Prompts:

The Way They Are: Lover of Trees and Animals, Keeper of the Graves / Nothing they do makes sense, but things always go their way.

The Way They Talk: Often misquotes Common Sayings.

The Things They Love: Religiously adheres to the lessons we learned from Mean Girls (2004).

Their Darkest Secret: It's, well, a secret.

What They Look Like: Ghostly pale, perpetually tired, but still completely irresistible.

Wildcard: Loves the Modern Rebels. 

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The sleet had made her travels a little more difficult than she had anticipated. The grey flow of mud and and ice was churning through her wheels and her journey had come to a disappointing halt. 

Briefly, she considered to just give up, to go back to the Eradian outpost and just make something up about the man from the volcano. 

Of course, that was in direct conflict with her journalistic pride, and her sense for the utter truth convinced her to take her recorder and notebook, rainjacket and gumboots, and walk the rest of the way through the sludge.

She hoped she'd get a raise for this. The downpour had almost immediately soaked through her, and she knew her notebook would be ruined. Her boots filled up with the icy mud and squelched with every step she took - that is, if she wasn't slipping or being knocked down by the sheer flow of filthy mass.

Allissa clung to the trees as she slowly, steadily made her way up the mountainside. Even if it killed her, she was going to conduct this interview. It was a funny thought, and she would have laughed if her bones weren't freezing, to think that she might have appeared on the news as one of the many articles she had written.

Not that anybody would particularly find her body for months - if they ever found it - until the rains stopped and the ice melted in late summer. As it was, Spring was already quite severe and she'd probably just be buried deep beneath the mud for the rest of her existence, like the dinosaurs. 

At least nobody would have to dig her grave. 

The higher up the mountain she got, the easier travel became. The mud thinned to a constant stream of water, already the rocks were washed clean of any loose soil and ash, and the freezing torrent barely splashed higher than her boots. 

By the time she reached the plateau, she had risen above the rain and was standing in actual sunlight - cold and crisp sunlight - but sunlight nonetheless. 

While fighting the forces of nature, she didn't particularly have the time to focus on how exhausted she was, but when her body rested just for a moment, the fatigue overwhelmed her and her muscles cried out in agony. She really hoped she wouldn't get frostbite. 

She collected herself and tried to get her bearings. If she wasn't mistaken, the cabin should be just along the ridge, and she set out to follow the natural curve of the mountain.

The man was waiting for her. He was sat in a chair and staring out at the clouds below. The sun caught his green eyes and lit his brown hair in way that made him seem like a god of Olympus, but his form was hunched and dirty, and Allissa briefly wondered which of them looked worse. 

"Hello!" she called out to him, and he turned to her, a bright beaming smile on his face. 

He took in her haggard state, and quickly ushered her into the cabin. "Thought you'd come by car," he muttered as he handed her a blanket and guided her towards the fireplace. "Would have been so much simpler."

She nodded. "The rain," was all she managed to say. He nodded knowingly. 

"That explains why you're late, but that's alright. Better late than dead, as they always say."

"Who says that?" Allissa asked.

The man seemed confused for a moment, then shrugged. "I dunno, the indeterminate 'they'." He made a vague gesture with his hands. "It's a figure of speech."

"Ah."

A silence befell them. The man busied himself with making tea and Allissa defrosted herself in front of the fire. She would seriously consider climbing into it if her better judgement hadn't held her back.

"Take your time, darling," the man said as he handed her a cup. "You've had a bad time, and you need to recover. I'll be right outside."

Allissa nodded, and took all the time she needed. When she eventually felt fit to move, she stood up and stretched. The man was outside, staring into the sunset, and it lit his eyes the same way it did that morning.

"Are you ready to begin?" she asked, pulling her recorder from the backpack.

"Time is a gift," he said, then frowned. "No, wait, that's not it. No, time is a present. That's how the saying goes, right?"

"Probably," Allissa muttered and settled into the chair next to him. "Let's begin with some basics. What is your name?"

"Moraine." The words rolled off his tongue almost instinctively. The journalist nodded.

"And how old are you?"

