[EternalPen]

Synopsis: The reflection of an ever-lasting friendship beetween Tiffany Leger and I as she readies herself to move away, forever.

Note: This may not be well-written, but this is how it happened.

"So, this is it, isn't it?"

"I guess so."

"I can't believe it."

"Me either..."

"It's only been a year and a half."

"Only? Besides, it was the best year and a half I've ever had!"

"Yeah, same here."

"Thanks."

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"Everything."

"Oh..."

"Hey, do you remember back when we first met?"

"Haha! Yeah! That was awkward! Who knew we'd end up like this?"

"Not me!"

"Me either."

"That was the best day of life, seeing as it ended up to this place, here and now."

"Yeah..."

The First: The Beginning

It was raining. It was raining, but I didn't care. I heard crying somewhere, and I had to know what was going on!

I flipped my jacket's hood over my head and continued looking.

"HELLO?" I yelled into the world beyond.

Nothing...

I continued looking, but I couldn't find anything. The rain started to pour so hard that it drowned out the crying. I kept looking. It was raining heavily, and the sun began to feel weary as it sulked backwards, still looking toward me and feeling sorry for such an insignificant being, and began to disappear. It didn't help that I was a few miles from home.

As I rode on my bike, a rock, hidden by the mud the rain brought, jumped out into my view, but a little too late for me to act. My bike's front wheel slammed into the firm rock, and I lost control. I saw a small pond with its arms outstretched to catch the weary ducks and knew that soon its arms would curl around me too.

I hit the surface of the water, and the pond, wanting all the company it could get, gladly accepted me. My shoes, jacket, shirt, and pants, now soaked and against their own master, helped in the only objective the pond had. If you find company, drag it down and keep it forever.

I fought the team of three - Water, Soaked Clothes, and Gravity - and after expelling most of my air, began to win. I fought my way to the surface and won. As I broke open into the clean air, I welcomed the rain; though it was still cold, it was not trying to kill me. I scolded the clothes that had turned against me and looked around for my bike. I began to think that the pond had finally found the company it longed for in my bike, when I saw that it was safe... from the water.

A girl about my height, though still shorter, was dragging it away. I ran toward her but didn't yell. I didn't want to scare her away. When I got around to her, she was putting it behind a tree.

"Hey!" I said as I got closer, "Why are you taking my bike?"

The girl gasped and looked up. I couldn't tell if she had been in the rain too long or if she had been crying, but that didn't really matter then. I got a good look at her.

The rain had washed away any traces of makeup, but she didn't need any. She was beautiful. Her eyes were brown, like mine, and she had long hair. Her hair was black but, being wet from the rain, sparkled with the wonder of all the gold and diamonds in the world. She was a little on the skinny side, but that only added to her beauty.

"I-I wasn't stealing it," she stuttered.

Her voice was smooth, and she sounded as if she had been crying for a little while. Her voice had all the splendor of the world, thousands of choruses, tuned together and singing in harmony.

"Then why were you dragging it away?" I asked her, remembering why I was here.

"I saw it sinking, and I dragged it out of the water and under this tree to keep it from getting rained on more!" she answered back frantically. She sounded as if she desperately wanted me to believe her and leave her.

The bike was unimportant. It was just a bike. This was a person.

"Are you okay?" I asked. "It sounded like you were crying."

"I wasn't!" she shot back, faster than any person normally would have said it. "I-I mean, I wasn't."

"I think you're lying," I said bluntly, to get the point across.

She looked down at her feet and stood for a minute. She sat down and leaned against the tree behind her and began to cry some more.

"Hold on!" I told her. "What's wrong? You can talk to me."

"But I don't even know you!" she sobbed.

She had a point...

I sat down beside her and gave her a hug, though I still had no clue who she was. When she returned the hug and began to cry harder, I held her and didn't let go.

After a while, when the rain stopped, she told me that her name was Tiffany, but everyone called her Tiffy. I asked her who "everyone" was, and she told me "everyone" was everyone she imagined. She said she had been alone, no brothers or sister, and that she had hoped that a good friend would come along soon. It didn't happen, and she became discouraged. She was out here crying because she was going to jump in the lake and...

