B U F F Y S U M M E R S
B U F F Y S U M M E R S
Everything here was a distance existing as a vast space of soundless expanse; the water of the riverway so unlike the water that Buffy knew. It was simply a passage in the bones of this dominion and moved without a true current to stir it. There was no wind to trouble it and still it moved; unceasing with the air above them cold and unyielding and yet… This was a place of calm, a strange wash of a calm with the residue of whispers of life. This was not a place to fear, despite the obvious suggesting there should be nothing but fear in the company of the River Styx.
Buffy stood at its edge; the patient dark. Her feet were planted upon a ground that did not feel like earth, though it held her all the same. No horizon lay before her and no sky in a true sense. Just the expanse of Hades and only the expanse.
Guard the riverway, she’d been told. Commanded, given as a seedling - a sense that had now taken root in her; Hades’ will iron and final. She folded her arms, hugging the red scythe against her chest as her gaze tracked as much of the river as she could make out in the unrelenting dark. “Well,” she said softly after a while, “this is new. Give me graveyards, hell dimensions… Apocalypses… Creepy non-river spookfest is new.” She glanced down at the unmoving space. “He could have got a coffee house down here…” There was no answer to greet her, only a heaviness now for her words having moved at the air; the sound of her voice an intrusion not welcome here.
Time seemed to gather itself here, holding in the spaces between her breaths until moments stretched, thinned, and lost their edges. Time did not pass here in a way she could measure. All that was true were the whispers of the river, drifting through as faint imprints of who they had been once. Buffy shifted her weight again. “I mean for the great beyond, it could really use some variety. A tree?” she groaned and leaned forward just so. “A chair, even. Something that says eternal damnation, but comfortable!”
Only a few moments, or perhaps hours later (she was not sure), a movement. Or not quite, just the sudden awareness of something else sharing the space. A quiet and unassuming presence had arrived. Buffy turned to see a girl standing several paces behind her, as still as the strange world that had painted itself around her. Her form was untouched by the distortions that defined the place, and she was young. Too young. She did not belong to this place of endings, when she appeared herself as a beginning still with firsts and more before her. No longer.
“Hey...” Buffy said, her tone gentler without the humour of puns behind it. “You’re… not exactly dressed for the afterlife tour.”
“Oh,” the girl sounded. “I didn’t know there was a dress code here.” She inclined her head with a slight, almost shy motion. “I’m Cassie. Cassie Newton.”
For a moment, Buffy simply watched her as the fear and confusion slipped through. This never got easier, she thought, but she found her own acceptance eventually. “You’re not supposed to be here. I mean, I’m sorry that you’re here.”
Cassie’s gaze had drifted to the river, and she watched with a quiet calm; expression thoughtful, not troubled. “I had dreams. Pieces of things, they didn’t always make sense to me but I knew there was an end coming.” She paused and smiled apologetically. “I didn’t think it would feel so calm.”
Buffy’s jaw tightened slightly and she approached in the space between Cassie and the river. “Yeah,” she began with a shrug. “They don’t mention it in the brochure.”
“You’re funny,” Cassie said with a slight smile. “Even after everything, you’re still funny,” and her eyes met Buffy’s with a knowing expression that sat on the borderline of being uncomfortable, and being reassuring. “Nice… axe?” she added, her eyes drawn to the gleaming blade in Buffy’s arms.
“Oh, Scythe.” Buffy responded, unfolding her arms and letting the handle fall comfortably into her grasp.
“Right,” Cassie said. “You’re the Slayer. I know… I’ve seen some things, heard others. Why are you here? You’re not dead,” she said, stepping closer to Buffy as though drawn to. “You were. Oh…” she realised.
Before they could say anything else, something around them shifted again; a pressure and tightening of the space around them. The unseen drawn breath before a storm that had even the whispers of the river quieten and hush. Whatever calm had been settled was decidedly unsettled as something beneath the river rippled and distorted. From the unseen, shapes formed and dragged to the surface. “Cassie,” Buffy began, stepping further toward the edge, a hand behind her to halt Cassie, “stay behind me.”
