katydid! you must have posted when i was posting. sorry to not have replied to you! tara is certainly yummy in that ep... that scene with willow outside the magick box...
she is soooo cute!!!! argh! i'm sorta in love with a fake character! hehe...
Jen- no worries, honey. i dont know where it was posted so i cant say much about it. i'm usually a spoiler ho but after going through what i went through last season i'd rather just not have any hope and be pleasantly surprised if anything good ever happens. i'll stick to reading fanfic til then. lol.
toni- you snuck up while i was writing! hehe... i luv ya too.
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ok, so i'm not 100% satisfied with this but it's a filler part so... anyhoo... onwards kittens... oh and madeinnz sorry about the lack of fireworks. my muse skipped ahead....
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“Ok, there are, like, bears and mountain lions out here! You expect us to sleep out in the open? Wide open? We can be attacked any minute!” Jenn groaned as she set her sleeping bag down over one of the two blue tarpaulin set down in the middle of the camping ground.
Buffy, in the process of helping another one of her campers named Skylar do the same, couldn’t help but sigh. “Don’t worry, the fire will keep them away.” She announced as she noticed the poison ivy marks on her arms had cleared up.
She’d gotten the uncomfortable itching, swelling, redness from yesterday’s bout with poison ivy but her quick Slayer recuperation healed the ensuing blisters in a jiffy. She was allowed to accompany her group on their outward bound which was a very good thing because even though they had a forest ranger and two extra staff members with them she certainly wanted to protect them all in the foresty wilderness.
“Actually,” Jamie easily mentioned as she walked by them, “the fire attracts them. New scent and all.” Once she reached her overnight bag, she reached in and grabbed the herbal mosquito repellent she’d brought with her. She proceeded to apply it all over her exposed skin, even spritzed it around her sleeping bag.
Buffy rolled her eyes... shook her head... groaned, “Ja-mie.” The young camper sometimes felt like a little sister, an annoying little sister that tended to say the wrong things at the wrong time and not realize it. Buffy was so happy she didn’t have one, she’d go crazy.
Audra, another cabin number seven camper, wrapped her arms tight across her upper body, “I heard that.” she said as her eyes tensely scanned around the grounds.
After having spent all day walking down a mountainous gorge, the same group from yesterday’s ill-fated hike finally reached the rustic campgrounds below for their overnight. As twilight advanced and ruby red light descended over the clearing, both sets of groups were busy setting up for the evening.
“Trust me, nobody will get hurt. I promise.” Buffy spoke in her weighty Slayery tone. She looked at each and every one of her campers when she said that. Eye contact was very important when trying to reassure them.
Skylar chuckled nervously at her counselors’ assertion, “Cause you’re Wonder Woman, right? You can fight off a bear.”
“I have…” Buffy began to retort but stopped. She couldn’t tell her campers that story now could she? She couldn’t tell them about last year’s Thanksgiving dinner fiasco when she actually did fight a bear. All right so it was actually a Native American ghost that turned into a bear but still- “Uh, not… No, I can’t fight off a bear but I do know self defense. Just ask Willow.”
She suddenly realized she hadn’t heard or seen Willow since they’d eaten their campfire cooked meal. She searched for her best friend and found her sitting alone by one of the three small fires near the camp ground. The redhead clearly had a distant look on her face. Buffy knew Willow was saddened about something, something big. She’d been really quiet all day and Buffy was afraid it had something to do with Tara. But what? Everything was good the day before.
Kimberly was busy pulling a sweater over her upper body, “Self defense against a bear? Hello?! That thing can whack you in half. Heck, I can whack you in half.” she added not knowing Buffy’s small stature packed quite a wallop.
As Buffy continued to argue with her bunkmates, Jamie finished up her priming and walked over to Willow. She found her absently staring at the steel fire ring that contained the coal burning flames. “Um, your marshmallow is burning.”
Willow jumped out of her reverie and looked towards her stick, “Oh! Yikes.”
As Willow blew the burning poof with deep breaths, she realized how far off her thoughts were. Definitely elsewhere. Clouded with Tara thoughts she couldn’t help but be sullen at the fact Tara hadn’t made it to the fireworks last night. Not that the fireworks were any good. The display had been very, very short of spectacular but what did she expect, Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks?
She knew it would have been hard for the blonde to sneak out before ten o’clock but when she didn’t come to the bonfire either Willow couldn’t help but feel dejected. She’d hoped against hope that Tara would make it and it hurt more than she ever thought when the evening ended without her looking at her love’s face one more time.
She knew Tara would have tried to sneak out but she also knew Tara was fearful of her father finding out. She’d never actually come out and said she was afraid of him but Willow knew. She could tell whenever Tara would speak of him how her tone mutated, it grew small and she tended to stutter. Her body language also changed.
