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Alejandra is beautiful. She's everything Penny was always warned not to be, not to even approach if she saw it on the street: piercings and messy hair, tattoos all down one arm. She looks nothing like Penny imagined a farmer would, laughing loudly with Abigail in the general store, leaning against the counter in her ripped jeans and ratty t-shirt advertising some metal band. She looks like the last person who would find city life so stifling that she would move a hundred miles away to a tiny town in an isolated valley.
Penny can't stop wanting her.
At first she does nothing about it. Alejandra, like so many other things Penny has wanted in her twenty years, seems like an impossible dream.
But one day they start talking, and Alejandra brings her poppies because someone told her they were Penny's favorite. Alejandra keeps coming back to see her, even after her mother throws a tantrum about allowing an "outsider" into their home, even after the dirty looks, as though Pam has so much to be haughty about. And one day, Penny decides that she isn't going to let this dream slip away from her.
No, she thinks, penning out her letter to Alejandra in the library while Vincent and Jas are occupied. She isn't going to wait for things to just turn out the way she wants them to anymore.
Penny puts the letter in the mail and slips out of the trailer that night, and she savors the feeling of finally doing something dangerous.
---
Emily puts more stock in dreams than most, and she trusts her intuition, but she's also been around long enough to realize that you can't take everything at face value. That doesn't change the fact that whenever she dreams of Topaz's smile, she wakes feeling warm and hoping that he'll cross paths with her the next day.
She understands that she is different. She embraces it, but she doesn't blame her neighbors and even her own sister for thinking her odd. But Yoba, Topaz - nobody has ever smiled at her the way he does. He barely speaks to her, but then he barely speaks to anyone. He has a habit of stumbling over his words and it would seem that he prefers to just keep quiet. It just makes Emily more aware of her own chatter, but after a few tries he manages to tell her that he doesn't mind just listening. He could listen to her all day, he says, and then he abruptly clams up again, blushing.
One day, without ceremony, he drops a polished, fist-sized chunk of topaz onto her work table. Emily blinks at it, and then at him, and manages not to laugh as she asks, if it's supposed to be some kind of hint.
He just looks at her with those golden eyes and smiles, and then she does laugh, delighted, and throws herself into his arms.
---
Kasumi is weird. Sebastian doesn't mind that in theory, but he still can't seem to figure her out. She seems to get along with Leah and Emily pretty well, and one time she says something about getting along with the trees too, which pretty much single-handedly rockets her to the top of the weird list.
God, but he can't help being intrigued. She looks at everything with wonder, and he can't even remember a time when he saw the world that way. He can't help but try to see things as she does, to look at Pelican Town as something new and wonderful, and little by little it seems to be working.
He overhears Maru talking to his mom one afternoon, about how she saw Kasumi walk into the dilapidated community center and how she could have sworn she heard Kasumi speaking to someone in there, though Maru could make out no voice in reply.
One night Sebastian hears it too.
He can see Kasumi through one of the broken windows, kneeling in front of the community center's fireplace, and he's certain that his eyes must be playing tricks on him because the interior of the building looks far too pristine to really belong to its outside.
He can just make out Kasumi's words: one more season. One more season and we'll be done.
Done with what? Sebastian has no idea. But he can't deny that the town has changed for the better since she has been here, and for once, he is looking forward to what the future might bring.
---
Alex never saw himself being friends with someone like Henry. Back in school, he'd have called Henry a nerd, which he supposed was kind of rude, even if it was true. Henry had glasses and long hair and almost no muscles to speak of, which left Alex baffled as to how he seemed fully capable of wrangling animals and handling farm tools like it was nothing, not to mention the frequent trips Henry took into the mines.
Alex asked him about it once, when he caught sight of Henry's bandaged hand, and Henry had laughed and brushed away his concern, seeming totally unperturbed by Alex's shock over hearing that he had gotten knocked out down there once or twice. Maybe he was just overly concerned about the mines, but that didn't seem like the kind of thing a person could just shrug off, especially someone as waifish as Henry. Alex had said as much, only to get some idiom about not judging a book by its cover in return.
And hey, that's all well and good, but Alex has never been one for books if he could help it and it doesn't change the fact that Henry seems to have no common sense about putting himself into danger. It doesn't take long for him to get fed up with worrying and fretting and generally losing sleep over whether Henry is staying healthy and not doing stupid, reckless things.
If he won't take care of himself, Alex will just have to do it for him.