I'm just glad I came along.

I told her I would be her friend. I am a man of my word, and ever since she has been there for me, and I have been there for her.

*****

"Yeah," I said as I remembered that day. "I'll never forget that."

"Neither will I," she replied.

"Hey," I said, striking up a new conversation to scare away the upcoming thoughts of what was about to happen. "Remember that old tree house we spruced up? That was great!"

"Yeah!" she answered back. "That tree house was awesome!"

"Hey, do you remember that time when we went to it and..."


The Second: A Strengthening Goodbye And Our Creation of Lothinar

"Hey!" I shouted as I saw Tiffy walking up the road toward me. "I was just headed to your house!"

"And I was just headed to yours!" she said back to me. It had been nearly two months since I met her, and our friendship, though we didn't know how long we would have it, was strengthening.

"Guess what!" I told her. "I found this neat tree house that's almost like it was made just for us! It's halfway between your house and mine!"

"No way! Really?" she said back, obviously excited. "Let's go see it!"

"Alright, follow me!"

Too excited to walk, we ran. I was in the lead, but just barely. She could have probably outrun me, but I knew where we were headed, and if she got in front of me, she might end up taking a wrong turn.

We ran until we reached a fence. The fence looked really unstable at one area, but that was because it was. I grabbed the chain link, which was not attached to the fence pole, and pulled it, and the vines on it, back like a curtain.

"Welcome..." I said, "...to my kingdom. All you see before you is ruled by The Great King Kalingdor. All that is mine is yours, lady MoonBeam."

She giggled and replied, "I'm not a giant fan of fantasy and role-playing, but I'll give it a shot."

"Well, then," I asked her, raising my eyebrows, "what are you a fan of?"

To my surprise and my absolute utmost happiness, she answered my question with one simple word.

"Writing."

"Really?" I asked her again. "That's crazy! That is the one thing in life I do the most!"

Having been working on my ability to describe surroundings to set a background in my stories, I had a sheet of paper that had an entire story about what it was like in a dark forest that contained horrors unknown.

She looked over it and smiled.

"You're good!" she said. "We should work on something together! And I think I should give fantasy a shot."

"Alright," I told her. "We start now!"

"But I don't have anything to write with," she said.

"Ha! Don't worry about that!"

"Why not?"

"We are not going to begin with writing! We will begin with exploration of the unknown!"

With that, I walked through the fence-curtain and led the way into the woods. Deeper and deeper we went until we hit it. The perfect tree for a fort. And a fort it was! It had a roof and everything! It even had half a ladder nailed to the trunk so you could climb into the limbs. I climbed up, walked around a bit, and heard it creak and groan.

"Wait before you come up!" I told Lady MoonBeam. "I think there may be a few booby traps here!"

Before another word was spoken, the floor I was standing on fell through, and I hit the ground below. The entire fort came crashing down in a thunderous boom, right on top of me.

When I woke up, most of the debris from the fort was cleared from on top of me, and an angel was staring at me. It had come to take me home! The angels smooth hands softly grabbed my head and held it up and asked calmly:

"OH MY GOSH! Are you okay!?" She was shaking my head, not violently, but not comfortably. I think she was trying to wake me from the dead.

"Yeah, yeah," I said. "It takes more than dropping a castle on my head to kill the Great King Kalingdor."

The next day, we came back with fresh wood and worked hard. Hard and steady, we got it done. The next day.

It wasn't back to its original splendor, but it would suffice. It had an area for sleeping, sitting, and watching. Needless to say when I called myself the Great King Kalingdor, she said I was only to do that on paper. Also, needless to say, though I feel compelled to anyway, she didn't mind calling her the Beautiful Lady MoonBeam. I stuck with calling her Tiffy.

After many days of work, we had erected a grand escape. A grand escape from everyone, everything, and harsh reality itself. We had a tire swing, which allowed us the pleasure of mountain climbing, a bridge across flowing magma, and even flying.

