monoculi | 001. not in kansas, toto [action/voice]

001. not in kansas, toto [action/voice]

[Xander has woken up in some pretty weird places in his time. It's an occupational hazard of fighting the forces of evil and usually getting knocked unconscious as a result. However, this - Luceti, that is - has certainly raised the bar of weirdness.

Cold, hard, earth underneath his bare (and oddly uncomfortable) back, greenery and trees all around, and some frankly bizarre white pants on his lower half. Blinking, groaning and fumbling to feel for his eyepatch (on his face, mercifully) he sits up.]

What the...? [he mutters, looking around incredulously - at that moment noticing his clothes piled neatly beside him, along with the rather incongruous looking journal. He stares, then sighs, reaching for his clothes - this is all probably Andrew's moronic doing, his idea of a hilarious prank - after all, if it was a demon thing, he'd probably be dead or eaten by now. Or possibly disembowelled.

He moves to pull his sweater over his head, but encounters difficulty at his shoulder blades - an odd obstruction, something there where there should be nothing. After a couple of frustrated tugs, he reaches back to find out what the problem is, and oh - feathers. Attached to... wings. Well, that's a game-changer.

Now fully miffed (and feeling a lot less relaxed about this whole experience) he abandons the sweater and reaches for the book instead, stifling the urge to panic. There were bound to be clues in here, right? He arrives at the first page and eyes it with suspicion - some kind of communication device? After a moment of ginger examination, he hesitantly selects the 'voice' function, muttering to himself:]

Yay, a mysterious book. Because that always ends so spectacularly well.

[and now raising his voice substantially:]

Okay, listen up, Andrew - whatever kind of hilarious joke you're playing, it's very much not hilarious. And if you don't get out here within the next two seconds and undo whatever funky mojo you did to my back, I will personally locate and destroy your vintage 1989 Sega Mega Drive console. Mint condition and boxed, third drawer from the left, don't think I won't do it!

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...Deep breaths, Xander. [ and she takes her own advice for a second or two. in and out -- filling her lungs. ] I'll spill all the deets as soon as you tell me exactly where you are.

Or. Well. Even if you can tell me vaguely where you are, that'll help. Hopefully.

Right. Breathing. [he takes a helpful deep breath and feels moderately calmer.]

Well, I see trees. And some other trees in between those trees. And also trees.

[...helpful?]

...Trees. Which means you're in the woods. Which means I was actually out in the woods, like, an hour ago. You couldn't have showed up an hour earlier? It would have saved me from having to put my boots back on...

[ but the griping is good-natured. energetic, even. and it's accompanied by the clatter and rustle of a domestic nature. a jacket fetched off a hook. a fridge door slammed shut. things like that. ]

Anything else? Maybe a river? The distant, beckoning lights of a quaint village worthy of rural Canada? Anything?

Well excuse me for being late to my own mystical kidnapping. Next time let's sync calendars. [his sarcastic response lacks the bite of a genuine reproach though - he's playing along. at her prompting, he makes slightly more of an effort to scout around, stuffing his feet hastily into his shoes, grabbing his clothes and trying his best to ignore the cold - he completely failed to get dressed.]

Okay, okay, I'm looking... looking... looki-- oh! There's what looks like a path here. A crappy path, but... [he looks up to see where the path leads, and spots a few promising looking buildings some distance away.] ...could be heading to this village you speak of.

...Luceti. [ she supplies the name with a quick tongue, if a muffled voice. ] The village I speak of is Luceti. Kinda. The whole darn place is Luceti, but the village is the only village around. You should definitely be walking towards it.

[ buffy opens her front door, ready to pop outside when. jeez. it's cold out there. which prompts her to ask: ] How are you, pants-wise? People tend to get dumped in glorified cult-wear. All white and homespun cottons. If you're feeling nippy, I'll bet Jack won't mind if I loan out something of his...

[ jack. that is going to be a conversation and a half. buffy frowns and hesitates at the door, waiting for his answer. ]

Edited 2013-03-08 01:26 (UTC)

Luceti. Isn't that in Spain? [geography = questionable. At any rate, he's jogging along this path at a reasonable pace - mostly to stave off the chill.]

I'm heading towards the village. And yeah, I still have the oh-so-fetching cult pants on - but I've got some clothes. My clothes. So you won't need to ask, uh, Jack. Whoever Jack is.

Edited 2013-03-08 01:46 (UTC)

[ and so, she locks her front door behind her and carries her journal into the march night. ]

Go centre-wards. There's a fountain. I'll be meeting you there, so long as you don't run into too many Good Samaritans on the way. We have a surplus of those.

[Xander is currently doing his best to juggle his journal whilst sorting out this sweater situation once and for all. There's no way he's meeting Buffy all shirtless and pathetic. He's a grown man! He won't be defeated by outerwear. As a consequence, he's slightly muffled as he replies.]

