John,

Since the extremely commercialized, yet sentimental and ever-important, holiday of Christmas approaches, I would like to cordially extend an invitation to you and Jade to the Lalonde-Strider household. It has been a very long time since we have all met up, and I'm sure that Jade will appreciate this gesture very much. I believe it is high time for the four of us to regroup and celebrate at least one of these events together, if only for the mere sake of friendship and hospitality.

I'm sure we will have much fun, decorating the house and finding an appropriate tree to festoon. However, it strikes me that Jade might not want to cut down the tree, and we will be forced to take all the decorations out into the middle of the forest and plug the lights into the backup generator. We must devise some way to dissuade her from this projected line of actions, but rest assured, John. We will find time to make a series of snow angels, even amongst all these mind-numbing conundrums. I would hate to deprive you of your favorite winter activity.

In any case, both Dave and I look forward to seeing you two again. I predict he will probably take over the sound systems and rig his improvised "sick beats" to replace my appropriately and not-at-all cynically chosen festive carols, but I am not overly concerned about that. If neither you nor Jade mind being slightly deafened, I'm positive I can drown out his mildly ludicrous slam poetry with back-up Christmas noels. I suppose this would be a suitable time to advise the packing of ear plugs along with your winter-wear.

See you soon.

Rose

deark karkat,

wow, so much has happened in the past few weeks, i don't even know where to begin! hehehe! i guess i'll have to go back to when rose and dave invited jade and me to their place to hang for christmas and new years! it was pretty funny, how everything happened, because rose guessed a whole bunch of stuff in her invitational letter, and it all came true! man, she is like psychic or something! kind of like how jade was before... well, you know. before her dream-self was killed.

um. yeah... uh, sorry, i didn't mean to... gosh, i would totally go back and write that over, if this wasn't the last sheet of paper i have! i gotta remind jade to put that on our list of "things to buy" later!

anyway! long story short, rose convinced jade to pick a tree close to the house, so we wouldn't have to keep everything in our fetch modus and lug the back-up generator out into the middle of nowhere, because jade didn't want to kill the poor tree! i guess i get where she's coming from, but gosh! she was really going to pick one, like, five miles away from the house! thank goodness rose changed her mind!

and then dave and rose had a music blast-off. we had an interesting mix of dave's raps and rose's super sappy christmas songs for the entire night! i'm so glad rose lives out in the middle of nowhere, or else we probably would have gotten a bunch of complaints from the neighbors! but the bad thing is that we all ended up a little deaf by the end of the night, even with our ear plugs. wow, i'm glad jade and i only fight by giving each other the silent treatment. the lalonde-strider household has some super INTENSE battles!

we had a lot of fun making snow angels and snowmen too, except rose and jade made snow squiddles, and i'm not sure what dave and i made. :/ maybe you can try to figure it out from the pictures i'm putting in here!

gosh, i would tell you what we gave each other for christmas too, but i am running out of space on my only piece of paper left! i'll just say that they were all really cool though! :) and we watched fireworks on new years too. rose had them shipped from china. i thought it was a little excessive, but she INSISTED, so we couldn't really do anything! at least we didn't accidentally light things on fire. that would have been sooo bad.

but it was so nice to all be together and hang out. i think we spent most of our time just talking to each other. yeah, even though we send letters all the time and chat online, it's always different when you talk to someone face-to-face! suddenly, it's like we all had a bunch of stuff to say and hardly any time to say it. it was pretty cool, actually. but i wonder when we'll get another chance like this. it's kind of difficult, and i'm sure i'm going to miss them a lot. maybe that's just part of growing up. i suppose that, sooner or later, we will all have to say "good-bye." it's kind of depressing to think about it that way, but it's inevitable, huh?

okay, i'm seriously squeezing all my words now, so i'm just going to end this here! i'll tell you more in my next letter! bye karkat!

~john

dear dave,

i'm kind of worried about john... ive noticed that hes been kind of down after we left new york for home. at first, he was acting normal, but now, hes getting worse and worse, and i dont know what to do! i try to talk to him and ask him whats wrong, but he doesnt really answer... i dont want to push him too far, so i just leave him alone for a while, so he can clear his mind. sometimes, well be talking and he just kind of gets really quiet and sad-looking... it really breaks my heart, and i wish there was something i could do for him.

i think hes been having bad dreams lately too. i woke up once or twice, because he was thrashing around in bed really badly. i tried waking him up, but it didnt work. at least putting my hand on his arm would make him calm down, but he never really WAKES. he mumbles a lot too, though i cant hear what he says.

the other night, he was crying in his sleep...

dave, its so hard to know what to do. this isnt like back then, when i could dream and see things that will go on in the future. at least, then, i could try to predict what would happen and try to make sure they happened correctly! now its just one timeline and a million choices to make.

i know we kind of stopped talking about sburb together, but weve all been trying hard to find the trolls too, right? i know that john does, and rose told me about her own researches once. you and i must be doing the same too. and yet, as the months pass, its like the entire thing just kind of fades away, even though we dont really want to forget it.

i wonder if thats whats bothering john so much... it has been getting closer and closer to april, after all. maybe, all this time, hes just been hoping that we would somehow be able to reach them again. i think we all need some sort of closure!

but im not really sure! rose is much better at these things than i am, after all!

in the end, i just hope im being silly and overthinking things. maybe hes just suffering a bout of "winter blues"!

