[Author's note: As a faithful reader and reviewer brought to my attention, there's been some confusion. The character "Sir Susan," introduced below, was never intended to be the same character as Susan Strong. The entire Islands series and Susan along with it just dropped out of my head when I was writing my series outline, apparently. Sorry for any confusion, and I hope you enjoy the fic.]

April 4, 2987:

Weather: Nice and drenched
Mood: improving
Music: Leonard Cohen - Teachers

Dear Diary,

Well, this is going to be a long one. I actually went on a mission for the Knights! It involved an airplane, magical books, and I actually managed to fight a ghost for the first time since I've been a vampire... Ok, let me get my facts straight and tell it in order...

I woke up, the room was bare; I didn't see her anywhere...

Wait, that's a song, I can't use that.

It's true, though. One good thing about the dorm room is, Melissa leaves way earlier than I do in the morning. Her first class is at eight and I guess she works out first. It almost made up for listening to her on the phone with Haden from eight to eleven at night. And I only heard his name at the very end of the phonecall, because she makes up a new, sugary pet-name every time she'd've had to call him by name.

Am I like that when I'm in love? I'll have to think back.

So I got up yesterday, alone in the dorm room. I'd managed to sleep five hours, which is as much as I've slept at once in a year. Then I had, by my standards, a futting luxurious breakfast: A whole tube of red watercolour paint! No, really, it's not as bad as it sounds. It's Fenniman's patent red iron oxide no. 14, and it has a very deep, almost crimson flavor, and when I'm done it's still usable-as white paint, of course.

Then I threw on some flannel and jeans that I hadn't actually worn yet since leaving home, for a change. I fished around for my portable clippers in the luggage, and when I finally found them, I took some chunks out of my hair at the sides. It'll look funny tomorrow and I'll have long hair again the next day, if I don't do something else with it, but today it'll look badass.

That's one thing I don't miss about before: bad haircuts. Back then it took a full year to get my hair shoulder-length if I'd cut it short, and by that time I was usually ready to have it short again. And when I cut it, I'd want it long, and so on and so on. And that's not even mentioning the bad haircuts. Decades after the war, even finding another person who could hold scissors only happened once in a while, and mirrors were kind of at a premium too. Imagine me with a bob-cut, diary. Actually, I described it to you pretty damn well in volume three. What is this now, volume 78?

But enough griping. Class was very interesting, for a change. I've already learned a few things about the Old World that I never knew. Most people didn't believe in magic? This was news to me. I must have seen Mom summon Dad a hundred times before I was five. Not that he ever stayed long.

But Foxham is good at painting these mental pictures of the Old World, and he goes off on tangents about history a lot when he probably should be teaching us about the books we're reading. Toward the forty-five minute mark, he was describing a place in our home city (mine and his), and I quote:

"There it was, nestled among unassuming neighborhoods, ocasionally shadowed by the massive concrete towers that the humans built when they'd run out of ground. It had been another poor neighborhood in its time, but it became a monument to this man, and to his dream. The home where he was born and lived was a museum, the church he preached at his entire adult life was a museum, and his tomb was a shrine. I've seen the ruins myself.

"And that city-crowded though it was with cars and smoke and the roar of aeroplanes, and even as racism ran rampant in the streets, there was a coal of equality burning in that city. Because he and his millions had a dream that... how did he put it? '...that every valley shall be exalted and every hill and mountain...'"

It's at this point that someone interrupted Foxham to ask what "racism" was. Actually, they'd been interrupting for several minutes, but it was then that he finally stopped to ask them what they were "on about."

He tried to explain and the student skillfully didn't understand. This went on for some time. They all understand prejudice. They're a dozen different species, with ancient rivalries and all that mess. They've experienced prejudice from both sides, every single one of them. But that a species could do it to itself? The idea offends them because it's so outside their experience. By the time they were done discussing it, it was the end of the period.

Me and Mom never talked about racism before she died. I think I was too young in her eyes for her to tell me about these things. I'd already been to the Nightosphere and seen all kinds of jacked-up shit, but Dad never told her that, and he made me promise not to tell either.

Mom had experienced racism, though, for sure. Me, I put up with species prejudice, being a vamp, and I've done plenty to earn it, don't get me wrong. That doesn't make it fair, really, but it somehow makes it hurt a little less. Mom? Some people would have treated her differently because of what continent her ancestors were from, and how basic natural selection colored their skin there. How does that even feel?

And unlike the students, who operate on a "weasels stick together" level, it doesn't surprise me. Every time a new form of sentient life crawls out of the swamp, it starts being douchey to everyone almost immediately. I've been around for it at least twelve times. It amazes me how Bonnie gained sentience and was immediately almost sociopathically good. That's "good" as she understands it, with about sixteen pairs of quotation marks around it, but even that is still an improvement on most species.

