Frostbitten Flower
by The Scarlet Sky is a Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life fanfic.
Set shortly after Jack's premature death, his widow Celia is left to pick up the pieces. Unfortunately, she's a farmer, not a rancher, so she can't take care of their farm on her own. She's also pregnant, which makes her situation even more dire.
This fanfic provides examples of:
- Adaptation Name Change: Mark is renamed "Jack".
- Alternate Universe Fic: The protagonist dies very early into his marriage with Celia.
- Alternative Calendar: The lack of months in the series is explained by being a personal choice of farmers. To a farmer, seasons matter more than individual months.
- Composite Character: In the game, it's unknown who Celia was in an Arranged Marriage to, as he lives outside of the village. This fanfic streamlines it so that Celia is in an Arranged Marriage to Marlin.
- Dark Fic: The story is themed around a recently widowed, pregnant Celia dealing with life after her husband's death.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: In canon, the protagonist dies when his kid is a young adult. In this fic, he gets hit by a tree before his kid is even born.
- Distant Finale: The epilogue takes place when Cassie is an adult.
- Honorary Uncle: Subverted. When Cassie was an infant, others disapproved of her calling Marlin "dada" and tried to get her to call him "uncle". Cassie never liked the word and doesn't feel it applies to her Parental Substitute Marlin.
- Kid Fic: Celia gives birth to her daughter several chapters in. Much of the plot revolves around Celia and Marlin raising Cassie together.
- Kids Play Matchmaker: As an adult, Cassandra tries to hook up Celia with Marlin.
- Hurt/Comfort Fic: Frostbitten Flower is about Celia adapting to being a young widow. Marlin ends up coming back into her life after Jack's death.
- Oh, My Gods!: Characters often say things like "Oh my Goddess".
- Prematurely Grey-Haired: In the epilogue, Celia is already greying despite being under fifty. Her stressful life possibly has to do with it.
- Romancing the Widow: Marlin was in love with Celia even before Jack came to town. After Jack's death, the relationship between Marlin and Celia eventually turned romantic. It ultimately stayed Will They or Won't They? until Cassandra was an adult.
- Snow Means Death: Jack died in winter. Since then, the season has been soured for Celia.
