From wesleysgirl's request...

[darcydodo]

There's a moment, while you jump, that you see your destination ahead of you, shrouded thickly in fog, like crossing the Bay Bridge from East Bay to San Francisco, when the bright air in the corners of your field of vision gives way before you to a pearly grey-toned scene of headlighted cars and high-rising buildings. And you keep going, and at some indefinable point the brightness stays with you, but if you look behind, you see a grayscale expanse of bridge stretching away across the water.

---

And this is what it's like, and I look at Jesse and lick the corner of his mouth clean, where there is a smear of red, taste my life's essence, how pure and sweet and good it is, and I want more. "Xander," I whisper in Jesse's ear, "has a big surprise coming, doesn't he?" And I laugh, so pleased with myself, ready or not here I come my darling Xander. Slide down from the couch, blow a farewell kiss, I'm out the door feeling the air dancing over my face like a lover's caress, never felt it before like this, and oh isn't it good to be . . . let's face it, not alive. My languid, purposeful stride takes me past the empty playground where rubbish blows across asphalt in the night's black breeze, and it's empty but at the edge there's a kid with a mess of brown curls peering through the chain-link fence, small fingers twined around the thin metal, and I say hey kid, wanna play a game, and we play a game, and his small fingers grow limp and cold in mine and the goodness of his blood is ambrosia and this is what I was missing.

I get to Xander's house, he's just coming down the steps, locking the door behind him, oh hey, Will, whatcha doing here, he says, I thought I was meeting you at the Bronze. You were, I say, but I got bored and I wanted you so I came to get you. I take his hand, draw him towards me, he doesn't resist, but laughs, and I can smell the rich red blood running just under the surface of his skin, singing and roaring like the surf of the sea, but I wait. Patience is a virtue, but it can be fun for a bit. Hide-and-seek, the cat stalks the mouse, hickory-dickory-dock.

"I saw Jesse," I tell him as we walk, my fingers twined in his. "He danced with Cordelia," and I see disbelief register on his face. And he danced with me too, I say, oh how we danced. "And now we can dance," and I smile up at him and his eyes grow wide and sick and his heart goes pam-pam in his chest and doesn't that just make me want him all the more. Xander, baby, you're all mine.

"Will, what's up? What happened..." his hand gestures, filling in for vanished words, and I lay my finger across his lips, hush hush, Xander. I bite buttons off his shirt, feel each one like a cool slick pearl in my mouth, run my tongue along his warm naked chest, hear his strangled gasp. My hand slides down inside his trousers like I've always wanted to, finds a warm softness of skin, he's too tall but he heeds me when I call, and my teeth pierce his throbbing neck. My Xander, all mine.

[self-indulgent poetry cut here]

My entire being tingles, and I think this is what I was aiming for in all those secret attempts to masturbate in the dark, only now there's no sense of burning shame, because this is the way the world should work, and at my neck where my clothes end and my flesh begins, I draw forth a crimson tide that laps over milky skin to feed my darling Xander. So greedy he is as he fastens on to me, so wonderful, and my hand continues to caress him as he dies and lives, and a groan rips through him as he comes and becomes fully alive, as alive as either of us will ever be again. You're mine, I tell him, mine mine, and he agrees, and chucks me under the chin, and lazily we kiss, fangs hard and tongues soft.

And together as one, the predator that stalks the shadows, we lope off into the darkness to revel in our new birth.

---

And then the candle toppled all the way over, and the memories and possibilities which had been drawn to its flame like moths burst free of their bonds, and Willow was drowning....

sadness. pain. immense, searing, soul-rending grief. joy. laughter. swirling butterflies of myriad impossible colors. faces, but not all are familiar. she surfaces briefly, sees equal pain and confusion reflected on the other's face, and knows that not all these memories are her own. hears tender words, feels a caress, on cheek, on naked back, oh Tara— tears spring up, but they might not be hers. she tortured Angel here in this room, tortured Buffy, tortured herself— no, that isn't her, that is the other. isn't it? a flash of comprehension, lost in the torrent. future possibilities, carnage heaped upon slaughter, gruesome ranks of inhuman soldiers, oh that's what Buffy saw, shadow demons leering at her through the mists. triumph: how? it nestles in there somewhere, but she is no longer in control of this raging flood and fails to pursue the glinting spark of hope. drawn back through the layers of nostalgia, finding a brief pocket of calm, the eye of the storm...

Sweaty, laughing, watching the bright air glint off Tara's hair. She smells the faintly rancid odor of the broken weeds along the side of the fire trail. Finding mistletoe clutching at the branches of the dying sycamore, and they both reach up simultaneously to break off a piece. Soft lips, a gentle caress against her own, her cheek, drowning in Tara's eyes until she closes her own, bare skin rasping against the tree's smooth bark. Later, still sweaty, still laughing, trying to wipe a smudge off the bridge of Tara's nose and leaving a darker streak. Their surprise and delight at finding not just sage growing in abundance up the sandy rocks of the hill, but white sage as well. White...
        ...shirt...
                ...Your shirt...

