The woman kneeling beside the dead girl's body wept fiercely. Buffy could
see tears dripping off her face and onto the leather jacket that the dead
girl wore. The jacket was strangely familiar but Buffy's thoughts strayed
away from the woman and girl to take in her surroundings. She was in a
house, no a crypt; a crypt that had been decorated as a house; a vampire's
crypt. The room was dark and silent but for the quiet hum of the television
and the crying of the woman on the floor.
Slowly Buffy moved away from the woman to inspect the crypt. The
furnishings were sparse; a television, which surprisingly was playing an
old rerun of "Passions", a chair, and a bed. Not much to see. Like the
leather jacket the room was oddly familiar, but Buffy could not keep her
thoughts in one place to identify the room.
A strangled voice came out of the silence. "You have to change it, you
must," It pleaded.
Whirling around Buffy came face to face with the woman who had been crying.
Her face a myriad of emotions: grief, anger, love, hopelessness, and fear
were drawn on her face. "It cannot end like this," the woman said again.
Buffy shook her head not knowing how to answer the woman. Then suddenly all
of the emotion drained from the woman's face and became featureless; except
for her eyes. Buffy found herself staring into the empty depths of her own
eyes, reflected in the woman's empty face.
In shock Buffy tried to take a step back but some force held her feet
firmly to the floor where she stood. The woman rose to stand before Buffy
and she seemed to grow in size till she finally filled the room with her
presence.
"You hold the power to change what will be," the woman boomed in her hollow
voice. "You must make a choice and do what I could not. Be strong and do
not loose hope. Your time will come."
Then the woman fell to the ground and her eyes fluttering closed. Her face
returned to normal, but the pain Buffy had seen there before remained.
Slowly the woman's chest failed to rise again and Buffy knew she was dead.
* * * *
Buffy woke with a start from a deep sleep. The woman's face was emblazoned
in her memory, but the more Buffy thought about what the dream had been
about the less she could remember. As she fell back into an uneasy sleep
the woman's last words echoed in her mind. "Your time will come."
* * * *
