A sudden flash...

I've not been around SL much for the last couple of weeks, but I do get on (when the system's not utterly dead, logins are not blocked and the rest...) and when I do I notice things... usually.

It was yesterday however that a friend IMed me and said "I see you've erected your treehouse again!"

I froze... I've never owned a treehouse, but sure enough, on a little plot adjacent to my land, a treehouse stood... and a branded treehouse belonging to someone I have not seen hide nor hair of online for 14 months. And in front of the treehouse, I discovered, stood a lifeguard's chair.

I blanched... literally my fingertips went cold where I sat, and my mouth went dry.

I cammed around the chair, and sure enough it was the same one as I remembered from way back when... from before I even opened the store.

A post from the very early days of my shop blog... here, in fact... hints at what was going on.

The friend who erected the treehouse was one of the initial group of people (Help Island rats who decided to escape) who moved first to Puzo in January and then onto Synchronicity in March of 2007. Another of our number was the resident of that lifeguard's chair. It was she; or her memory at least, that made the adrenaline start flowing as hard as it did; and for my RL av to start feeling cold, despite being sat in front of the three bar heater.

Why?

Well... She was, and I hope still is one of my best friends in any world... virtual or otherwise; but due to factors that I cannot divulge (because, dear reader, I'm not privy to them precisely) she walked from Second Life mere days after I returned and set up the store, without so much as a word.

Now don't get me wrong... I am not holding any ill-feeling towards her in the slightest; and I understand more than she knows how hard it would have been to tell us all that she was going... that and she was never one to believe in the "grand gesture" in that sense. In fact in many ways I'm grateful she just went... because I still hold out some kind of hope that maybe, just maybe her decision wasn't final.

Seeing the treehouse... owned by an RL friend of hers, makes me wonder if by some fluke, by some slim chance she might come back also... Ok, not to stay... for me to feel like that would be inherently selfish and I'm generally not towards my friends... but just a word... a few minutes to catch up and realise that all is OK would mean so much.

So I wait...

I sit in my own land and wait, watching the the guard station from the corner of my eye for that telltale glimpse of red...

Until next time,

Kalli