---
Ivy has a warmth about her. There's just something there that draws Leah in and makes her want to get close, but she fights it and keeps her distance. It is too soon after everything in the city, after Kel, and Leah's not desperate enough for company that she's going to go around throwing herself at the only other newcomer around.
Not that it stops Ivy from hanging around. Leah sees her often, wandering around Cindersap Forest to gather mushrooms and berries, felling older trees to collect their wood and to make room for new growth. Leah appreciates the outdoors, and she appreciates people who know their way around the outdoors even more. She's a little envious, even.
The seasons turn and Leah keeps watching from a distance. It is still too soon, she tells herself despite the pull in her chest every time Ivy smiles, and the way Leah's stomach flutters when she notices all the little ways that Ivy moves, the way she shakes her hair out of her eyes when she laughs and leans in to whoever she is talking to.
The first afternoon that snow falls that year, Ivy happens to glance over towards Leah's cabin and catches sight of her in the window. Leah is mortified, but Ivy just smiles and waves before continuing on her way.
Leah stays away from the window for the rest of the afternoon and evening, but come the next morning, she finds a suitable block of wood and picks up her hammer and chisel.
Maybe it's time to give romance another go after all.
---
Maru hardly takes notice of Angel when he first moves in. She's busy with both her job and her passions, and as nice as he seems, she doubts that she and a farmer would have too much in common. He always seems mildly embarrassed when they make small talk, as though he is afraid of something that she has to say. She would probably be flattering herself to assume that it is her intellect that intimidates him, but it might not be too far off the mark either.
Once or twice, she sees him furtively flipping through books in the library; after he places the books back on the shelf and leaves she goes to check the titles and finds them familiar volumes concerning astronomy and mechanics. Maybe that's when she starts to really want to break through Angel's shell and find the shining core inside of him, like so many other curiosities that she has examined.
It's not that Maru cares whether she is the smartest person around, or even if the people she talks to can stand for her to constantly go on about science and the future. She can't expect everyone to share her interests, but the fact that Angel tries without her ever asking is what first piques her interest in him. From there, well, Maru can guess how this might end.
Never before has she had someone look at her the way that she looks at the stars at night.
---
Delia is a hypochondriac. That's the conclusion that Harvey comes to not long after she starts to regularly show up at his clinic. It's frustrating, but she does pay for his time. She is almost always perfectly healthy, and definitely always entirely too interested in how his day has been going.
Honestly, it takes him an embarrassingly long time to put the pieces together. His initial assumption is that Delia is just seeking attention, as people do. It doesn't occur to him until numerous conversations and gifts later that she might be actively seeking out his attention specifically. But why would he have guessed that to begin with? They didn't know each other.
Harvey concludes that Delia is lonely. This seems to prove more true than the initial diagnosis, but why come to him with made-up aches and pains, spending her hard-earned gold to get a metaphorical pat on the back and be sent on her way? It doesn't make a lot of sense, but people rarely do, Harvey has found.
He begins to look forward to Delia's visits, however reluctant he is to admit it to himself. He finally decides that he has to stop charging her; somewhere along the way, the line between doctor and patient got blurred and crossed, and now they are friends. Maybe even something else.
It only makes sense when he realizes much later that Delia must have recognized a kindred spirit in him, and concocted a half-desperate plan to break through his walls so they could both be a little less alone.
---
Shane isn't sure why he says it. He and Ben are about as different as can be, but that moment, when the world seemed like it could be just the two of them sitting in the rain, sharing a beer, that was the most kinship Shane had felt towards anyone in a long time.
It's just that Ben's eyes are so honest and Shane feels like he hasn't been honest with anyone in a long time, least of all himself.
You have to face the music sometime. Even Shane knows that. Lately though, the inevitable conclusion is starting to seem like it's not quite so inevitable, and that, ironically, is what scares Shane half to death. It has everything to do with those eyes that Ben gives him, more so than the gifts. It's Ben's eyes as he crouches over Shane on the ground, as he comforts Jas afterwards while she cries over how she nearly lost another caretaker, that drives everything home.
But what does Shane want with all that, anyway? It's not like he really needs a sweet, caring person with a prosperous farm, and fat, happy cat, and plenty of room for another chicken coop, and...
God, Shane wants him more than anything.
And the scariest part is, the more time he spends with Ben, the more he starts to feel like he might even deserve that happiness.
---
Melody doesn't really live up to her name. She's small and quiet, folding in on herself like she's trying to disappear, and in the beginning Abigail is content to let that be that. She's got other things to worry about besides the mystery of whatever is going on with the new girl.
