July 2026:
In which I write a love letter to my friend.
Hi lovely,
Before we jump into the newsletter, I just want to flag some things I’m talking about below. I talk about cancer and terminal illness. But I also talk a lot more about love and gratitude. If that’s not for you right now, that’s okay. I’ll see you in the next one.
If you stayed, thank you.
Because one of my oldest friends is dying.
I mean ‘oldest’ as in ‘I’ve known her for the longest time out of most of my friends’ and not ‘the oldest in terms of age.’ She’s in her mid-thirties and was diagnosed with a very aggressive breast cancer in December 2024. It’s progressed and worsened and… she’s dying.
Her name is Alyce.
I know she’ll be reading this (hi beautiful one) and she knows that I love her, but I wanted to shout it into the void of the internet too, and while she’s still here to read it with all of you.
Alyce is one of my oldest friends but I’ve only met her once. We live on other sides of the country: she in Noongar Country in Perth and me in Wurundjeri Country in Melbourne. And we actually met online, on a collaborative community role-playing website.
‘What on Earth is a “collaborative community role-playing website”?’ I hear you ask.
It was essentially a set of forums, a range of message boards, that were all a different location. You created an account as a character and then you would write a scene from your character’s point of view. Then, depending on the intention of the scene (sometimes you were just bored so it was an open invitation to anyone, sometimes you built entire storylines/plots with other people), you would wait for someone else to respond to your post with their point of view, and things would get rolling.
This website was inspired by a love of a particular magical children’s book series, which I don’t talk about anymore. So the main setting was a castle and there were witches and wizards, who were students, password protected boards depending on what house you were in, classrooms, communal halls, then the village that sat outside of the castle, plus the forest and the vampires’ cave up in the mountains.
I’ve never asked Alyce how she ended up there. I myself actually found a really early version of the site - it went through a lot of changes and spin offs, that were all very dramatic at the time - but in the iteration that lasted the longest, that’s where I first remember Alyce’s work.
She was, unquestionably, the best writer there. And there were a lot of absolutely class writers on the website.
Alyce had multiple characters - everyone did - and I don’t remember when I first read her work but I remember wanting to write with her all the time. She had this incredible demon character, Mai, who lived in the forest, and a human character, Mina, who worked at the pub. You couldn’t have found two people more different from each other and yet, it was always unmistakably Alyce. And they were unbelievably cool. For a lonely sixteen year old obsessed with books and harbouring a dream of being an author, Alyce’s writing was the kind of style I knew I could never write, but desperately wanted to. Still do. Alyce’s voice drips with darkness and horror (complimentary), rich and thick with poetry, shaded red and black.
My main character on the site was a witch called Kiki. I don’t actually know how I came to that name - I remember I created her for a competition entry and she stuck in my mind, but discovered Kiki’s Delivery Service much later, which has loads of parallels but was not the inspiration for her, just a weird coincidence. But Kiki was much lighter than Alyce’s characters, much more purple and blue toned against the backdrop of this world.
Kiki was one of the key people on the website for a long time, with a whole saga of relationships and magic and all sorts behind her. One of her most significant relationships was with a vampire called Ace. But I loved the idea of a vampire character of my own and so I created one: a white haired, golden eyed man called Sungai.
It was actually really freeing to write a character who was so different to Kiki. But Sungai opened me up to having more opportunities to write with Alyce. Vampires and demons could more easily spend time with each other, after all.
So we did. And we wrote a LOT.
Sungai and Mai had a continuing, casual flirtation. Meanwhile, Sungai and Mina also had some chemistry of their own. Kiki and Mina had a more normal friendship, although Mina often seemed to feel like Kiki was overbearing (she probably was, to be fair). But almost every day, Alyce and I would be writing with each other in various capacities, both for ourselves but also for the others on the website, who had a voracious appetite for certain characters and relationships - as is the case with most fandom. But unlike fan fiction, there were never/rarely any references to the characters in the actual books. We used the setting and most of the rules of the world, but created our own characters to be in amongst it.
Through these characters, Alyce and I grew closer. And when I look back on that time, on the people who were my earliest crushes, Alyce is definitely one of them.
