shamefully short update but i just wanted to let you all know i'm stillworking on this fic! lol...
more soon, kittens!
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But before Buffy grabbed her second snack from Xander she suddenly turned towards Willow, “Did you hear that?” she asked a redhead bewildered by her actions.
Xander quit chewing and listened for a moment, “No.”
“’Cause you just missed it.” She rolled her eyes at him.
“I didn’t hear anything,” Willow replied looking towards the direction of Buffy’s gaze, a direction which just happened to lead to the exit door of the large kitchen.
It sounded a bit like the rustling leaves, “There. I just heard it again. Did you hear it?” She knew it could be anything but didn’t want to chance it.
Willow shook her head, she was beginning to get scared again. There was no way she was going to face any demon tonight. It was summer, dammit. Why did this keep happening to them? “Is there something out there?”
“One way to find out,” the Slayer voiced as she headed toward the exit.
“Buffy, no. Wait.” Willow called after her, “What if-”
“A notebook.” Buffy noticed the pad, upside down, on the ground as soon as she’d opened the screen door. She bent down to pick it up. Its pages were a bit dirty from the earth and red from the what probably was flying spaghetti.
“A notebook?” Xander asked trailing Willow with his broom still ready for action.
“Yeah, little doodles and drawings.” Buffy mentioned as she flipped thought the papers. “Some poems too. They could be spells. You do some rhyming don’t ya when you call upon…” Buffy squinted her eyes as she tried reading the fine print, “Goddess Kali of creation and transformation, transform my world.’” she read aloud. This did not sound good at all.
“Let me see.” A soon as Buffy handed over the notepad and read some of the spell writings Willow drew out her disappointed sigh… “Jamie.”
“A ‘huh’ and a ‘how do you know’ it’s Jamie’s?” Buffy questioned.
Willow pointed to the engraved letters JMW on the footer of every page as she flipped through it. “Jamie Marie Wallis.” She clarified.
She’d read the name a million times on cabin paperwork but mainly on everything Jamie owned that was either engraved with her initials or labeled with her name. Willow tried reasoning this out. Jamie was shy and quiet but that didn’t mean anything. She was very secretive though. She was the only one that didn’t unpack her belongings in the beginning of the session and always closed her suitcase with a lock. She was the only that had an incentive to use mischievous magick against her camp tormentors.
Xander was very confused, “Who’s Jamie?”
“You spent a whole day in the kitchen with her and you don’t remember her?” Buffy asked.
Willow was quiet, still in shock. Jamie, lil’ Jamie, was engaged in dark magicks. Lil’ Jamie was dealing with forces she didn’t even comprehend yet. How could Jamie do this? How powerful was she?
“Earth to Willow.”
“What?” she was shaken out of her contemplation, “Sorry.”
“I said maybe you should talk to her.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. She’ll listen to you. She likes you. Plus, you work the mojo too so you can tell her about some of your experiences with magick.”
Willow reddened at that statement. Her most magickal experiences involved a goddess named Tara and she was certainly not going to talk to Jamie about that. “But… Maybe it’s not her. Maybe someone stole her notebook and used it.”
“From Fort Knox? I doubt it.”
“Maybe she misplaced it.”
Buffy crinkled her brow in thought, “Why are you defending her?”
“Why are you so…” Willow couldn’t think of what to say. Why *was* she defending Jamie? “Why are you being such a poop head?” she huffed as she inwardly winced at the lame retort.
“Nice comeback there, Will.” Xander tilted his head in a half nod.
Buffy turned and headed towards the cabins. “I’m going to talk to her.”
“Buffy, wait!” Willow followed after her. “You can’t just go barging in there like- like a Slayer.” That is, if the girls ran back to the cabin after the fiasco at all. They were probably in bunk number five hiding underneath the covers with the boys. ‘And that sounds so wrong’, she voiced to herself.
“Ok, thanks, bye!” Xander half waved at the two retreating figures. “I’ll just be here. Cleaning up the food infested building.” He grumbled and went inside.
Willow followed her best friend. “Buffy, you don’t know, maybe she’s scared. Maybe it got too powerful for her and that’s why she ran away. You cant-”
“Willow?”
Tara’s unexpected voice silenced her in mid-sentence. “Tare?” she asked as she quickly searched around the open area for her girlfriend. “What are you still doing here?” She asked, her eyes taking in the Tara’s womanly figure as she walked up to her with a worried gaze.
