SA, that was really interesting.

And because I don't monopolize enough, I have one. I went over by a word or two. Come Autumn
"cause autumn does come, doesn't it, Kay?" (I know, give it a rest, right)

It's November and cold as Kay goes through her day taking witness statements. Is it fall or winter now? Kay is conscious of time since Crosetti drowned his sorrows--literally, and since she saw there was more of her high school honey than she remembered. If she had married him, she'd be working in a K-mart now. There was a depressing thought. There'd be no doubt in her mind where the bodies would come from then. She hated feeling boxed in and there was nothin' like some rugrats and a dead-end job to do it to you.She pulled her coat tighter.

H:LOTS drabble!

DUDE!

I know! Kay is so demanding!(But any of the others could never finish a thought in 100 words.) Kay is laconic, huh? Which is good for me to practice, cause I'm, like, not?

Drabbles rock. They've become part of my writing exercise bag of tricks.

Aaaaand, last of three on the Autumn theme:

Old Blood

The pumpkin sits on a hideous diner-style table in a motel just outside Lincoln, Nebraska.

They'd had slipped away from the group long since dubbed "Rupert's Travelling Medicine Show", and gone to a local market. They chose the pumpkin; they even remembered a votive candle to light its snaggletoothed, empty-socketed head.

Now, staring at it, Buffy swears. "Damn," she says, "we forgot a carving tool."

"No prob, B." Faith rummages through her surviving wardrobe, and produces a knife; the blade is stained with old blood.

The two Slayers look at each other for a silent moment, each remembering too much.

Jeebus, Deb. You oughta be published.

Oh, yeah ... nifty how that works, eh?

Karl funneee.

I always wondered what ever happened to that knife - the one the Mayor gave Faith, that Buffy used on her and then used to lure the Mayor with it. I'd like to think it was found in the rubble of the school when Xander oversaw the rebuild, and that it found its way back to Faith.

Hey, cool. I'm glad you like it. I was afraid it was a little too morbid, maybe too dramatic? But I'm glad it worked.

Were the interludes too jarring? This was the kind of story that gets written in a mad fury at two am, and I don't really have enough perspective to see how it works.

But it's not too dark?

SA, how could it be too dark? This is the other side of the perspective: the girl with no warning, no Watcher to clue her in, nothing except a body she's spent years rigorously training and that now is completely betraying her.