Hello, people! Yeah, I know, starting another without finishing my other... eight? Well, this one just wouldn't leave me alone, and it begged me to write it, so I have to obey.

Now, before I start this, I have to say something. I'm not getting reviews. I know for a fact that people are reading, but I'm not getting reviews, and that has to change. Hit Counter is a wonderful feature.

Dis: I don't down Baten Kaitos, but I wish to GOD I did because it is the BEST game to ever make contact with my Cube controller.


"Don't you have a family you belong to, Arietta?" she was asked. The person who asked her was a boy of nineteen, with blue eyes and blue hair. Arietta couldn't help but feel the waves to sorrow radiating from the bond the two shared.

'Yeah, I do… But I love it here. It's so boring back home, and I don't want to go back to that life!' Arietta responded. It was sunset, and the forest around them was steadily getting darker. The open portal was slowly getting smaller; her window of opportunity was vanishing with the sun. Her bonded looked at the portal for a second then back at her.

"You should hurry…" he said softly. His eyes grew, if possible, even sadder than they were. Not trusting her voice, Arietta only nodded. The boy sent a wave of what can only be described as friendship laced with sorrow. "I'll miss you, Ari. You were the best Guardian Spirit a guy could ask for. I promise we'll meet again somewhere." Through her tears, can spirits even shed tears? Arietta grinned.

'I'll hold you to that promise. If I never see you again, I won't forgive you, and I'm a vengeful little spirit.' Arietta unconsciously used a saying that her charge had used many times before. Steeling herself, she felt the bond between them break. She waited helplessly as she was drawn into the almost non-existent portal. Her last thought before she lost sight of his face, and her consciousness, was very simple, but possibly one of the most meaningful things she ever remembered saying.

"I'll never forget you, Kalas…"

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Arietta opened her stormy blue eyes. The first thing she noticed was that she was crying, and she had an emotional tightness in her heart that was almost physically painful. Some of her brown hair was sticking to the wet spots on her face.

She blinked to push the rest of her unshed tears out of her eyes, and glanced at the digital clock by her bed. The green digits glared back at her, announcing to the world that it was two-thirty-eight in the morning. She sighed almost inaudibly and thought back to the reason she woke up.

'That dream again…' she thought. 'Why won't it stop? It's just like my magic; it only reminds me of the fact that I'm not there any more.'

Wiping her wet face on a corner of her blanket, she turned over, trying to get a few more hours of sleep before her alarm forced her out of bed. Sleep eluded her, however. She tossed and turned for hours, not able to get comfortable or get the memories of her old friends out of her head.

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"-ever lied straight to your face! No one ever stabbed you in the back! You might think I'm happy, but I'm not gonna be okay!" Simple Plan's Welcome to My Life lyrics shattered the silence. Groaning, Arietta looked at the offending clock-radio with a glare that amounted to nothing short of pure hatred. She had apparently been able to fall asleep again earlier, though not long before the clock decided to obey its programming. Grumbling about early mornings, Arietta firmly decided that mornings sucked with only five hours of sleep and trudged into the bathroom to shower.

Deftly twisting the shower handle, she set it to the right temperature on the first try with the ease of practice. While the water heated up, Arietta looked at her reflection in the mirror that was over the sink. Tired, gray-blue eyes stared back at her from a pale face. Her normally semi-wavy brown hair was frizzy and wavy almost to the point of curly from sleep. Her overly-large night shirt was hanging off of one shoulder, and her two necklaces were backwards.

Stripping off her nightclothes, she put herself under the hot water and sighed happily. Quickly washing her hair and body, she soaked up the glorious heat for a few more minutes before reluctantly turning off the shower and grabbing her two towels. She wrapped one around her head and one around her body before walking out of the bathroom and straight into her bedroom to get dressed. She only half listened to the radio as she got dressed, but a news report grabbed her attention.

