Disclaimer: I'm just to tired...whine!

I'M BACK! SO STOP YELLING!

I was going over my story again to make sure it was flowing right and all I kept seeing were typos. GRRRR! So, if anybody wants to take on a slightly insane, horseback riding, fanfiction writer, I desperately need a Beta.

...

Chapter 11

Concentrate, Willow Rosenburg thought to herself, as she manipulated the energy between her hands. It was a very complicated spell. She was weaving strands of energy back and forth across each other like they were thread in a tapestry. Sweat pored down her forehead as she sent them back and forth, back and forth. The finished product would be a protective shield that would be stronger than any she had ever made before and become a permanent part of her being. Something she could snap into place at a moments notice.

The actual weaving of the power was hard enough, it took complete concentration. She couldn't break her focus for a moment or the strands of power would all go flying away into the ether. The strands squirmed around in her "hands" like they were alive, trying to get away from each other. They had been perfectly happy where they were and hadn't wanted to be "spun" into "thread".

Willow narrowed her eyes as she came to the end of her task. The hardest part of the whole thing was coming up. Now that the shield was completed she had to tie it all up at the ends so that it would stay woven. She was so close to being done. Just a few moments more and she could rest. It would be one step closer to completing her training and going back to…

Sproing! BOOM!! Willow was flung onto her back as the energy escaped from her and eagerly returned to the earth as fast as it could. She blinked a few times, making sure she was still conscious. She had a massive headache and her hands were tingling, but she thought she was still alive. Her shield, however, was caput.

"Well poop."

"Something intruded upon your mind," the voice of her teacher came from out of the dark.

Willow sighed and shoved herself back up into a sitting position, pushing back the pain. Her teacher was somewhat lacking in the sympathy department. She would be expected to get right back to work. Using a tiny trickle of magick she got rid of her headache and shook her hands to get feeling back into them.

"There is still something you have not told me."

"I've told you everything," Willow denied, "Even things I really didn't want to."

When she had first come here Willow had had to admit she'd been a little scared. The Coven had sent her here because while they could teach her a lot, they couldn't teach her about all the aspects of her magick. The Coven specialized in white magick. They shunned the dark side of the craft and were always a bit uncomfortable around her.

After so much time in Sunnydale and especially after her time as Destructo Girl she couldn't avoid the dark side anymore. Willow had literally made herself into a magickal sponge. She had absorbed so much magick, good and bad, that it was now a part of her being. She couldn't live without practicing both. And while the Coven was happy enough to teach her about meditation and helping her explore the Light side of her powers they weren't to keen on dealing with the rest of her wiggy self.

So off she'd been sent, to India this time, to learn about the rest of her magick. Of course, Willow couldn't exactly go up to a practitioner of Black magick and be like, "I'm here to learn dark magick from you but I don't want to be evil really and I don't want to hurt anybody." Dark practitioners weren't exactly known for their patience or willingness to share their secrets.

The solution they had come up with was her current teacher. Both Giles and Rheanna, the head of the Coven, had heard of her and even Rheanna had had to admit that while the Coven didn't always approve of her methods, she wasn't exactly evil. Both had agreed that she was very good at the Craft, however. She should be, she was over 1,000 years old.

"Tell me about the Slayer."

"Ehhh…which one? There are a lot lately, you know," Willow tried to delay. This was the one subject she'd been hoping to avoid. She'd succeeded so far, but it didn't look like it was going to last. She shouldn't be so surprised. Her teacher was scarily good at ferreting out secrets.

"The one you call Buffy."

"What do you want to know? I've told you how I met her and helped her and…"

"I want to know why your voice changes when you talk about her."

"It does?"

"Do not try to disseminate, Little Water Tree." That was the closest her teacher ever came to calling her by her name. She had told Willow when they first met that her name was translated as Little Tree By The Water in her language and she'd called Willow Little Water Tree ever since.

