kerkevik_2014 | Fics for 2017 #006 ~ How You Knew Them; This Stranger (Reply)

TITLE: How You Knew Them; This Stranger

AUTHOR: kerk hiraeth

FANDOM: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (set in the 22'verse)

CHARACTERS: OC; see previous stories for the particulars as they currently stand.

LENGTH: 200,

A/N: This double drabble is made up of very recently created material; written during the christmas break, so was not there in the original idea I had for this couple. I didn't know them as well three years ago. The tenses in the title are deliberate, before you point them out.

She watched; eyes veiled with unsheddable tears, as he moved; seeming painfully older than his years, as he moved around setting camp.

Fire set, he took the coffee makings from the back of the truck; setting the beans roasting before setting into preparing their supper.

It was all so painful; slow and deliberately done. She felt every painful motion; even from this distance. Eyes dropping momentarily; not in prayer, but as a preventative; though she began to pray anyway, before she turned away and disrobed, until finally she was wearing only the briefest of clouts; for a measure of personal comfort, not discretion.

Grimset; she started off into the dark; fiercely determined in her desire to run her grief away.

She was already out of earshot when he felt a slow; but still sudden cold pass through him. Too late he realised the import; stumbled as he reached for the coffee pot, cutting his thumb as he rose and fell forward; almost in the same moment.

He wanted to call her name, but it slipped his mind as he knocked the pot over the fire; snuffing out the flames before he fell into them.

A lone Coyote cried.

Goddess watch over us in these dark times,