"To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing." -Leo Buscaglia

-October 4, 2009-

The water cycle is something that I am sure many people are familiar with, even if they wish they weren't. Most people probably don't the water cycle a second thought after walking out of their classroom in the third grade. After all, there are so many more interesting cycles to think about, such as the life cycle, cycles of change, the cycles of the moon, the cycles of day and night, energy cycles, planetary cycles, seasonal cycles, motorcycles, chemical cycles, rock cycles, disease cycles, and, of course, sleep cycles. Yet oddly enough, the cycle that was on Matt's mind was the water cycle.

The reason for this was that it had just rained – a form of precipitation. He was making sure to walk around the puddles on the sidewalk – the collection part of the process. The sun, looking rather pathetic hiding behind the remaining nimbus clouds, had already begun its job of evaporation and transpiration. Before long, condensation would occur, and it would rain again. Hopefully, thought Matt, in this city. It gives me a good excuse to stay indoors.

However, the downside to being stuck indoors on a rainy day is that one runs out of necessities, such as food, toilet paper, and toothpaste. And Matt did indeed run out of these things while being lazy indoors. So, he was now walking down the wet streets towards the drug store, where he knew he could find everything he needed, with the water cycle on his mind, wishing that he knew how to hot-wire a car so that he wouldn't have to walk all four city blocks.

Until something caught his eye.

He saw it through the window of a small coffee shop. Curious and disbelieving, he walked inside. The bell on the door jangled as he walked in, and the young woman behind the counter smiled and nodded at him. He returned her nod, but walked in the opposite direction of the counter. There, on the wall above the booths, was a painting. Granted, the wall had about half a dozen paintings, but only one of them really mattered. It was the painting closest to the window, the one that he had noticed while making the trek to the drug store.

It was a painting of children. There were three children in the foreground, clearly the subject of the painting. There were two little boys, the shorter one being dressed completely in white with cake on his face and in his hair, the taller one having red hair, which seemed to stand out when compared to the white cake on his face. This latter boy's hands were also covered in cake. Close to the boys there was a little girl with pigtails, her hands covered in cake. All three children were smiling, giving the impression that they were laughing. Nearby there was a table with an extravagant cake on it, chunks of it clearly missing.

The painting felt familiar to Matt. Memories of his childhood came seeping into his consciousness, and he looked at the little card underneath the painting on which the title and the artist's name were printed. "Birthday Traditions" Linda Townsend. Matt smiled widely as he realized what was so familiar about the painting. He was the little red-haired boy. He had shoved cake into the face of the other little boy, claiming it was a tradition. The little girl – she had been his childhood crush. But she had rejected him. Linda, her name was. She always was a great artist. It took no stretch of the mind to put two and two together and realize that Linda, the girl from his past, the girl from the painting, was the artist.

"Linda Townsend," he murmured. "So, that's the name she's using now, huh? She kept her alias from Wammy's." Matt couldn't say he was truly surprised, as he too used still used his alias, even though he had not been the one to succeed L and thus no longer needed it.

Linda Townsend, Linda Townsend, Linda Townsend, he kept thinking. The name sounded familiar. Then it clicked. Linda Townsend was the name of a famous painter from Winchester. He wondered why the painting of a famous artist would be found hanging in a small coffee shop. He turned to ask the woman behind the counter, but then doubted that she knew, and simply smiled to himself, deciding to think of it as serendipity.

Linda, he thought, ditching the water cycle for nostalgia about a girl he hadn't seen in a year and a half. He remembered the way she looked when he had last seen her. Her hair had still been in pigtails, although now they were not quite as high on her head and were braided. She had been waving goodbye to him from the gates to the orphanage, a sad look on her face, one she couldn't hide with her friendly smile. Memories of her from that point back came rushing into Matt's mind. He smiled, remembering how he used to feel when he saw her, when her name was brought up. He remembered, and he knew he always would.

Your first love, it is something that you can never forget, no?

x.X.x

-October 13, 2009-

The phone rang at what Linda believed to be an unearthly hour, waking her from her pleasant slumber.

"Bloody... And I just got over my insomnia last month, too," she grumbled as she fumbled for the phone on her nightstand. She picked it up and cleared her throat, hoping she would sound good and tired so that person on the other end would realize how rude it was to call someone at three in the morning and would hang up. "Hello?" she moaned.

"Hello. Linda?" the voice on the other end asked. It was a familiar voice. So, so familiar. "This is Roger. From the orphanage." Aha, that's why it was familiar.

"Oh. Hey. Yeah. Um, what is it?" she asked, trying to now get rid of the sleepy sound in her voice. This was, after all, someone she did not want to rudely hang up on.

"You remember the boys Mello and Near, right?" he asked her. Linda wondered how his voice could sound so devoid of sleepiness; they were, after all, located in the same time zone.

"Yeah, Mello, Near, yeah, I 'member 'em," she said. "What about 'em?"

"Do you think you could draw them? Just sketches of their faces, and then when you're done fax them to me? You do remember the fax number for the orphanage, right?"

"Mm. Mm-hm," she mumbled.

"Good," Roger replied, "please have them within the next hour."

The next hour? Oh, fun, Linda complained internally. "Yeah. Okay."

"Excellent. Thank you, Linda," Roger said, and hung up before Linda could return the farewell.

"Hmm." Linda placed the phone back on the receiver. Coffee, caffeine needed to be able to bear functioning at this unholy hour. She flopped out of her bed and trudged to the kitchen. Two minutes later, her microwave beeped, and she removed the cup of instant coffee from it. Sipping it, she decided that maybe she would be able to do this.

Bringing her cup with her to her studio, she sat down on a swivel chair in front of an easel. Okay, so I have to sketch... Mello and Near.

She began sketching Mello, and memories of her days at Wammy's House began to waltz merrily through her mind. Mello, she had painted his portrait once, about a year before he left the orphanage. She recalled he had been second choice for a person to paint. Her first choice had been the other boy she was to draw, Near. She couldn't seem to draw him, though. She had liked him, but he didn't return her feelings. No, Near hadn't been the one to like her, it had been a different boy. Matt. But, because no one was very lucky if they attended Wammy's, she hadn't returned his feelings. He'd been sad, but they'd remained friends.

At the time, it seemed like unwanted drama, she thought as she shaded in a few final parts of Mello's portrait, but now it seems like a cute little story to tell your daughter when she's having boy trouble or something. Linda smiled to herself, replaying the past in head, wondering if she would even remember most of what happened by the time she had a daughter to relay the tale to. She laughed to herself. "Man, I'm tired." She took a swig of the coffee.

Linda began her portrait of Near, her hand moving almost by itself from memory. Another smile graced her lips as she thought of how much she used to draw this particular boy.

"I wonder what he's up to now," she murmured. Probably has an internship with L, that little genius. She laughed at her little joke. I wonder what they're all up to now. Hm, we have some good memories together. I don't want to lose any of those memories. I don't want to forget about any of them, Near, Mello, Matt, even Roger. Linda put her pencil down, reflecting on what she had just thought. "No, I don't think I can forget about any of them. I can never forget."

Another swig of coffee and another three minutes, and Linda was done with her portraits of both Mello and Near. "Well, that's that. Now I can return to bed. Yup, that's the end."

"It takes a minute to have a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone – but it takes a lifetime to forget someone." - Anonymous