Chapter 35: Love Kills Slowly

Violet's grave is placed beside Lyle's, and decorated with a top of the line serving dish to commemorate her culinary career.

The death of his grandparents hit Archer hard. Even getting their old bedroom for himself is no consolation for his loss.

Their parents are completely devoted to their work, and Archer and Griffin are pretty much on their own without their grandparents to take care of them.

Archer misses Lyle especially, and spends a lot of time in his old office, playing on his old laptop.

Briar's most recent tattoo.

Griffin grows out of the toddler stage and into childhood. Though time has passed, the death of their grandparents remains the dominant influence in their lives.

For the first time, the family has need of outside help. Though Drew stays at home all day, his time is completely absorbed in his writing, and he has none to spare for housework, so a maid is hired to clean up after them.

Much like his great-great-grandfather Shepard, Archer is a born dancer.

Archer becomes a teen.

Briar gets another tattoo.

The long family tradition of defending themselves from burglars is broken when the police show up to apprehend the thief this time.

Briar is disappointed to be cheated out of a fight, but it's probably just as well. The burglary alone was enough to make Drew faint. Watching his wife get into a fight might have put him into a coma.

Griffin becomes a teen.

Archer has been courting Megan Curious-Kindle.

He's not sure he would call it love, or even a crush. He just wants a  dancing partner, really.

He spends most of his free time trying new hobbies, like mixology.

And martial arts.

Another tattoo for Briar Rose.

While no one's looking Andre the maid tries some of the plasma juice leftover from Violet's days as a vampire.

He regrets it by the time he's throwing the empty juice box into the trash compactor.

Briar heard about the death of Beau's wife, Lea, and went to pay a condolence visit. She found him wandering the swamps around his house.


"It's daylight, shouldn't you be inside?" she asks gently, seeing his fragile state. He bursts into sobs upon seeing her, and cannot answer her with words.

She leads him back to his house, getting him indoors and out of the burning sun, and his sorrow turns quickly to fury.


"Why? Why do you humans insist on dying on me?"

For one who has claimed to be immune to love, Beau is clearly deeply affected by the loss of his wife.


"It's what we are," Briar says gently, "You know that. Lea didn't abandon you, it was just her time."


"I should have turned her. She said she didn't want to be a vampire, and I was happy enough to feed on her human blood. But now she's gone, and I miss her, Briar Rose."

Since Griffin wasn't making effort toward getting himself a girlfriend, Archer decided to help out by inviting Megan's younger sister, Lilah, over for a visit. Instead of greeting her himself, he sent Griffin out to do it. 
Lilah picked up on Archer's plans intuitively, and accuses Griffin of putting his brother up to inviting her over on false pretenses.

The situation doesn't improve when the teens settle in for some TV watching. Anything Griffin says, Lilah argues against. Archer decides not to try to play matchmaker in the future.

Briar gets invited to a party Bree and Bennie Merrick are hosting. Though she doesn't socialize much with her vampire relations besides Beau, Briar accepts this invitation and uses the opportunity to get to know her vampire aunt. Or rather, to grill her aunt for information about growing up with Beau, because she's decided she want to write an article for the paper about her grandfather, a human interest piece that will help people understand vampires better.


"He was cold and unforgiving," Bree says, her own voice cold and unforgiving in the description. "He dumped my mother as soon as she showed signs of aging and seduced my best friend, your grandmother, right out of high school. He treats humans like cattle, and is incapable of love."


Briar has heard all this said about Beau before, and wonders why her own experience with him seems so different from his daughters'.

On her days off, Briar makes occasional attempts to tend her father's abandoned garden. This evening she's interrupted by a visit from Beau.

She invites him inside, where he immediately begins crying on her shoulder.


"You are the only family I have, Briar Rose," he sobs, "Lea wanted children, but my children all rejected me. Oregon told me I was a failure as a father, and she was right. I couldn't go through that all again."


"You were younger then," Briar says, "Maybe now that you've gotten in touch with your emotions, you could try again?" Though he's her grandfather, he doesn't appear to be any older than she is, so Briar assumes could conceivably marry and start a new family.

Archer's romance isn't going very smoothly.

But despite the rocky relationship, Archer still believes in romance, and questions Griffin about his continued single status.


"Dude, I don't want a girlfriend," Griffin says, "Everybody hooks up in high school, then gets married and pops out a bunch of kids. It's totally depressing. Don't you want to do something different? Or do you seriously want to marry Megan as soon as you graduate?"


"Well, I hadn't thought that far ahead..." Archer admits. "But it's not like there are a ton of girls out there who aren't our cousins. If you don't act fast, you could lose out altogether."


"That's depressing," Griffin sighs.


Challenge Notes:
Gen. 8 has been kind of boring to play. I'm trying to get Drew to achieve a perfect career, so all he does is write all the time. He's currently at level 8 of the writer career. He's got max writing skill, and achieved all the writing skill challenges. He's 5 days to becoming elder.
He's now got the ability to write masterpiece novels, which take longer to write but pay really well, so he might just be able to get the perfect career before he dies.
Briar has achieved her perfect career, level 10 of journalism with max writing and charisma skills. And she's gotten a new tattoo every Sunday since she turned YA. Archer will be turning YA the next Saturday, so at that point the generation changes and she will no longer be required to get more tattoos. And I will then be having to have a party every week for Archer's partier requirement.
Most of the other teens are related in some way to Archer and Griffin. Most are still eligible to be romanced by EA standards, but I feel creepy about hooking them up with Carter Sargeant's (Oregon's brother) granddaughters, or any of the Merrick girls (vampire or non), or anyone with McDermott or Carlton in their names. So that leaves them with little choice.