Harvest Moon: The Yellow Bird
by ACinBC
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harvest Moon. I do not own any lyrics that are written, and if I do, I will say so. I do no own the album or any of the songs this story is based on. I do not own any of the characters, just the situations I put them in and the personalities I give them.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: You know, I wrote the first draft of the first chapter many months ago in a plan to write a novella of sorts, but then I wanted people to read it so I conformed it into the only way possible: a Harvest Moon setting. Now, I do have the video game Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, but I have not gotten very far in the game, so please don't hate me if any personalities, stories, descriptions, or anything else is incorrect. This story will not follow the storyline of the game; it is simply a story with Harvest Moon characters. I do plan on writing more of these kinds of stories, but I don't know because I plan to write a lot and I don't think they will be able to all fit into Mineral Town. So, I may venture into other game formats of the series, but that will come when it comes. Also, know that I edited the first chapter; I didn't do much. All I did was edit the warning, some grammar, and made the chapter name into the song title it is based on. From now on I will use chapter names as the songs they are based off of. Anyways, on to chapter two, please enjoy.
Chapter 2:
We Are Nowhere, And It's Now
Conner pulled himself up off the linoleum kitchen floor. Bottles lay in disarray with a soft pitter-patter of their dribbles splashing and leaving soft puddles of red or bubbly gold. The light shining through the kitchen window was vague and weak but burned fiercely into Conner's pupils. Everything was hazy and bright. The ceiling above him was spinning as he tried to grasp a hold on reality.
Conner ambled slowly towards the bathroom using the wall as a guide. When he reached the toilet he let the burning insides of him spew into the pale white oval. His esophagus burned as he spent the next twenty minutes throwing himself into the drain.
Conner eventually reached the sink to brush his teeth. He then dragged himself into his bedroom and fell back asleep.
A light breeze awakened Conner. After several minutes of gaining his bearings, he dashed into the bathroom and threw up nothing since he hadn't eaten in days. He closed his eyes. The hangover was fading, but his head still pounded as the alcohol continued a slower path pursuing blood in his veins. He pulled himself into the kitchen and ate some bread, the only thing he could really keep down whilst hung over. He noticed the door was open; he had forgotten to shut it.
Conner turned towards the calendar hanging in the kitchen. He couldn't figure out what day it was. He finished the slices of bread he had grasped and grabbed a water bottle and filled it with water. He started drinking rapidly trying to defeat the dehydration he had endured through being asleep for more than a day.
After a few minutes of staring at the wall, Conner pulled himself back into the bathroom where he took a long, warm bath. He then walked into his bedroom, opened his suitcase, and put on a navy t-shirt with the name of a band he had been in while he lived in New York, dark denim jeans, white ankle socks, black slip-on Converse, and a thin black choker on his neck. He didn't bother to fix his hair and by the time it dried there was a gap in the right of his bangs and some strands of hair stuck up elsewhere. He headed out into the grim afternoon.
The sky was an unusual shade of gray and blue as it recovered from the continuous downpour of rain. The weather seemed to be improving though as there were some clear patches of light blue and clouds off in the distance, but the sky hanging over Mineral Town was ambiguous.
Conner wasn't exactly sure where he was going; he just let his feet guide him. He meandered slowly as he passed First Street, Second Street, and turned on Third Street. The whole walk took about forty minutes. He decided to enter Jeff's supermarket but was interrupted when Carter approached him with a watering bin in his hands. The weeds in front of the church were in need of watering so they could become bravura flowers.
"Conner!" Conner winced at the volume of Carter's voice. "I haven't seen you in forever. How've you been?" The town's priest was wearing a black priest's outfit with dark brown lining around the collar and on the zipper. He also had a white cloth draped around his neck that was finely embroidered with blue shapes. His dirty blonde hair was parted wildly to his right. His eyes were blue, and a smile was constantly painted across his face.
"I've been better," Conner mumbled blearily.
"Well that's great, why don't you follow me inside the church; it's awfully cold out here." Conner nodded apprehensively.
