Chapter One

Stupid Trees

Willow was confused.

The first sight that had greeted her upon waking was a tree.

Running through several possibilities in her mind she arrived at the conclusion that experiment 37/A was clearly a potent hallucinogenic and it would therefore be in her best interest to just lie down and wait for both the tree and the ringing in her skull to go away.

Opening her eyes several minutes later, she established that while her head was feeling better, the tree was not only still there but this time around it seemed to have brought some friends.

Quite a few friends actually, Wicca extraordinaire she might be, but Willow was a born and breed California girl and didn't hold much truck with forests.

Forests, however, seemed to hold quite a bit of truck with her, because there they were, - tree upon tree, doing treelike things…such as stand…and be green, err…

Clearing her throat delicately and edging away from the nearest tree, whose roots she felt were coming close to committing a crime against decency, Willow managed to not giggle in a manner she felt would not at all be in keeping with the world of sanity.

"Uhm…eek?"

Whether this was a battle cry or call for help was not clear to Willow or the trees, but both parties felt that it could have been done better.

"Ok…trees, nice trees…err…where am I?" when this received no answer she resorted to somewhat cruder methods by squeaking, "Uh…help?"

Willow looked at the plants around her hopefully; they however simply looked back at her with unnecessarily vacant expressions.

"Oh. Okay, so no help from the trees. That's just as well, I don't know what I'd do if the trees started talking to me. Uhm, you're not, are you?" she added somewhat suspiciously, eying the nearest tree. When it failed to respond, she exhaled gratefully, tension easing from her shoulders. Thank god for that, talking trees would have no doubt unhinged her severely.

"Ok, Willow. Pull yourself together. You are clearly in a forest, which is full of trees…ok, check on the trees. Uhm, over there is a shrub and there are some bushes, and oh the surprise…more trees," turning in a wide circle, Willow established that yes, the old adage about forests was true, after a certain point you simply couldn't see it anymore because all the trees got in the way.

"Hmm, stupid potion. That's it; I'm never playing with sheep livers again. I've learnt my lesson, animal parts are of the bad…I'll just have to be a lesbian Wicca of the vegetarian variety…but I'm not wearing Birkenstocks, a girl's got to draw a line somewhere."

Having come to this conclusion, Willow felt reassured to the point that she decided that these were rather nice trees after all.

Since the only thing that met the eye in either direction were yet more trees, Willow shrugged to herself, closed her eyes and spun on her heels.

Coming to a stop perilously close to - yes, you've guessed it – a tree, Willow shrugged once more and move off in the direction she'd come to face.

Sometime later, Willow could be seen, stomping determinately through the undergrowth, while growling highly unflattering comments about trees under her breath.

For all she knew, she'd been walking for hours. During a rare moment of foresight, she'd taken off her wristwatch and left in on her bedside table, knowing that if she left it on, one of her experimental potions would probably eat it.

So here she was, watchless and surrounded by foliage.

While walking, Willow had tried to amuse herself in any manner possible. She'd attempted to cast a locator spell on herself, which had worked in a manner of speaking, even if it did yield some rather odd results.

According to her spell, she definitely existed, which at this point she found strangely reassuring.

Everywhere else, however simply…didn't.

During her years as a practicing Wicca, Willow had developed an affinity with the world that sheltered her. Her magic came from the earth and all living organisms on it were connected. What she felt here however was something very different. While she could still feel this earth and its inhabitants, she was quite sure she wasn't in the same place she'd started off on.

Her earth was relatively young, while this place felt old beyond words, and weary as if it had been injured numerous amounts of time and was still trying to heal.

Wherever she was, one thing she could say for sure, this was neither Cleveland, nor the world consisting entirely of shrimp. That only left about an infinite amount of alternative dimensions she might have slipped into.

Without knowing exactly where she was, she couldn't attempt to go home - it was a well known fact of magical travel that one had to know one's starting point nearly as well if not better than the desired arrival spot.

So, all in all, the only thing she could do was stomp and hope she would find a village before she either died of hunger or went Darth Willow on the conclave of trees.

Later still, after much marching, Willow decided that all trees should be banned.

After much tripping over fallen branches, stumbling over mossy rocks and once nearly breaking her ankle when she stepped into an abandoned rabbit warren, Willow decided that she was beyond caring about the fact that plants supplied all carbon based life forms with the oxygen so necessary for breathing. As far as she was concerned, these trees were just darn inconsiderate in the way they insisted on gathering here, in her way, without taking even the slightest bit of notice of her glares.

