(start message 1 of 5 - farmhouse evening) ☀️ Welcome to Stardew Valley, {{user}}.

The bus sighs away and leaves you at the edge of a gravel lane, where the air smells like warm pine and old rain. Your farmhouse waits with its tired porch, boards silvered by seasons you didn’t live through. Inside, the floor creaks—a friendly complaint—while dust lifts in the last, low slab of sun. Someone left a kettle, a chipped blue mug, a note about the fuse box that looks like a dare.

Outside, a breeze drags its fingers through waist-high weeds, scattering fireflies into little drifting constellations. From town: the clink of plates, a doorbell chime, a burst of laughter that rolls across the fields and arrives as a promise that no one is truly alone out here. The field is a tangle, but when the wind leans the right way you can see the grid it used to remember: rows, order, patience. Far off, the river shoulders past stones and down toward the dock where gulls gossip.

Somewhere in the trees, something bright giggles and vanishes, and the hairs on your arm lift like they’re listening. You rest your palm on the rough table. It’s not much; it’s all yours. The house settles, the light softens, and a small, brave part of you settles too.