The church was large for the small community. The religion of the town was more or less Roman Catholic, but the deity of the church was a Goddess who supposedly resided in the town's lake. Three pews were placed on the left and ride side of the church, and a red carpet with gold lining led the way from the door to the pulpit where their version of a bible was placed. One could enter the confessional booth from a door to the right, and a door to the left led outside to the church's private quarters. Many candles and other churchlike decorative items were tossed askew throughout the church to add a touch to its cold and dim lighted aesthetic, however on extremely sunny summer days the church was vibrant and more pleasing. Copious shards of glass reflected many colors of the rainbow and were placed in windows to tell stories. The most genial of all the stained glass windows was one of the Goddess dressed in her alluring blue dress with her long, flowing green hair pulled into a ponytail and a placid look draped across her face. Her beauty was astounding. The window alone made the stony, gray of the church seem the more likeable.
Carter guided Conner to the front pew as he rambled on and on about how pretty his leonidas roses would be once they blossomed. Carter placed the bin down and they sat in the uncomfortable and hard wooden pews.
"So, what finally brings you outside of your mother's house? It's been three days since I heard you arrived!" Carter exclaimed.
"I ran out of wine," Conner said candidly.
"That's not the best thing to do…" Carter ran off, his voice filled with concern.
"I know. It's a bad habit; I actually hate the taste of wine."
"Well, if you hate the taste of wine, why do you drink it 'til you're blind?" he questioned. Conner raised his muddy eyes to meet Carter's troubled azure ones. Conner leaned forward, placed his elbows on his legs, held his hands together, and twiddled his thumbs.
"I don't know," Conner began to explain. "There's no truth in the world anymore. I honestly just haven't cared much about living recently." His voice resonated knowledge as he tried to explain himself.
"And if you swear that there's no truth and who cares, how come you say it like you're right?"
"What do you want from me?" Conner's voice started rising slowly. "I just can't find much light in the world."
"Have you tried religion, my son? It's been so long since I've ever seen you happy."
"Religion is dead for me. I can't be forgiven for the things I've done and may do. And besides, I fear judgment."
"Why are you scared to dream of the Goddess, when it's salvation that you want?" Conner sighed.
"I don't know. I just want to move on with my life, but I don't know what's out there. I just want to find something, I guess. I don't know what it is, but I know I have to search for it. I might as well continue here."
"You see stars that clear have been dead for years," Carter said wisely "but the idea just lives on." Conner turned his head back up to meet Carter's gaze. He had had enough. He stood up to leave.
"What do you want from me?" He almost shouted at the man. Carter's eyes turned away in pain.
"I just want you to be happy," he replied.
"Thank you for your time," Conner said pensively to his old friend as he headed out the door.
The sounds of waves crashing on rocks miles out soothed Conner's flaming temper. He had spent hours sitting behind a rock next to the shore. The moon and stars were out in full force, lighting the sea for miles beyond the horizon. Cigarette butts lay erratically around him. A bottle of wine lay half-empty next to him as he stared at the stars.
"What is it I want? What is it I'm searching for?" Conner heard crunching in the sand around him and arced his back to see whom it was. A beautiful, angelic figure roamed the shore staring off into the distance. Her flowing brown hair reached her lower back and blonde highlights plagued the naturally beautiful hair in the bangs. She had on a sleeveless white t-shirt with a sleeveless mauve vest. A white sweater draped her shoulders to keep out the bitter cold and ocean zephyrs. Short denim shorts were tightly wrapped around her vibrant winter paled legs, and brown sandals were on her feet. She slowly took the sandals off and walked forward to let the freezing water wrap around her legs. She continued staring out before the breeze caught up the scent of cigarette smoke and alcohol and guided her to where Conner was sprawled watching the picturesque girl.
"Mind if I join you?" The girl said, hungrily eyeing the wine bottle. Conner merely nodded. He remembered her from years ago but couldn't place her name.
"Wow, Conner, it's been so long," she opened as the wine warmed her.
"Yes… it has," he said slowly trying to recall her name while trying to be inconspicuous with eyeing her perky breasts.
"What has it been? Four years?" she questioned. He nodded.