"-ter of the park today. Nothing is known about the strange phenomena, but people are advised to stay out of the park if at all possible, as authorities aren't sure what caused the vortex to open or what it did. Eyewitnesses claim that two oddly-dressed people stepped from it and then it vanished without a trace. Witnesses claim that it was a man with blue skin wearing some sort of armor and a woman with oddly-colored hair. Both are considered very dangerous, and if you have any information, please contact…"

Arietta stood dead still for a second, letting the information sink in. The report occupied most of her thoughts as she finished putting on her red shirt and jeans, wolfed down her breakfast, and rode the bus.

She went through her day normally, the news report finally fading as she concentrated on her schoolwork.

Her day went pretty well, considering that it was a Friday, at least until her boyfriend stopped her at her locker at the end of the day.

"Arietta… hi…" he said, obviously nervous about something.

"Oh, hi, Robert. Listen, I'm really sorry about not being at last week's dance, but I had to babysit as soon as I got off work. How was your weekend?" Arietta asked. Her bright expression faded as Robert shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.

"Yeah, about the dance…" he trailed off. "Listen, is it okay if we don't see each other for a while?"

"Why, is something wrong?" Arietta was immediately concerned.

"Well… You see, Melissa kissed me at the dance… And she asked me to be her boyfriend and… I told her I would be," he finally said after many hesitations. Arietta felt a growing pain in her heart akin to what she felt when she dreamt about those last precious minutes with Kalas and she dreaded what he was going to say next. Finally, the pain became too much and she started to cry. She stared unblinkingly at him through her tears as he continued. "I wasn't even thinking about you at the time, and I had said yes before I realized it. I'm sorry, but it's over." With that, he turned and walked away.

Tears continued to fall and Arietta's legs gave out. She fell to her knees in front of her open locker. She took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out as even more tears made themselves known. Suddenly, completely on autopilot, Arietta grabbed her bag, closed her locker, and ran from the building.

She ran all the way to the park without realizing it. Collapsing under a tree, she gave into the tears and started sobbing.

It felt like hours to her before the sobs subsided and she looked around. Still hiccupping, she realized she was in the park and the report from that morning came rushing back to her. Getting up quickly, she gathered her scattered books and hurried to her house.

As she walked, her deep sadness froze into rage. Her tears turned into the insane desire to use the magic she brought back with her and she had to repress the urge to scream out her favorite of her six spells.

She was in her bedroom before she knew it. She collapsed on her bed and fresh tears tried to fall. She looked at the blurred picture of her former boyfriend through her tears and her rage returned.

"Hellfire," she growled. She felt a slight shiftof her magic and thephoto burst into flames. The flames quickly spread to the tissues and other things on her nightstand. Panicking, Arietta sat up, held out one of her hands to the flames, and quickly chanted, "I am the water, dispeller of fire. Guardian Spell: Sacred Spring!" A larger shift of magic and a rush of water put out the fire and her rage dissipated again.

Burying her face in her pillow, Arietta let her tears soak into the soft material.

"How could he?" she moaned softly to herself. Sitting up, she looked at her ceiling though tear-filled eyes and yelled, "Haven't I suffered enough? First I lose Kalas, now Robert! Why me?" The ceiling didn't answer. That's when her watch beeped repeatedly, signaling to her that it was two-forty-five and that she only had ten minutes before she was late to work. Her eyes widened as she jumped up and hurriedly tried to changed her shirt. Her work shirt was half-way over her head as she ran from her room. The shirt was blue and in the left side of the chest, there was a white ink bottle and paper, the symbol for the store she worked at.

She ran out the door.


There. Now, REVIEW and tell me if you like it or hate it, and look at that scenario thing in my profile and give me your answer in a REVIEW, and one more thing. I have no originality what so ever when it comes to names, so if you can give me a good name for Ari's best friend, please do. She's short and skinny and acts like she's on constant sugar high. Give me your suggestion in a REVIEW.