The door started to swing shut, then was pushed quietly ajar again.  Shiloh stepped inside, and her puffy eyes and red nose made it clear that her face wasn’t just wet from the rain. Her hair was dirty and matted flat, and a black grease stain on the side of her face suggested that she’d slept under a car, possibly for more than one night.  “Did you miss me?” she asked in a voice watery from weeping.  “I’m back now.  Lucky you!  Congratu-fucking-lations!”

That’s the mood at the moment.  Shiloh’s been quiet to the point of being missing for a little while. It was a bit of a concern.  Usually the imaginary friends who populate my stories are fairly active, chattering genially about their lives or the world around us, but about two months ago Shiloh just went silent.  Didn’t really have any idea why, and of course the only one who could have explained…wasn’t talking.  But she’s back now, and has brought a pile of generalized anxiety and unhappiness (that we hadn’t noticed was gone) with her.  Therapists would probably say that we put that away for a while, and now we’re ready to deal with it, or at least have decided that it’s time to deal with it.  We don’t usually think too hard about that stuff; all we know is that Shiloh is back, which makes the collective happy, but she’s kind of a miserable ball of misery, which makes the collective less happy.  Not so much in a “wish you’d stayed gone” way, of course.  We want to help.  Life’s better when everyone’s happy, and a depressed Shiloh is dramatically out of character and worrisome.  Is the world really that bad?  (Yes, it is.)  Is there any way to fix it?  (Not sure.  Maybe not.)  And if there’s not, can we convince her to just be her hedonistic self and not think about it any more?  (Also not sure.)

Maybe we’re just looking at the possibility of a depressed Shiloh from here on out.  We hope not, though.  Will continue looking for solutions.

Meanwhile, there are rifteen weekend work days till Wasteland 2019.