“I felt-“ she nervously looked at Buffy, “I felt t-this energy. L-like magick. Dark though.” Her eyes connected with Willow’s green, “I didn’t even get to the gate before I turned back around.”
“The food turned into bugs. It was a thing.” Buffy restlessly voiced. She wanted to find Jamie as soon as possible and get this whole thing dealt with.
“Bugs?” Tara could sense Buffy’s craving for a confrontation though she didn’t understand why.
“Somebody made a spell.”
“Oh god, was anybody hurt?”
Willow reached out and softly caressed her lovers arm. “No.” she laced their fingers together. Tara was so in tune with the magicks around her, sensitive with people’s emotions, Willow wondered how she dealt with it. If it were her she’d be using her power to stop the pain, anything help herself and others. But that wasn’t the way of Wicca according to Tara. Their rules and customs forbade them from interfering with nature and the natural order of things. Unimportant use of magick like tonight was frowned upon.
“Not yet.” Buffy crossed her arms over her chest.
Willow scowled, “You’re declaring Jamie guilty without any real proof.”
“Jamie?” Tara’s voice was filled with astonishment. Jamie practiced magicks?
Willow wordlessly handed the notebook over to the blonde. She and Buffy silently watched her leaf through the pages, both nervous in anticipation. “These are harmless.” Tara finally spoke after about half a minute of skimming, handing the notebook to Buffy. “There are no spells in here. If it were a true Book of Shadows there would be more details, directions. It’s just poetry.”
Buffy was still not convinced. “Are you sure?”
“Have you tried talking to her about it? Calmly?” Tara softly half smiled at Buffy while Willow smugly grinned beside her girlfriend.
Buffy sighed. Glancing back and forth from Willow’s self-satisfied smirk and Tara’s sweet smile she now understood what Willow meant when she said Tara had this power to just soothe her nerves. She knew both of them were right and chalked it up to the lack of slaying these past few weeks with out the exception of the yucky yucky that was building up in her system. She still patrolled, mainly took long walks, every night but it just wasn’t the same. She needed a fight at least three times a week to pacify her plenteous energy.
“Ok. Tomorrow you talk to her, Will.” Buffy said as she headed to the cabins once again.
“Me?”
Buffy swung around to her friend, “Yeah, you. You’re the powerful witch.”
“I’m not a powerful witch. Tara’s a powerful witch.” She said thumbing over to her girl.
Tara quickly shook her head, “Not really.” It wasn’t that she was more powerful, she just knew more spells.
“Yes, you are.” Both Buffy and Willow said at the same time.
Stunned by their comments, Tara looked at both her girlfriend and Buffy.
“What? Willow tells me about your spells together and stuff. ”
‘Stuff’ Tara mouthed over to the blushing redhead who quickly denied it all with a shake of her head.
“I think I’m going to go run around the field or something.” Buffy said as she stretched out her legs and back muscles in front of the two girls. “I need to burn all this Slayer energy.”
“Ok.” Willow said a bit too quickly. She had already begun to drag Tara away.
“Fine. Bye.” Buffy couldn’t help but smile.
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“Tara, your father- What will you tell him?” Willow asked as they neared Tara’s truck.
She wasn’t really that late just about 45 minutes. Sometimes that was enough though. “I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”
“Tell him you got a flat. And that you didn’t call because you didn’t want to bother him.”
Tara was surprised by Willow’s excuse. Not bothering her father or brother was always her best bet at not getting into trouble with them. “He’ll notice I don’t.”
Without so much as a peep Willow quickly dug into Tara’s back pocket, making sure her fingers caressed the fleshy mound there before withdrawing, and opened the door to the truck with Tara’s keys. The blonde was left breathless as she watched Willow lean over the seat towards the glove compartment with her well-cupped bottom pointing skyward. Tara unconsciously licked her lips. Willow and jeans were meant to be together.
Before she had the chance to cop a feel herself Willow was standing next to her holding her Swiss Army knife that was part of her earthquake survival kit. With a mischievous smile, she silently moved towards the back of the truck and slashed Tara’s left rear tire with the sharp blade, “Now you have a flat.”
Tara grinned while she listened at the hissing noise of air escaping the tire. Willow was so smart sometimes.
“Oh crap.” Willow muttered.
“What?”
“Do you know how to change a tire?”
Tara laughed, ‘sometimes’ was right.
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TBC....
"Take care of my heart, won't you please? Take care of it because it's all that I have. And if you let me, I'll take care of your heart too." Pure sweetness in the look between Willow and Tara.