Where are you going, where have you been?
On May 20, 2004, while the Immortal slept soundly in his Rome apartment, Buffy Summers stuffed a few essentials into her backpack and slammed out of the door for what she swore was the last time. The effect of the slamming was probably wasted on a man who could sleep through an air raid (and, as he liked to point out, frequently had). Still, traveling light made for a good dramatic gesture. She had every intention of sending for her things, and carried only a few of them with her: a couple changes of clothes, basic toiletries, a little bit of cash, and a few handy documents issued by the Watcher's Council. She also took the book she had just started to read and, because she was feeling petty like that, the Immortal's personal IPod. Finally, of all the expensive gifts he had tried to impress her with, she picked out one pendant, in the shape of some kind of tree branch. It looked pretty sturdy, and couldn't possibly hae been real gold.
And so she walked out the door, with "These Boots are Made for Walking" and "Love Her Madly" alternating on her mental soundtrack. Stepping into the strada, she clutched her hand around the pendant, an old nervous habit from her cross-wearing days, and muttered the name of that old game they used to play back in Sunnydale: "anywhere but here, anywhere but here."
A sidenote on occupational hazards of shacking up with shady immortal powerbrokers, particularly ones who have faulty memories: They tend to leave potent mystical artifacts lying around, sometimes without being fully aware of what said artifacts can do. In this case, Buffy's cheap-looking pendant happened to double as an interdimensional skeleton key, allowing the bearer to walk seamlessly from one world to another. Unlike many a mystical artifact, this one also lacked the pesky habit of taking its master's commands too literallly. A bad-tempered talisman might have taken "anywhere but here" at face value and jettisoned Buffy into the Q'ortoth or Pylea or worse. Maybe the shrimp dimension. But this was a particularly responsive amulet, and it not only took the bearer's expressed wish into account, but did a little examination of its own. Here was a girl carrying a few changes of clothes, a book about interdimensional travel, and an IPod programmed with (as Buffy would discover, to her initial disgust, gradual resignation, and eventual enthusiasm) nothing but "Me and Bobby McGee," the Grateful Dead's "Truckin'," and every song that Bruce Springsteen ever recorded. That girl clearly needed an extended vacation to a world inhabited by curious wanderers who didn't mind sharing their gear, music, insight -- and, when appropriate, their drugs. A world where time didn't matter as much as it did back home. Anyone who has ever suspected that their summer break, gap year, or semester abroad occurred in such a dimension just might have the Immortal to thank for the experience.
In that other world, Buffy Summers was alone, but she was not lonely; in crowds, but not crowded. She met new faces to love, new hands to touch -- and sometimes more than faces, more than hands. She wandered a world where no one asked much of her, yet freely took what she gave. Yet lying down among new faces, she sometimes dreamed of older faces. Faces that seemed to have lost their names. And only a few nights ago -- as such things are reckoned, if such things are reckoned -- Buffy lay down with her hand around the same pendant and, half-floating into sleep, murmured, "I wonder where they are? I wonder how they are? I wonder who they are?"
And the next morning she woke, in a house full of wanderers, in a world that was once again hers, that she once again knew.
The next afternoon, she arrived in Los Angeles. Tanned, rested, and ready, she thought, and kept herself from asking: Ready for what?
And so she walked out the door, with "These Boots are Made for Walking" and "Love Her Madly" alternating on her mental soundtrack. Stepping into the strada, she clutched her hand around the pendant, an old nervous habit from her cross-wearing days, and muttered the name of that old game they used to play back in Sunnydale: "anywhere but here, anywhere but here."
A sidenote on occupational hazards of shacking up with shady immortal powerbrokers, particularly ones who have faulty memories: They tend to leave potent mystical artifacts lying around, sometimes without being fully aware of what said artifacts can do. In this case, Buffy's cheap-looking pendant happened to double as an interdimensional skeleton key, allowing the bearer to walk seamlessly from one world to another. Unlike many a mystical artifact, this one also lacked the pesky habit of taking its master's commands too literallly. A bad-tempered talisman might have taken "anywhere but here" at face value and jettisoned Buffy into the Q'ortoth or Pylea or worse. Maybe the shrimp dimension. But this was a particularly responsive amulet, and it not only took the bearer's expressed wish into account, but did a little examination of its own. Here was a girl carrying a few changes of clothes, a book about interdimensional travel, and an IPod programmed with (as Buffy would discover, to her initial disgust, gradual resignation, and eventual enthusiasm) nothing but "Me and Bobby McGee," the Grateful Dead's "Truckin'," and every song that Bruce Springsteen ever recorded. That girl clearly needed an extended vacation to a world inhabited by curious wanderers who didn't mind sharing their gear, music, insight -- and, when appropriate, their drugs. A world where time didn't matter as much as it did back home. Anyone who has ever suspected that their summer break, gap year, or semester abroad occurred in such a dimension just might have the Immortal to thank for the experience.
In that other world, Buffy Summers was alone, but she was not lonely; in crowds, but not crowded. She met new faces to love, new hands to touch -- and sometimes more than faces, more than hands. She wandered a world where no one asked much of her, yet freely took what she gave. Yet lying down among new faces, she sometimes dreamed of older faces. Faces that seemed to have lost their names. And only a few nights ago -- as such things are reckoned, if such things are reckoned -- Buffy lay down with her hand around the same pendant and, half-floating into sleep, murmured, "I wonder where they are? I wonder how they are? I wonder who they are?"
And the next morning she woke, in a house full of wanderers, in a world that was once again hers, that she once again knew.
The next afternoon, she arrived in Los Angeles. Tanned, rested, and ready, she thought, and kept herself from asking: Ready for what?