
I'm so confused and absorbed in my self-disappointment that I forget the state of things in the real world. I walk straight forward from the portal's exit, and instead of being able to turn and hop from the hidden shelf, I am battered with several hundred pounds of water.
Fear seizes my throat; I try to step back, but I'm already being shoved to my knees by the weight of the falling liquid, soaking my clothes and making me heavier. I claw at the stone shelf's edge, trying to hang on, but the lip is slick, my forward momentum is pulling me forward and over the edge.
The first impact, my horizontal body with the roaring river's surface, stuns me, the pain of my body suddenly slamming flat into the depths, burning the entire front side of my body. The second impact of my head on a giant stone beneath the surfaces nearly knocks me out. Around me, the water is both red with blood, white with foam and bubbles, and pitch black with dirt and depth. I struggle sluggishly to the surface trying to breathe, and I break the surface momentarily. I gasp desperately for air, and I hear someone, I think Freya, screech in terror, and call for help, before my skull slams into the underside of the first bridge. All is black.
My lungs are burning, and I need air, but everything is so heavy. Even trying to twitch my finger feels like trying to raise houses. Suddenly, a lurch of energy slams into my head, and I flip onto my side.
I vomit up river water, murky with soil. After I retch the water from my lungs, I keep expelling, the remains in my stomach burning up my esophagus and stinking as it all mixes together beneath me, on a wooden surface. My eyes burn; I can feel dirt beneath the lids. I claw at them, trying to clean them, my body quaking with the cold and adrenaline.
"Daddy, is she okay?" a small voice sobs. I freeze and open my eyes; the entire town is around me, all with varying expressions of terror, panic, and concern. Nearest to me are the town's three children. "Daddy, is she going to be okay?" Cindy cries again.
"Get them out of here!" Ethel, who is behind me, says, with surprising severity and authority. Wilbur, who is often quite inscrutable, herds the three youngsters away quickly, uncharacteristic tears of worry streaking down his cheeks.
I take a moment to appraise everything around me. My clothes and hair are soaked, and I remember falling into the waterfall. I glance over at the Zephyr River; it is still foaming and raging, demanding I return to its deadly embrace. I shiver in fear.
I'm sprawled on Angelo's wooden porch in front of his home, on the edge of town. I'm sitting in a pool of river water and my on refuse. I look at the sky; the sky is orange and red, and I guess the time is just after five. I look at my neighbors in bewilderment, shaking with fear and realization of what I just escaped.
"I saw you fall into the river," Freya says, answering my question and wild gaze. Her eyes are wet with recently stopped tears, and her hair is tangled. "I screamed for everyone to try and get you out, but Ivan was the one who got you." I scan the crowd and find the teacher. He is the only other person who is soaked to the bone like me.
We stare at each other of a moment, and then with a heavy sigh, falls to his knees before me in exhaustion. "I was just watching to water from the dock by the windmill," he croaks. "Trying to see if I could find any fish I'd read about in the tide pools. I heard Antoinette screaming at me, and it was just so out of character for her that I looked up immediately." He looked away from me, haunting dark circles beneath his grey eyes. "The whole town was running at me from the town proper, and all of them were screaming different things at me desperately, but… Antoinette just keep pointing insistently at the river."
He rubs a large hand over his face, smearing mud down his expression, making him look more feral. "I…I saw your hat in the river first, the feather was sticking straight up from the surface. And then… I saw your pink coat, beneath the surface." His words cracked on the last word, and Ivan buries his face in his palms, assumedly to hide tears.
Dirk, my other best friend and Ivan's younger brother, places his hand on Ivan's shoulder comfortingly. " Ivan raced you down the river and lunged over the railing over there," Dirk continues for his brother, nodding his head at the wooden railing that frames Angelo's patio, which hangs over the river's edge. "The current was pretty strong, and he was kinda' underwater himself, but he held onto your wrist until the rest of us got here, and Felix and Claude helped pull you up and over the railing."
I blink dumbly, looking at the people around me. My giant adoptive family. They all look so worried about me. Daisy won't stop crying. Lloyd's turban is askew. Stuart's glasses are missing, somewhere on the path back to town. I try to tell them I'm okay, but things grow blurry. I feel my hair float around me as I feel gravity decrease around me.
"Someone catch her!" Claire shouts.
"Keep her out of her puke!" Raul squeaks.