Let's talk about life for a while.

"Enough about me, let's talk about you for a minute;
Enough about you, let's talk about life for a while."

In descending order of importance, then:

-Yusra really is leaving. Yes, I knew she had to leave eventually. I don't think I've ever written about the girl properly, so this is as good as time as any to put that right. I've known her for five years, more or less exactly, and when I first laid eyes on her, it was our Merchants' induction and I was feeling utterly alone in the world. I didn't know anyone at all, and everyone else knew everyone else, and I saw her from across the room and wondered if she were Indian - she had the looks for it - and if that might prove a conversation-starter. It didn't, as it happened. I never even talked to her. I never talked to her for two years afterwards, because she was so shy, and I wasn't much better, and besides I was too busy being a sheep.
Times have changed, in a manner of speaking. As Becca is continuously saying, we have known her for five years, but been her friend for only three, and that's not nearly long enough for a friendship to last. From being shy girl in corner, Yusra has become a hyperactive, giggly, fangirlie girl with a sense of humour and an inability to tell a story from beginning to end. Also, I have observed several details - some notes lying around her schoolbag and a few of the filenames on her computer - that seem to indicate she writes het fic about Blazin' Squad. I wanted to find out more about that. I wanted to ask if she'd ever considered slashing them, I wanted to tell her I write fic too, of a different sort, and in the end I just wanted to get to know her better.

But I will never have the chance, because she's gone. This morning, to be precise, first to Heathrow and then to Jeddah, and we will never see her again.

-Next, I have realised that my induction is on Wednesday, and therefore I only have today and tomorrow left. I haven't been to school properly since the beginning of May, so this is going to be a culture shock. Sixth form and all that - it was one of the main topics of discussion at the Last Supper/rat-arsism. At the induction, we find out which forms we are in and get our tails, and so on and so forth, and I haven't quite decided what I feel about it. Yusra won't be there, but neither will cucharita and _detroit, and I will never randomly meet emerald_embers or lilka in the corridors ever again. They are all people who have been and still are very important parts of my life, and now they're gone I will be Merchants' one and only remaining slasher. I don't like this. I don't want this. And it's all very well saying I still have friends - I do, I have Becca and many others - but it's a whole sphere of friends I've lost. During the last two years, fannish life and real life have been gradually blurring at the edges, becoming the same thing, and I wanted that to continue.

-More prosaically, two days of holidays left means I have to wrap up anything I have ongoing. I don't think I will finish all three Fics From Hell (the first of which has been summarily dispatched to language_idling) but I do want to make some headway with them. I don't know what it is about this fandom that makes me want to write epics. I don't do epics, because I don't do plots. In any case, the three fics do sort of have titles (Hunter's Moon, Paragons, and Fairies and Wolves) that are subject to change, but they are still going to be collectively known as the Fics From Hell because that is what they are.

Where was I? Yes... I want to make some headway with them. And I particularly want to write this week's hp100 challenge. Which reminds me; shouldn't there be a new challenge on contrelamontre by now? Anyway, yes... the drabble challenge is simply "owls." I don't know what I'm going to write, but I have a feeling Newt Scamander will be involved. He's one of those minor canon characters I really really like for no immediately apparent reason.

-Lastly... I don't think there is a "lastly." Being introspective for any length of time really takes it out of me. So, if you want me, I will be somewhere else, procrastinating.