Sims 3: Zodiac Challenge - Chapter 4, The Rabbit

We left the Ursine (formerly Masemame) family at Haven's funeral.  As the wake carried on into the evening, an unexpected guest turned up.

Serena, Jasper and Haven's mother, and Avery's grandmother.  She has returned from beyond the veil to attend her second daughter's funeral.

Jasper was standing outside.  He burst into tears and wept on his mother's shoulder.

"Hush, my child, my only son..."

Still, Jasper wept in his mother's arms.  As a commitment-phobic loner, he had never married.  He spent most of his life living with his twin, Rosemary, and her wife, Lindsay.  Neither Jasper nor Rosemary had children, but their younger sisters, also twins, Liberty and Haven, had.  Liberty had two girls and Haven had three boys.  Jasper had loved them all, from afar.  He had hated Haven, as a teenager, for asking his girlfriend to break up with him, a girlfriend who is now long-forgotten.  He never told Haven he forgave her.  Not when she gave him his beloved nephew, Avery.  Not at their mother's funeral or their father's.  Not at the funeral of his own twin, their elder sister.  They had lived together, with Avery, for only one day, and now he had outlived another sister, and yet this was worse, because she was younger, not older.  There had always been the possibility that he would outlive Rosemary, but to outlive Haven and Liberty was perverse.  And now he wept in his dead mother's arms and knew that something was deeply wrong with the world.

Serena warned him that their family would soon face a great evil.  She didn't know what it was or when it could come, but she warned her son "you must protect our inheritance" before fading away.

The next night, Jasper was visited by another spirit.  The ghost of his father, Jake, the genius who had built a business empire from nothing, who had cared for all his children from babyhood, who had been a successful author, who had dragged himself out of a shack in the woods and into the heart of the city, a man whose funeral Jasper had attended in Avery's childhood.

He wept again.  His father held him.

"A great change is coming," Jacob said.   "The child must have a guardian."

Jasper knew he was living on borrowed time.  He had outlived two sisters.  Surely it could not be long now.

"Father....I - I'm not long for this world.  I must join you soon."

Jacob looked into his eyes and took his hands.  "The child must have a guardian."

Jasper wracked his brains.  He knew that Bunny had 11 older brothers and sisters.  Jasper himself wouldn't be able to keep her safe throughout her life, but perhaps one of them would be suitable?

A day of research did not give him a great deal of hope.  Many of Bunny's older siblings were evil, or hydrophobic, or had some other flaw.  The best, Bruce, was friendly, good, technophobic, and lucky, but he was already grown, and had his own life.  Would he forsake all that for the sake of a younger half sister?  Would he stay with her throughout her life?  Jasper thought not.

On the third night - which was Christmas, incidentally - Jasper was visited by the third spirit, his sister, Haven, Bunny's grandmother.

"Part of me," she told him.  "Give her a part of me."

When Jasper came to the house, he had two imaginary friend dolls in his inventory.  One, Wiggles, was his own.  Jasper and Wiggles had fallen out long ago.   Jasper apologised, and spent a day appearing as if he were talking to himself, but then they had another row, and Jasper sent him back to doll form.  The other, Buddy, was, I think Haven's.  I'm not sure how Jasper got it.  I know I was bored of imaginary friends at that point, after Rosemary's obsession with hers, so perhaps I gave it to Rosemary and Jasper when they moved out, to keep it away from Haven so she'd make real friends.  Initially, I put both Wiggles and Buddy in the family room downstairs, but Wiggles kept moving to follow Jasper and Buddy looked lonely, so I gave Buddy to Bunny.  I didn't think the imaginary friend would work for the wrong sim, but I got the same message from the game about Bunny becoming close to the toy as I normally would, so maybe it will.

Seeing his grand-niece's obsession with the toy, and knowing that his own time is limited, Jasper knows what he needs to do, to send a part of her family with her and keep her safe. He doesn't yet know why she might be in danger or where she might go, but he knows what he needs to do.  Jasper is a trained scientist.  He reached the top of the profession before retiring.  He has the skills he needs to do this - to make a potion which will turn her imaginary friend real, and give Bunny a real guardian, for the rest of her life.  Neither he nor I know if he has enough time.  His life bar is right at the end.  We're up against the RNG now.