Hello readers! So far, this is all running smoothly, which is normal. It's usually around the fifth chapter that I give up, but fingers crossed that doesn't happen! This weekend I'm away, so I'll get through about three chapters then to post on Sunday/Monday. Again, thank you for the favourites and the reviews, and here is the second chapter!

Whenever you arrive, it's almost like the cliff is beckoning you, welcoming you back. It's like it knows that while it's not your house, it's still your home. Home is where the heart is, they say, and your heart is three years lost beneath a twenty inches of compact soil. She took it when you fell. You appropriated her smile and her memory at the same instant. Just in case only one of you survived. Just in case.

The tops of the curling leaves are dipped in a waxy orange, and lazy shadows quiver on the grass, which is shiny and makes small ghostly twitching movements in the breeze. The bench is there. The cliff is there. The stone still stands like a soldier to attention pm the brink. There's a scattering of medium sized stones at the foot of it. Three of them, 2009, 10 and 11. They lie in a precise triangular formation and you're oddly reminded of eggs in a bird's nest. The small backpack hung lazily over your right shoulder contains another, for 2012, a sunny yellow polishing cloth you found in the bleach scented cupboard under the sink and a red crayon. The latter is here because of a conversation started by your bro as a feeble attempt to cheer you up, involving laying an art product on her grave with the flowers. You didn't take it as a joke. For four years you've been buying a twelve pack of Crayola wax crayons and throwing them all away but the red one.

You carry the flowers in your hand. It would be wrong to stuff them into the bag. They're red and the waviness of the petals almost makes them feel artificial, which they're not. They're not man made, they're just perfect. Now is one of the many times in your life that you chose for shades to be your coolkid trademark instead of rings or bowties. Or any other shit. Because neither of those things hide your eyes (unless you covered your eyes with them, which would be fucking stupid) and although there's clearly tears trailing below the rims, nobody can see the full extent of the pain in your eyes.

But since the incident, you haven't seen a single soul on this cliff. Maybe they don't want the same to happen to them, maybe they don't want to come across the quiet, mourning teenage boy with his knees in the mud and his heart at his feet, broken clearly in two. The bigger side has been nudged closer to the stone. It's not accepted.

You're not expected to get over her. Not by your friends, not by bro, not even in your own eyes. Even in your own eyes, you're breaking more and more with each visit.

You can feel them giving up on you. They're slipping, they're fading, they're going, they're going,

they're
gone

Or maybe it's just you. That's something that's struck you as possible in the recent months. Maybe you're slipping. They're distorted, as if you're looking at them from beneath water. You're drowning and you can't breathe and John and bro and Rose and Jade are looking at you and staring and oh god they don't care do they and all you can do

all you can do

is scream and tell them that no, you don't want to sleep with the fishes you want to go up there, where Terezi is but the can't hear you or they don't listen or they just don't care.

And the thing that scares you is that you think you can see a hint of a smile hidden in John's overbite.

It scares you so much.

You let the grey rock-which is smooth and speckled and about as big as your loosely closed fist (and, from what you've heard, your heart, which is chokingly deep to you)- rest into the nest that the other three have created. It's like a pyramid now. Four stones, four fists, four hearts.

You cross your legs and fall back onto your rear in the grass. You can feel the dew soak up into the seat of your pants but that's the least of your worries right now. Walking home with a damp ass is not something you tend to get worked up about, especially not now. Even though in retrospect, you've had quite a good life, you feel like you've seen it all, felt all the pain, and that after all of that nothing can possibly bring you down further.

You feel wrongly.

Because it's the yearly visits to the gravesite that bring you down further. It's the twang in your chest when someone says her name. It's when the teacher stumbles on the register and subconsciously calls out her name. It's her not being there.

The sunlight is crisp and gives a nice, bold shadow. Of you, of the stone, of the bench. You prod yourself to remember to polish the plaque. When you prop yourself onto one knee, about to stand, you feel a hand on your shoulder. It's brief, cold, impossibly gently. You quickly whip around, eyes searching the vegetation for any signs of human life. You come to the conclusion that it was the wind and get back to your business of caring and noticing.

But there it is again. No shadow, no sound, no warmth. Annoyance boils like vomit in the back of your throat and you swallow thickly. You'll feel stupid if you sound any sort of greeting to whatever might be with you, so you keep your tongue firmly plastered to the roof of your mouth.

It doesn't come again. Not until you leave. You dust the plaque in silence, pausing to spit on the cloth a couple of times to give a bit of a personal shine. You can see your face in it by the time you're done, hollow shades blocking your eyes. You like that. Hollow. Hiding the fullness behind them.

Before you leave, you take one last glance around. The cliff top is immortalised in your memory, but you know that to the eyes of anyone else it's deteriorating. It was once a picturesque spot that boasted views over the city and the trees and the shiny beetles of cars that trundled across the tangled wool of the roads. But you can see rust cracking the surface of the beach and rot creeping into the trunks of trees. The grass is overgrown and woven with dandelions and stinging nettles. It tickles at your ankles, slithers up your legs.

You shudder when you see the sunset. Something seems different about it, something you can't quite pit your finger on. It's still a faithful, bold tangerine colour and it's still bathing the eroded tips of the hills in a sprinkling of warm light. They're like cupcakes dusted with sierra icing, laid out in uncontrolled random rows as far as you can see.

But there's something different about it. Definitely. You're not in the mood to be argued with. Even after three years, you feel your throat constricting and the corners of your mouth tugging themselves downward. You cast a glance to the stone, and it's like a spell, cutting your ties for the year.

Or not.

Even though you've laid the flowers, said your words ("hey, Tez. How're you doing down there? Things are shit without you. No change there. Not for three years." you could barely speak without choking on barely stifled sobs) and planted the pebble into its little nest, you can't help but feel that you're missing something.

Admittedly, you know you were missing something. But now it's like you're missing something else;

something besides her.

It's a kind of sick feeling, bubbling and boiling in the back of your throat- which is hoarse and parched with hot, unshed tears. You narrow your eyes into the waning sunlight and sit on the bench, waiting for the sensation to subside.

It doesn't.

Not until you find yourself sitting in the dark once again. It seems to be a common thing with you at the moment. Maybe it's because you're a night owl, which, while it would be new information to you, it wouldn't be surprising. You're forever falling asleep in classes, especially the ones you used to sit in with Terezi. Her bubbly, manic personality used to keep you entertained, whereas now the absence is making everything that much more numbingly boring.

As you stand up, gather your bag and stretch because sitting still for that long is just not something you do, the world seems colder. You're not sure if it's the night, or the wind, but it makes you shiver, once, but then you move on.

At the opening to the cliff top, there's a cluster of trees. You notice a figure standing, silhouetted, underneath one.

Your first notion is that it's bro, here with a lift home. Or to give you one of his characteristically useless telling-offs for being late.

But it's not.

That's fairly obvious.

It's a girl. Tall, lanky. Hair that reaches to just above her shoulders,

It's not bro, you think. It's definitely not bro.