My first morning on the farm, I woke up half-in, half-out of the tiny twin-sized bed, the blanket mostly fallen off of me. The inside of the cottage was blue with early morning light. I sat up and scratched my beard. I couldn't remember the last time I had felt so well-rested. Still, I would have killed for a hot cup of coffee. I opened a jar of dilly beans and ate a handful before setting out to work. What an odd feeling not to have a commute.

I sowed my first batch of turnips as the sun started to rise over town. My mind was like an old cash register, spewing off a receipt from the top of my head. I needed more seeds to get off the ground. It would likely wipe out my savings, and I most likely wouldn't have any more money until harvest. That meant I needed some way to feeding myself in the meantime. The thought frightened me. I had never lived so far away from a convenience store that, no matter how broke I was, I couldn't get some kind of cheap snack. I had never known true food scarcity.

When the morning chores were done, I crossed my farm to the southern border towards the forest lake. Maybe there were birds to shoot and rabbits to trap. Maybe, in the library, I could find a book like Betty had had, and fill my stomach without poisoning myself. I followed the border of the lake, where thornless bushes clustered, speckled with tiny dark fruit. Just as I leaned in to pick a few, a woman's voice said, "Don't eat that."

I turned my head. The third redhead I had met so far in this town. Her hair looked natural, too. What were the odds of that happening in three unrelated women? "Why not?"

"They're poisonous." I looked between her and the fruit. They glistened juicily. "That's deadly nightshade."

I froze.

"Yeah, half a dozen of those will put even a guy your size in the hospital. If you're looking to forage, follow me. I know a place."

Leah and I introduced ourselves and crossed from small island to small island on rickety slat footbridges. She walked across easily without even holding out her arms. I wasn't sure they would hold under me, so I took baby steps. "How'd you learn to forage?"

"I got sick a lot in the beginning." She grinned over her shoulder at me. She reminded me of a drinking partner I had had at Joja, before she was terminated. "I hope this isn't too blunt- as you get to know me, you'll see that's just how I am- but you seem very new to country life. I know you're the new farmer and all. I just mean…"

"You're right. I don't have a lot of survival skills."

She hopped off the last slat. "Don't be embarrassed. It takes getting used to. What brought you out here?"

She had stopped, and I stopped not far behind her. "I don't know," I said honestly, with a shrug. Leah seemed to grasp my tone and expression better than most of the people I'd met so far in the valley, her reactions about what I'd expect based on what I'd meant to convey. She nodded.

"You don't have to know." She smiled, and waved her arm out before us. "Check it out."

This little clearing in the backwoods looked unlike anyplace else in the valley. It was obvious that this area wasn't travelled often, let alone trimmed or sprayed. Great patches of land were completely bald of grass, packed instead with a variety of familiar-looking weeds.

"Spring onions, wild potato- these are strange because they taste more like carrots. These brown mushrooms are safe, I can vouch for that, and the yellow ones too. I don't know the name of the root under the broad-leaf plant, but it's starchy and filling." Leah went on in this fashion for a few minutes. Her information was just right, brief but thorough, and always managed to answer my questions before I could ask them. When she was done, she pulled two folded-up cloth bags from her pockets and gave me one. "Here, take what you need."

I thanked her, and for a while we picked in silence. "What brought you here?"

"The worst creative block of my adult life," she smiled. "I came for a change of scene. What about you?"

I thought hard, pulling up a wild potato from so low on its stalk that my fingernails scraped the dirt. "I came to figure some things out."

"Sounds like we have a lot in common."

"Sounds like it, yeah."

"Getting used to life here isn't as hard as it looks. This is probably the hardest things will ever be for you, this first spring. Because you have no safety nets- all your money is tied up in crops, and you haven't had any harvests yet, meaning you have no stores. But beyond this, money isn't much of a concern here. Once you figure out how to come by, preserve, and store all the food you need, you're pretty free to do whatever you please."

"Sounds good," I say, slinging my bag over my shoulder. "I'm gonna head back."

"Real quick, before you go- Willy's teaching me how to fish tomorrow evening. You should come and learn, too. Afterwards we're going to have a bonfire, and you can meet Elliott."

"What time?"

"Sevenish."

"Great." By this point, we had crossed back almost to Leah's cottage, and were able to go our separate ways shortly after saying goodbye.

That afternoon I visited the library for a book on food storage. I borrowed it and applied what I found to what I had foraged with Leah, hoping I could keep it fresh for at least a week. Clustering food-gathering trips would get me the most food per trip, and leave me more time for more important things, I reasoned. I fell asleep faster knowing that someone was waiting for me the next day.

Lots of people in developed areas talk about "getting off the grid." We grew up with good infrastructure, power and water supplied by district lines, gas pumped through massive industrial pipes that snaked silently beneath suburban homes and hidden within the innermost walls of skyscrapers. Our amenities were expected, reliable, regulated, 99.9 percent of the time. Then, maybe once a year or less frequently, a storm would knock out the power, or your water would get shut off for maintenance. People would act like it was ridiculous and the only "true" solution was to get off the grid- to supply your own amenities.