Glob, what did Bonnie do to me? I sound like I'm in love.

So class was interesting. Health was boring, math was difficult, but the other two were interesting. Ms. Donovan handed out our first essay assignment, and when someone complained about the deadline, she said she "thrives on our salty, salty tears." That's actually pretty funny. I might say it sometime to like... Jake, or somebody.

After class, it was time for training. I went to the garrison via an underground passage from the math building, that I don't think I'm supposed to know about. It was bright out yesterday, and I didn't want to burn anything before I got there. I'm not sure how well I heal right now. Probably pretty well; I got five hours of sleep in, right? But I'm not pushing my luck.

I came up through a hidden hatch in the fencing room. Julian the magic dragon glared at me and then told me I was five minute late. My Timex showed me three minutes late, but whatever. Sir Howell led me into an empty classroom in the garrison building and introduced me to my new training partner, Sir Sue. She's pretty cool, I guess, but she doesn't let on much. She's human-ish, one of those mutants who can't make hair follicles, but I think if she had hair she'd have it short. Her eyebrows are painted-on, and the little finger of each gauntlet hangs empty, but otherwise, she could pass for human.

And she's tall. She wears armor that was clearly made for a good-sized man, and wears it well. Her effortless motions while wearing it tell me she's pretty muscular too, but I've only seen her in armor.

"I'm in charge of your initial evaluation, Probational Knight Abadeer," she said, after Sir Howell had left. "Depending on your performance, you may be given an additional rank upon comissioning."

"Alright, what's on this evaluation?"

"There's an abandoned library over in the Great Wastes. It has books the professors need. There is an obstacle which blocks easy access. You will fight it, I will observe."

"An obstacle?"

"Patience, Ms. Abadeer. As Sir Howell says, patience is a knightly virtue," she said, but somehow it didn't sound that judging. Maybe it was just a platitude.

"Aight. How do we get to the Wastes?"

"We fly. I've managed to book the Lyceum's light aircraft for this operation. I will pilot it."

Alright, so I was starting to think that maybe Sir Susan isn't just playing frosty with me. I was beginning to wonder if she was just like that, all unemotional and distant. Wooden, too. But fuck, an aircraft? Like a plane? I hadn't seen one in centuries.

I got into my permanent armor, the suit I'm supposed to keep for my whole stay here. It's a womens' size 2, and it fits a little better than the suit I wore to fight Sir Howell. The helmet is new to me, though. I'd never worn anything like it, either in Iowa or the Second Mutant Army. It's a frog-mouth, which is my least favorite kind of helm, but has very nicely made cushioning, unlike nearly every other helmet ever, and it has a radio intercom. It felt nice to strap on one of the famous swords, too. I still haven't figured out how it makes the blue flames. Pure fucking magic, I suppose.

Then Sue took me down another underground passage, which seemed to go on for a long time, and then up a flight of stairs into a little hangar. There it was, a small yellow airplane, painfully slender and beautiful, like a chicken hawk I once killed for its blood in a moment of desperation. It had a multi-faceted glass cage for a cockpit that looked barely big enough to hold two people, let alone the two of us in armor. It looked to be in good shape, but the engine was clearly a replacement, because the housing for it looked crudely welded on.

"Prewar, from Europe." Sue muttered, when she noticed just how much I was admiring it. "It lands on the spot in a medium headwind, like a kestrel. In a heavy headwind we might actually land backward."

"They made some good things before the war," I said, still staring at it.

"Including yourself, I suppose. Not self-serving?"

I did a double-take. "You know?"

"I do. Let's begin."

She opened the cockpit and motioned for me to get in first. I put on my helmet, because I knew we'd be in sunlight in a minute. Sue put hers on too, and only once I was inside the plane did I see why. There would have been no place to set it down in the tiny cockpit. We had to shove our shields, swords and packs awkwardly behind the seats.

"So, what's a kestrel?" I asked, as I strapped in.

I somehow think she half-smiled inside her helmet. "You've seen 'em," she said, sounding for only the second time like a Glob-damn living being and not some kind of robot. "Little falcons that hover in a headwind. I like to call the plane that."

"So what else do you like to do?" I said. It sounded less futting awkward in my head.

"Mostly this," she said, and started flipping switches on the overhead panels. A few seconds later she started the engine, which sputtered and then got loud. On cue, someone ran out in front of us and pulled a lever, and the hangar door opened. The sun hung low in the sky directly ahead, just beginning to turn red. I squinted. We began to roll forward.

Did I freaking say you could land airplanes on the castles walls of the Lyceum campus? I fucking called it. Somehow in all that underground mess, we'd climbed up a flight of stairs inside the wall and come out in a hangar adjacent to the main gatehouse. The hangar door faced out on a runway on top of the wall.

