CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE JULIET: BUFFY
:Saturday, 14th October 2000:
Aluwyn sniffs haughtily. "Best you ask your subconscious that. I, just wanted a pool of water, without the vegetation." She looks at me through kohl-darkened eyelashes, then adds drily: "Though, as it happens, despite enjoying the odd, furtive, lesbian dalliance, the original Buffy was firmly wedded to the myth of her own heterosexual nature. She was far too stubborn to have admitted otherwise."
Golly! I guess that would make quite the difference. "OK, my bad. Show and tell, lamia gal!"
The pond is now free of its flowery clutter. I've never seen water so still, or my reflection so perfectly captured. I jump as my image explodes into spray, waves radiating from the ground zero of the splash. I yelp. Aluwyn quells me with a glance, her left hand upheld to demand patience. When, at last, the surface of the pool regains its glassy quality, she knots her tail around a tree, rears up on her snaky abdomen, and leans far over the pond's bank. Then, as she almost touches the water, she slowly, gently, carefully inserts a pebble into the liquid. I can see, barely, the stone's wake as it slips under.
"Well?" Aluwyn, now fully back on land, has her arms folded, an eyebrow raised, the end of her tail twitching like a cat's. She's not like Giles, not fooled by my playing the fool. Here in topsy-turvy land, I'm expected to make with the exposition. "It's an anchovy, a pretty clear one. You can be clumsy, turn history into a fubar. Or, you can be all finessy, get mostly what you want. Either way, you break too many eggs for your omelette."
"You do have a uniquely concise way of putting things, Buffy." says Aluwyn admiringly. "Those are exactly the points my analogy was meant to illuminate."
"My brain isn't designed to think." I complain. "Couldn't you- Ow!" Aluwyn has pinched my nose hard, hard enough to bleed. Oh, boy! Does she look pissed!
