"She's kinda... Me. In a way. Like... Philosophy stuff. Kinda would be the result of my own creepy-evil-self. She's how I can hang around and be safe. You'll probably get something like her, too!"

"... What do you mean I'll 'get something like her'?"

"Well, a thing you can call out in the Midnight Hour. Probably will look like a less-silly version of that knife-thing, if you saw it?"

"Yeah. I saw it," she says darkly. "But I don't get what you mean by me 'getting' one. Does it just appear one night, and tell me it's going to work with me or something?"

She doesn't seem pleased by the prospect.

"Uh... No. There's a way to call it out to begin with - later of course. Is there a nice way to say that Libby kinda relaxes in my soul? She kinda is my soul anyways. As I said, philosophy stuff! It helps to go through that yourself... Am I atleast being helpful or should I stay quiet until midnight?"

"I don't really want to be awake and attacked by monsters at midnight, but if none of them are as bad as that monster was, and since you took it out that easily, it would probably be okay? At least I'm learning things."

"I'm sorry, do you not understand the concept of 'sometimes'? You've switched between saying 'I can sleep through it and never be attacked' and now you just said you'd always be attacked."

"... I thought you were saying that if I'm awake, I'm basically guaranteed to be attacked, but if I'm asleep, it's only sometimes."

A long, drawn out groan takes Cynthia a minute to get through.

"If you sleep, you normally won't be bothered. If you're awake, you can avoid them or whatever. Every so often, when a full moon comes along, like last night, all bets are off."

"Okay. I was imagining the monsters to be pretty quick, like dogs or something, and that they'd actually chase us, rather than something that you can just avoid by... planning to avoid them."

"A dog doesn't attack you unless you do something to it. It can still get rabid and attack anyways. Knowing that there's a doberman down the street means you can walk a different way. Does that idea atleast help?"

"Yeah...? So, the monsters don't always want to kill you? Or they at least can't track you very far? I mean, last night I just walked home from a party, the sky went weird and then there were coffins and weird puddles, and then I got back to my house and some creepy copy of myself appeared, seemed to read my mind, and then turned into a monster when I left the house, after having just thrown knives at me. I know it was a full moon, but... that's pretty different from what you're describing."

"IT WAS A FULL MOON LAST NIGHT! IT MAKES STUFF DIFFERENT! THAT IS WHY WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THIS!"

Thea gives her a look, obviously unimpressed.

"Look. Showing up for a holiday dinner and thinking that's always a normal dinner is wrong. There won't always be turkey served. What you saw was a turkey." Cynthia is getting more and more puzzled trying to explain things.

"... The evil clone that turned into a monster was a 'turkey' that 'won't always be served'. Okay, well, weird analogy, but yeah – I get that. It was a full moon, like I said, but I'm expecting 'evil monsters that want to kill me', here, not 'weird species of thing that passively sit in an alley.'"

"They don't. I haven't even gotten that far. You kept getting hung up on if you need to deal with any of this by sleeping it off."

"I haven't mentioned sleep in a while! But now you mention it, if they're that easy to evade, it'll probably just be really boring, so I might as well try to sleep through it anyway, maybe get some stronger glass to stop them breaking in. I was trying to work out how bad they actually were, but you keep being surprised that I haven't lowered my expectations enough from the literal only monster I saw."

"I'm surprised you formed such a strong expectation from the first one! You aren't waiting for me to get to explaining anything and you aren't understanding there are better and worse out there!"

"... There's worse? Please tell me those only happen on the full moon."

"There are ways to avoid them. Trick them. So on." Cynthia sighs.

"Look, I'm sorry, okay? First I thought you were a hallucination, and I was a little busy being terrified, then we didn't speak much at school. Now I'm basically just guessing what the Hour is like, and then when I'm trying to get you to say yay or nay, you seem to be frustrated that I even guessed anything."

"At school you left. The problem I'm having now is that you're making these guesses and the answer of 'it isn't the same for everything' is making you guess more before I can answer anything specific."

"Do you just want to meet up in an hour? I can show you whatever you want during the Midnight Hour and quit this." She looks annoyed.

"Yeah, fine, whatever."

She stops, turns around, and starts walking in the direction of her house.

"Sure. Bye." Cynthia walks off in another direction.

Where were we even headed? Atleast there should be a burger place nearby... As long as I'm back in the alley at 11:50. Not a problem... Argh, shoulda asked if she wanted something! Not like she was being reasonable anyways. I'll sort it out with Libby around.