Prologue
Growing up, I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. All I knew was that it was not going to be farming. Goddess forbid it be farming.
My father, Jack, was a farmer. And a functional alcoholic. He spent most of his time breaking his back in the fields, trying to sell his crops and products at different markets, and spent just as much time comatose on the couch or embarrassing us both around town. None of that ever appealed to me, and every time I was dragged along, I dragged my feet relentlessly.
Life in Mineral Town was unremarkable. Wash, rinse, and repeat, for years on end.
All the kids my age treated me like a monster because I lived on the outskirts of town, and my dad dressed me like a boy until I was 8, so I can't say I made too many friends. I did have a boyfriend for a while, Kai. I met him when I was 12 and he was 13, and he made me the best smoothie I had ever had in my life. The idea of Kai was insane to me. A 13 year old boy, with a head of unruly brown curls, skin all burnt and peeling, but tan from days spent in the sun on the deck of his very own houseboat. When he moved here, all the girls my age were dying for a look inside, and of course, Karen was the first girl to demand to be given a tour.
She must have put a sour taste in his mouth, because he invited me over for lunch right after Karen left, when he saw me looking for shells on the beach. He was one of the first people my age to give me more than just polite disdain, and I ended up following him around like a puppy dog all summer long. He was smart, adventurous, and funnier than anyone I'd ever met. He was my first kiss that day and he told me I was his third. We spent countless hours giggling under the setting sun, and he'd play with my hair and tell me that out of all the girls he'd met on his travels, none ever made him want to stay in town all season like I had.
He had a mean streak, too. Once, when he saw me getting a little chatty while delivering a dairy order to Rick and his family when we first started going steady, he made out with Popuri on the beach and ignored me for a week. But we ended up making up, and before Summer 30th came, it was like nothing ever happened.
When Kai was with me, I felt invincible, like I could talk to anyone and say anything at all. He made me brave enough to stand up to my father, stand up to Karen and her friends. I couldn't wait until Spring came, when I'd get a call any day, telling me he'd be docking within the week. I used to do my homework on the docks every sunny day in Spring, waiting for my Kai to come back to me.
After dragging their kids all across the world for a traveling circus they performed in the first 10 years of their lives, Kai's parents owned an Inn on Toucan Island in their old age, and since they both left Konohana at 15 and 16 years old to experience life, they felt it'd be unfair not to let their children do the same. Kai was the only one of their children earning a 100% honest living, and he was proud of that. His older brother Skye left for Fontine when he was 12 and according to Kai, stole, scammed and cheated his way through life. His older sister Selena was an exotic dancer on Waffle Island and scammed her way across an entire ocean to get there, and his younger brother Denny was a fisherman in the Sunshine Isles who was living with a retired pop star for her money.
He was determined not to steal his way away from home, so he spent 2 summers selling food he made over a bonfire on the beach and saving up the money to buy his small houseboat, and when people started lining up by the dozens to buy his grilled corn, the pipe dream of Kai's Summer Shack was born.
He dropped out of school as soon as he had enough savings and ended up here by accident. From then on, he spent summers in our village, selling grilled corn and snow cones on the beach on his way to Demeter, the coastal city closest to us. He only anchored in warm climates, citing the blizzards of his childhood in Konohana, up in the mountains as scarring him for life. I wished Mineral Town was a tropical island just as much as I breathed.
I used to wake up at 7am every morning to get a head start on my chores, so I could go meet him by lunchtime, maybe even 10 or 11 if I was lucky. I'd pour syrup on snow cones for smiley, cheery boys and girls that would have ignored me otherwise. We'd work until sunset and spend all night at the Goddess Spring and talk about how he'd take me away from this 'miserable peninsula' and show me all the cities he docks in, show me what a hotel really looks like, take me to a different restaurant every day, and a different bar every night. He'd talk about the million different stores, with hundreds of different styles of clothes and shoes in Demeter, and even more in Fontine, the oceanside capital city, how he wanted to buy all of them for me.
I was completely mesmerized by the wild things he described, restaurants that were open all day and all night, buildings that have more than 4 stories, cars of all shapes and sizes, everywhere, all the time. Cafés on the water, all the lights and noise. I almost started to miss it as much as he did when he was here.
Tensions rose high at the end of every Summer, when he would start packing his belongings up and getting his boat ready in between kisses and promises of letters to come. Sometimes I could get him to stay an extra few days, but he was always on the water, his furious waving getting smaller in the horizon on Fall 5th. The rest of the year became dull without him, until the year I turned 16. I met a new friend, finally.
Mineral Town had a few drifters besides Kai. There was Cliff, who stayed for all seasons except Winter some years, and worked at the Winery, there was Gustafa, who had a home base in nearby Forget-Me-Not Valley but traveled for his music career, and then there was Gray.