A/N: Well, these are a few indulgence drabbles I did for an 'open on Sunday' challenge. No pairing, just Spike. They're fun to do, maybe I'll tack on more in the future, though I'm more likely to post them in my journal than here. Reviews would be wonderful, but unexpected for a tiny no-pairing thing such as this- it's the shipper stuff that seems to draw the most reviews, I've noticed.
And I will do something longer, and with plot. I have things like that on my computer, really I do! They're just… not finished. I'm slow.
If it's hard to read this way, blame fanfiction dot net. They screw my formatting every single time I post. Punctuation, too. Lovely.
Atlantic
Low, eerie echoes of whale song traveled for miles through the ocean. The gently-rocking ship buzzed like an amplifier with sound almost too faint for human ears to pick out over the creaking of bolts and metals. But one passenger heard- crouching under the waterline, surrounded by this ancient melody of natu--
"Christ, would you shut up! Bloody fish, s'already hard enough to kip in this hole…" Spike muttered mutinously, swinging his boot against the hull of the cargo hold with a dull clang. Two weeks of this, and he was gonna be raving before he even got to Africa.
Morocco
The heat rolled over him like a wave when he stepped off the ship, and he welcomed it with a groan. Hopping down with only the smallest of stumbles, he surveyed the area- open-air market, mix of traditional burnouses and flashy tourist garb, dust and spices thick in the air. He frowned. Could be half the port cities in Africa- but then the creeping sense of familiarity drew his eyes to the far-away spire of a mosque, and the penny dropped. Ahh. Casablanca, Morrocco. Dru and he…
"Due South, then," he muttered, shaking off sweeter memories with a reluctant twitch.
Sahara
Spike burrowed deep into the dunes minutes before the sky began to pale with dawn, racial instincts from a time before cities and crypts driving him underground. He shut his eyes and tried to sleep, but his reflexive breathing quickly filled his mouth and nose with sand, and he woke up fighting the memory of suffocation. Everything was silent but for the constant hiss of sand sliding away on the wind, slowly stripping away his shelter and his nerves layer by layer by layer...
When sunset came he ran for miles, full of adrenaline and the shivery fear of death.
Nigeria
It was a skin-and-bones dog, refugee from a village of fleas and despair and wizened little children with obscenely distended stomachs. Why it followed him, he neither knew nor cared. The damned thing seemed to sense his inability to hurt it, infuriatingly indifferent to both the curses and stones regularly hurled in its direction (and if Spike didn't pull away from the warm body at his back in the mornings, there was no one to see.)
A farmer shot it as they passed at twilight on the dusty road.
Spike had a migraine for most of the following day.
Tanzania
The lionesses bore down on their meal, a lame wildebeest already forsaken by its panicked heard. It was a beautiful thing to watch, the hunt- predators effortlessly keeping pace with the wounded prey, pride moving together in a deadly dance. The wildebeest stumbled once more and it was over.
"Oi!" Four heads turned in tandem, golden eyes trained on the black buzzard of a man darting foreword. His scent was unfamiliar, unnatural and strangely disturbing. They turned as one and loped off, abandoning the kill. Ignorant of his envious eyes on them.
The blood was fresh, but somehow tasted bitter.