Turns out, when you want to leave the house for the most selfish of reasons, you can’t expect to be fully supported by your incredibly wealthy family.
Fine. I didn’t want your money, anyways.
When you’re a teen with low to no income on your own, you have to get creative to find a place to live — so I did.
Since no matter how long I spent on the Internet I couldn’t find anything that I’d be able to afford on my own, I broadened my filter a little. Until I found the perfect gem.
Oh, it would take some convincing. But on the bright side, it wouldn’t be my parents I would need to convince.
This was going to be great.
I set out to search that perfect place, every day, several hours a day, often as soon as I woke up.
I searched, and searched, tirelessly
I searched in really odd places on the Internet. Until finally…
I found it! The one palace to end them all.
Convincing Charlotte meant convincing the whole group. It took treasures of passion to make her see the potential of my plan.
I fell in love with the cosmopolitan city of San Myshuno at age ten. We were visiting Miranda’s loft in town, and I was swept away.
She lived at the foot of a majestic bridge, where a docking bay used to be. She made it her own fairly fast by tagging a beautiful fresco on the ground. It was the kind of thing the San Myshuno sims do.
In the cozy atmosphere of her little warehouse, she stood at her dj booth and blasted music I had never heard before. She said it was the kind of beats that got you noticed in the Top Of The World Nightclub. Sitting on the highest building of the Fashion district, this two-story nightclub, she assured me, was the place to be.
Then she dragged us outside with her musical gear under her arm. She found the right spot, in a colorful curve of the plaza, and she laid down her violin case, got the instrument out, and she played for us. Mom, Ma and grandma were transported. Grandma, especially, was humming along the melody, perhaps remembering the time she had spent teaching Miranda how to hold her bow correctly.
I looked around. There was a man in a golden attire, a few steps from us. In a swaying running pose, he pretended to be the statue of an astronaut. He, too, was staring at my sister, listening to her talent. He noticed me looking at him, and winked at me, then jumped into another pose.
In the background I could hear the street vendors and their haggling clients. The smell was incredible. They were smells and spices I had never known before. It was different from the fresh fish smell of the Brindleton Bay wharf, that I can tell you. People sat down at the creatively painted tables to eat, and I ogled at the colors in their plates.
When Miranda stopped playing, I told her about the food, and she laughed. “You’re in luck,” she said. “Tonight is the Spice Festival. You’ll be able to eat as much as you want! Try the Curry challenge… if you dare…”
And when the day turned purple, I saw, as she had predicted, that the Spice Market morphed into something taken straight out of a dream. Music started blasting from invisible speakers, and Miranda danced and played along. New stands appeared seemingly out of nowhere; gardeners brought their product to the plaza; food samples were installed on separate tables; and they brought a bubble blower that I was not allowed to try. Mom tried it; she turned blue.
The lights, the colors and the smells won me over.
One day, I would come back. I would try the curry again, and hold the fire in my mouth instead of spitting it out. I would dance with the crowd and blow bubbles with the adults.
That night, the Spice Market became my dream.
A masterfully decorated house. On the coffee table, a bridge to match the one behind the house, and a lighthouse to remember home.
I could have stayed there forever.
We were all slightly afraid that the sound would bother some neighbors; Miranda laughed. Her neighbors often come down and party to the sound of her mixes.
I could never adhere fully to the artsy, vegetarian, boho lifestyle. I deeply respect my grandma and my mothers, but a hippie’s life’s not for me.
I often think it started with my sister. When I was born, Miranda was already well on her way to adulthood, and I think she also knew that there was more out there than the Brindleton Bay wharf.
Like our moms and grandma, Miranda was all about the arts. But where Mom had preferred the paintbrush, and found in Mam someone with the same paint-splattered drive, Miranda liked what pleased her ears. For her 16th birthday, Grandma had given her the most stylish guitar a teenager could wish for. I was only a toddler, but I remember drooling over it.
Much like I years later, Miranda wasn’t entirely satisfied with her peaceful little town, and at the young age of twenty, she fled the countryside and invested an old warehouse in the San Myshuno bay. She started a flourishing DJ career, living by night, blasting the Spice Market with the loud bass of her speakers, and as I learned much later, fluttering from good-looking man to good-looking man.
Miranda was my idol.
Miranda, enchanting people with music anywhere, anytime, since before I was born. Camping trips were no exception.
I was not invited to her 21st birthday at the restaurant, but they said it was a blast. Judging by the food, I believe them.
Miranda took reading me bedtime stories very seriously.
I’m Azalea Stewarts, and I come from a long line of lovable weirdos.
No, I am not the woman above. That beautiful old lady is my grandmother, Naomi, the most amazing person I know. When my great-grandparents passed, she single-handedly raised her four younger siblings, along with her own son.
She offered them the most amazing childhood, away from the tumult of San Myshuno, denying herself the right to marry the love of her life so that she could give them her undivided attention.
My mother was her youngest child. Unlike her brother and sisters, she was born after Grandma had reunited with Grandad. She had a perfect childhood, surrounded by love, two adorable dogs, and paintbrushes.
See, Grandma is also the best artist of her time. The best artist of the century! Every canvas her brushes touch is a masterpiece, every keyboard her fingers brush sings some new, incredible melody. Grandma raised us all, all three generations of us, to recognize the beauty that lies in art, in nature, in ourselves.
She also raised us to be vegetarians, and groomed us to take her place, when she dies, as the owners of the Windenburg Herbology Shop. You should see the garden she has in the back of the house. She and Mom spent their days there when I left.
Yes, I left.
The perfect life is a great life, but this was not the life for me. 
When Grandma got older, her herbology shop became her hobby and her passion.
The Stewarts Family (and other shenanigans) 