It finally begins... the final chapter in Teri and Kristoph's story. Courtship is the third and last story I have planned in this saga. From this point on, there will be more resolutions than dangling plot threads, more confrontations and less lamentations, and more action, sex, and drama than you can shake a stick at. But this time around, we're going to be doing things a little differently.

Teri and Kristoph's story has always been about how people Change over the course of going to college; how they Grow as people. (And also about sex, if you're into that). The thing about Change and Growth is that more often than not, there's not a single moment where we have an epiphany and suddenly are better people because of it. We grow over the course of time, over many small moments where we make conscious choices about our actions. We have small successes. We also have failures. We relapse. And we pull ourselves back up again. We grow as people through the making of these choices, through our actions, and through examining what we did and seeking to learn from it.

So, subsequently, Courtship isn't a single long story. It's going to be a series of short, connected story snippets, each between twoish to fiveish pages long. This is the first, where we revisit our stripey, vivacious protagonist #1. Let's see what he's gotten up to.

Writing these stories about Teri and Kristoph has always been a bit autobiographical for me in a weird sense. The two main characters have always been inspired by my boyfriend and I, and although I'd be hard pressed to say which was more closely inspired by which, both Teri and Kristoph's experiences and struggles in the stories mirror things I've gone through to some extent myself. Kristoph coming out and accepting his homosexuality was a dramatization of my own walked path. Teri's journey is a bit more fictionalized, but represents a lot of the demons I've seen plague homosexuals, and homosexuality as a whole. Which caused me no end of grief when I was younger. Writing these stories helped me sort out my own feelings on the subject, so I'm glad I have gotten the chance to write them, and I hope anyone who reads them enjoys them.

Truth be told, I've heard people say things like "Reading this story helped me decide to come out to my parents" and "Reading this story helped me accept who I am." They're rare, and very much in the minority of the (admittedly few) comments I get, but hearing stuff like that pretty much makes my day.

Thank you for reading. And if you feel like it, leave a comment below to tell me if you liked it, if you hated it, if you think I'm full of bullshit, etc. Criticism, praise, and discussion are what keep me motivated to write. Even trolls. :P

You can find the previous part of the story, Teri's Lament, here: https://www.weasyl.com/submission/1040617/teri-s-lament