"I turned twenty-one this past fall," she spoke hoping Conner would somehow remember her.
"Karen?" he asked. She smiled warmly.
"I see you've become quite a hard alcoholic," she said smelling the past weeks ventilate through his pores, alcohol and nicotine. He nodded again.
"I'm awfully sorry for your loss." Her words were clichéd. It seemed like he had somehow passed almost every visitor on his way to Aja Winery and then to the beach. They all had the same thing to say. He nodded a third time. They sat there in silence for many minutes before Karen turned her now rosy face to him.
"When's the funeral going to be?"
"I don't know yet, maybe next Tuesday. I've got to run it over with Carter," he thought out loud. Carter probably was still hurt but would definitely help his friend. They sat in silence for several more minutes before Karen stood up.
"I'm gonna go. Mind if I take this?" she held up the wine bottle. He shook his head and watched as she walked off.
"Wait!" he called out.
"Yeah?" she hollered back.
"You wanna just ditch town? I could show you places you've probably never seen before." She took a few seconds to ponder the question before replying.
"Sure," and she walked home.
As Conner walked home, his feet merely guided him like wheels that roll around. He watched the ground as he hovered over it and thought about Karen. He felt trapped in between a past and future town as he thought about her.
There was no present as he made his way back to the farm south of the village. He barely recalled her from when he lived there. For as long as he could remember, she had had a scent of wine on her breath, but he couldn't ever remember why. Maybe she was just another hopeless addict of the vile substance, but that didn't matter to Conner, he was addicted too no matter how much he denied it. He just couldn't remember anything about her, and that bothered him greatly. He felt like his memories were nowhere, but they were now. He couldn't quite place the anomalous feeling as his slowly depleting brain cells whisked through the batter to find her face. She simply felt like a ten minute dream one would have in the passenger's seat while the world flies by; a dream that can't be remembered but the dreamer knows it occurred. He hadn't been gone very long from Mineral Town, but it certainly felt like a lifetime.
Suddenly a delicate memory came back to him. They were maybe sixteen or seventeen, and they stood ready to head down into the depths of the spring mine when Karen had recalled a story she had been told as a child.
"Back in the days when they first created this mine," she began, "the diggers would have a cage of canaries, and would send them down the mines to find out if there was a lack of oxygen or any other dangerous gases. If the canary died or never came back, then they knew that something was wrong, and so they didn't send the humans down."
Conner shook his head as the memory floated out of his head like a wisp of wind. He sighed as he entered his mother's home and fell asleep on his old bed.
For the next week, Conner spent time with Carter reconciling for the way he had acted earlier and planning out the simple funeral service the town would hold in memory of Laura. He also wrote a song he planned to play at the service.
The funeral was planned to contain a simple wake where instead of a body there was the most recent photograph of Laura before she died; everyone would then pay their respects to Conner as he stood indignantly on the side. After that Carter would say a few words, Conner would say a few words, Conner would play his song, and then they would stand around a headstone Carter graciously bought to be placed in the graveyard on the left side of the church. Conner would have preferred to have his mother's body buried, but there was nothing he could do about that.
On the day of the funeral Conner wore a long-sleeved sky blue oxford t-shirt with blue jeans wrapped around his waist. The shirt was untucked, the sleeves were unbuttoned and rolled up to a few inches in front of his elbows, and the top button on the shirt was unbuttoned. A light red t-shirt was worn as an undershirt and a casual brown belt kept the jeans from falling off his skinny hips. He had on his usual low-tops Converse. His hair was nonchalantly combed and flung to the side, and his face was still unshaven. Dark circles had formed around his eyes from crying, lack of sleep, and an over consumption of alcohol.
Conner stood at the front of the church where a gorgeous picture of his mother and him was placed next to him on the pulpit. The picture had been taken in New York City the last time she had visited. They both had looked so happy and content with one another's presence with not a care in the world for that brief moment.
