Through the Mail Slot

It was quiet in Sparkle's room, finally. There was no incessant muttering into a dead phone, there was no sound of a hungry cat yowling. In the latter case, that was because the cat had fortunately been rescued days before. In the former, it was because Sparkle was just so. Damn. Tired.

That hadn't stopped him from trying, though. Hadn't stopped him from sitting on his floor in the spilled kibble, clutching the business card with Melanie's number in one hand, holding the phone to his face. He was murmuring, staring at the floor, chapped lips moving though no sound came forth.

They were so close now. Melanie had promised. She'd found a place for him, where he would always belong, and he just needed to talk to her for a little longer before he could finally go home.

[For one!]

It had been difficult to bring himself to do it, the first time he dialed the number on the business card that Mr. Gaunt had given to him. It seemed too good to be true, like it was either a cruel prank, or at least a scam, and Sparkle had treated that first call as such.

The second time he'd called, he'd talked to Melanie about her own experiences in the foster care system, how she'd been jerked around her entire life because she hadn't been what people were looking for when they went to adopt. This time... this time it was his turn. Melanie liked to take things slowly, to ease people into her way of doing things. After being failed by the system herself, she understood the importance of taking time and building trust with those angry, troubled teens who had been jerked around since they were small.

Sparkle was very much an angry, troubled teen. But he sat himself down on his bed, holding the business card in his hand as he hit the call button on his phone. She had her own entry in his contacts now, but there was just something soothing about punching in the numbers himself, like maybe doing so would give him a bit more courage to do this, or at least a chance to freak out and hang up before the phone could start ringing. He never did, of course, and dialing was getting easier with every call. It was just another bit of zen that he needed right now, apparently.

The phone rang a few times. And then, on the other end, there was Melanie's voice, cheerful and welcoming and understanding, this woman with a heart full of compassion for kids forgotten in the gutter the way he had been, and he smiled. This was going to work out just fine. Of course it would. Melanie seemed sure, so of course he should be sure too.

"Hey it's me," he said, smiling easily. "Sparkle. You wanted to talk about what it was like before Social Services came, right?"

[OOC: Establishy, but open for interaction if people want to knock!]