Ripples: Angles of Falling Stars
By Phoenixflame
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel: The Series, and all affiliated characters belong to their respective owners (Joss Whedon, etc). Ideas and original characters belong to me.
He worries about her, she knows. She usually ignores him, though, sitting at the window, tracing patterns on the glass, watching the children play outside. Two or three of them. Every time she gets into bed with him, it seems, she gets pregnant again.
Here behind the white picket fence, she fixes meals for the children and sends them off to school, patches up boo-boos, and sings them to sleep. He's not home for it, he's off saving the world, and so he does not know that the children grow up with songs in long forgotten tongues in their heads, and a love for the extraordinary that no one can wipe away. One will be a witch, and Willow watches, smiling softly as the fourteen year old steals books from the magic shop, and lights incense, and dances beneath the moon.
They do not know that she traces patterns in the dirt of her garden, or that she has kept rosemary by the garden gate, marigold for the ointments she smears on their wounds, they do not yet know that the aloe in the bathroom is mixed with it, and they do not know that she has planted nightshade in the darkest corner of the yard, or that she knows thousands of ways to kill by magic. They do not know that their mother could have been an Adept.
Then she fell from such heights. A falling star, lighting up the sky, blazing across it. Fire in the heavens, the wind in her hair, and ancient magic dripping from her fingertips. She knows the blackest of magic, magic that can twist the soul, call up fiends from Hell, magic to bind souls.
They do not know why her husband watches her, or what he says to her when the door of their bedroom closes. They do not know why she used to get up to sing at dawn.
But the daughter watches, and learns, and smiles quietly. And Willow smiles back, grateful that at least one of them will escape the stifling normality. By the time her little Rose blooms, she will be far away from Xander and Sunnydale.
And the world will never be the same.
By Phoenixflame
Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel: The Series, and all affiliated characters belong to their respective owners (Joss Whedon, etc). Ideas and original characters belong to me.
He worries about her, she knows. She usually ignores him, though, sitting at the window, tracing patterns on the glass, watching the children play outside. Two or three of them. Every time she gets into bed with him, it seems, she gets pregnant again.
Here behind the white picket fence, she fixes meals for the children and sends them off to school, patches up boo-boos, and sings them to sleep. He's not home for it, he's off saving the world, and so he does not know that the children grow up with songs in long forgotten tongues in their heads, and a love for the extraordinary that no one can wipe away. One will be a witch, and Willow watches, smiling softly as the fourteen year old steals books from the magic shop, and lights incense, and dances beneath the moon.
They do not know that she traces patterns in the dirt of her garden, or that she has kept rosemary by the garden gate, marigold for the ointments she smears on their wounds, they do not yet know that the aloe in the bathroom is mixed with it, and they do not know that she has planted nightshade in the darkest corner of the yard, or that she knows thousands of ways to kill by magic. They do not know that their mother could have been an Adept.
Then she fell from such heights. A falling star, lighting up the sky, blazing across it. Fire in the heavens, the wind in her hair, and ancient magic dripping from her fingertips. She knows the blackest of magic, magic that can twist the soul, call up fiends from Hell, magic to bind souls.
They do not know why her husband watches her, or what he says to her when the door of their bedroom closes. They do not know why she used to get up to sing at dawn.
But the daughter watches, and learns, and smiles quietly. And Willow smiles back, grateful that at least one of them will escape the stifling normality. By the time her little Rose blooms, she will be far away from Xander and Sunnydale.
And the world will never be the same.