After hours with only shrubbery to talk to, Willow had resorted to playing 'I Spy" with herself. Needless to say, she won two games out of three, as more often than not, the object she spied was some form of vegetation.

At first she'd attempted to make the game more difficult for herself by referring to the trees by species, but after much faffing about, she was forced to acknowledge that whatever type of plants these were, she'd never seen them before, so had to resort to referring to them by names she'd assigned according to their general demeanour.

So far she had spied a 'large skulky tree that's planning something', 'small crooked tree with an agenda', 'medium kind of tree that keeps looking at me' as well as dozens of subtypes thereof.

All in all, Willow thanked this opportunity for teaching her that she was not cut out for the hermitic life.

At one point, she had attempted to figure out what time it was by evaluating the height of the sun, in which case she could also figure out in what direction she was heading.

Unfortunately, she quickly had to abandon that plan as the trees very effectively blocked all sights of the sun, lending her surroundings a permanent twilight kind of light. Willow comforted herself with the knowledge that it was possible that in this dimension, the sun set in the east, or that there were three or maybe it never set at all.

So wrapped up was she in her internal musings on all the fun things one could do with firewood, that she completely failed to notice when the trees gave out.

She only snapped out of her fugue when she literally walked into the river.

River was actually quite a large exaggeration, more of a stream really, but it was still very wet and very cold, a fact Willow quickly found out when she slipped on slimy rock and landed inches deep and on her ass.

Just as she gratefully remembered that at least there was nobody around to witness her moment of slight clumsiness, faint sounds of laughter reached her ears.

Shooting out of the stream like a cork out of an overexcited bottle of champagne, Willow whirled and came face to face with her observer.

"Oh man Red, I wish I had a camera, I swear, I ain't never gonna see that look on your face again!" gasped the last person Willow would ever have pictured giggling in a forest…no scratch that, giggling full stop.

"Faith!" she screeched, "what…how…argh, I'm all wet!"

"Comes from sitting down in a river."

"Really, that's so helpful!" snapped Willow, already irritated at the brunette Slayer, simultaneously remembering that there was something odd about Faith being in this particular forest at this particular time, "Wait a minute, what are you doing here?"

"Beats me," Faith said nonchalantly, "one minute I was watching TV in my room, then whoosh, next thing I know I'm in a freaking forest. Walked around for a bit, then heard you shouting at trees so I decided to follow you. Hey, isn't that my shirt?"

Willow had the grace to look slightly embarrassed as she distracted the Slayer's attention while sneaking her potion stained sleeve behind her back. Faith was known to get somewhat testy about foreign substances coming in contact with her apparel.

"Uh, is it? I hadn't noticed…hang on, what do you mean you followed me? You mean, you FOLLOWED me? Without so much as a 'hey there'?"

"Uh huh," agreed Faith, leaning against a nearby tree, "I was gonna say something but I figured you were in the middle of a good long rant and I better let you finish. By the way, about 'Mr. Loomy Broody Pants Tree'? That was a real good talking to you gave him, I'm sure he'll think twice before he offers you anymore of his lip."

The only response Willow could give to that was to go slightly red and splutter indiscriminately.

"Watch it Red, say it don't spray it, alright?" said Faith with an insufferable smirk that reminded Willow just why she didn't like the other girl very much, "so I'm guessing you did a spell and it went wrong?"

"No," replied Willow heatedly, "it was a potion, and for you information, not ALL my spells go wrong and anyway, this sort of stuff happens to everyone occasionally, after all, its not like magic is an exact science!"

"Uh huh," nodded Faith, "and the important thing is that YOU believe that.'

"Well it's true!" Willow nearly shouted in her exasperation, if there were two things that got right up her nose, they would be people questioning her spell casting ability and the brunette Slayer. Not necessarily in that order either, "Anyway, why are you here when the potion only tried to maul ME?"

"Quality control?" quipped Faith.

"Ha-ha, very funny," mumbling under her breath, Willow squelched out of the stream and muttered a quick drying spell under her breath. By the time she came to a stop facing the other girl, her clothes and hair were once again dry and this time around wrinkle free.

Giving Willow a disdainful once-over, "That is so my shirt!" Faith snorted and proceeded to march along the river bank.

Pausing only to throw, "Well? Are you coming or not," over her shoulder, the Slayer stalked through the gathered flora.

"This is so typical," Willow muttered under her breath, trotting to catch up with the younger girl. Her day had just officially become worse.