’ They sat in silence for a few minutes before Angela sighed and said, ‘I asked you to stop by today because I have something for you. Your mother...had me keep a strongbox for her. She said it was just a lot of papers, but they’d be ones you needed when she was gone.’ ‘You have Mother’s papers? They didn’t burn in any of the fires?’ ‘No they didn’t burn. I had to laugh when she asked me to keep them. She said she was sure she’d burn the castle down someday because of her smoking habit—that you. We never acted on our physical attraction in the normal way because of the unique nature of our friendship. Ruth was unwilling to risk losing that special form of "friendship with benefits" by going further. She reasoned that if a physical real-world relationship went wrong, our friendship would end, and she'd not have her "safety valve" form of sexual release she'd come to rely on.I, on the other hand, was willing to risk it all for just one chance at getting her naked and losing myself. She often told me she loved me and I guess she did, but to her it was an abstract kind of love. Pledging her love was like a turn of phrase, I guess. And to my shame I have to admit that it took me years before I understood. You see, I never wondered who Alicia was in whatever 'real time' there might be. I fell in love with the girl I met in cyberspace, not with the girl (woman? man?) whose fingertips typed her into life.When I once tried to convince her that true love could very well exist in. It was as good as she could have hoped.The blonde was talking as Naira took long drag after long drag, but she didn't really listen. Maybe she was being bad company, but she was too focused on the act of smoking to pay attention to anything else. It was better than she remembered. It completed her. She was lost to time, only coming back to reality when the cigarette died."Want another?" the blonde asked, the paper wrapped poison already in her hand. Without a word Naira took it. The blonde lit.