Chapter 2

Sticks and Stones

Faith was humming.

Willow found this deeply disconcerting; as far as she was aware the other girl only expressed happiness - or any other emotion for that matter, by beating stuff up.

But no, here she was, humming cheerily and skipping over exposed tree roots and fallen brunches, while Willow herself stumbled along. All in all, Faith was taking this whole situation far too well and it was making Willow extremely nervous and ever so slightly suspicious.

If anyone had asked her to predict the Slayer's actions should she find herself catapulted into a dimension that seemed to be made up entirely of trees, without a way home or any knowledge of her exact whereabouts, Willow would have answered that the reaction would probably not be favourable and could she personally not be around when Faith found out it was all her fault?

Thinking along this vein, Willow eyed the girl in front of her warily; she had at some point stopped humming and was instead whistling vigorously.

"What are you doing?" she said after the suspense finally got too much for her.

"Hm?" responded Faith absentmindedly, - she'd been in the middle of a particularly pleasant daydream about the kinds of vicious creatures one could expect to find in a forest this size and wasn't happy about the interruption, "I'm not doing anything."

"Yes you are," responded Willow forcefully, "you're being cheerful. It's creepy! Don't you understand what's happening here? We're in a forest, full of trees and…and we don't have any way home, and I keep expecting you to get mad and rip my arms off and you're whistling! Like you're actually happy! It's scaring me."

"Well excuse me for thinking the glass is half full,' said Faith with a sideways look one usually reserved for the mentally impaired, "I happen to like forests. These woodsy woods are great, just smell that fresh air!"

Willow stopped in her tracks, quaking in horror. This was all starting to make a terrible kind of sense. The creature before her clearly wasn't the Faith she was acquainted with.

"Oh my god, you're your own doppelganger! You are, aren't you!" she squeaked, "Please don't eat me, I have virtually no nutritional value! You'd be better off gnawing on a root, honestly!"

"Jesus Christ Red, what's your damage?" asked the dark Slayer, brows furrowing, "I like forests, so what. They're peaceful."

Noticing that this did not seem to be alleviating Willows fears she added gently, "I'm sure I'll get bored soon and then take it all out on you, how's that?"

"Uhm, actually, that's not helping," quaked Willow.

"Well tough shit," came the response, "I'm a Slayer, not a babysitter. For god's sake woman, you're an all-powerful witch, possibly the strongest in the world and here you are, shaking in your booties. Just pull yourself together already!"

"I am…together! It's just…this place doesn't feel right," she admitted, slumping her shoulders.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, this place, this whole stupid planet feels familiar, like our earth only a lot older and kind of really…sad. And when I did that locator spell earlier, it didn't react in the way it's supposed to," Willow admitted.

"Why?" asked Faith, wondering vaguely if the witch would just shut up if she humoured her, "how was it supposed to react?"

"Look, everything is connected, right? I'm connected to the earth and through it I can technically feel anything on it, provided I concentrate hard enough and have the necessary strength to back myself up with, you with me so far?"

"I guess," came the reply, "I'm not really into the whole mojo thing, more of a violence kinda person."

"Really, I hadn't noticed," Willow answered, unusually sardonically, "anyway, as I was saying, because I'm directly connected to the earth and it's energy I can feel stuff, especially other people using those forces…other magic users if you will."

"Ok," replied Faith, pausing momentarily to sharply kick a rock that had the audacity to be in her path.

"Well that's the thing, I should be feeling other witches or whatever, but there's nothing there!"

"Hmm," Faith responded, and Willow was surprised to note that the other girl actually seemed to be thinking about the problem, "well maybe this world just doesn't have any magic users…maybe the force or whatever just doesn't work here...no, that's not right, if that was the case, your drying spell wouldn't have worked, right?"

"Right," nodded Willow, pleased that there was someone else to talk this puzzle through with, "all the necessary forces are here, it just feels like no one's been around to use them in aeons and right now they're feeding on each other. It feels…tight, like a balloon with too much air in it."

"It's not gonna blow, is it?" the Slayer asked, and Willow thought she detected a note of alarm in the question.

"No, I don't think so,' Willow found herself wanting to reassure the younger girl, "it'll just find another way to get rid of the excess pressure, - bursts of wild magic, unexplainable phenomena, that kind of stuff."

Faith looked thoughtful for a minute before speaking, "So, if you keep doing magic, the stress levels will go down and the balance will right itself? Just keep doing magic then."

Willow smiled at the thought, "It doesn't quite work on that scale I'm afraid. I could do the spell I did to make all the Potentials into Slayers three times over and it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference."

