Two Years Without Rachael | The Day the Grid Went Quiet

Last Updated on: 16th November 2025, 04:55 am

Two years ago today, my best friend Rachael Ezvalt logged into Second Life for the final time. A couple of weeks later, I learned she had passed away. And even now, writing that sentence feels like swallowing glass. Time in Second Life moves at its own pace and it’s fast enough that whole eras feel like they vanish overnight but slow enough that grief never quite eases off. These two years have flown, and yet they have been the longest two years.

People say that grief comes in waves. What they don’t tell you is how predictable those waves can be. In the last week I’ve been working longer hours, pushing myself, and finding anything to occupy my hands and my head. Going to bed later, waking up earlier, grinding harder and all because I didn’t want this day to arrive. I knew that the moment it did, the wave was going to hit. And it did. Exactly on schedule. And so, because I can’t sleep and it’s 3am on the 16th of November 2025, it’s time to remember the amazing woman that was Rach.

Losing Two Pillars in Two Months

For someone who literally makes her living with words, it has always been impossible for me to find the right ones when it matters most. I can describe a sim, a roleplay scene, a product, a person’s avatar, but trying to put into words someone’s impact on my life is the one thing that I struggle with.

Recently, I’ve been on this mission to soften myself up a little. To not be so hostile, so guarded, or so dismissive. For example when someone has a group in their profile that annoys me. Somewhere along the line, I realized that I’d turned into a bitter, unyielding bitch who didn’t want to give anyone a chance. I haven’t always been like that. And that also goes back two years.

Because in September 2023, Lumi and I had a falling out. She left X-Sisters and left me as the sole owner. Two months after that, Rach died. We were the three best friends you could ever meet. We were inseparable. And then, in the space of two months, I lost both of them.

After that, Second Life stopped being a fun world for me and became nothing but a place to run my businesses. It was easier to run a bar and sims than to feel anything. Easier to chase numbers than memories.

When the news of Rach’s passing finally reached me, I sat in the X-Sisters office for over a week reading through our old conversations with tears running down my face. Sometimes it was because I was so tired, sometimes because she was the only person who could make me laugh while breaking my heart at the same time.

There are people you meet in life who are irreplaceable. Rachael was one of mine.

[2023/06/28 06:01] Jess X (itsjess.skydancer): I’ll tie you to a wall if you want and make you stare at the fish
[2023/06/28 06:01] Rachael Ezvalt: LMAO
[2023/06/28 06:01] Rachael Ezvalt: cause I’m black innit?
[2023/06/28 06:07] Jess X (itsjess.skydancer): You’re black? Fuck I need to pay more attention.
[2023/06/28 06:08] Rachael Ezvalt: yessum
[2023/06/28 06:14] Rachael Ezvalt: I thought the steel band gave it away
[2023/06/28 06:26] Rachael Ezvalt: coo ta
[2023/06/28 06:26] Jess X (itsjess.skydancer): You have a steel band? Do they have an album?
[2023/06/28 06:27] Rachael Ezvalt: probably several at home

Rach | The Blueprint for Enjoying Second Life

To me, Rachael Ezvalt was the blueprint for how you’re meant to enjoy Second Life. She squeezed joy out of everything. She dragged me to ballet classes when I didn’t even know how to spell plié, convinced me to buy a horse, and helped me build my ranch sim before I inevitably ruined it by converting half of it into the X-Sisters Sex Bar. And even then, even as I bulldozed my pretty little ranch to make room for depravity, I left her birds flying overhead. You can still see them today, circling above the wall in the centre of the sim. They’ve been there for two years now, and they’re not going anywhere.

Her photo is still on the wall of active X-Girls. The Black Lingerie Thursday poster with her on it is still right where it’s always been, even though I’ve changed the branding since she passed. I can’t take them down. Some days the idea feels too final and like removing her picture would mean letting go, and I am nowhere near ready for that. Other days it’s because those photos make me laugh. She was utterly, beautifully unhinged in the best possible way. She could turn the most boring thing into madness and somehow have me dying laughing for days afterward.

And god, her music. She was the most musically cultured goblin I’ve ever met. If you gave her the stream for five minutes, you were in for a ride. One moment she’d be lecturing us on Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. I felt like I was in a fucking university seminar most of the time. And the next she’d blast Static X. I never knew what was coming, and that was half the fun of it.

Protective and Utterly One-of-a-Kind

Rach was bold and blunt. Enough to scare the weak. But she’d protect the people she cared about with zero hesitation, and even those she didn’t even know. One of my favourite examples was the first time she met Sasha. Back then, only Christina and Lumi knew that Sasha was my alt. I hadn’t written about it publicly. Lumi hated Sasha with a passion and called her “Little Cunt” every chance she got. She even named her baby after her. I still laugh at that conversation: Rach saying Sasha was a cute name, and Lumi replying, “No, I’m calling her Little Cunt.”

So one day, I brought Sasha into Candy’s while Lumi and Rach were there, just to wind Lumi up. Lumi immediately went full nuclear on her and I joined in “for the lolz” as the kids say. And Rach, who had NEVER met Sasha, and had NO idea who she was, instantly jumped up, ran across the floor, and told us to stop picking on her. She defended my alt without hesitation. When I told her who Sasha actually was, she hit me with the classic “Oo er blimey,” then immediately scolded me for “shouting at myself.” That woman was a menace.

But she was my menace.

Rachael Ezvalt was the funniest, brightest, most relentlessly wild light I’ve ever had in my Second Life. And now, two years since the last time she ever logged in, the last time she told me to sync my Lovense to death metal, I write this because as long as I’m breathing, her name is never going to disappear.

Cheers to you, Rach.
I love you, and I miss you every single day.