And I've found at least one reference of Wes calling Gunn "Charles," though it's early. And, as with paleontologists, one reference is all you need to postulate an entire species.

Heh. Well, just so long as no one calls Cordy "Delia."

Fred/Faith the first part, is up in the LJ.

Okay, Buffistas- I could use some advice. Some time ago, I wrote what I thought was silly badfic, a challenge response in which Buffy gets pregnant. I posted in on ff.n, and now I have five reviews, all of which as positive and four of which say 'please write some more'.

What I need to know is: are they right, should I go on,or will it just get worse if I do?

Read it here and tell me what you think. Thanks.

I've read it, and, um, well--dammit, I like you and I trust your own assessment of your work, so I won't say much. But the Giles's stuff is funny! "For you, Spike, that means Angel goes first." snerk.

I'm no fan of Buffy pregnant stories, no matter how well written--you know who you are, folks! Unrepentent shippers, maybe? I'd like to see Buffy's reactions ot Connor and all.

This is the first finished bit of the Willow story I'm currently working on. Hec helped me with a very good line-edit; any suggestions would be appreciated.

Willow is having that dream again.

It's bright light on hard surfaces, her limbs moving slowly, a hand she can't identify on the back of her neck. It's the dream where someone is talking to her, quickly and loudly, and she knows she should be listening but she just can't make the sounds coalesce in her mind into something she can understand. The words swim around her and she reaches to catch them but meaning, that slippery fish, squirms just out of reach. Like biochem lecture Thursday evenings when she hasn't had enough sleep and the blackboard is blurring in front of her eyes. The professor's voice crackling into static.

Giles is staring at her. She nods. He asks her if she's all right, if she wants to eat something or find Anya to watch Dawn so that she can lie down for a moment; and it hits Willow, the absurdity, that she should try to go sleep within her dream. What would happen then? Would she pass into another dream? It seems exhausting-- an endless progression deeper and deeper into her unconscious mind. Or maybe the sleep-within-a-sleep would fade to blackness, silence thick and immutable, the softest velvety heaviness blocking all her senses. She blinks at Giles. No, she's fine.

She lifts her arm off the counter and turns her body in a slow semicircular motion, squinting as the kitchen blurs and changes into the empty back room of the Magic Box, its side wall smashed in and the cinderblock dust still fresh on the floor. Cool night air blows in through the hole. The lights are dark, blown out on the ceiling, but the orange glow of a streetlight coming in through the far window illuminates the way to the door. And it's very important, suddenly, that she make it through that door and into the main room of the Magic Box. There's something she's left on the table, what is it? She'll remember when she gets there. Everyone is waiting for her. Everything depends on her getting that object. Willow takes a step forward but the ground turns to pudding under her feet and she's sinking in, struggling; she's up to her knees into the not-so-concrete concrete floor and she's trying to wade but it's quicksand, she's dropping, it's to her hips and her chest and she flails forward, blindly. Eyes shut in terror and Willow *reaches* with her mind, grabs whatever she can and *pulls* herself to it--

-- She's standing in an unfamiliar graveyard. The night sky overhead, cloudless, is thick with time. All the hours of this night, and all the nights before and after, have accrued to the surface of the sky. It's like a cat's shed hair clinging to your sweater. It's like a picnic table sticky with the ghosts of long-ago spilled sodas. As Willow watches the dark blue wavers and blurs and is still again. The stars zip along their paths, silently encircling the earth with their tiny pricks and flares of light.

There's motion in her peripheral vision and Willow shifts to see Xander limping towards her, shirt torn, gaze fixed on her steadily.

"You're not supposed to be here, Will."

She tries to take his arm, but Xander's rigid with the tension that comes after battle and doesn't seem to even notice her hand brushing his elbow. "Xander? Was the sky always like this?"

The expression on his face doesn't change.

"You should be back at the house. Willow-- Dawn needs you."

As he stands there his scratches heal; the shirt re-fuses. Then silver streaks through his dark hair, and shoots away again. The word *time* appears in Willow's mind as if emerging to the top of a deep dark pool, calm and rippling the surface of the water. I can't get rid of this, she thinks. This seeing in *time*.

