It's been a few months, but I finally decided to take this story back up. Long story about why I decided to start writing chapters for this again… I'll tell it in the notes after the story, if anyone is interested. For not, I wont hold you from the new chapter.

Loves Icy Journey, Chapter Six.

Minako was almost floating as she walked from Haruka's car to her front door. Her first date with Ami couldn't have gone better if she had written a script for it beforehand.

            The young blonde blush softly as a stray naughty though ghosted across her mind, and her hand rose to cover the spot where Ami had softly kissed her on the cheek. Well… maybe just a little better…

            Her face split in a grin at this thought. But you take what you can get… and she'd gotten far more than she could have hoped for.

            Near rapturous joy was instantly replaced with a flash of anxiety, however, as she saw the door opening in front of her and her mother standing in the doorway.

            "Little late, isn't it?" The older woman asked, as she placed her lips around the butt of a cigarette.

            "I'm sorry Momma." Minako replied, "But the concert ran a little longer than I thought it would."

            Minako's mother took a deep drag from her cigarette, and motioned her daughter into the house. As the younger woman was passing her, however, she seemed to notice for the first time what she was wearing.

            "Where did you get that dress?"

            The smaller woman paused, and turned to her mother.

            "It was a present from a friend."

            "Seems a little fancy for a night out with your friends." Another deep drag, followed by and exhalation of smoke that Minako struggled not to gag at.

            "It was a classical concert Momma… formal dress was required just to get in."

            Minako waited a moment to see if her mother had any other inquiries for her, and then made her way to the bedroom she shared with her older sister. (*1)

            Ami's reception, as she made her way into the home she shared with her mother, was a bit warmer. She passed quickly through the front door, but paused a few steps into the home as her mother called out to her.

            "Ami? Come into the living room, please."

            Sighing, the blue haired woman (*2) made her way into the tastefully decorated living room, where her mother was sitting on one of the leather cover couches, waiting for her.

            The older woman leaned slightly forward as her daughter entered the room and, in a rather anticipatory tone of voice, asked,

            "Tell me how it went! I want to hear everything." She paused then, and grinned a bit. "Well, maybe not everything… "

            Sighing deeply, Ami sat on the couch across from her mother and related the details of the evening, stopping before the point where she kissed Minako goodnight.

            Ami's mother seemed almost disappointed when her daughter finished the tale.

            "That's it? She didn't even try to kiss you?"

            "Mother, it was a first date, and neither of us has much practice in the art of dating girls. So no, Minako did not try and kiss me."

            "Oh…" the elder Mizuno paused, thinking about what her daughter had just said. "So she didn't try and kiss you… but did you kiss her?"

            The soft blush that instantly spread across Ami's cheeks clued her mother in before the younger woman could stutter out a response.

            Ami's mother laughed softly and stood, leaving the young woman to her own thoughts before seeking bed.

(*1) I don't know if I made it clear in early chapters that Minako and her sister share a room, but its important later –duh- so if I said differently earlier, Ill try and go back and change whatever chapter I miss told you all in.

(*2) What exactly do you call someone with blue hair? A blunette? –shakes his head- If someone has a good idea, feel free to let me know.

Ok, a little background info on why this story is starting again. A few months ago, when I was last active on this story, I had a lot going on. I was having health problems ( all  better now), familial problems (stopped caring), and financial problems (…ok, so I'm still broke…). On top of that, I just didn't have any time. I was working and going to school full time, and that ate up my day. Well, I'm still working full time (turns out that they wont give you a paycheck if you don't show up…), but school has eased  up.

            -Sighs- That brings me to the last two things that caused me to drop this. The first one is the novel I am/was/kinda still am working on. You see, when writing short stories or fan fiction, 1,000 words isn't bad. 5,000 words and you're doing pretty good. 10,000 words for a single chapter is outstanding, and not bad for a series. Heck… I have series that have individual chapters of less than 1,500 words each, and not much more than 10,000 words total that I'm not to ashamed of.

            But I bit off more than I was ready for with a novel. I've been pouring everything I have into it for almost a year, and I have 40,000 words. Now, if this was FF, that would be a killer fic. Unless it sucked, then it would just be really long. But not for a novel. I figure that, with my outlines, my novel is going to be at least 120,000 words. That means that, after a year, I'm one third of the way done. And yes, before anyone says anything, I know it would be a lot of work.

            So I'm going to take a break, and write for fun for a while. Don't get me wrong… the novel was a lot of fun, but since I want to sell it someday, if feels like work. I know that Ill never get anything but feedback for writing fan fiction, and that relieves a lot of stress from the writing process. After all, the worst that can happen is that I lose a bit of time, right?

            And that gets me to the last reason I quit writing this story. I was suffering from deep depression six months ago (working on it… a bit better.) due to some long time personal issues, and getting a bunch of flames about this story didn't help. And it wasn't just the reviews (some of those were bad enough)… it was the email flames. The best one was the letter that basically told me that the writer had read everything I posted on ff.net, and couldn't find a single reason why the moderators shouldn't just dump my account and saver server space.

            So this time Ill try not to be quite so thin-skinned.

Oh, and yes, I know that my author's note is as long as the actual story… just humor me this once, eh? It's been awhile.