...whipped back into the maelstrom, the echoing, pounding stream of memories both good and bad, but she must fight her way above the water, it isn't water, it's magic, oh magic, she can control magic, just not memories—

---

They'd driven out to the coast and headed south a ways, ending up in a small tourist-trap town that had seen friendlier days. All of them, seven without the vampire; and they spread blankets out on the prickly, patchy bluff to await sunset and the dancing glimmer of fireworks. The sullen fog drifted away as dusk fell and bonfires blossomed on the sand below; firecrackers whizzed and popped; sparklers flashed with white incandescence. From the beach, the first firework shot whistling into the air, bursting overhead with a shower of melting color.

---

Now there is a song stuck in his mind, nigglingly familiar and apparently set to play on an eternal loop, until after the hundredth, five hundredth time it begins to irritate him. So he screams experimentally, loud and raw, the noise exploding from his lungs.

"You don't have to yell about it," she scolds him tartly, from her position just behind his shoulder.

"Don't I, pet?" he mutters, somehow unsurprised at her presence. "Thought it'd help. Didn't, though. Got too much in my head, can't hear it all, can I?"

---

Sheets tangled, limbs loosely twined, kisses nibbled in moments of languid half-awareness. The sultry heat dredges memories from between nested layers.

"Remember that game you played when you were little, where each person says a word and you all try and tell a story?"

A cozy "mmm" signifies acknowledgement and accord, while a silky head rearranges itself more comfortably, drags up another effortful syllable. "Why?"

"Nothing, just curious." Tara shifts, encircles Willow with her arms, strokes a soft shoulder with her thumb. This night could last an eternity and she would never complain.

---

In the gathering dark of our misguided trials
lurk impotent seeds of both evil and good
which the glittering icons of damnable faith
raise on ivory pedestals crafted of lies
that man eagerly swallows while gasping for air
in the hectic arena of soul-crushing life,
so that now he is owned by mechanical bliss
while his fragments and fantasies dwindle and fade
till he crumbles beneath an incredible emptiness,
carried aloft by the fires in his soul
to be dropped so he cracks like a porcelain egg;
but his nursery-rhymes fled from the hell-hounds of God
so he has no king's horses or men to rebuild him;
and slowly he fades into unblessèd dust

---

Grasping arms twine,
greedy for the omniscience
of sorrowful, ruby wine:
but the refrain comes too brief a time,
fades away in all its splendor,
and the maenad chokes
on a mouthful of blood,
grasping a tarnished thyrsus.
The ivy turns to pine,
turns to smoke,
and ancient lore
swells with bitter wisdom.

---

The sky has faded, though,
no longer infused with the hot purity
that summer brings,
now a faded denim drop-cloth tossed carelessly across the heavens.

---

I think dark and dream are thieves,
More than whim and care.
Light bears a veiled chasm clasped in its coil;
I am a slice of dazzled air.

Comments

[liv]

Can you explain what those are, please? Random snippets of writing without context are a tad unhelpful.

I recognize most of them (ok, I am slightly obsessive about reading all your stuff), but not the last fragment, which, by the way, is gorgeous!

[darcydodo]

Well, I think the point was just to see what people like in their own writing, and not to give people a bunch of contextual stories to read.

But if you want, then, in order, they are from:

Jumping (original fic), A Kiss Between Friends (BtVS), And For A Brief Spell (BtVS), a BtVS drabble, Shades of Madness (BtVS), another BtVS drabble. Then the poetry, from: Theopoiesis, A Bacchant's Dream, Autumn, untitled. ;)

I'll explain about the last one, now. There was this magazine that I found on the web, about translating poetry. And it wanted people to try translating a certain four lines just by how they sounded. So I wrote my snippet. But I never managed to send it in, 'cause I forgot about it, which is a very sad thing.

[tzeentch.livejournal.com]

I think "lush" is the bet way to describe your writing. It's really good. BTW, is the second one (with Willow and Xander) using vampire!Willow from that episode where the old Anya (when she was a vengeance demon) granted Cordellia's wish that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale? Well, it couldn't be really, since one character "danced" with Cordelia, who didn't really know what was going on, and encountered them after they were both vampires. But it could have been otherwise.

[darcydodo]

Thanks. :) And yes, it's vampire!Willow from "The Wish."

Well, it couldn't be really, since one character "danced" with Cordelia, who didn't really know what was going on, and encountered them after they were both vampires.

Sorry, you lost me with that. Jesse dances with Cordy in "The Harvest," after he's been turned. If you're confused by my setup, the whole story can be found here.

[tzeentch.livejournal.com]

Well, assuming that the story take place during the timeline/storyline of "The Wish," (which I assumed, since we were dealing with vampire!Willow) then Cordelia doesn't realize that Willow or Jesse are vampires, and hence couldn't have danced with him. But if you are mixing and matching, then anything goes.

[darcydodo]

No, she doesn't realize that Willow and Xander are vampires. Big difference! :)