fifth.

I said, last time, that I was wrong when I thought things would change after that friend of mine came back.  She came back, of course, but things didn't change.  The only way they changed was that she no longer told people about those characters.

I'd blamed myself, at the time.  I'd thought that it was because of me that she was like this.  That because I played along with her at that time, because I fed into her belief, that I ruined her.  She told me that it wasn't my fault, but I still believed it was.

And then she got involved with the sisters.  One my age, the other a year younger, both normal at a first glance, maybe a bit odd by the fifth, oddness confirmed by a conversation.  I knew the older sister from spelling bees in elementary school, but I didn't speak to her again until high school.  We got off to a decent start, until she told me about her nightly activities.

"You what?" I'd asked.  I couldn't believe what she'd told me.  Not because it was amazing, fascinating, but because it was absolute bullshit.

"I fight demons."

Well, then.

I mentioned this to her younger sister the next year, as the older one had included her in these obvious delusions.  She'd said it with a serious face, that every night, she went to another realm to fight demons.  But I just had to know what her sister thought of her spreading that around.  She must have been so mortified.

"She wasn't supposed to tell anyone about that!"

Fuck me sideways.

So now I knew two girls, both of whom believed that they were nocturnal demon fighters in some magical realm.  And they were apparently serious enough about this to have written a 126-page story detailing their battles, werewolf boyfriends, and anything else that they had ripped off from episodes of Buffy and Charmed.  And then, so was that old friend of mine.

And just like that, she was one of them.  A third sister.  A demon hunter.  And I just had to give up.  What else can you do?

Really.  What else can you do?