We also had a big bucket which we filled with two sleeping bags, two flashlights, two pillows, snacks, drinks, and a second bucket filled with books, writing utensils, and blank sheets of paper. That bucket contained the portal to anywhere, anytime, and the ability to change our very beings into anyone.

Having done that, we were set to call it anything we liked. We agreed on the name Lothinar, which I later tried to use in a story but stopped and decided to keep Lothinar our own kingdom.

Lothinar was where we met, where we talked, where we ate, and also where we flew, fought, and defended ourselves. There were even a few nights, when things were going horribly wrong, that after a quick call to each other's house and the helpful use of sneaking around without being caught, we would meet. We would comfort each other, reel the sleeping bags up, and use the flashlights to write in our stories and read. In the wee hours of the morning, we would lie there, snug in our bags, and talk. When we decided that everyone else was soon to wake up, we would head back home, get in bed, and pretend nothing happened... that is until we met back in Lothinar.

Tiffy asked me why we had chosen such a name as Lothinar, and I told her the best fantasy was an original fantasy, the ones with Dragons and Trolls and such. She disagreed but later saw what I meant when we watched all three special extended editions of Lord of the Rings in a row.

Lothinar was our one and only place where we could be us. That, sadly, wouldn't last forever. How come the good things never do? Lothinar would fall to evil. It would fall, soon, to the Shunters. The Shunters that found a way off the Island of the Damned would come, and Lothinar was there first destination.

***

"So..." I said solemnly. "That was fun."

I didn't want to be talking solemnly, but I had a pressuring aura around me that said I had to say it like that. The pressure that tells you, "You have to say it like that! Take a look at your surroundings! It's polite!"

Tiffy looked around us. While talking and remembering the good times, we had walked back to good old Lothinar. It was soon to be teeming with thousands of Shunters. We would leave it and possibly never go back.

"I love this place," she said amongst a sigh. "I'll miss it."

"Miss it?" I asked. "I certainly hope not! Keep it; it will be with you wherever it is you go."

"If I take it," she asked, "will you always be in it?"

I grabbed her hand, and she looked at me.

"Friends don't ever leave, nor do kings! You take Lothinar, you take Kalingdor with it. You leave yourself; you're taking me with you."

She looked me in the eyes, and tears began to form in hers. I couldn't bear it, so I began to look up through the trees and into the clouds. She leaned her head on my shoulder and looked up with me. We spent the next hour looking into the clouds. I thanked God that the black ones backed up. I think he did it just for us, just for today.


The Third: A Weakening Hello And The Fall Of Lothinar Under The Black Clouds

It had been an exhausting and rotten day at school for me and Tiffy. Being bullied, called names, being clumsy and labeled. Those things were on the bottom of our list, the least important.

"I've got an idea," I said to Tiffy, who was quietly but greedily drinking our Life Giving Water. "Why don't we, for today-"

A loud "boom!" sounded off in the air. It came by surprise, in the middle of my sentence, and scared me so bad I flung the last of my Pringles off the watchtower.

Looking down at my loss of a full-fledged snack, I continued.

"As I was saying, I think-" Another thunderous boom sounded off, intent on its mission to stop me from finishing my sentence. I looked up to scold that blasted noise and saw humongous clouds hovering over all of Lothinar.

"Uh, we got trouble!" I told Tiffy.

Tiffy, who was busy pouring the bottle of our precious LG Water over her head since the day was very hot and muggy, looked up. She shook her head and flung tiny ferocious beads of water on my face.

"Oh," she answered. "Darn, its going to rain again!" We grabbed hold of an old fire hose that we had tied to one of the branches, and we swung from the watchtower. Working fast, to beat the oncoming rain, we packed our books, pens, pencils, paper and everything else that couldn't afford to get wet back into their appropriate buckets. As soon as the last bucket was sealed, it began to rain.

We had a nice sized tarp to cover Lothinar with but couldn't get it out fast enough. The demons that rode the wind and rain came forth and beckoned us to ride with them. We refused and ran. We, for the first time ever, abandoned Lothinar. We gave it up to the Demons of Sermos.