"I…I'm in love with her," Willow sighed and hung her head. She had learned within the first week that there was absolutely no way to lie to her teacher and thus, no way to lie to herself. She'd known for a long time that she loved Buffy. She just hadn't had the guts to admit it to anyone else.

"Why does this disturb you so?"

"For many reasons," Willow stated, trying to keep her emotions even. It was a very touchy subject. "I feel like I've hurt the people I've had relationships with because I've always loved her and probably always will. But it probably disturbs me most because she'll never return my feelings."

"She has told you this?"

"No. I've never told her about my feelings." Though Willow wouldn't be surprised if Xander knew, she wasn't too worried about Buffy. The blond Slayer tended to be a little dense about matters of the heart.

"Such limitations!" For the first time since coming here Willow heard emotions enter her teacher's voice. Usually her voice was monotone, flat and disturbing. Willow heard the dry rustle of scales against stone as her teacher stirred in irritation.

"Who are you?" Her teacher asked, out of the blue.

"Wha…I'm Willow?"

"Who are you?"

"I'm…a…just Willow Rosenburg, really."

"Who. Are. You?!"

"I don't know what you want me to say! I t...t...told you already. I'm Willow!" Now Willow was getting irritated. Her teacher was all of the sudden asking these weird questions again. She thought they'd gotten beyond this sort of thing already.

"Again you place limitations on yourself."

"I don't know what you mean. Please explain," she gritted her teeth and tried to remain calm. Emotional extremes of any kind were bad for her. Things tended to go kind of explodey.

"Mortals, especially humans, I have found, place limitations on themselves on every level. 'My name is John Smith and I am an accountant,'" Her teacher's voice was actually sarcastic. "As if that could hold the sum of their worth?"

"You do the same thing. You assume your Slayer could not love you even though you have never tried to gain her love. You assume that she would not welcome knowing she holds a special place in your heart. That she would hate you because of it. You even assume you cannot love more than one person at a time."

"But you can't be…," Willow tried to protest.

"Why?"

"Huh?"

"We will address the first issue. Why do you assume you cannot love more than one person at the same time?"

"Because it's just wrong!"

"Why?"

"B…because everybody says so," Willow waved her hands in the air, getting frustrated. "There's a reason you can only marry one person, you know?"

"Ahhh," her teacher's voice sighed out across the cavern, "Now we get to the crux of the matter. Humans rely so much on what other's say to form their opinions. There is the ever mysterious 'everybody' that tells them what they can and cannot do."

"I have lived for over a thousand years, Little Water Tree," she actually sounded her age now, "I can tell you now that this 'everybody' changes their mind on a regular basis depending on what period in history and what region of the Earth you look at. There have been many cultures where marrying more than one person is both accepted and even required. Your own is now examining the definitions of marriage quite vigorously I believe."

"Yeah, they are," Willow had to agree with that one. "But…"

"Limitations, Little Water Tree," her teacher interrupted. "Each person must ultimately do what feels right to them, but do not let yourself feel guilty for feeling love. It comes in many forms and is one of the things that makes life worth living. Obviously your love for this Slayer is a powerful one but it does not mean that you cannot love another. The love is simply different, not less."

For some reason this took a great weight off of Willow's shoulders. Doubtless if anyone else had told her the same thing she would have simply nodded and continued on feeling guilty but her teacher always spoke the truth. The naga did not believe in lies, they thought them foolish. Besides, it was one thing for your friend to point something out and another thing entirely for a decades old magickal being to do it.

"You limit yourself in your magick as well."

"Huh...W...What do you mean?" Willow was dragged off the track of contemplating her love life, or lack thereof.

"Your insistence in the belief that there is good and evil magick is the main issue. But this is not a surprise. Many mortals hold this foolish thought."

"Have you ever been to a Hellmouth?!" Willow was incredulous, "Trust me, I sucked up enough magick there to know it was evil."

"I have been in the tunnels beneath many Hellmouths in my time. I even guarded the treasure you call the Scythe for a period of 103 years."