Of course it's annoying to wake up and discover that your power's out and your phone didn't charge at all last night, or realizing that your shower won't start after returning from the gym. But in an area like Stardew Valley, infrastructure like that was an unattainable luxury. It would be impossibly expensive to run pipes and lines out here. That's why all the landlines are satellite phones, and everybody has propane tanks, generators, well water, and septic tanks. Being off the grid changes the way you use amenities. If you run out of propane, for instance, it could take a week for more to come in, and that means a week without heat, hot water, or cooked meals.

That's part of the reason why food storage was so important. I grew up with refrigerators and freezers, ready-made meals, tupperware and ziploc bags. Out here, if somebody had a 2,000 or 4,000 watt generator, they most likely wouldn't use 500 watts to cool their fridge and another 600 to chill their freezer. They needed that wattage to service all their needs. That wattage would be used to keep the lights on, to keep the phone viable, to power things we don't even think about, like sparking the pilot light on a gas stove. This informed my desire to learn to can and dry and pickle as soon as possible. I would need these skills to build up my stores for my first winter.

As I arrived at the beach, I wondered who could teach me these skills, or if I'd have to learn them from a book. Maybe Leah would know. She seemed to be a treasure trove of useful information. She had survived her first winter, after all. The day was overcast and cool, doubly so at the dock. The waves looked choppy and gray. I looked around for Leah, but couldn't find her on the small stretch of beach, so I knocked on Willy's shed out on the pier. We shook hands and Willy handed me an old bamboo pole. He admitted that he didn't have the faintest idea where she was, but we could get started in the meantime.

We dug out a pit a few feet from where a stake in the sand marked a typical high tide. We dragged over some driftwood and started a bonfire, somewhere to retreat to now and again when the seaside chill got into your bones. Willy passed me a bottle of mead, and started teaching me how to cast. Eventually Leah and Elliott emerged from the cottage at the far end of the beach, and I began to understand. I passed them the bottle and they joined the lesson.

Elliott was an attractive guy, with perfect dimples and a self-satisfied gleam in his eye. It really bothered me that he never looked at me head-on. "Nice to meet you," he began smoothly. I couldn't help but feel that he sounded smug. "You must be Clark."

"Yup."

"He needs to learn all the same skills we needed to learn this time last year," Leah added.

"Oh! Why didn't you say so? Well, I can't promise you'll get good at fishing, but between the three of us, you'll get very good at drinking."

"Great." I tried to smile. Elliott looked at me knowingly, and smiled back.

"All jokes aside, you'll definitely want to become a decent fisherman. It can be hard to get any amount of protein around here. Someday, of course, you'll have livestock and from them all the meat, milk, and eggs you could want, but until then, you still need to eat."

"Yeah," I agreed. I realized I sounded short with him, so I went on, after a pause, "That's why I'm here."

We fished for a couple hours afterward. Willy started to get bleary-eyed around sundown. "Did I ever tell you about my lovely Frannie?" He sighed. Leah tried to signal me against it, but it didn't register in time. "Years ago, there was a woman who loved me as much I loved the sea. Agh, but I was a fool…"

Elliott lowered his voice. "He tells this story every time he gets drunk. You ought to go home. We'll take care of him."

"I really don't mind," I said. They seemed pleased. We listened without reaction to Willy's story of his long-lost love, lines in the water all the while. It seemed to bring him peace. When it was over, the sky was dark and full of stars. The fire was mostly red coals. Leah demonstrated unhooking a fish and spearing it for roasting. She explained what size was well-suited for roasting on the bone, and which fish should be kept alive in a bucket for cleaning and preparing at home.

I gently pried Willy's fishing pole out of his hands and replaced it with a speared fish. He was out of it, lost in drunken thought, but able to feed himself just fine. I took my own share of cooked fish and breathed in the smoke and steam. "Wow," I mumbled quietly to myself, already salivating.

Elliott laughed quietly. We all ate without much talking, Leah and Elliott sitting within an inch of one another. I struggled internally with why this bothered me. I was exclusively interested in women, but was also mostly friends with women, especially while working at Joja. I didn't think this was a romantic jealousy. What I felt was too vague, too dull, to be romantic jealousy. I didn't want Leah as one wants a partner. I resented that I had to share the woman who was, so far, my only friend in town with someone who was clearly very close to her. It was unfair of me, and I knew that.

When the fish were eaten or divided among us, I helped them get Willy inside and put out the fire. I walked home alone, trying to reason with my jealousy, my loneliness. Someday, I would be well-established in the valley, and would know everyone who lived here, and hopefully have lots of friends. I'd be involved in the community. I'd be known as someone who did right by their neighbors, someone who was reliable, dependable. I'd find the right girl, get married, have a family, and be inseparable from the lifelong valley residents.

Preoccupied, I took a detour to pass by the small mobile home, where the girl with the moonlit eyes lived. So far, I hadn't had a chance to see her in sunlight, or see her at all. She was reclusive compared to most people I'd met. I'd occasionally spy her in the shade of a tree or around the library, but I usually had no business with her, and was otherwise unsure how to approach her. I tried to think of an excuse to talk to her and find out what she liked.


Special thanks to ChocolateTeapot for always reading carefully and catching all my typos.