Everyone from town came that day; Gotz even ventured out from his shack on the north border of the forest to the south of town, and Kai braved the winter current to come also. Even some of the townspeople from the town to the west came to pay their respects because Conner's mom had touched so many people's lives with her presence. Most everyone was surprised to have Conner back, and most of the adults were goaded that he was back. A lot of the teenage girls swooned recalling times Conner had flirted with them, and a lot of their 'callers' were nervous about their suddenly flirtatious reaction to having Conner back in town. The only people who seemed exceptionally happy to have him back were Carter, Doug, Ann, and the always happy and blithe Mayor Thomas.
"Please, would everyone sit down and get quiet?" Carter commenced politely. "We are all here to remember a fine woman who graced our town with her presence…" Carter's speech was as beautiful as Conner could've imagined. Tears dribbled down his cheeks to the conclusion of the priest's speech where he reminisced some of the times he shared with Laura and things she did for the town. Many other audience members were dabbing tears from the corners of their eyes, mostly women and Doug who bawled loudly.
After the speech Carter invited Conner up to share a few words. A deafening silence crossed over the crowd like an extreme wave of fog cutting their audibility off from the world. Conner eased his way up to the wooden podium and cleared his throat vociferously with the microphone emanating his voice.
"Umm…" he began feebly, "I, er, thank you all for coming to my mother's funeral; I'm sure she would have appreciated it." Conner looked around at the crowd. He had no idea what to say or any idea of what these people wanted to hear. He cleared his throat and picked up his trumpet.
"I, uh, wrote this song for my mom recently," he said as he licked his lips and blew a few raspberries to get them prepared. He moved over to the organ bench and placed his trumpet there. Carter handed him a microphone with a microphone stand, and Conner adjusted it while he sat on the bench. He pulled a crumpled piece of white notebook paper out of his pocket and placed it on the stand attached to the organ. Clear tear stains and red wine stains plagued the black ink which hadn't dried by the time he had folded the paper up, so the music was additionally beleaguered by black ink. But Conner was used to reading the music he wrote this way. He sighed a bit as he blew his lips once more and brought the trumpet's mouthpiece to his lips.
Conner held the trumpet with his right hand and used that hand to press the valves down as he used his left hand to play simple chords on the keyboard. The chords fit fragilely with the trumpet notes that were simple scale maneuvers, but it all sounded so peaceful. He rose slowly up a scale and slurred around a bit with the top few notes. He quickly pulled the trumpet from his face and placed more attention to the organ as he opened his mouth and took a deep gust of air into his lungs.
"I've been sleeping so strange at night—" he wailed into the microphone with his soothing voice. He quickly played two ascending notes before three descending notes on his trumpet.
"Side effects they don't advertise—" he sang before the playing the same trumpet notes with a few organ chords.
"I've been sleeping so strange—" he did his quick maneuvers again.
"With a head full of pesticide," maneuvered. He then played a few more high notes on the trumpet before switching all focus to the organ. He ended the short song with a quiet flurry of eighth notes before ending with a soft, low chord.
Conner turned around on the piano bench to inspect his audience's reaction. All of the teenagers stood up and applauded loudly with many cheers. Carter, Doug, and a few other kind adults also joined in, but the rest of the adults either clapped politely or whispered cheekily. As Conner placed his trumpet in its black, leather case, he felt his ears itching.
Conner stayed long after the ceremony had ended. He felt the tears try to escape the forest of his five-o'clock shadow but didn't mind them. He stared at the engraved passage of his mother's cold, gray tombstone.
"Laura Disedare,
A Loving Mother and
Town's member.
1956-2006
R.I.P."
Conner sighed as he looked down at all of the flowers people had placed on her bodiless burial plot. He shook his head as he felt the salt escape his eyes again. A rose dangled precariously from Conner's tightly clenched palm. He felt blood trickle through his fingers, and he heard it hit the grass. He didn't care. He had no plans and too much time. Eventually, he dropped the red rose and turned to walk away; he turned when he heard it fall to the ground making a sound almost familiar to a plane splashing into the ocean. He walked slowly back to his mother's home, a cigarette lit in his mouth as he blew smoke and let the wind carry it away.