That's the thing about mysteries, though: they draw you in, little by little. And Abigail had always had a fondness for mystery, anyway.
It starts when Abigail sees the sword. She keeps her own hidden in a drawer, underneath the frilliest, most embarrassing underwear that she owns to best deter any would-be snoopers (ahem, Mom). Melody, on the other hand, just walks around town with a sword hanging off of her belt like it's nothing at all. It's so bold of her that it's almost startling.
Once Abigail starts looking, she can't stop. She notices the odd things Melody carries into the decrepit old community center. She watches Melody just walk right up to the wizard's tower and let herself in, and she hears nothing to signal that Melody's visit is unwanted. She sees things out of the corner of her eye when Melody walks past, little sparkling creatures bouncing in her wake, and none of it makes sense, and all she wants is to know more and more until she and Melody have no secrets from each other.
It might be the most exciting thing that has ever happened to her.
---
Haley seems to be losing a lot of things lately. Her favorite top (which later turns out to be underneath the couch), Alex's attention (he's got his hands full taking care of his grandparents so she can't really begrudge him that, but it's still lonely), her will to live (okay, that's an exaggeration, but she's feeling a bit melodramatic lately too). Pelican Town is stifling her, and that new guy named Gerard is the first thing out of the ordinary that she's seen in months, and it's not like he's much to look at for long.
What really stings is the loss of her grandmother's bracelet, though. Haley might have a bit of a reputation for superficiality, but there was more to the bracelet than that. It's the only thing she has of her great-grandma, and now it's gone, swept away by the wind and the waves, and knowing that it might be childish to cry over a piece of lost jewelry doesn't make her want to do so any less.
When Gerard shows up at her door, soaked to the bone, she initially doesn't know how to react. She almost chocks it up to some new, advanced form of farmer weirdness before she spots the bracelet in his hands, and then she is out in the rain too, hugging him tight and uncaring that she's getting drenched. She almost doesn't want to ask how long he was out on the beach looking for it in the storm.
Even several blankets and Emily's steaming green tea can't keep the both of them from getting colds, but Haley doesn't mind so much for once.
Little by little, some things - her bracelet, her contentment, the realization that even the oddest people can be new and invigorating - are coming back to her.
---
Gloria is exactly what she sounds like: glorious. There is a wildness about her that fits perfectly with the untamed land. She is exactly like nothing that Elliott has ever known.
She fascinates and frustrates him in equal measure. Never before has he met anyone that could only be described as indescribable.
They chat when she ventures down to the beach to collect shells and corals, while he sits and gazes at the ocean in search of inspiration. They trade stories of their own, memories and fictions, and Elliott plays the piano while Gloria sits and listens. She reminds him to care for his plants properly, and to eat well, and she brings him things that she has foraged up or made herself to make good on that advice. She walks him home when he indulges a little too much at the pub, and he laughs at her bad jokes and strange non-sequiturs.
At some point Elliott realizes that it isn't just the ocean which inspires him anymore. He has been trying, without even realizing it, to capture Gloria's wildness and spirit on the page.
He cannot imagine anything more captivating, anything lovelier to share with the world, than what she has brought into his life.
---
Sam isn't sure how much longer he can keep up a cheerful face, what with everything that's going on. Soothing Vincent's worries and keeping him happy, helping his mom out around the house when she's not in one of her moods, looking after Sebastian and Abigail (yes, they need to be looked after), working part-time, and hoping, hoping, hoping that someday soon Dad will come home safe. That's Sam's daily routine, more or less. He gets in good practice with the band, and he's got his games and skateboard to keep him busy, but it's all starting to weigh down on him.
The day is unreasonably sunny when the cracks first start to show. He's just strolling along, having a good time with Devon and Vincent, and then Vincent drops the metaphorical bomb, that first hint that his world is no longer as bright and unbreakable as it should have been. Sam salvages the situation, but he feels himself starting to stumble in the day to day.
But Devon is right there to catch him.
Sam had never realized just how relieved he would be to finally let it all out, to have someone who doesn't need him to stay strong and sunny all the time. He hadn't even realized how much he was holding in. But Devon is here now, quiet and strong and steady, the metaphorical and almost literal rock in the storm, and all Sam really needed was somebody who would let him fall apart every once in a while and stick around to put the pieces back together.
He doesn't know when the storm will pass, but he thinks he can see sunshine on the horizon.