Chapter 119

Dear Lily,

Of course we are friends! I might have been distressed by the last letter you sent, but that's because I love you and hearing how your life was before you ended up with Will and Marissa. After all, your story was one of great tragedy and pain.

I'm not a huge fan of pain. I know that you'll hear that the motto of a lot of people back on Earth is "No pain, no gain" but that never really made sense to me. I did live with pain. I was a cheerleader in high school and college and you can't do that without expecting some pain, although I never got hurt badly, mostly just muscle strains and twisted ankles.

What's funny is that yes, we have the medical tubes here on Wadi. I mean, of course we do. However, except for medical checkups or the sponsors when they need to recover from injuries after a fight, no one uses them. Well, if someone was desperately injured I could see someone using one, but for the everyday minor injuries no one really bothers. It's not too unusual to see someone with a bandage around an arm or leg as they recover from playing too hard.

And it is playing too hard. Now that all the concubines on the island have had their first baby, there are quite a few who haven't got pregnant again immediately. We have swimming contests in the lagoon, and even have come up with some water volleyball and water polo matches. Then we have beach volleyball, beach soccer, roller derby, roller hockey and one of the crews from Tank Six had a basketball court set up in front of their home pod. I noticed you wrote about regular barbeques. We have those just about every night it seems, and they almost always include contests. We even have had three-legged races. Those are great fun, but I can't pair with Erica very well. My love and reason for living is just too short and we struggle to maintain a good rhythm. Willow and I have won a couple of races though.

I noticed you writing about how you can recognize Veronica's cries. I know how that works, although I can usually tell the difference between Sage and Cee as well as just pick out Cee. From all the babies out there. A huge part of that is the time I spend with Violet. We seem to eat and drink at the same time. We feed our babies at the same time, and we definitely try to cuddle our ladies at the same time. She's become my best friend and my biggest supporter in all things. It's scary, I know that Erica and Willow have to be my focus, and I give them all my love, but somehow I always have more to give and Violet definite receives quite a bit.

I think she returns the favor and the feelings, although she's so devoted to Willow. But I'm sure she'd say I'm just as devoted to Erica, which is likely true. I'd do anything to help keep Erica happy, including allowing her and Willow to take Cee and Sage into their tank during a training run.

Yes, the darling duo is still training, although its all practice and range work. They get in the tank, drive for a few hours and then return to the training base. Most of the time they are using lasers instead of their actual guns. I heard that in one training exercise they defeated five tanks from First Company without being hit. That was with Sage sitting in Willow's lap and Cee riding with Erica. It was a complete violation of just about every rule, but no one was going to tell them to stop.

Actually the best training trick they pulled off still has me puzzling a bit on how they managed it. I don't think you've seen a real tank, but the insides are small. The one time that I visited the inside I couldn't imagine how you could do anything in it, there is barely room to sit and breathe. However, one day when we were invited to watch the training. Violet and I accompanied Erica and Willow onto the transport to the mainland.