A fragmented figure pulled itself away from the river. Large and looming, its form stretching and breaking as it moved.
“Okay,” Buffy muttered, “not a fan of the welcoming committee.” As it lunged toward her, she swung her right arm, the scythe singing through the air with the force behind it as it cleaved through the shape and pulled it into ripples of ash and dust. What was left of it twisted and writhed before pulling itself back together and growing anew from the weight around them. Buffy’s eyes narrowed, “of course,” she said. “Not big on staying down. Figures.” She swung again with precision as another followed, emerging from the edges of the voids around them
And then, from the water another shape emerged, real as real - the shape of a boat coursing the current. “What now?” Buffy sighed as she tucked into a roll, the pointed stake of the scythe finding a non-corporeal purpose in the center of another shadowed figure. The long, narrow vessel pulled closer and at its stern, stood the ferryman. Charon.
He did not move, he did not speak, yet his very presence settled over the weight of the river that even the encroaching shapes recognised and surged towards. Buffy pushed back, once again casting her glance to Cassie in between her precise attacks. The girl was also moving toward the vessel with a calmer intent. “Cassie!” she yelled out again, the vibration of her shout a ripple in the air. “Don’t go near the boat-”
She continued walking, undisturbed by the creatures around them, and unbothered by their presence. Her steps were unhurried and her gaze fixed on the ferryman as thought she was following a path she had already known, and already walked across. She did not falter.
“Cassie–” Buffy’s scythe screamed upwards through another figure, their presence holding her back from Cassie as they pressed harder to meet her challenge, and unrelentingly formed and reformed again and again. “Cassie stop!”
As Cassie met the ferryman, he turned to face her in a single suspended moment where the dominion once again to draw inward, river, shadow, breath and all pulling toward the moment of their meeting and instantly something passed between them. Not seen, not spoken, but Buffy felt it; a shift that ran through the fabric around them. A door closing, a door opening. Cassie, one foot on the ferry, stilled. Her head lifted and when she turned back, her eyes had changed. She opened them, white and devoid of an iris or pupil, filled instead only with a depth that seemed to stretch far beyond everything else.
“...Cassie?”
The girl smiled, and only then did Buffy notice the ferryman had gone, the shadow fighters had gone, only the fluttering shapes of what may have been a cloak melted into space. Cassie’s smile carried a greater vastness now, something that had not been there before, and was not there alone. “It’s all as it must be now,” she said, and while the voice came from her lips, it did not belong there. The sound echoed and layered from all around.
“Do not fear what follows,” she added as the last of the ferryman’s form faded, his purpose relinquished and repurposed into a girl with sight who now stood as the inevitable keeper of the boat and all was quiet again, and all was fading.
She was leaving. She was being pulled away - like a line of thread pulling from a sweater the space around her narrowed and squeezed, expanded and grew and sound and light moved back in. Buffy felt her limbs again as each of them woke up on the other side and where she had existed in a space of dark concept of abstract feeling and nothingness, now the world was bright again. Bright and real, and temperate - the hard floor beneath her was a contrast and scented candles added to the atmosphere as her eyes opened.
“Buffy!”
It was Willow, her face tight with worry until she smiled enough in that gently enthusiastic way that she did, a sigh left here. “You’re back! How was it? What happened? Was it scary? Are you hurt? What-”
“Will-” Buffy began, blinking at the sudden and loud daylight while she took in a breath to ground herself again. Back in this solid and imperfect world, but her world all the same.”I’m back,” she croaked out. “Which is good, I like being back and not in… The swirly pits.” She watched as Willow’s brow knitted with confusion, briefly and then a sharp clink broke the moment entirely.
Across the room, Rupert Giles stood near the table, a mug beside him that he’d also stirred to life, his grip on it too tight, the bridge of his glasses pinched between the fingers of his free hand.
“No… Giles,” Buffy began, “got anything that’s going to make this day any worse?”
“How about the end of the world?”
She sighed, truly back to her reality now. “Knew I could count on you.”
Antlers
Eddie Brock
Pirouette
Captain Uni
Supermaxx
Natty
Ezekiel
Nemaisare