A surplus of Good Samaritans - I'll take that over the alternatives. [Demons, vampires, etc.]

How big is this village? I think I'm at the outskirts.

Not that big. Smaller than Sunnydale. A little bigger -- maybe -- than the village near Chateau Summers. [ she's gambling on him knowing what she means when she refers to the castle. ] Don't let the apartment buildings fool you -- there's only a couple hundred of us in residence.

[ her pace picks up. if he's at the outskirts, she's likely to reach the fountain before him. that's alright. that's okay. as eager as she is to see him and as much as she wants to race to find him, she understand that she can't be certain from which direction he's coming.

the fountain will have to do. ]

['In residence'. An odd choice of words from Buffy (or so it seems to him) under the circumstances. Residence implies living here. Living here implies not escaping from here. And that raises a number of other worrying questions, like 'how long have you been here?' which, frankly, would be best tackled face to face. So for now, he won't comment.]

Okay. I'll keep heading centre-wards - not sure that's an actual word by the way, Buff - until I hit this fountain.

[...and perhaps a magical handwave is an order, and within a short while, he'll be approaching the aforementioned fountain, where Buffy will hopefully be waiting?]

[ after one beautiful, magnificent, awe-inspiring handwave? buffy summers is perched anxiously on the edge of luceti's quaint plaza fountain. she finds herself rehearsing greetings: hey, harris or if centre-wards isn't a word then it should be one or there aren't enough hallmark cards in this or any world to express how much i've missed you.

as she watches the stars above and allows the options to tick over in her brain, she plays nervously with her bare fingers. part of her felt guilty for removing the gold and jade ring she'd gotten accustomed to wearing, but she'd shoved it deep within a pocket for this reunion. buffy barely understood what the jewellery meant to her, so how could she even comprehend explaining it to xander?

and -- just like that -- he's approaching. she pushes up from the fountain's stone lip and regains her steady footing. her journal remains tucked under an arm. although the starlight is dim at best, she wouldn't look all that different even in the harsh light of day. parts of her are different, but they're all hidden from sight. scar tissue or ink or deep internal strife. or a slight bulge at her shoulders where her own wings must be constrained by her jacket.

she doesn't move to hug him. not yet. she's still so struck by the sight of him. if pressed, buffy would admit that it's a relief to see he's still lacking in an eye. it means he must be somewhat in sync with her own timeline. ]

By now, at least one person's bound to have told you not to touch the feathers. Right?

[such an amazing handwave, we shall remember it always. At any rate! Xander is relieved to see Buffy, and to find that she's safe and apparently unharmed and... more or less how he left her just yesterday, with the obvious exception of those discreetly jacketed wings. He gives her a weary smile in greeting.]

Yup. Don't touch on pain of death, week-long sickness, infertility, beheading and migraines, right?

Maybe the chickenpox too, I dunno. I'm a dutiful little lab-canary and I keep mine in decent nick. [ she runs an anxious hand through her hair. she may not look all that different, but buffy is deeply shaken by the prospect that her best friend might reacquaint himself with her and somehow find her wanting.

so she stands there. silent -- just for a few moments longer. and she's shocked by how difficult it is to drum up new words. ]

G-genetic camouflage. [ ... ] The wings, I mean. It's like what tricks this world into not rejecting us or something. Adaptational something or another. I can't pretend I understand it. Biology? Not my best field.

[the feeling of general unease that he had about Buffy's uncharacteristically - relaxed? - approach to this place intensifies with her silence, and even more so as she talks. It's almost rehearsed, habitual - dramatically at odds with how alien everything seems to him, how utterly disorientating.]

Not my best field either. [he dismisses all that for a moment, bowing his head slightly to look her in the eye.] Buffy. I hate to make with the bad puns already, considering I just got here. But you seem kind of... unruffled. By all this. How long have you been here?

Guess you're not even gonna give me the chance to beat around this bush, huh?

[ she crosses her arms. what she still really wants to do is hug him. hug him fierce and hard and transmit all the dire amounts of missing him through that one hug. but now the question's been asked.

and she can't lie. not to xander. not on his first night. ] It'll be four years in May. [ ... ] It's March, now. So -- soon. Soon it'll be four whole years of feathers and...

You should probably come to the house. This is a conversation best had with hot beverages and maybe something comfy to sit on.

[he answers her rhetorical question with a patient, expectant look - though he most certainly wasn't expecting the response he got. his face almost blanches with shock.]

Four years? Four years? [he looks completely incredulous.] But I just - yesterday, we were talking. At length... [he trails off, struggling to process the idea that somehow Buffy has been stuck somewhere for four years without his knowledge, and with the dawning realisation that he too, is now stuck.]

