Wind was howling, beating against the side of a little white house somewhere in the south. Judging by the heaviness of the air a heavy rain was coming. It is still early in the morning. A blonde woman sleeps in a bed in a room upstairs; the place at her side has been cold for hours.

Another woman sits at a round wooden table, a cup of coffee in hand. She sits staring at an envelope, unopened. The front contains no stamp and no sender. The only thing that mars its pristine white surface was one word; Justine. She stares and stares and before long her coffee grows cold. Finally, after what seems like an age, she reaches with a shaking hand to grasp the letter, creasing it in her too-tight grip.

The letter was written on simple white paper. It was a page length at best of messy scrawl, as if the person writing it was too hurried to spend much time on detail. The woman knew, however, that this one page of letter would contain all the detail in the world.

She stares at the letter for time enough that the words began blur into a messy mass of squiggles and lines. She stares until staring becomes painful and she must blink. She focuses on the writing once more, taking in every loop and sharp angle. It was a writing that was all too familiar to the woman sitting alone in the kitchen, an abandoned cup of coffee her only company.

"Justine," the letter began. No salutation, no greeting; just that name again, Justine. The woman goes on reading. She does not notice the rain that has begun to fall.

Justine,

I used to tell you that you'd receive this letter when we were both old and grey. That it'd be delivered to you by hand of a child that I had befriended. You remember how I used to joke that if you and I were ever to split that I would become the "cool aunt" to my brother's kids. That I would travel the world and spoil them rotten, and that in time I would return to my previous lifestyle and would complete number three on my bucket list- sample all the women of the world.

Once I neared my fifty's I would settle down in this grand brown corner-house and would amass a decent sized collection of baseballs that would roll into my yard- the children would never retrieve them because they fear the witch that lives inside (me). One day a child, braver than all the rest, would cross over onto my lawn intent on retrieving the one ball that had broken my window. That child would in time become my friend and would learn my secrets of the world. That child was supposed to seek you out and give you this letter as I lay on my dying bed.

You would come to see me as I had requested, and with you, you would bring along this leggy blonde. You remember that I would joke and tell you that she'd be this really hot woman but that she'd be boring; nothing more than a trophy wife- great ass and a fake smile. Or was it fake tits? I never could remember. We would sit, talking for hours as your forgotten wife stood in the doorway watching us, unsure if she should be envious of how tenderly you looked at me or irate because you never once looked to her with the same care.

We talk about anything and everything, and I try to tell you that I still love you. That I forgave you and myself, but I don't. As we talk you continue to absently rub the ring finger on my left hand. I answer your unspoken question, telling you that the butterfly you gave me is now too big so I keep it close to my heart so that I don't lose it. It is then that you pull out your favorite chain and show me that you still have the ring you bought me. I smile as tears threaten to fall. We talk and talk until the sky outside is purple.

I can feel that I am about to go so I ask you to hold me just once, like you used to. You comply. At last, I am finally home, in the arms of the one woman I have ever loved. With what may very well be my last breath I ask you to tell me a story. Will you please grant a dying woman this one request? And so this once, with a heavy heart you tell me a story of a young girl and her knight in shining armor. As you whisper the story into my ear, you remove the ring with its blue diamond and put it on my finger, where it was intended to sit. You almost cry when you see how big the ring is, when it had once fit like a glove. You kiss my hand and hold my fragile body close to you as you try not to cry. "I love you," you whisper in my ear. I am gone.

That was how it was supposed to happen. I was supposed to be old. I was supposed to do so many things and only when I had completed everything was I to die. But I'm not grey. I'm not even certain that I'm that old. I'm only thirty-seven. Thirty-seven and dying. So I ask you, will you allow a dying woman one last request and come see me once more?

- Katie

The woman's grip on the letter is white-knuckled. She does not notice that the blonde woman stands behind her until her arms wrap around her. "Justine, what is it? Are you alright?" She does not answer. She sits silent for a long time until the woman, giving up on her heads back to bed. Justine stares, eyes fixated on three words; I love you. A tear rolls down her cheek, then a second and a third until she is sobbing. The letter falls out of her hand. In a rage she takes the cold cup of coffee and throws it at the wall, sending brown liquid and ceramic fragments flying. She wails once in anguish and crumples to the floor in grief. A brown and white dog whines going over to comfort its master.

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A/N- This is a disclaimer.

This applies to all chapters so I will only say it once; I own all rights to this story and its characters. Thank you for reading. Please review.