Welcome to Gaia! ::

Livie couldn’t help but think back to her first conversations with Ignacio about stuff, about the Chaos boys, back when it had been Albite. She remembered the quote that she’d shown him then.

Remember that you can’t save everyone.

That thought hit her harder than it should have. It made her eyes start watering again, even after all the work that everyone around her had been doing to cheer her up. That wasn’t the end of the quote, though.

Remember that you have to try.

Had she been trying, over the past year? For too long, for a good couple months of that, she’d assumed that everything would work itself out, that Fulgurite’s promise to her had meant something, that he’d get everything worked out, and that one day he’d show up on her doorstep with a dozen roses. When she worried, she worried that he’d gotten attacked or something, not that he’d just stopped, or that he’d change his mind, or that he didn’t like her anymore.

Then she’d met Cryolite, and her heart had started breaking slowly, even back then, because she’ not minded that Fulgurite had someone else she loved, but she’d always wanted to be held equally in his heart. It had become so clear even back then, though, that her place in the relationship had gotten shoved down to distant third.

So, she’d focused on Cyrolite, because he’d been there, and, like, super thoughtful and considerate of her, and he’d held her gently, and, yeah, she’d fallen for him a little bit. She’d kinda shoved the responsibility for Fulgurite onto him, though. She’d dropped the hints that he should purify, figured that if he got out, it would make things easier for Fulgurite, too, and that they could work on all of that stuff together.

She’d written Fulgurite the single note, and then she’d stopped even with that. She’d shoved all the trying onto someone else. She’d shoved all the communication off of her, too.

Now they were here. Fulgurite hiding from her, freezing up, vanishing just after admitting that his mental health was a disaster. Was it too late? She’d spent hours over the last few days crying in bed or staring at the walls while she’d asked herself that question.

Remember that you have to try.

Livie sat up in bed, took a deep breath, and pulled her laptop over to her lap. She opened up a word processor. If Fulgurite was going to refuse to talk to her, then she’d do what she could. Maybe he wouldn’t read this. Maybe it would go straight into the recycling, but at least she would give him the option to do that.



She held it together while she wrote, and while she printed out two copies on plain computer paper. It was different from the colorful stationary and magic ink she usually used for her letters, but she figured it was best to have something that couldn’t be traced back to her.

She powered up in the alleyway down the street from her house. She pulled out her golden pen from Almadel Fulgurite’s name on the first note and sent it off, before she could stop herself.

On the other one, she wrote a small note at the bottom.