Whoops! I meant Julienne. I'm not sure how I mixed those two up. 
No worries.
Aw, Screwtape's kid is adorable! What a good looking teen. Alhena's outfits are wonderful. You always make such good use of patterns. I think we all appreciated the shot of Samhain running through the desert sand, too. 
As if Screwtape's kids can't be adorable!
Alhena was the one sim I could go totally pattern-crazy on. Somehow spiceberry has a way of looking really good with most patterns, so it was the perfect condition for me to get a little more creative with Alhena's wardrobe.
I think that was the precise moment where I realized "dang is Samhain a hottie!" instead of "yeah, he's pretty darn good-looking." It took me until Screwtape's adult birthday to truly appreciate his looks, for a bit of perspective.
---
His name was Maurice Dubois, and he was another child of Screwtape. However, the old man had no respectable excuse for Maurice's existence.
Screwtape was pretty young when it happened, and Clarissa was very much alive. However, he was warned about bringing too many guests to France at once, and he left Clarissa behind in Twinbrook.
The girl who worked at the nectary was named Charlotte Dubois, and Screwtape found a good friend in her. On his last night in France, they got to talking about families, and Screwtape's loneliness got the better of him from that moment.
And the spring in their steps told the rest of the story.
Since he was younger and naïve, he thought nothing of the consequences until he met Maurice years later. He was such a nice kid.
“Offspring! I have photographs of my grandoffspring in my wallet. Her name is Alhena, and she's your niece.”
“Niece?”
“I have yet to invent a new term for that. She's in the nectar garden anticipating childish games!”
Poor Maurice. There were a few teenagers in Champs Les Sims he could have hung out with instead, and even though he was fond enough of his distant family, he still sighed at being reeled into hours of tag with his niece.
Screwtape smiled at it instead. It was nice to see Alhena finally act like a child.
As for Screwtape, it was unclear whether he learned his lesson about irresponsible side-romances or not. He already had two illegitimate children from his escapades, and an outsider would say that there was no way that Screwtape could be stupid enough repeat his mistakes a third time with Capucine Dutiel.
It wasn't a mistake. His mother wanted five grandchildren, and someone had to do it.
Meanwhile, Alhena amused herself with a whale toy that she made herself. It seemed like an insignificant little thing for a girl who dreamed about unlocking time travel and artificial intelligence, but she ended up enjoying the small trinkets she made too.
When they got back home, Screwtape might have made new friends with the French, but he had an enemy back home. The easily-insulted Beck made the animosity clear with a slap across the face to her father-in-law.
It was too bad, because Screwtape was in great standing with the other Knacks. Julienne was a great cook while she was still alive, and even though Nick was merely a customer, all of the Ironstars felt a deep connection to him. All Screwtape could do was whip out his camera for a coveted shot of a ghost and the Reaper. Nick would understand.
With tragedy hitting the Knacks, it was time for Vega to pounce. She had a new flame in her life, someone who she said reminded her of an old friend, one with bright green eyes.
It was none other than Hugo Knack, Beck's older brother. Vega might have been close to elder by the time Hugo was born, but she'd be darned if he wasn't a cute old man.
If nothing else, she could already sense the jealousy boiling up in Susanne!
Ah, life was good.
Meanwhile, Samhain brushed his hair into a different arrangement so he could properly usher in middle-age, and played gig after gig in the park. He mastered the art of spontaneously appearing objects, but he had trouble thinking of great lines to go along with them.
“A lamp? Those things are bugged.”
“Yes, audience, I have produced a bugged lamp!”
Alhena sometimes liked his tricks, but she found more solace in painting. Even though she came from a line of sculptors, paint felt very natural to her. Her neuroticism lent itself to use of neons, and art teachers were already taking note of Alhena's skill. She was always absorbed in her art when she did it, enough to make her grandpa Harwood jealous if he ever came out to haunt.
But she still fretted over how she'd never top Marco James and his award-winning still-lives.
The elders realized the importance of having a good time, and they wanted Alhena to enjoy childhood before she had to stop and wait for immortality to have unlimited pool access, gym access, and well-beloved television time without limits. The girl was shaky on the diving board, but grandma Vega insisted that she made a spectacular splash.
Alhena later said that she hated childhood. She felt too limited; no one took her seriously as an inventor or as an artist. She was just a little girl with pockets full of widgets and cute neon paintings. While she also didn't want to make a big deal of her teen birthday, it filled her with joy that she was making another step towards maturity that everyone could see. Maybe even her crush could come closer to seeing it. The sparkles still came as a slight shock, though. That would never stop.
She ducked out of the party to get some new clothes and a different way to arrange her hair into a headband, then spending the night at Bayless Memorial Junkyard. She relished the smell of old scrap and rotting wood, of uncleaned floors and damp Twinbrook soil that sunk a bit under her feet and teemed with compost.
This was what she wanted: scrap for her visions. She was full of them, all imagined to perfection. It was the only way she could pass the time until she was an adult. Alhena itched for adulthood, from a curvier body to cuter guys.
Her chaperone seldom had deeper thoughts.
Little did either of them know that grandpa Screwtape was scheming, and everyone back at the house wished him well as he embarked on a soul-searching journey to university. Again.
---
And
this was the moment where my jaw hit the floor and I said "woah, Alhena's gorgeous!" I spent a long time and countless dynasty attempts hoping for a female immortal that had Harwood's mouth, and I was on the verge of tears when Alhena celebrated her teen birthday, finally pulled off that mouth, and had every other feature of hers look perfect as well. Dang was she beautiful.
As for the quip about bugged genie lamps, genie lamps are actually horrendously bugged in my game (if I command sims to clean the lamp, they freeze and I have to reset them. I have a feeling that I've said this before). I never really used genie lamps much anyways, so even after lots of attempts at fixing the problem, I'm just leaving it be. Samhain's just very aware of my woes.
And have a picture of adult Hugo, and a story:
I don't have many good shots of him, but yeah, that's Beck's older brother. He's cute! Harwood usually makes very,
very ugly sons, so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw Hugo all grown up. Now for my story.
Before Samhain was born, I was really divided over who he would marry, and who from a different line would have a different kid with Sheila. The end choice was Samhain married a Knack, and Sheila had a kid with a Bull. The other way around was possible, and Hugo would have been the only choice for Sheila to have a kid with if I wanted Samhain to marry one of Marc's daughters. So poor Hugo was given the short end of the deal because I liked his younger sister a lot more, and I gave him Vega in apology.
EDIT: So I'm reaching the limit of my Photobucket bandwidth, and it might have dire effects on my story since my bandwidth resets on the 25th. I'm not switching back to our site's gallery because I care enough about Carl's server not to overload it with huge PNGs. This chapter was hosted on Imgur, so it should be fine, but there might be a period where the rest of the thread is filled with broken images. I might just switch everything over to Imgur so the thread isn't a bunch of broken pics until the 25th.