"It's okay, Xander, I'm just dreaming," she tries to tell him, but his face is set with pain, even though it flickers from spotted and wrinkly skin to the babyface he had had in junior high before he started having to shave. Willow is dizzy with the constant motion. Can he even hear her?

The nagging feeling returns. Something. She's missed *something*. "Xander," she starts to say, even though she knows it's a dream, even though she's sure she can wake up in a minute if she tries stretching her eyes open wide enough. "Xander, where's Buffy? I need to ask her something," and he flinches visibly, as though he's been struck, and Willow whirls around to see their attacker, and when she turns back Xander is gone. Only the continuous pattern of white gravestones gleaming dully with reflected starlight, the dark earth stretching forward endlessly into an even darker night.

"Huh," she says aloud, and rests her hand on one tall gravestone. It crumbles beneath her touch, falling gently into dust. Willow can't help it and she gives a little shriek that's half-submerged in her throat because oh, big solid stone, not supposed to poof away like some staked vampire like that! She tries to remember the name that had been on the stone, but she can't recall even glancing at the inscription. Tombstones and mausoleums have become part of the ordinary backdrop of her life, and Willow doesn't even consider the people decaying beneath them, any more, or imagine a family of mourners draped in black and stifling graveside tears. She barely notices the graveyards she walks through, beyond scanning for the freshly-turned dirt that might mean a freshly-turned vampire.

The stone dust is settling onto the grass of the graveyard, the leather of her shoes. She almost tries hitting another stone just out of curiosity, to see if it'll disintegrate, too, but stops herself in time. Instead Willow brushes the dust off her feet, and after one last look at the distant, shaking sky, she chooses a direction at random and starts walking, out to the dark band of the horizon, into the black and featureless night.

An

And it's weird because things get darker, actually darker, like the way on a foggy day you look down the street and you can't see the end of the block at all. Once you've walked down there the air is just as thin and clear as usual-- it's where you just were that's now shrouded in mist. But it's not happening the way it ought to, the way it should be happening, as she's walking forward the air in front of her is getting *thicker*, she'd swear it, it's practically inky with blackness, and it's getting harder to breathe. The grass squishes under her feet less and less audibly until it's not there at all. When she looks behind her half-expecting the graveyard to be the one bright spot in a dark and flat landscape, a tiny suspended tableau of spinning stars and white gravestones, it's gone. There's nothing there, even now, and Willow feels its absence like a sudden, ridiculous stab of pain in the chest. Or is that the effort of trying to breathe now? Willow thinks she's stopped walking but she can't be entirely sure. It feels like something's still pushing her forwards, and she's starting to cough on the air, it's getting dense and practically oily, like the noxious smoke from a refinery plant; and she drops her head and she's choking, and for one endless, unpleasant moment she's not drawing any breath in at all, it's just tightness in her throat, and that's the second before Willow remembers that this is just a dream.

Sorry to interrupt your story, RL.

But the Giles's stuff is funny! "For you, Spike, that means Angel goes first." snerk.

Which is why I've since moved on to writing Giles as a much more major character. I take it 'but' means that it is good-ish to read, which is of the good.

I'd like to see Buffy's reactions ot Connor and all.

That's an intresting avenue to explore, which I will think about- possibly I could skip over the whole 'preganant' bit and just have Buffy, Spike and baby in LA, meeting whatever Connor I chose to present them with.

well--dammit, I like you and I trust your own assessment of your work, so I won't say much.

Thanks, connie. Expression of confidence much appreciated.

Could have a fun scene of people looking at Buffy's baby and saying "That can't be right. Spike shouldn't be able to--" and then have everyone glance at Connor and suddenly change the subject.

Yes. And when Spike and Angel suddenly find that as well as being jealous over the Buffy issue, they're jealous because the other one's baby is better looking.

Oh, god, yes! And if Buffy's is a girl, Cordy can get all cradle matchmaking! "Or is that incest?" "Cordy, Connor is not marrying Whatever-Her-Name-Becomes." "Hell, no, I'm not being co-fathers-in-law with the poof!"