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So…if 'gbherivashinkali' is being used in its adverbial sense as a modifier of the spatial/temporal gerund form of 'juskinpalovahr,' would that mean that the demonic influence will rise in Burkina Faso on a Saturday, or in the southwestern coastal region of the United States on a Tuesday?
Giles squinted determinedly at the lines of small, precisely-scribbled text hovering several inches in front of his nose. The prophecies were a rather garbled mix of original ancient Sumerian, derivative ancient Babylonian, and the hieratic script of ancient Egyptian, all translated (rather badly) into a single volume of Old High Latin by Galdinius sometime in the first century. The linguistic hodgepodge made deciphering them…a bit of a challenge.
Then, he blinked, marveling at his occasional ability to overlook the glaringly obvious.
Knowing the usual tendencies of the demon realms…definitely Tuesday, on the Hellmouth.
There were some constants in the universe so reliable that they just didn't require confirmation by direct primary-source translations.
"But I suppose that won't be happening anymore, will it?" he asked himself idly. With the Annealing suddenly scheduled for the next day, a great many of these prophecies had been rendered rather suddenly moot.
He wasn't sure whether he found that idea thrilling or…disturbing.
"So, do the books ever answer back?"
Several of those books jerked and teetered in their precarious piles, as the table lurched beneath the startled Watcher's elbows. A scruffy hand, sporting fingernails bitten into ragged stubs, appeared from nowhere to stop one particularly spindly stack of volumes from toppling indecorously to the floor.
Giles blinked nervously up into the Herald's smiling visage.
With a devilish twinkle in his eye that belied his somewhat angelic nature, Harry saved the flustered Brit the trouble, by answering his own question. "I'm gonna take that as a 'no.'"
Giles cleared his throat and deliberately repositioned his glasses on his nose in a vain attempt to salvage some modicum of dignity. Then he caught the cheerful, knowing expression on Harry's face, and gave it up with a resigned sigh and a half-hearted grumble. "Need a bell around your neck…bad as Spike…"
Then he blinked, and frowned, as a thought occurred to him. "Half a moment…how did you sneak up on me like that? I didn't hear the bell at the door…"
The Herald's sunny expression dimmed a bit, as he plopped into a vacant chair with a satisfied noise. "Yeah, well…see, that's 'cuz I didn't come in by the door." Pulling one leg up over the other, he proceeded to remove both sneaker and sock. "I haven't been in a mortal body for quite a while—I forgot how fragile they are!" he explained with a self-deprecating chuckle. "All that walking around, window-shopping…well, let's just say these shoes were starting to rub in a really uncomfortable way!"
With a bemused look on his face, Giles took a moment to appreciate the sheer, freakish irony of sitting in the Magic Box on a Saturday afternoon, calmly researching the end of the world out of mere curiosity, while chatting with the physical embodiment of a near-omnipotent Elemental being about the blister forming on its celestial heel.
This day has been so unutterably bizarre…can I really be sure that I'm not dreaming it all?
The black-and-blue patch on his forearm, however, offered mute, aching testimony to the number of times he'd pinched himself, attempting to test that theory.
"Still a bit much, ain't it?" Harry's eyes were sympathetic as he watched Giles' internal struggle.
The bewildered lines carved between the Watcher's eyebrows did not soften, and his voice was preoccupied. "Oh, ah…yes—yes, I suppose it is…" Eyeing his non-human companion, Giles went on. "So, what…er—why are you here…again? That is—can I help you?"
Harry ran one hand up the back of his hair in sudden…embarrassment? "Actually, it's kind of silly, but…well, I was hoping I could just hang out here—for a little while, I mean. See, I sort of got in…a little early."
Giles blinked. Who would have suspected that an Elemental could blush?
Or that I would ever have the opportunity to see it?
"But I was just so excited about getting to visit these mortal realms one last time, y'know? And with the Annealing on its way and all…well, it all sounded like so much fun, I just couldn't wait!"