... somehow, im not really convinced thats the problem though...

love,

jade

hey

its almost your birthday so i thought id send you a letter. not saying that i wont actually give you a gift or anything but ill shoot another envelope over when the time comes. i just wanted to let you know that i still have your back and if you need anything im here for you. most the times we just seem to talk about stupid things but its not like i wont listen to your other problems too.

its like sburb messed up everything in our lives with weird puzzle shit and time shenanigans but that doesnt mean that its changed how we are all still friends. yeah its sappy as hell but whatever. its the truth. thats what bros are for right dude?

so anyway if you need someone to talk to just hit me up. dave strider will always have the time for his best bro.

stay cool

dave

hr

Jade,

Since the last time you sent me an instant message of concern, I have been attempting to crack John's case. Unfortunately for us all, be seems to be rather badly stuck in his vacation trip to Egypt and will not divulge any information to either Dave or me. This is worrisome, as it might be related to the long -suppressed agitation from Sburb, which we have all been harboring, but if he won't admit it to himself—or worse, does not understand what is bothering him at all—he certainly will not be jumping at the chance to admit to us.

Perhaps John simply needs more time to reflect on his emotions and reach his point of enlightenment. It would certainly not help to try and speed along this process via subtle hints, but as the situation sits, and we have not the barest iota of an idea what might be plaguing our brave friendleader's deepest thoughts, we cannot do anything, save wait. I understand that this is a high source of mental agitation, but we must be patient. Just as we bided our time through The Critical Moment shall we bide our time through this conundrum.

John is a strong individual, and I do not doubt his ability to resolve his issues, no matter how long it will take. We have all overcome our own obstacles, and while it is difficult to watch him struggle so, we can do no more.

Just make sure that he is keeping himself well physically and do your best to support him mentally. Dave and I will be doing the same, but since you are the most accessible to him out of us three, a majority of these responsibilities will fall upon you. In the chance that this becomes too worrisome or taxing upon your mind and body, do not forget that we are a mere Pesterchum message away.

Be strong, Jade. We will be fine at the end of this very, very long day.

Rose

dear karkat,

it's hard to believe it, but it's already my birthday! i'm fourteen now, and it's officially the one-year anniversary to when we first played sburb. a lot has changed since then. everyone is settled in their "new" lives, and it seems like the world really does keep spinning, no matter what.

i kept writing these letters to you, in hopes that you will somehow get them, but i have no idea how that train of thought worked. i never even tried sending them out! then again, i don't even know where i would try to send it to in the first place… :/

to this day, none of us have been able to locate your pesterchum handles, so just as it's a year since we played sburb, it's also been a year since any of us got to talk to you guys. even so, we still talk about you guys a lot, just for the sake of remembering.

by the way, i've been having a lot of dreams lately. i mean, i've always had them, but since the date to my birthday approached, they seemed to get more and more frequent. they're nothing like the dreams i used to get while i was still god tier, and they're not like the ones in the dream bubbles either, but just… dreams. dreams about what happened in the game and stuff.

like when i first entered lowas, did the windy thing, and met you guys! even though a lot of bad things happened because of sburb, i don't regret having played it. i learned a lot from it and got to meet rose, dave, and jade in real life for the first time then! but i think the best part of having played sburb was being able to meet you all! :)

at the end of the dream, i woke up feeling really, really sad. it felt so real that i didn't remember that it was actually all over now. I was so lost afterward that jade had to shake me a few times just to get be back to earth!

but man, karkat, it really DID hurt... it was like i was missing a huuuuge chunk of myself or something.

i don't know! just being able to remember the way you growled at us, all angry-like, or glared at me when i laughed at you... it made me want to cry or something.

now that it's been a year, there's this terrible sense of finality, as if this is it. we couldn't find you after so long, so it's like this is it... we really won't be able to talk to you guys anymore. maybe this was how it was meant to be, but i still feel really bad about it...

i don't think i was ever able to tell you, but i was actually really scared when we first came face-to-face with each other! i didn't really know what to expect, since i didn't even know what you looked like. and i couldn't believe you really did yell all the time, just like when you were typing! it was kind of silly, how much you yelled, actually. hehehe.

it was nice, though, being able to see to you in person. i mean, you even managed to bring your yelling to a grumble for me! it's too bad we only got to talk for a little bit before the scratch happened. but i'm glad we even got to chat for such a short moment, because after getting trolled by you so much, i had actually really wanted to meet you.

and i was incredibly happy too. even though we didn't really talk except for that one day, it still felt like we knew each other really well. maybe it was because of all the things we had to go through "together"! planning everything must have been super tough on you, but it all worked out, so i think it was all worth it!

to be honest, it's kind of hard to remember what you looked like. it's been a so long, though. have you changed in appearance? maybe gotten taller? i think i was taller than you the last time we met, right? hehehe! don't try to deny it, karkat! hmmm, i think the thing i remember most about you were how weird your eyes were, all yellow-orange like that on the outside and super dark on the inside! it was kind of INTENSE! :P

hahaha, look at me, getting sappy and weird again! i don't mean to freak you out or anything. it's just hard for me to write a letter without getting all sentimental, since it's the one-year anniversary of sburb and all. it should mean something, you know? and i guess...

karkat, i guess what i'm trying to say is that i just

really, really miss you.