"Really?" Willow tilted her head, confused and a little intrigued.

"Yes," the voice of her teacher was back to being dry and informative, "And you confuse my meaning. Magick can indeed be corrupted, there is no doubt of that. Many an evil man or demon has used it for nefarious purposes and it is tainted thereafter unless cleansed."

"The rituals themselves that mortals use are not in and of themselves magick, they are simply away to channel it. Magickal power in its rawest form is drawn from the Earth and the Universe itself and is very hard to control. Very few mortals have ever been able to do so. You, Little Water Tree, are now one of them."

"When you opened yourself up to the magick before you lost the veil that separates you from it. The spells and rituals that the Coven have taught you are worthless because you are never separate from the magick and do not require them. What we must teach you now are two things, how to control the flow so that it does not overwhelm you and how to cleanse the corrupted energy that enters you."

"I can do that?" Willow was excited. The Coven had been so frustrated with her when she couldn't block out the dark, or corrupted, magick. It was a basic skill that they taught all of their witches. Now she knew why she hadn't been able to do it and why Sunnydale had been so hard to live in.

"Indeed, but first you must work on your concentration," her teacher settled back into the dark with a rattle of scales. "Begin again on your shield. You must focus only upon that. Do not try to force this Buffy from your mind, but rather accept the fact that there is nothing you can do about it now but love her. We will begin with the cleansing training once you have mastered this skill."

Nodding, her mind set, Willow focused on pulling power from the earth and "spinning" it as she had been taught.

"Good," Willow didn't here her teacher begin to speak as she was so entranced with what she was doing, "It is a good beginning. But something is still missing. She is too tangled amongst the Slayer Line to see her whole self. There is something that must be completed…"

…………………….

Author's Note:

Thank you all so much for waiting patiently (and not so patiently) for this update. While my new job is very cool, I get to ride horses all day, it doesn't leave much free time. So the updates will be a bit more spread out from now on. SORRY! Don't panic though, they will still be coming.

For this chapter we finally get to see Willow again. I didn't focus too much on her feeling or history because we will be getting to that later. I chose to deal with her magick and how she's learning to deal with it. She never did quite get the hang of it even toward the end, she never had time to. I thought about sending her off to the Coven again but then I figured she wasn't really a traditional witch anymore and so she would need somebody pretty special to teach her.

Her teacher and no, she doesn't have a name, is a nagini or a nagi. That is the female form of naga. They are snake-like beings found in Hinduism or Buddhism. Tales of them are found all over India and even into Korea and mainland China. They are traditionally thought of as having the lower or whole body of a snake and the upper body or head of a human. They are immortal and usually associated with subterranean areas, water, and guarding treasure.

Also, I'm not advocating polygamy or whatever here and I'm not knocking it either. I just think people get to locked into ideas about "what's right". If you look at all the different cultures that have and do exist they all have them. They even need them to function. But one of things that disturbs me most is when people are absolutely sure they're right about something. Inevitably I think the Universe will prove them wrong. If only just to laugh at them when they fall on their faces.

Next chapter, the beginnings of an actual plot. OMFG!

OMAKE:

Buffy- Master Shin?

Master Shin- huffing out of temple- What?

Buffy- I was just going to say goodbye. I'm leaving today.-suspicious- What are you hiding back there?

Master Shin- guilty- Nothing!

Buffy- You're lying, I can hear your heart rate going up.

Master Shin- Uhhhhh.

Buffy- notices thing in hand- Is that a remote? Did you have a t.v. in there the entire time?!

Master Shin- throws remote away and herds Buffy out the gate- Of course not. I would never hide something like that from you. It's been nice to know you. Have a nice life. Passions is on. Bye! –slams door in her face

(a nod to Spike)

The usual shout out to all the reviewers and readers. I noted the upswing in the favorite story and story alerts, very cool. Also, to General Mac, sweeeeeet!