We ran along the wall a mere two hundred feet before the creaky wheels left the ground. Sue pulled back on the steering thing, and we were going upstairs like a bat.

Literally. I do it all the time when I have the energy.

And we were soaring over the mountains a moment later.

"Hey, is there anything I need to do before we get there?" I asked.

"Just keep your strength up. The foe is... well, let's just say that there's a fail rate of forty percent."

I managed to plug my MePod into the helmet intercom so that it'd play over my headphones. I put on Pink Floyd, that mega-epic that they called Echoes, but which should be called, like, The Albatross or something. I once read in an ancient magazine that they actually made more than just the two albums. I'd love to find those someday.

Beneath us the mountains rolled away. Maps call them the Northern Appalachians, or at least, the old ones do. They have about a thousand names now.

In my headphones, Dave Gilmour was singing about life coming into existence deep in the ocean. And then in one of those haiku moments, the point where two images come together and the meeting casts new light on both, he switched to a new image: two strangers meet in the night and recognize themselves in each other. Is he saying that strangers falling in love at first sight is like chemicals randomly joining together on the ocean floor to create life, or vice versa? Neither or both. Neither and both. That's why it's brilliant. It's also why I love haiku-all the good ones do that.

And for only the second time in how many decades, I felt the perfect moment. I was floating over beautiful scenery in an airplane, with a person I like, as much as I don't know her that well, listening to, like, one of the greatest songs in history. What could tarnish this moment? I might have thought. Because I'm a real schmuck...

"So what's this music we're listening to?" Susan asks.

Fuck, I had it set to broadcast. I felt embarrased, and if I'd fed recently, I would have blushed like a fupping teenage boy from one of those Japanese shows. I jerked the headphone wire out of my helmet. "I'm sorry, I didn't know you could hear it too!" I said, louder than I'd meant to.

There were about ten seconds of silence that could be cut with a knife.

Then I had a terrible thought. Maybe she'd been enjoying it. Fuck, I don't know what to do!

Then a voice came into my head. Not one of those whispering voices like you hear when you're strung out or sleep-deprived or just nucking futz, the ones that, like, tell you to destroy things; it was a calm, wise voice that always gave good advice.

"Use your words," Simon had said, more than nine hundred years ago.

"Um... Sir Sue?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know you could hear that. Do you... do you want me to put it back on?"

"Yes, please," she said. "I liked it."

And that was that. I've never felt like a stranger around Sue since then. But I felt dumb for making a big awkward deal about nothing. Glob, I am going to be this way forever.

So that was day one of the mission. We sailed over the mountains and the desert well into the night, and landed around midnight. Then the trek began...

I'm not going to lie to you, this was the most bored I'd been in a decade. The Great Wastes are pretty flat and featureless. We walked over sand and scattered grass for four hours.

The ancient city drew in sight about two in the morning. Walking all that way at night with armor and a heavy pack was hard enough for me and probably harder for her, and I asked if we should camp for the night. So we set up our little pup-tent and laid down in armor as a chill wind blew through the flaps. I don't think either of us slept that much. She was freezing, I have a condition, and there was a coyote howling not fupping far enough away.

But hey, misery loves company.

In the morning, I got up to find her cooking breakfast for one in a little lightweight stewpot. We'd apparently stumbled into a junkyard on the edge of the city the night before. Mountains of twisted wreckage stood here and there, and through a gap in the junk I could see a well-preserved city-street.

If we'd pitched our tent a little to the right, we'd have been out of the wind, dammit. The little prairie chicken she'd killed with a slingshot was barely mutated, almost certainly not a person, but it was small and she hadn't been able to get much meat off it for herself. She'd broken the bones and was trying to make broth. When she noticed I was up, she closed a little green book, laid aside the stick she'd been stirring her soup with, and handed me a plastic bag full of chicken blood.

It was good. I drank half of it and poured the rest down my canteen with a little water left in it to make it go farther. Sue doesn't naturally communicate much, but she's a very good person.

And then we were ambushed by the Coyote Men. They'd snuck up on us while we were eating. I drew my sword, and one of the twisted, semi-erect beasts laughed a terrible laugh. There were ten in all, and they had me surrounded. I say "me," because Sue had disappeared and I couldn't see her anywhere. She'd shoved the book in my hand, and I shoved it in my bag.

I ran towards the one that smelled like the alpha. Don't ask me how I know what that smells like. I had my sword in both hands, pointing down, and went to plunge it down the soft part between his neck and clavicle. I heard a creaking sound, and at once me and the Alpha looked over to see a massive landslide of car-parts coming towards us.

Meanwhile in the present, it's time for me to get to that extra-credit seminar, so I'll write the rest down later today.

(To be continued.)