When we came back, it was ruined. Lothinar looked perfectly fine, but when we climbed to the watchtower, pieces began to fall off and plop onto the grass oozing water from all sides. We tore it down, not wanting to leave even ruins of the foul Demons, and re-built it to its previous splendor.

Lothinar had suffered its first loss and had fallen to those who dwell in ruins, the Demons of Sermos.

We decided, the next day, that with Lothinar new and firm once again, we would explore uncharted lands. We would visit the ruins of Sermos and find out why Demons had begun to roost in its once holy shrines.

On the pathway, we crossed over the breeding grounds of the Largach Wurms. They had been breeding far too long without care and had almost half the continent in its ever expanding hives.

You can always tell when you will be eaten by one - the ground is moist; the trees, though alive, will be black as death itself, as was our current surroundings. Then, in an instant, they break the ground from underneath your feet, and you fell into the cavers of their hives, leaving only one trace of your existence: your screams and a few strings of your meat that once sustained your life.

Then it happened. Tiffy, not being wary of where she was stepping, stepped into one of the Wurms' traps. Luckily, the ground did not break into one of the Wurms' caverns; it just made a small hole.

Tiffy twisted her ankle and fell.

"Tiff!" I yelled frantically when I saw her hit the ground. "Are you alright?"

"'Course!" she smiled as she replied. "My ankle hurts a little, but I'm not injured that easy!" Tiffany stood and collapsed. I caught her and set her down gently. When I did so, I sat beside her.

"Oh really?" I asked. "Would you like me to sit here with you until your ankle is better?"

"Or good enough to walk at least," she replied.

We sat and talked for an hour, but when she tried again, she said her ankle hurt worse. It was probably swelling, so she probably needed some ice and to sit down for a while. I thought about going to get her dad to help her get home, but then again, there was no way I could leave her here with all these Wurms.

I stood up and said, "Hold on, Tiffy! I'll get you home!"

I wasn't strong by any means whatsoever, but I knew that Tiffy was my friend, and she needed help. I scooped her in my arms, and I carried her to Lothinar. I felt like an idiot, stopping at Lothinar to have a small rest before continuing. She thumped me on the head with her hand and asked if I was implying that she was heavy when I told her I needed a quick break. She told me later that she was joking.

When we got to her house, I set her gently on her feet, and she stood uneasily on one foot. She held my hand to steady herself so she didn't have to put pressure on her other foot. When her parents answered the door, they helped her inside and thanked me. I got permission from my mom, and I stayed with her until she was better, even through the night.

***

After me and Tiffy finished pulling down the last edges of the big blue tarp over Lothinar, we started to head back. I had a little money left, but she just wanted to spend this last day with me. No movies or anything. She left Lothinar a few of her precious tears, and we continued to go throughout the neighborhood, bumping into various memories along the way. A horn, off in the distance, honked. It was the Port Of Judgment and Hageros the Boater beckoning Tiffy to its evil waves. The boat was to take her to the Island Of The Damned, home of the Shunters.

The Last: Lady Malishior MoonBeam And Her Journey Across The Sparkling Lake

We gave each other a hug, Tiffy and I, and I bid her farewell. She climbed into the Van that was to take her from me. The van roared to life and began to drive away. Tiffy was staring straight forward and didn't even give me one last glance. The van climbed over a hill and slowly began to disappear.

All of time froze that instant. God did it; he did so I could think for a moment.

The good things in life don't last long. You make what you can of them. When you have them, they last forever; when their time comes to be lost, they become so much more precious.

I watched the sun set with Tiffy, I shared all my secrets with her, I lived to my fullest when I was near her, and most importantly, when I was with her, I was no longer alone. She was the one thing I needed to truly live. And that I did. I truly lived and we were happy.

Time regained its earlier fading consciousness, and the van was almost out of sight. I took a few quick steps forward to make Tiffy's image stay longer, but that helped none. I looked hard for that final glance that never came. Until now.

She turned her head and looked me dead in the eye. Time, giving me one final chance to see her, froze again. In that frozen space of sorrow, I found joy. She was smiling.

