(Written under the influence of lack-of-sleep and Blood Canticle. Lestat has changed.)

It's been maybe a few hours, a few minutes, a few seconds since I said goodbye to Rae- originator of the Satanical Duck, which is now mine, mine, MINE- and I' staring at the screen, pure white, of the computer.

I'm in shock.

I'm confused, bemused, and all of those lovely words that roll off of the tongue with a trill.

But don’t start on your pity roll yet, baby, because I'm not done. Don't tell me about how my fantasy world is always better than the reality. In the words of some mortally dead person or another, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Don't assume that just because I’m in shock, this trip was bad.

In point of fact, this trip might well be one of the best things that's ever happened to me.

I lament all the time, my voice low, my voice high, my voice faint and squeaky to the point where I realize that there’s no way I can be this tired—but I am! I am so tired, but I am enjoying it. I enjoy the weary-in-the-bone ache that courses through my body. It's like another kind of adrenaline. A better but worse kind.

What do I lament?

I lament that there’s no one like me. That everyone is so unique at my school, but always the same, always unlike me. They understand me, but not to the core. They can say what I'll say and do next, but they don't understand the motivations behind that. And most of all, they will never say the same things with me.

I am normal. I am your typical crazy Gothic-touched, tear-ridden teenager who will sit in her bedroom for hours and hours, sitting and staring at the walls and smiling and typing and—

But you’re not here for that. You're here, wondering, was Rae that forty year old rapist after all? Am I? And why am I in shock about the trip in the first place?

Well I'm not forty years old.

And it's odd, because on the trip, while lamenting, I met someone like me. Too much like me.

I'd be sitting there, thinking thoughts of my own, we'd converse and think all the more on it. And I would think and reach a certain thought. And- bam! she would say it. My own thoughts in someone else's mouth.

It happened to the both of us, often enough so that it felt weird, not so often that it got tiresome.

Tiresome.

It's hard to imagine anyone less tiresome than Rae.

There are some people out there who are –damned- gorgeous. They make you want to drool at them, to love and worship them, to strangle them because you know that you can never live up to them. They make you want to laugh because their perfection is absurd in this world, and cry because if it’s so absurd, then what the hell are they doing, existing on this planet?

I'm not one of them.

She's not one of them either, but she's so.. splendid (splendiferous?), in a way. It's hard to imagine someone different, someone vivid as she is. It's hard to imagine someone as alive as she is. But once you do, she exists, she’s alive, and it’s.. something akin to an honor to meet her.

I was flattered.

I mean, come on! You walk in, meet the kind of person whose face and voice you’d never forget, and suddenly, you realize. She’s your idol. She’s everything that you’ve ever looked for in your authors, but most of all, she’s here, she’s alive, and she’s-

Too damned modest for her own good, that’s what she is. (And you know it’s true!)

We had fun- or at least, I did. She gave me a pottery sculpture of a firelizard guarding her eggs, and I gave her six books- two Diana Wynne Jones collections, one Crown Duel, Elvensbane, and two other ones I can’t remember. She gave me a watercolor painting of a blue dragon, and I smiled helplessly because I had nothing else to give her. She gave me a little bobble-head turtle that she’d picked up on the way here and had thought was cute. I smiled and enjoyed the view.

Never have I felt so worthless. She gives me things that she spent time on. The best we can say about my presents were that they cost money, and that they took some time to select.

Time equals money, they say. But what’s the specific proportions?

She had coffee at Cracker Barrel, and I had the blandest hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted.

But hey, who cares? I was grinning too hopelessly to stop at that point. I loved being in her presence. It’s like being in rain after a length drought. Deserts and rain. You know the drill.

We watched Monty Python, sang along to Sir Robin and the Monks’ Chant and the Court of Camelot.. (Monks’ Chant was great. We hit our heads several times over.) We made fun of the Castle of Anthrax specifically because a certain Mary-Sue liked it so much, and we found it hilarious. We would say the same thing at the same time—sometimes in the same wording!—and then we would pause and glare at each other before grinning and starting again where we left off, or maybe somewhere else, newer entirely, and better.

We talked about fencing and dartboards and the Don’t Remind Me game and-

Why am I relating this stuff to you like it’s relevant? You don’t give a damn. But then again, I don’t give a damn about whether you give a damn or not. You’re not important to me unless you were there, or unless I tell you all about it in some medium other than this bland diary. Yes, diary.

We played tarot cards. It was almost enough to make me believe in something supernatural-

(Shit. I’ve just remembered that they invited me to go boating. And me, having the shitty memory of a goat, completely forgot! Damn it, damn it, DAMN IT!)

I am very strictly heterosexual. This has held true through everything, and I think it still does. I think, I think, I think. There are still some very beautiful people out there of both genders that I’m not afraid of admiring, though. There are some people that I’m not afraid to confess are gorgeous, striking, and vivid.

So I’m loosely heterosexual. Like an interpretation of the American Constitution.

But- as I’ve said once before- if she or I was a guy, Teatime wouldn’t exist for me. And it honestly, honestly wouldn’t matter at all about North Carolina. So many hours away, but not so distant by IM or phone.. Technology has its uses. For all that its mortal spawn are weak and puling, there is something distantly beautiful about the hum of a machine- a live one.

It’s good to have technology, for all that it breeds people like us, who could not survive without our computers and our comfortable little beds and lives. Evolution is supposed to breed us until we’re stronger. I’m the weakest of the weak, but I feel proud, because somewhere deep within me, my mind is of a clone of Rae’s.

And of course, it’s an honor to be cloned after a genius of such magnitude. Even if the scientists did fail, and make me inferior.

So you can see me now. Dark-haired, unwashed, but content. Glaring at the computer, but smiling on the inside like there’s nothing better in the world than what I’m doing now. Sitting, typing, livingbreathingsmiling.

And you know what?

(Don’t say what, that’s so cliché and clueless. Pick something else, why don’t you!)

I honestly don’t think there is anything better in the world.

----

Yeah.. that was written under Lestat’s influence. Sorry for the excessive swearing and all that, but I can slip so easily into Lestat’s voice.

This weekend was great. Can’t you tell?