Willow knew he was a stern man, having grown stricter since his wife’s death. Tara blamed it on herself saying it was her fault for having done many crazy things after her mother died. Stuff Willow could never have pictured Tara doing like lying to her father and staying out all night, not letting him know where she was while he worried frantically about her safety.
Willow knew something was askew in that household when she noticed that there were hardly any family photos dispersed around the house. Maybe two or three of her brother, father and Tara, but more importantly none of her mother. Even her own house with her habitually absent parents had pictures everywhere. They were either of Willow alone or photos of her folks from their various yearly business trips. They even had a wall full of family pictures in her father’s den, people Willow hardly knew since family functions were so few and far between. But there were still pictures everywhere.
It wasn’t just the lack of photos though. It was also the fact Tara glossed over much of her house when giving Willow the tour. The redhead couldn’t help but feel the house was… it was lifeless, cold, and Tara knew it. It felt like Tara wanted to shield her from it.
In contrast Tara’s room was a completely different story. The minute she had entered Tara’s space Willow realized what the rest of the house was lacking… love. You could feel the attachment, the warmth, the little peace of heaven Tara had in that attic. It was where her mother had practiced Wicca before her and it was where Tara now secretly practiced her religion. It was her retreat.
“Willow?” Jamie asked.
The redhead hadn’t realized most of the blackened melted marshmallow had now fallen off the end of her stick and onto her sneakers. The goo slowly dripped down to the floor leaving a white trail on her red shoes.
“I’ll get you a napkin,” Jamie said as she ran off towards one of the wooden picnic tables nearby. “Are you ok?” she questioned once she’d reached her counselor again.
“Yeah. Thanks, Jamie. I was just off in my own little world again. Sorry.” Willow replied as she carefully wiped the marshmallow off her shoes. “I sometimes get trance-y like that when I think of stuff.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Jamie responded as she sat down on the wooden bench next to her, “It gets kinda noisy in my head too sometimes.”
Willow couldn’t help but smile. She lightly nudged her camper, “So-“
“Hey you two!” Buffy yelled out, “Come on! We’re heading over to the big bonfire for some ghost stories.”
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It didn’t take long for all the campers to cozy up to the fire and get comfortable. Snacks were handed out and everyone took turns narrating horror stories. At one point the tales told by the teenagers with unrestrained imaginations were becoming so gory one of Jonathan’s campers couldn’t help but ask, “Can we have cute campfire stories now?”
Tales of deformed wild dogs attacking defenseless people, crazy gun toting widows, and serial killers with no sense of remorse were taking its toll on the scared campers. To ease the fear some of the staff began to tell jokes while others started sing-a-longs.
After about two hours Jenn suddenly stood up. With her blanket still wrapped tightly around her body she spoke, “Ok, I need to pee and there is no way I’m going alone. Who wants to come with me?” All the girls gathered around raised their hands, stood up and followed in a bunch to the portable toilets.
It was decided to call it a night after that.
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“Hey, Will, you sleeping?” Buffy asked in a hush tone. She’d spent the last hour listening to the crackling of the dying fires, the snores of some of the campers and the endless nighttime symphony.
“No, you?” Willow chuckled at her own question, “Well, duh.” Of course Buffy wasn’t sleeping, she’d just spoken to her. “What’s up?” She whispered back.
Buffy turned over on her side, elbow propping her head up as she looked towards her best friend lying in the sleeping bag next to her. “I can’t sleep.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. What are you doing?” She wondered, watching how Willow remained gazing up at the night sky.
“Staring at The Big Pineapple.”
“Huh?”
“The Big Pineapple. See those three bright stars right there?”
Buffy lay close to Willow, pressing her head against the redheads so that they shared the same line of sight. Her gaze followed the arm up to the expanse of sky above them. “Yeah.”
“And see those stars along there?” She asked pointing out another part of the formation. “That’s the bottom of the pineapple.”
“It’s big.”
“Hence the name. Tara... She, uh, showed it to me the other day.”
Buffy smiled softly. “Cool. Any other funny named constellations?”
Willow grinned, “Yeah.” She was reminded of the fun she and Tara had had while stargazing during their picnic at her house. The stargazing that lead to strip storytelling. The strip storytelling that lead to… Willow sighed blissfully; remembering of the wonderful day she spent worshipping Tara. Worshipping Tara in her sanctuary.
Buffy saw the beautiful grin radiating from the redhead and chuckled quietly. So things were all right with Tara after all. The two friends spent the next couple of hours giggling at the made up constellations, even coming up with some of their own.
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TBC....
hope it was ok... lol
Edited by: Rane018 at: 6/30/02 7:43:21 pm
by tommo » Sun Jun 30, 2002 7:03 pm 
JERKS!!
AND NO SMOOCHIES!!! 
at: 6/30/02 11:16:04 pm
Please don't hit me.