Time began to start back up, never to stop again. As it started up, I realized something.

She had not left us behind. She had taken us with her. I wasn't alone - I was with her. She had taken Lothinar, King and all, packed tightly in her heart and soul, with her.

Time began fully, and I smiled back as she disappeared over the horizon.

As words for my broken throat, a single tear fell from my eyes and hit the ground, symbolizing my final goodbye to her.

"Goodbye."

[Rolling Pichu]

Hmm, rather lenghty, with a twist from most common writes I've seen. I like it; I only then can say you could add a lot more to the narration you're god at it, that's why. Diction is just fine but you might want to differ from some words and let a bigger vocabulary take place here. While you're describing very well, the dialogues seem too ordinary to me, maybe a bit monotone after a while... And I can't tell if that's what you were trying to portrait. Anyway, good write.

~Steven

[modfiction942]

Overall, I really liked this piece. A great portrayal of young friendship, bittersweet and nostalgic. Reminds me of "Bridge to Terabithia" and "The Changeling" and other such books. How old are you and Tiffy? You said "makeup" - guessing around 12-13? Perhaps you should clarify. Anyway: there are a few stylistic things that I feel I must comment on.

I loved your voice, not so sure about your organization. I didn't much like the way you chaptered it; it seemed to detract from the flow of the flashbacks. I would suggest italicizing the flashbacks instead and dropping the chapter titles. Although they are pretty long sections to have to italicize. Maybe you could indent them or change the font size or something, just to show that they ARE flashbacks and they ARE distinct from the present action. Not sure. But I definitely don't like the chapter setup. The section after "The First: The Beginning," the part where you segue into your second chapter, seemed too short and too easy. I'd say add a bit more dialogue in here so it doesn't look like you were just trying to make a transition. The other transition sections were fairly smooth, though.

Having been working on my ability to describe surroundings to set a background in my stories, I had a sheet of paper that had an entire story about what it was like in a dark forest that contained horrors unknown.

You lost me in the middle of this sentence. I would split it up into 2 sentences and use more active verbs than "had."

The next day, we came back with fresh wood and worked hard. Hard and steady, we got it done. The next day.

How did you assemble Lothinar? If it was made of wood, how did it fall apart in the rain?

As words for my broken throat, a single tear fell from my eyes and hit the ground, symbolizing my final goodbye to her.

Is the tear serving as words for your broken throat? If so, maybe stick in some clarification. Also, your treatment of tears and crying throughout the story borders on being sentimental. Perhaps I'm just heartless, but I found the whole tear-symbolism/precious-tears thing just a little bit too Disney.

I didn't want to be talking solemnly, but I had a pressuring aura around me that said I had to say it like that.

You don't need "say it like that" in this sentence. Also, you just used solemnly in your previous sentence. Use a different word.

The fence looked really unstable at one area, but that was because it was.

This sounds like something a seventh-grader might say. Just say "The fence WAS unstable" or else "The fence LOOKED unstable." You don't need both; each one implies the other.

Things I liked: your personification (of the pond, the storm, etc.), your fantasy terminology to describe mundane things, your description, the way you structured it (with the flashbacks). I really do like this piece. If I came across as being too mean I'm sorry. I just think it would benefit from a little cleaning up. I like the length - I don't think you need to add or remove anything. I agree with Pichu that your dialogues need work, but I think they're a little too EXTRAordinary. They read like a movie script - not too realistic.

One last thing - your title. Not catchy enough. It could be about ANYbody's good friend. I'd like it better if it were more specific to you and Tiffy and your experience together. But, it's a title. Your call.

[EternalPen]

I know what you mean, I "accidentally" dramatized this more than it happened. ^_^ That doesn't mean I made any of it up, just some accounts were... added on to. lol.

Over the past few months tiffany deleted her myspace account, didn't reply to any e-mail, letters, or phone calls I sent her. I almost hate her for it, after all this, she just dissapears one day. Maybe she will call or something and explain but...
I was thinking about deleting this. I don't want to remember her if I'm not worth her time.