CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE INDIA: BUFFY
A/N: Warning: character death! This one's for you, Wispr. ;)
:Saturday, 14th October 2000:
"Wait!" Aluwyn commands.
I freeze, withdraw in a babble of chagrined confusion. "Oh! I didn't... I mean... Not Willow... I know I'm not Will... That's who you want... To see, that is-"
She silences me with a gentle touch, fingers to lips. "Buffy, I don't think you presumptuous. True, I'd hoped for Willow. But I can sense her auric traces, her mystical scent, on your astral body." Encircling me, Aluwyn eyes me flirtatiously. "I won't refuse you, you please me. Kennedy, you are not! But business first."
"Who's this Kennedy guy?" I ask curiously.
"A Slayer. Not someone you, and Willow, need ever worry about." Her face becomes inscrutable and remote. "There was... an unfortunate series of events: drunkenness, a vacuum cleaner, the blow setting, an embolism."
"Yikes!" I glance nervously at Aluwyn's enigmatic expression and decide to ask some other question. "You changed history. That's all butterflies, chaos and stuff. How different is original Buffy?"
She points at a nearby pool of water. Large, scarlet and pink blooms, with intricate folds, float on its surface. Tall, slim trees surround it, lunging at the sky. Suddenly, I want to dive into that pool, and drown my face in the blossoms. I want to climb those trees, and scrape my palms on their bark.
"This place isn't real real-" I glimpse Aluwyn's frown, correct myself. Oh, she's got me well-trained. Good girl, Buffy! Where's my Scooby snack? "Um, not vanilla, astral real. It's funhouse mirror, astral real. It's all a crocodile."
Aluwyn nods in approval. "This whole realm runs on metaphor. It's resonance is self-knowledge."
"And I'm definitely bi." I say, as I regard the Freudian clue by four. I turn back to her. "Very deep, very insighty. But tell me, what does all this," I jab my thumb towards the pond, "Have to do with the price of Manolo Blahniks?"