A bubbling, infectious enthusiasm was emanating from the Herald in almost palpable waves, and Giles couldn't help but respond with a small grin. Despite his immortal omniscience and dire tidings, there was something remarkably naïve and endearingly child-like about Harry. In a way, his all-too-human manner made it a bit easier to cope with the upcoming…events.
Shaking his head slightly in bemusement, Giles set aside his worries—for the moment—and seized upon the unparalleled opportunity staring him in the face (literally). After all, he was sitting across the table from an Elemental…the possibility of picking its brain proved an irresistible temptation.
"May I…er, ask you a few questions?"
Harry responded with another knowing smirk. "A scholar to the bitter end, huh?" He slid down into his chair and put his feet up on the table, comfortably settling in for a long chat. "Sure—fire away."
"Very well, then…" Giles shuffled through a stack of notes for a moment, then located the page he wanted. "A colleague of mine in Los Angeles has provided me with copies of the Nyazian prophecies, some of which include verses believed to pertain to the end days…"
"Lemme guess—" Harry interjected. "Some of 'em are wrong."
"Well…yes," Giles affirmed with an air of chagrin. "But that much is to be expected, when dealing with millennia-old prophecies written by a number of different sages. No," he went on, in a tone that was equal parts confused and excited, "there are two aspects which I find truly confounding. First is the fact that there are events prophesied in these texts—some of them described in remarkable detail—which, now that the Annealing is upon us, shall plainly never come to pass. I…I don't understand how the authors of these verses could have had such clear and specific foresight of occurrences which we now know were, for all intents and purposes, elaborate figments of their imaginations. Especially," he went on, as Harry opened his mouth to reply, "when so many of the other prophecies by the same sources have proven so reliable in the past!"
"And then," Giles went on with enthusiastic intensity, oblivious to the Herald's attempts to get a word in edgewise, "there's the matter of the coming apocalypse itself. In every text I've studied, the end days are supposed to be heralded by a time of great suffering and conflagration—war, plague, earthquake, flood, volcanic eruptions…any number of terrifying cataclysms, both natural and supernatural, resulting in staggering amounts of death and destruction. And yet," he went on, his brows drawing together in perplexity, "we've seen no significant increase in that sort of activity, on any local or global scale…" His shoulders lifted in a baffled shrug. "I can find nothing to explain why all the lore should be so uniformly misleading…!"
The Herald stared at him blankly for an endless moment, seemingly lost in thought.
Giles finally broke the silence. "Do you…er, that is…can you offer any insight into these inconsistencies?"
The Elemental immediately snapped out of his fugue, and favored the Watcher with a devious grin. "Sorry 'bout that—just checking…my inter-dimensional e-mail, I guess you could say."
His smug grin widened, if possible, at the befuddled expression on Giles' face, then he went on. "So…your prophecies don't seem to have all their ducks in a row, eh? Got a real simple explanation for that one—"
He leaned forward, resting his palms flat on the table top, as if inviting the other man to lean in closer so he could impart a great secret. "Historic window-dressing."
Giles' perplexed frown returned with a vengeance, flanked by a pair of uncomprehending blinks. "I—I'm sorry?"
"Window-dressing!" Harry repeated jovially. "Hyperbole. Overstatement. The apocalyptic version of ancient PR. Exaggerated myths, for a more violent, less civilized age."
At Giles' increasingly frustrated expression, the Herald sighed. "Alright…see, most of the mortals who wrote your prophecies were from all sorts of ancient countries—Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, the Sumerian city-states, and so on, but most of the sources you spend so much time ogling, those were written centuries later by Greeks translating from the originals. Then when the Romans came along, they did the same thing, putting everything into Latin…but, of course, those Roman scribes couldn't just translate things…they had to put their own spin on the stuff," he said, rolling his eyes good-naturedly at the foibles of mortal writers.
"So you start getting all these tall tales of hell and damnation and apocalyptic destruction creeping in during the early Christian era, 'cuz all those sexually-repressed priests got together and decided to get their kicks by scaring the bejesus out of a newly god-fearing populace, and suddenly everyone's buying into the fact that the end of the world is a big, bad deal!" He shook his head, smiling slightly as his shoulders quivered with silent laughter. "You mortals never cease to amaze me…you really will believe anything, won't you? I mean, Elvis is dead, people—get over it! It's not like his music was that great, anyway!"