He seemed to consider it for a moment, then asked, "What year is it?"

"Thirty-seven AE."

He chuckled. "Oh, yes. After Effect. I forgot about all that. So, that happened in... what was it? two thousand, one hundred and... twenty-three, was it?"

"Yes."

"Alright, that makes me... one hundred and seventy-three years old."

Allissa frowned, but didn't press the question. "Alright, then. What do you do here?"

Moraine chuckled and rose up from his chair. "I keep the graves, darling," he said, gesturing to the clouds below him. 

"The graves? I don't understand."

"Have you ever seen Mean Girls?"

"Mean girls. Sure, I've met plenty of them, but I don't see the relevance."

Moraine shook his head. "No, no, not girls who are mean. The movie, Mean Girls."

"Movie?"

"Yeah, like moving pictures."

Allissa huffed. "You're crazy, aren't you."

"I'm afraid so, but let me tell you something, we're all mad here. That was from Alice in Wonderland. Remarkably strange, that one was."

Allissa was getting annoyed. She couldn't help it. She'd almost died to be here and none of this was making any sense. "Alice? Who the fuck is Alice?" She spat. 

"The girl next door," Moraine said matter-of-factly. Allissa wildly looked around and decided that, no, there weren't any other houses.

"My point was," Moraine continued, "in the movie, Cady pretends she doesn't know how to do math because she's in love with Aaron, but Aaron likes that she's smart and thinks playing ignorant is stupid. We know that there's no use in pretending to be something that you are not."

"You lost me," Allissa admitted.

"Oh, no, I meant that you shouldn't play stupid."

Allissa took a deep breath and tried to calm down. "Okay, let's start again."

"Sure," Moraine says, sitting down. "Back to the first square."

"So, you're mage - "

"A god," Moraine interejected.

"- a... god? of rain?"

"Yes."

"So a rainmaker."

"I don't make the rain, it just likes me. Follows me everywhere I go. Valentine thought it was cute, but she didn't invite me to our wedding, as a joke. Said that rain on your wedding day was bad luck."

"Who is Valentine?"

"My wife."

"And she's -"

"Dead."

Silence. Allissa wasn't exactly sure how to respond other than, "I'm sorry."

Moraine shrugged. "It's okay, it wasn't your fault."

"So, a rainmaker then."

"Another lesson, you might want to write this one down, we learn from Mean Girls is that subscribing to cliques is a futile exercise."

Allissa nodded. "Sure, why not. So, tell me more about this keeping of the graves."

Moraine went silent for a long time, and Allissa almost thought he hadn't heard her. She repeated the instruction.

"I've lived for a very long time, and it was quite alright to be human for most of it. But, I suppose, I've seen so many things come and go, live and die. I'm not quite sure why I'm a god or what I'm supposed to do, but I figure I might as well do something, so I take care of the trees, and the animals, and when they die I take care of their graves."

Allissa took a moment to process this. "Okay, follow-up question.  Which animals and trees?"

"All of them. All over the planet. I go to see them, and I sing to them. Do you know music?"

"I know some music."

"The trees especially like the Modern Rebels. Ever heard of them?"

"I can't say that I have."

"Well, they have this one song, that goes da-da-da-dum, da-da-DA-dummmm, and I like to hum it to them. Even Madonna once said that Music makes the Burger King and the Rebels."

"I see." Allissa didn't see at all, but she was out of patience.

"You know, they named a city after me once, by accident."

"By accident?"

"Yeah," Moraine giggled.

"Care to explain?"

Moraine shook his head. "Nah-ah. The best kept secrets of mice and men, y'know."

Allissa let out a pined laugh. "I honestly don't." She felt like she could cry. "I think that's enough. I'd best find my way back now."

Moraine rose out of his chair again. "Stay the night. I can't let you go down there in this darkness."

Allissa considered this, and agreed.

When she awoke the next morning, Moraine was gone, and so was the rain. The valley beneath the mountain was a shimmering green, just like Moraine's eyes in the sunlight.

It would be so much easier to get back, but how on earth would she explain the oddness of her interview to her boss?

[AN: Hi!]