"It hasn't been that long since my last letter, but I've been really busy this week and I felt it deserved its own letter," Blaze said, reading over her letter one more time. "It doesn't seem that formal," she muttered to herself.
Deciding that her message was alright, she put her pen down, folded the letter in half, and put it in an envelope. The entire composition read as such:
"Dear Silver,
It hasn't been that long since my last letter, but I've been really busy this week and I felt it deserved its own letter. First of all, I wanted to know this. Have you been having any weird dreams lately? Maybe it was just what I ate, but these past few nights I've been having the strangest dreams, and you seem to be in all of them. I wouldn't call them nightmares, but there's a healthy amount of grim and dark in there.
My grades have been keeping me stressed, and my med degree seems awfully far away. But enough bad news.
You say Amy's staying in the county after graduating? Maybe someday, if I come visit, you'll introduce me. I'm running out of space, so I'll have to end it here. Respond soon."
Blaze had already talked with someone about her dreams; Tails, to be precise. Her parents had recommended him over the phone—"It doesn't matter how cheap he is; we don't have to take a road trip for this one."
At least the psychiatrist had been nice. In fact, he was probably the most informal person with an M.D. that she knew of. The session had been about an hour, but it felt more like lunch with a friend.
As for Silver, he'd been her acquaintance for quite some time. They'd met mostly by accident, in some botched, stange sort of interstate foreign exchange program at Silver's school. Initially, Blaze had been selected to go, but due to financial circumstances that neither party got an explanation for, she wasn't able to go. Meanwhile, Silver had somehow found out the name and address of Blaze via 'accidental' glances at the teacher's faxes. Sending a letter to her, the teachers at both schools had supported this pen pal relationship, and they'd been sending letters for the last ten years.
Glancing up at the clock, Blaze stretched. It was nearly time for dinner; she'd planned to go to a restaurant with a friend. The completed letter lay on her desk, unsent.
As Blaze quickly learned, stupid dreams and friendly visits didn't go so well. Especially considering the amount of sleep she'd gotten the other night, which was next to none.
The friend in question was a senior, like herself. He was a youthful and unassuming type, called Blake, a newt with a penchant for saxophones. Normally Blaze was tolerant enough when he went on one of his tangents, but she found it harder and harder to keep up with where he was going as the visit drew on. Her eyelids began to have a mind of their own.
The meeting dragged on quite long, and Blaze felt inwardly sorry for not having the energy for keeping up a conversation. She could tell he was getting bored, and finally she stood and said simply, "Let's do this again sometime."
Blake nodded enthusiastically. He'd had a little more fun than she'd thought. Good.
And then she checked her watch. 7:45.
For the love of—
Since she got her driver's license, Blaze had been able to drive wherever she wanted, but her (rather strict) parents had always set a curfew of 8 PM. Unfortunately for her, the trip back was going to take twenty minutes—five minutes that she didn't have.
So, her arrival home was not a happy one. Once they'd gone over the initial formalities: "Sit down, young lady"—she'd prepared for whatever punishment it might be.
"I have tried to give you freedoms with your steps towards adulthood," her father started. He looked at Blaze's mother for confirmation. "Have I not?"
Both Blaze and her mother nodded. Her father continued: "But with those freedoms come a certain responsibility. Such as being home on time."
"Five minutes," she muttered, and instantly regretted it.
He took a menacing step forward. "Excuse me, young lady? Would you care to repeat that?"
"I'm sorry," Blaze said quickly, afraid.
"You'd better be," he said gruffly. "Like I was saying, one of these responsibilities is being home on time. And when you choose to enjoy a privilege and ignore the responsibility, there have to be consequences. Like taking your car away. But we won't take your car away," he finished.
Briefly, Blaze seemed hopeful, but her father was still angry. "Instead, we've decided to take away your privilege to send letters to that pen pal of yours. So, well…" he said, somehow scathingly, "I found this letter, unsent, on your desk."
Blaze looked hurt as her father gripped the letter she had written between his hands, slowly ripping it apart. "I guess it'll have to stay unsent. And so will your next letter. And the next one. For…I don't know…about a month?"
On the surface, people who didn't know Blaze's relationship with Silver all that well might just shrug and say, "Oh, well. No contact? Not so bad." But Blaze and Silver had been in contact since they were fourth-graders, and one could say they'd developed quite the friendship. They told each other everything—things that their friends didn't know, and things their families didn't know, even their parents. And knowing Silver, he was going to be hurt, badly, by this—something Blaze didn't want to do to him.
Alone in her room after the lecture, Blaze could hear her parents' voices, although she wanted to just sleep. "All that for being five minutes late?" her mother was saying.
"You always take her side," her father sighed. "Anyway, weren't you the one who set the curfew?"
"Yes, and I think we discussed reasonable punishments, too." Blaze felt a small shred of hope, but it was quickly stifled. Her father had been stubborn for a long time, and that wasn't going to change now. She supposed she'd have to get what sleep she could.