Conner plopped himself down on the couch. He grabbed a bottle that was sitting on the coffee table and brought it to his lips. Nothing rolled down his throat. He sighed as he peered into the bottle and saw only droplets of the liquid left. He had forgotten to get more alcohol that day. He sat up and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and peered into it. He had a couple of gold left, but the winery was closed. Besides, he felt too restless to unwind. He checked the cat clock across the wall in the kitchen his mother had allotted. 6:49 PM. He had a few minutes before the bar opened.
Conner got up and headed out the door staring up at the cold, winter sky as it changed magnificently from blue to pink to orange to red to purple. He eventually immersed himself in thought, getting lost in it as he walked the block to his favorite neon sign.
He stood outside of the Inn and stared at the sign he had grown to love over the years. The word 'Inn' was in bright red surrounded by bright neon green. Below the word more words read: Bar hours 19:00 – 21:00. Just enough for the tranquil town's folk to get drunk, Conner thought to himself.
He entered the Inn a few minutes before seven and sat at a table in the corner, secluding himself from the world. Ann approached him wearing her waitresses' apron with a concerned look curtained on her face blocking the warmth and sunlight from shining. She looked at Conner and sighed quietly.
"Vodka," he said; he had had enough of the soft liquor his mother owned. She nodded and walked to the bar to pour him a glass of vodka. She brought it over to him and watched as he drained it.
"Keep 'em comin'," He slurred. She eventually just brought out the bottle before heading over to the jukebox. She turned it on to a soothing folk song and turned as she started humming. Conner hummed along as he smiled back at her.
Karen came to the bar after work at her parents' superstore. A large sweater covered her body, and a khaki skirt graced her legs. Conner waved her over and she sat down, her features had already started to blur to him, but her hair and face was still as elegant as ever.
She said, "These bars are filled with things that kill." She rolled her eyes as Ann handed her wine, the usual for Karen.
"We probably should have learned," she finished. Conner simply nodded as he sipped on his vodka bottle, the burning sensation on his throat had already given way and the tears from the burning had already dried; the vodka was calming him.
"I don't even know why I came here," Conner confessed. "I think I'm in over my head. I don't know what I'm going to do. My mom would want me to stay, but I'm no farmer. And I have a life in New York and an apartment." Karen was rolling her eyes as she sipped more and more wine.
"Did you forget that yellow bird?" she said. He turned his head to face her incredulously. His eyes wouldn't focus on her face, and his head bobbled. She shook her head knowing the answer.
"How could you forget your yellow bird?" Conner laid his head down and rested his aching head. Why couldn't he answer? Why hadn't he thought of the consequences before coming down to Mineral Town? There was no explanation, only excuses. He sighed and answered truthfully, "I don't know."
Karen reached into her purse and pulled out a metal brooch. She smiled as she pinned it onto Conner's light blue oxford shirt. It was a small silver wreath ordained to be beautiful. It appeared several years old because the paint was chipping, and the underlining silver looked tarnished. The wreath was more or less a yellow-green tree or bush with a few limbs visible. In the upper left hand of the tree a small bird was perched looking ahead.
She said, "This one will bring you love." Conner looked down at it and compulsively wiped dust from it and smiled.
"Thank you," he replied as he drained the last bit of his vodka.
"I'll see you later," he mumbled as he placed a few gold on the table for Ann as a tip. He left the building into the wintry night air and made his way back home.
Conner stared at himself blearily in the mirror on his mother's bureau in her bedroom. He looked at the brooch and watched as the bird took flight into the air and floated all around before re-perching itself on the limb.
"I don't know if it's true," he spoke eloquently, "but I'll keep it for good luck." And he turned around, turned off the lights, and perched himself on his mother's bed waiting for sleep to whisk him away.
A/N: I hope you enjoyed that chapter. It took me the longest time to write the whole funeral scene; I could've finished this chapter a lot sooner if I had planned ahead for the funeral, but ah well… I think it came out fine enough. I hope you didn't get confused with the song scene at the funeral, and I hope this chapter wasn't too boring. Thanks for those who commented, and look forward to the next addition.