This was going to be a much longer article at one point, before the mysterious gaps in the ether that reside in our publishing offices decided to swallow the damned thing whole. It's also not a particularly amusing article; I did warn you all when the Gaardian's charter was first formed that occasionally we might like to publish things that are a) serious, and b) true (no!).

In short, it's Valentine's day. Or it will be soon. Or it's just gone by a few days ago. It depends how prompt you are in reading this, and whether we slip past another deadline or not. Play along with me, and assume it is.

I've been on Aardwolf a long time, first logging on about six months after the MUD was created, and hanging around under a variety of characters since until settling on the name of Wolfe. For some reason. In that time, I've killed a lot of mobs, done a lot of quests, idled away weeks of realtime, and made a few friends. One friend in particular, of course, is Kittenbane, who a lot of you will know has been engaged to me for some time now.

I'd known her for about a year before Euphonix, in a casual, Immlike way, knocked our heads together and pointed out that we should stop messing around and get together for real. This happened a few days after Valentine's Day, 2002.

You've all heard the horror stories about long-distance, online relationships, and how they never work. In our case at least, this has proven to be completely untrue. We're still very happy, and will be happier still in a few months when we finally get together for good.

In short, then, this is more of a shout-out than anything. I'd like to thank Lasher and the gang for creating Aard in the first place, without which I doubt very much we'd have ever met. I'd also like to thank our various friends, for listening to us being nauseating on a variety of public and private channels, and for their support over the years. And, of course to Kit, for putting up with me for this long, and still loving me anyhow. Happy Valentine's Day, hon. Love you loads.