For Giles, this was just one revelation too many. There had been too much information thrown at him over the last few hours, and he found himself unable to take any of it seriously for a single second longer.
The laughter started slowly, bubbling up in his throat like a swig of warm beer, erupting from his nose in little snorting giggles. Then the giggles coalesced and multiplied into long, rolling belly-laughs, sparkling behind his closed eyelids as tears of mirth began to leak down his face.
"So…so you're s-saying," he gasped between giggles, "that it's true, what Eliot said—that the world shall end not with a bang, but a whimper…!"
"Or maybe even a contented sigh," Harry joked. There was an odd light in his eyes as he glanced sidelong at the Watcher—as if he were measuring the other man, and had found him…somehow wanting.
"Well…" Giles took a long, deep breath and reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, removing his glasses to wipe off first his face, then the lenses. "Well. I suppose it's not every day one is able to see the humor in an imminent apocalypse."
The Herald winked jovially at him. "That's the spirit, man!" Then the Elemental bounced up out of his chair as if propelled by a spring. "Now, if you'll excuse me—" he said, hopping comically on one foot as he tried to replace the sock and shoe on the other, "I'm feeling much refreshed, and the end of the world waits for no one! So much left to do, to prepare…" He trailed off, seemingly deep in cheerful thought.
"Oh, er…yes—of course," Giles stuttered. "I certainly didn't intend to monopolize your time…"
"Ah, don't worry, it was nice chatting with you," Harry reassured him. "But I really gotta run. Catch ya later!" And with a wink and wave, he vanished. Without using the door.
Giles could only shake his head slowly, a bemused little smile on his face. Once again, he sat all alone in the Magic Box—his only company, that of a few brilliant splashes of rainbow sunlight sparkling off the many crystals and trinkets attractively arranged on the shelves.
This is the way the world ends…not with a bang, but a whimper…
But suddenly, that thought was no longer amusing. Rather, it left Giles with a hollow ache inside…and the merry colors spattered across the walls and floor seemed to mock his earlier laughter. Soon those tiny things of beauty—nothing more complicated than the glittering facets of a crystal in the sunlight, or the scent of a ripe nectarine on a bright July afternoon, or the love in a mother's voice as she calls her daughter's name—all would vanish without trace, without fanfare…unnoticed and unmourned, in the shimmer that would follow.
Giles found the idea…disturbing, and suddenly he couldn't shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong…
Then he shook himself, even cracking a self-deprecating grin at his own fatalism.
Stop being a silly git, Rupert! It was just so—so unnatural, to watch the end to all their struggling creep closer and closer, and not feel obliged to beat it back. What does Tara call it? 'Assume crash positions'?
With a swift nod, he slipped one hand beneath the cover of the book on the table in front of him, and flipped it closed with a snap of utter finality. There was one, last beautiful day happening out there, beyond the front door of the shop, and he'd be damned if he let it pass him by, as he had so many before it.
With a small smile on his face and an uncharacteristic spring in his step, Rupert Giles tossed his tweed jacket over a chair, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and strolled casually out into the sunshine. A tune came unbidden into his head, and before he stopped to think about it, he was whistling.
The bell tinkled lightly as the shop door swung closed behind him, but the song on his lips floated back through the window, which was opened slightly to catch the midday breeze. The merry notes swirled about the well-kept shop on a fragrant draft, past the shelves full of crystals…past Anya's beloved cash register…past the jars of lizard glands and chicken feet and mandrake roots…and past an unassuming book entitled Glamours, Charms and Illusions of the Daemon Realms, stacked second-from-the-top in his pile of abandoned texts.
The melody echoed…re-echoed…and slowly faded, eddying in Giles' cheerful wake like a freshly-slain vampire's dust on a puff of wind, carrying with it an ancient stench of doom and decay…
The sun will come out…tomorrow…bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow…there'll
be sun…
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