Fic Storage: Epilogue

[nebulousmistress]

Unfortunately for my sanity, the Stardew Valley worldstate I've been playing and I've been writing has developed into an entire fanfiction series. It has a beginning that we're clearly past. It has a middle with many hilarious antics. It has a climax that I have planned already. And it has an epilogue.

I've now written the final story of the epilogue. I write eldritch horror, this should be expected. I am writing Elliott as a Lovecraftian protagonist but with my own eager interpretation of the man who willingly gives up his humanity and throws himself at the feet of the eldritch being he's bound himself to, for what other option is left of him? What is his life anymore without this wonderful terrible cosmic bliss?

About the Author

Elliott Vale is an avid collector of fine and feathered things. He gave up a life in the city to enter a world of magic and make-believe and never looked back. He lives on a farm in Stardew Valley with his husband and their ever growing flock of sullen and angry doves. They also keep chickens, goats, cockatrices, and a collection of undead fish. He enjoys cheap wine, good company, and pomegranates in the Spring.

It is commonly assumed that the name ‘Elliott Vale’ must be a pseudonym similar to other prolific writers, passed down from person to person in the style of the Nancy Drew novels or the Adventures of Jerry the Junimo. This assumption is not lessened by the fact that Stardew House has published Mr. Vale’s long series ‘A Little Forest Magic’ since its first novel ‘The Green Rains’ one hundred years ago.

However, there are indications that the Zuzu City Historical Society has uncovered that have strange implications.

Editors with Stardew House insist Mr. Vale’s manuscripts come to them in physical form, even in the modern era, written by hand with an ink quill. The original manuscripts are converted to digital format to be edited and the original hard copies donated to the Historical Society for preservation. Curators at the Historical Society insist these manuscripts are all written in the same handwriting regardless of decade of origin.

Manuscript copies come to the Historical Society bundled with photographs for the About the Author section of each book and the man in each photograph remains the same man, a gentleman in his 40s with long red hair touched with gray wearing a 3 piece suit with pinned green cravat and red velvet tailcoat last popular three centuries ago. Notes with each photograph say he speaks with an archaic accent though in a style at seems completely natural for him. He speaks of his husband and their farm as though events in his novels actually took place, though fictionalized for the purposes of publishing.

Members of the Historical Society eagerly await the next anticipated installment of Mr. Vale’s work as he has consistently brought a new manuscript to Stardew House the second week of every other Spring for the past century. The Historical Society is interested to know if this man might somehow be what he claims, a writer who left the world with a friend over a century ago and somehow found the fabled Stardew Valley of the Winter Star legends and now lives outside of space and time.

It is likely the truth is much more mundane.

But it never hurts to believe in a little magic from time to time.