Deborah, I think you're right. And I think Peg would be kind of hip, in a 50s sort of way(not beat, but cooler than June Cleaver, for sure).

Oh. Them.

Hey! What do you mean by "Oh. Them." *g*

I maintain that the AU has some seemingly rational foundation.

Oh, I'll make notes out the ying-yang, so I can keep track of the things I have to lay groundwork for. But I just know if I write the juicy scenes too soon my muse will think her work's done and not do the people moving that needs to happen.

No notes, no outline. Only time I ever tried, the novel died after fifteen pages and I had to go back and begin again.

I'll do the research, mind you. Former history tutor, retired. I'm not anal, I refuse to be bullyragged by tiny little tight-sphinctred points of reference (gee, her dress would likely have been blue, not green? I don't really give a damn), but I don't want to drop any howling period clangers, either. No wristwatches on the 14th century yeomanry.

New.

---

Once, twice, three times, the same note. Three times, the same hum. Always in threes. It was all for me, all of it, all existence, all power. A phrase came into my mind, watching the firmament wheeling into the vast reaches of forever, for my pleasure and amusement, hearing the triads pouring like cold distant starlight into my witch's ear.

"The music of the spheres."

"What did you say?"

It took me a moment to come back, and a bit longer to realise that I had spoken aloud, and was being answered. I looked up at Richard Giles and, instead, found myself confronting a boy, not very much older than I was.

I liked his face at once. It was a good face, amused yet alert, wary but also curious. The word that would come to me years later, when I pushed my memory down through the byroads to those early days together at the Carolan, was lively. And there was a mind propelling the liveliness. I realised he was holding a pair of glasses loosely in one hand, and I knew, instinctively, that he'd taken them off so as not to hide. I began to guess whose child he might be.

"You're staring," the boy said. He was taller than me, but only by a bit. I was a leggy child. "Staring's rude, usually. My father gets quite shirty about it. Mind he doesn't catch you. You're the Slayer? I'm sorry, I don't know your name. I'm Rupert Giles."

"I'm Amanda Lisle." To my own surprise, and certainly to his, I put out a hand. He took it, holding it for a moment as if unsure what he was to do with it, and then let it fall. "Yes, I suppose I'm the Slayer. I don't care what he catches me doing. I'll do whatever I like. I expect that makes me even ruder, doesn't it?"

He glanced involuntarily over his shoulder. There was nervousness in that look, worry, a kind of secretiveness. It was so obviously a reflex, something he felt it so necessary to do that he now did it without thought or knowledge, that I wanted to hit him. Along with the uprush of anger came a touch of sympathy, not something I usually felt for other peoples' weaknesses. And most importantly, my dislike for the man these people kept calling my Watcher ratcheted up one more notch.

"Ah, Rupert has introduced himself. Good. Amanda, your mother's leaving. Her train back to London is in an hour."

The adults had come up behind us. My mother's hands were twisted together. She never carried a purse, preferring instead to distribute whatever tats and bobs were necessary to any given hour of her life about her person: a bus ticket in a coat pocket, a pound note folded small in the empty locket she always wore around her neck, the key to our London flat - entirely her own now, that flat - warmed between her breasts.

Her face was cloudy, uncertain. There was relief at this leavetaking there, she couldn't hide it and I was long enough accustomed to not mind, but I saw Rupert's face tighten beside me, and I understood that this was just what I must have looked like when I saw his nervousness at his father. I caught his eye, and felt the corners of my mouth lift, in a tiny signal. Something, a curve of muscle down the cheek I could see, signalled back to me. So was the first bond created.

• * *

Yay!Or more politely, I do hope you'll keep writing this.(Giles-ly throat-clearing.)

deborah, are you using the long, intricate sentences on purpose? It makes Amanda sound much older than I'm possibly thinking she is.

Also, Carolan--is there an Irish connection? I'm thinking of the old harpist.

heh. try and stop me.

I'm having printer issues. Not enough that the damned thing won't function properly for more than ten pages at a time; it's also locking up the computer and forcing me to bail.

Bleah.

I knew, instinctively, that he'd taken them so as not to hide.

Should this be "...taken them OFF so as not to hide"?

Deb, I just love this character. She fascinates me.

Yes, and young!Giles. Good stuff.