But this is the thing: Alyce has never been a ‘one who got away’. I went and visited her and her partner, Alex, for a few days many years ago now, the only time we’ve ever met. She met me with a sign at the airport, and the three of us romped around Boorloo together. It actually was over Valentine’s Day but Alex didn’t miss a beat. On Valentine’s Day morning, he gave Alyce chocolates and a bunch of flowers, but he also gave me a chocolate heart too, so I didn’t feel left out. Pretty safe to say, I had/have a crush on them both.
The website Alyce and I wrote together on faded away but we stayed in touch. Every time we spoke, it was as though no time had passed, like there was something we both deeply recognised in each other. A soulmate. A kindred spirit. We never needed the small stuff because we could go straight into the deep.
Alyce has never been a lost love because I have never lost her. We don’t talk every day, we don’t necessarily know the minutiae of each other’s daily life but we don’t need to. We know each other on a completely different level. There’s an intimacy between us that’s always been hard to articulate but has never failed us.
And here’s the thing: I wouldn’t be the writer I am today without Alyce.
The foundational skillset I built on that website was because I wanted to create a character that could sit comfortably alongside hers. I cannot stress enough how absolutely incredible she is as a writer, something that made me hungry to match her and lift my game. The storylines and scenes we were writing at sixteen years old might’ve been absolutely cringeworthy looking back (to be honest, some of them were absolutely amazing) but, when I do look back, I can see the glimmers of the writer I am today sparkling through even then, which is all because I wanted to impress a girl.
When At the Foot of the Cherry Tree came out, Alyce and I started talking more often. She was/is so thrilled that I’d done the thing we’d all secretly been dreaming of since the days on that website and published a book. She took a copy of it with her on a trip to Africa and messaged me as soon as she finished reading it, telling me how much she loved being around my writing and characters once again, even though it had been so long. When she read Until the Red Leaves Fall, I got a similarly excited text response, and I was so glad to have been able to provide some kind of escape for her once again.
Then in Feb 2025, she posted about her diagnosis. I didn’t want to be a friend who stopped talking to someone after a scary health situation, so we actually started talking more. I made it clear from the start that I never expected a reply from her, ever, that I was absolutely happy to meet her exactly where she was at at any given time. I sent her photos of my cat, we talked about her animals, about her trying to write again but struggling with focus and energy, we talked about lots of different things when I checked in every few weeks or when she sent me the latest update.
Sometimes things were better. Often things were worse. In January this year, it became clear that the cancer wasn’t responding to the treatment any longer. This is a very simplified version of what’s been happening but it is the crux of it.
However, it’s now July and she’s still fighting. I know she’s struggling. I know it’s incredibly hard. I know there’s not a whole lot I can do for her. I try to create a safe space for her in whatever capacity she needs, and celebrate her wins (she and Alex got engaged!! Everyone say congratulations!!!!) and give her somewhere to feel the lows.
But, as I said: she’s dying. I refuse to shy away from saying it, as though if I somehow look at it head on, it might make it easier for her in some tiny way.
And even though I tell her I love her every time I talk to her, I just want to say it again. I want to say it so everyone can hear it. I want to say it so she knows it even more deeply than she already does.
I am so grateful to know her. To know Alyce, to know Mai, to know Mina. To know Alex, their animals, to have even a small part in their lives. I am grateful for the way she’s pushed me, for the way she’s made me better writer and a better person, who has met me with no judgment and only unconditional love at every point.
I’ve been writing this on a train and I’ve missed my stop but who cares? It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I am hurting because she is hurting and I’m going to miss her like mad, because of course I am, but I also know that there will always be a part of my heart that is hers, that is Mai’s and Mina’s. It’s the part that twists unexpectedly when it remembers what’s happening and feels like a punch to the stomach. It’s the part that soars with me when my words flow. It’s the part that reminds me that I love.
And Alyce will never be a love lost because I will always be able to find her in me. In my stories. In Cherry and Gordon, in Emmy and Isadora, in everyone else who comes next. She is etched into my heart, into the words I type on every page, and I will never, ever lose her.
Alyce will never be lost because, in her, I have found so much. So many beautiful things and so much of myself. I can’t imagine who I’d be if we never found each other on some random website one day when we were teenagers. Let this be a lesson: always try to impress the girl.
One of my oldest friends is dying. But I am so infinitely grateful to know her.
A departure from my usual newsletters but something that needed to be said.
See you next time,
Alli x