...a hot and strong beverage? [just a suggestion. anyway, though Buffy may be reticent, he has no such qualms about giving her a hug - which he proceeds to do, wrapping his arms around her without preamble or warning. it seems like she needs it. ]

[ her arms reach 'round his waist -- placing the hug low, so as to avoid his new and sensitive wings. even still, she crushes him against her in a way that might threaten to crack a rib should she get even a little bit more enthusiastic about hugging him.

missed you.

her face presses firmly against her shoulder and everything about xander that is familiar and comforting rushes back to her: his height; his arms; his own way of holding her close. it nearly overwhelms her once again. she knows the truth is gonna be a hard pill to swallow -- luceti itself, the way in which people came and went, and the irrational nature of how time works between home and here. but xander is one of hers -- one of the scoobies -- and she already trusts him with the ability to come to terms.

buffy speaks with her mouth muffled against his sleeve: ] Hot and strong and with marshmallows, if that's what you want. The sky's the limit. Well, okay, the pantry is the actual limit but...

God, recently I've been waking up and wondering if I was ever gonna see you again.

[ah, Buffy's famous rib-cracking hugs. Despite the intensity of the embrace, he doesn't wince - though her strength never fails to surprise him, even after all these years, and in more ways than one. He can only imagine what it's been like for her, here for four whole years - and yet she's still strong. Still sane. Still herself, and not a chattering loon rocking in the foetal position, as he suspects he would be under similar circumstances.

He gives her a gentle squeeze with his arms, bowing his head slightly so that he can plant a kiss just above her hairline.]

Well, now I'm here. And I'm not going anywhere, unless it's with you. Deal?

Deal.

[ she releases him after that friendly kiss, and feels all the better for it. although she's made friends in these parts and most have been true and constant friends at that, it's never quite the same as someone from home. someone who has survived the hellmouth at her side. someone who already knows the peaks and valleys of her past: the achievements and the failures and the days when they felt relieved merely to be alive. ]

C'mon. The house isn't far. [ she gestures in a northwesterly direction, towards a simple bridge that crosses the town's ever-present river. and she loops her arm through his, letting her shoulder settle against him. ]

Meet anyone peculiar and-slash-or personable, yet? [ she suspects she wasn't the only one to latch onto the sound of a new feather in not-quite-distress. ]

[he walks along amiably at her side, taking everything in, this strange village with all its trappings of normality - it's certainly a far cry from the other weird situations they've found themselves in over the years.]

Oh, several. I'm now on first-name terms with a talking purple unicorn - oh, and then there was the psychic eagle. It's like Narnia. Or the 1960s.

[ the slayer laughs. ]

Or a 1960s whacked out version of Narnia. I get it. It's quite the pill to swallow, complete with trippy elements and thing best left to hallucintions. But...

[ like sunnydale, it's hard not to feel some kind of affinity to a place you've learned to fight for and protect. ] But it eventually makes a kind of sense, even if that sense is still pretty sucky.

[ the perk of explaining this to xander, she decides, is that she can trust him to meet supernatural adversity with maybe only a blink or two. ] This whole area is under a bubble, of sorts. And that bubble is our cage. We're test subjects. Or we're conscripted soldiers. Or we're the best damn thing on television. Or we're all of the above. The Malnosso don't take us here, Xander. But they do keep us under wraps once we are here -- all under the great scientific banner of trying to find a way home for themselves.

There's a guide. Kinda like a tourism brochure. I'll drag it out for you once we get inside.

[well, at least he can rely on Buffy to laugh at his lame jokes.]

You win the prize for best explanation so far. [he mulls all that over in thoughtful silence for a moment.] Do we know where this bubble is? I mean, are we talking alternate dimension? Different timeline? Because I think I would have noticed if you pulled a sudden supernatural vanishing act.

We're pulled from a moment. Stolen, I guess. 'Cause people return and show up and return again, and no one ever misses them in their own chronology. When my golden ticket is eventually punched, I'll be shunted right back to the time I came from. It'd be slick if it wasn't also so...kooky.

[ as for a where? she sighs. ] Alternate dimension is my best bet. Some people think it's a different planet, but that's usually only the really-far-future folk. The folk who come from places with spaceships.

Spaceships? [he momentarily perks up, because - well, spaceships! - but no, now is not the time to indulge his sci-fi fantasies.] ...aaaand I'm focusing.

So wait, if people return and show up again, have I been here before? Because I talked to a guy - Captain Something - who claimed to know me. Said I was 'suspicious and resentful', in fact.

Jack. [ a little too quick. a little too careless. ]

And he's right. You were here, once. A couple years ago. [ and the day buffy had lost xander to the fickle powers controlling who got to go home when was the day that drove her into jack sparrows's arms.

as for suspicious and resentful. well. she remains tight-lipped, saying instead: ] Just the once, though. It's just been the once. Before today.

Edited 2013-03-10 11:49 (UTC)

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