The sun would not set for a couple of hours. In her tower office, Lavender made a call, the phone dialing rapidly from its memory. The phone meditated through the speaker for a few moments before it was answered.

"Yeah?" The voice on the other end was male, but with a faint lilt and husk, a feminine undercurrent, a crossdresser's voice.

"Hiiii," trilled Lavender into the phone, so that there would be no mistaking who was calling.

"Hi, Lavender," replied the voice, bemused, feigning boredom.

Lavender played along. "I love you too, dear." She grinned. "I read your response to the Mormons. It was clever and catty and basically unassailable. You make it seem so easy."

The voice chuckled. "It's reflex."

"Are you still going on tonight?"

"Yes I'm fucking going on tonight."

Lavender raised her eyebrows. "Touchy."

"I'm sick of everyone asking me that. I'm sick and tired of having to justify myself every time a kid decides to solve his problems with a gun."

"Still smarting from Columbine, are you? Perhaps you should have taken credit for it. In six months no one would have cared. Your race is cold."

There was a snicker from the other end of the line. "You're as human as anyone else," it accused.

"If I'm human I'm the only human," said Lavender, turning away from the desk as if to deny what the phone had said, gazing out and up into the sky. "I renounced that membership some time ago."

"It'll come after you," the voice said.

"I owe much to you, but my patience isn't inexhaustible..."

The voice on the other end laughed and said "Fuck your patience. You have to make everything so melodramatic, like the world is waiting on your words."

The corner of Lavender's mouth crept upward. "I had an excellent teacher."

"...you can't wait for history to proclaim you," the voice continued, "you have to go out and make history."

"You presaged my arrival well enough, and surprised you were to find I wasn't allegorical after all."

"You built yourself out of my words," hissed the voice. "You plagiarized me."

Lavender sighed, ran her fingers through her mane. "We've been through this before. What I am now had begun before you ever reared your head."

"You'd still be a tool if it wasn't for me."

"I've already acknowledged your contribution, pet."

"Everyone thinks--"

"--and as we never agree on this point, I beg of you to let it drop. Teacher."

"I hate it when you call me that."

Lavender grinned. "You don't."

"I hate how you say it. You talk down to people when you're at your weakest."

Lavender made a noise of disgust. "I do not--"

"It's when you're at your most vulnerable that you step on everyone else, and it's only been getting worse, hasn't it?" There was silence. "I know."

"I can't stop now," said Lavender softly.

The clock ticked.

"No, I suppose you can't," said the voice gently, "and I suppose I really shouldn't talk."

"I wish you could be with me during this."

There was a soft sigh from the other end, more helpless than exasperated. "You know I'm your friend, Lavender. But I can't be anything more than that now, and you know all the reasons."

"No, I suppose not," said Lavender weakly. "I guess I knew that before we met. Despite my other delusions."

"I still don't know how to interpret any of this," the voice said, "but I can't help you any more than I have. I have a destiny, too."

"I know," said Lavender. "I'm sorry I keep asking."

"I'd be pissed at you if you ever stopped."

"Will you wish me luck?"

"I do every day. You're just what they deserve."

"I am, aren't I?" purred Lavender, smirking, as though the thought had never before occurred to her.

"Goodnight, Lavender."

"Good night," she replied quickly, but he had already gone.