Written on a whim. Tara's escaping.

Entropy; n, a gradual decline toward chaos.

Sometimes, you just have to escape. Tara learned that many times in her life. She'd escaped from her father's reigning blows. She'd escaped from her brother's hands when the places they touched made her belly knot cold. She'd escaped from her own life when her mother had died, floating away on a cloud of alcohol, marijuana and sex. She'd escaped her home town. She'd escaped from more vampires and demons and creatures of the night than any reasonable person should be able to count. It wasn't until now, until the last vestiges of Willow's curse unclouded her foggy brain that Tara realised she had to make yet another escape. She didn't know it could hurt so much.

Her fingers fumbled in the dark…turning on a light made little sense. Scraps of clothing fell through her fingers. It didn't matter what went into the bag, not really. It still all smelled of strawberries and ash and incense smoke. It all still smelled of her. She slung the bag over her shoulder, beckoning to the small cat that lay mewling at her feet. It was, honestly, all the company she could stand.

Days…weeks…she wasn't sure. But there was dust and forests and rolling hills and star-strewn skies that for moments, she could lose herself in. Those soft moments where the world pressed in on her from every side until she felt like she was suffocating, where stars were as bright as suns and time fluttered by in tiny instances. Sunrise. Sunset. The full moon. The new moon. It took her three days under the sky to make her realise that she hadn't eaten since the last forest. It didn't ache though. She didn't feel the hunger that she knew was there. She stared at a reflection in the side of her car. It was probably her. But the skin was more delicate, the ribs and hipbones more pronounced. There were hollows under haunted eyes she'd never seen before. Those full lips looked stark on alabaster flesh. Her body looked near disappearing. As if any rough edges had been sanded away by controlling entities and dark magic and her own blood, dripping from wounds others had inflicted. As if one gust of wind would scatter her into non-existence.

Miss Kitty liked the deserts best. The ground was red and warm and tiny creatures were constantly scampering past. Tara preferred the forests. Everything was green and damp and smelled like Earth. The first time Tara stopped in a town, she found out she'd been on the road for nearly a month. She wondered how long could she run. Forever would probably be okay. The walls of her motel room felt too tight, too small… and so she kept moving. Checked out at three in the morning and drove until she found somewhere wide and open and natural… until the walls of nature blossomed around her, until she felt like she was floating away into the ether, guided by the light of the waxing moon. Her world was so sharp and bright… unfair. Unfair for all the things ripped from her. For the happy life she expected to have. Not that anything was supposed to be fair. No. But as she held out a bony hand, she couldn't help but wonder... Wasn't escaping meant to be about moving, rather than fading away all together? Maybe she'd be better off if she just let them get inside her head, inside her body… all of them. All the people she'd escaped. If she just let them consume her and devour her and infiltrate her every thought and action. Maybe then she really could just fade away. Become so moulded by them that she wasn't her anymore. And her body could fade and break until she was so non-existent that she just sunk into the Earth… no one's. Nothing.

Her third night in the clearing she felt a presence behind her. The energy was familiar, strong but guarded. She felt more connected to it than she had felt connected to anything since she escaped. It was alive and pulsing and here. She turned to see a wolf. His shoulders rippled with ropy muscle and his eyes were soft and green. She wasn't afraid. The knot of betrayal that had so resolutely tied in her gut began to unravel as the creature circled her slowly, examining every inch of her. Seeing her. Maybe she hadn't completely faded away after all. She reached out a hand and it pressed its face into her palm, breathing hot air on her… and he wasn't going through her, she wasn't crumbling to pieces. Oh yes. She was still here. She knelt before him, her fingers knotting in his fur. He lay before her, just letting her lay there, holding him, stroking him. He was so warm. She'd never felt so alive.

She woke in the morning, no longer wrapped in the wolf's furry body, instead lying on the warm, muscled chest of a young man. As she shifted, his arms crept around her and she sank deeply into his warm embrace. The sunlight dappled them, illuminating the soft slope of his nose and the pink bow of his mouth. One of Tara's hands lay on the ground, and for the first time in… well, over a month, she felt the energy of the Earth flow through her, crackling in her fingertips, itching to burst through her skin as the magic welled somewhere deep in her body, filling her, warming her, completing her.

"The Earth witch and the wolf," she whispered into his chest.

Oz's eyes slowly cracked open and he smiled at the woman curled on his chest. "It's time to stop running, Tara. This is the real you," he pressed his palm to hers, feeling the crackle of intense Earth-energy pass between them, fusing the join of their hands. She couldn't quite bring herself to let go.

"If I stop running, I belong to them."

"You belong to this," he whispered, curling his fingers with hers until they were so intertwined that neither knew whose hand was whose, until the energy crackling between them became so intense Tara began to quiver. "You're not disappearing, Tara. Escaping isn't about fading away, it's about change. And you're changed."

Slowly, Tara closed her eyes, letting the warmth of early morning sun envelop her, allowing the red glow to burn into her retinas, giving herself over to the immense power pulsing beneath her. It undulated, in soft peaks and harsh dips, rising and falling, in constant motion…contrasting so starkly with the utter stillness of her body. Without opening her eyes, she leaned forward, placing a gentle kiss on Oz's lips, as she felt herself blossom from the inside out. Until she was so filled with the heady power of the wolf and the Earth and the sky that she felt not like falling to ashes, but bursting with light.

And so, she stood.

And so, she moved.

And so, she returned to the place she would forever call home.

And so, things hurtled toward entropy.

And so, she fell.

And so, the blood from her wound dripped back into the Earth.

And so, by the light of the full moon, the wolf howled.