"Oh," said Faith, and resumed her unconcerned expression, "well in that case don't worry about it."

"Huh?" responded Willow, pausing to stick out her tongue at a cunningly hidden tree root that had attempted to trip her, "what do you mean?"

"Well, seems to me there's not a lot of use in worrying about something you can't do anything about. Bit pointless really, so you might as well not bother." And more importantly, not hassle me with it - Faith added in the sanctity of her own head.

"Uh, that's kinda a weird attitude for a Slayer to have, don't you think? Shouldn't you be all about fighting unbeatable odds and stuff?" Willow wheezed. Faith had longer legs than her, not to mention that whole Slayer stamina deal, and it was becoming increasingly more difficult to conduct a conversation and keep up with her at the same time, especially considering that the vegetation seemed to be turning decidedly hostile.

"What can I say," replied Faith grinning back at the wilting Redhead, "I've always been a rebel."

There wasn't a lot Willow could respond to this without dredging up the past, an activity she was a lot more reluctant to indulge in since that unfortunate trying-to-end-the-world incident. So, the two girls continued walking in silence, each in her own world.

For all she knew, they had been walking along in silence for hours before Faith called for Willow to stop.

"Yo, we should find somewhere to make camp for the night. It's gonna get dark soon."

Looking about her, Willow frowned. The forest was cast in the exact same shade of gloomy non-light as it had been all day.

"How can you tell?"

"Shit Red, you're really not a woodsy kinda person, are you," Faith laughed, "I thought it came with the whole Mother-Earth-Goddess package. What happened, they lose your application?"

Not waiting for the other girl to answer, she veered off from the stream they had been following. A few paces to her left, she'd spotted a hollow which seemed to have been formed where a tree had fallen over. This spot, sheltered on one side by the fallen trunk and on another by a small rock formation seemed to her as good a place as any to stop for rest.

"For your information," Willow answered huffily, dropping wearily onto a comfy looking moss covered stone, "Xander and I went camping once when we were little. We both got lost in the woods for hours on end and when we finally got back, squirrels had peed all over my sleeping bag. Anyway, I'm from Sunnydale, remember? We've found that if you come across a dark, secluded area full of trees that offer a convenient amount of shade, it's generally a good rule of thumb to just turn and walk the other way."

"Good point," agreed Faith from the spot where she was crouched attempting to build a fire-pit. Thinking of something to add she stopped fiddling with sticks and turned to her companion, "Hey, when you did your locator spell thingy, did you find any signs of people or demons?"

"Uhm," replied Willow, "to be honest I didn't bother checking. I was sort of busy reassuring myself that I was real. Be quiet for a sec, ok?"

Not waiting for the other girl to murmur her assent, Willow closed her eyes and concentrated. Long gone were the days when she needed candles and incense for such simple stuff as locator spells, now all she had to do was picture a map of her surroundings in her minds eye, - a very simple feat under the circumstances as she knew from personal experience that the outlining regions consisted solely of trees – here and there interspersed with a smattering of shrubberies.

A couple of seconds later and she was dispelling the breath she had been unaware of holding. Opening her eyes, she turned towards Faith.

"Nope, nothing out there bigger than a rabbit…at least I think it was a rabbit…can't be sure in this place. There's a large gathering of energy about twenty miles north of here, basically we just have to follow the stream and we'll hit it."

"Village?" Faith asked while she attempted to light a fire using her Zippo lighter.

"I think so, the energy readings correspond with some big mammal type life forms so it's either a village maybe a large gathering of deer. Or cows…could have been cows," she added wrinkling her brows when she heard Faith snickering.

"Sorry, but 'energy readings correspond with mammal life forms'? Been watching a lot of Star Trek lately?" the Slayer tittered, still vainly trying to get a fire going, "that's it, I give up. Clearly I lack the pyrotechnical expertise of a fucking caveman. Damn wood is wet, must have rained recently."

"Allow me," Willow said smiling sweetly. Absently she waved a hand at Faith's admittedly feeble attempt at a fire and allowed herself a small grin when the other girl was forced to quickly scoot backwards in order to save her eyebrows.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, adding a saccharine smile just for good measure, "guess I'm just not used to my strength in this place. My bad."

"Right," grumbled the dark Slayer, lying back and vainly trying to find a comfortable spot in the rock she was leaning against, "just for that little stunt you get to take first watch."

"Crap," muttered Willow under her breath. She had a feeling this was going to be a long night.