Title: Tara and Willow – The Blessed Unrest – Chapter Seven Author: Katharyn Rosser Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story. Spoiler warning: Not sure why I am bothering, really, but nothing much apart from the episode ‘Hush’ in S4. And let’s face it, if you’ve not seen that then… what are you doing here? Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here. Story notes: Tara’s background is different to that presented in Family and instead based on a throwaway remark made in interviews around the time Family first aired. (Though I now realise not the precisely terminology used there) Summary: Morning. Together. Bathing. Together. Yes. Really. Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. As this is a missing scenes and alternate reality fiction lots of scenes are new versions of those seen in the show, as such dialogue and situations are taken from the show. I’m sure you can tell which. All credit for those aspects goes to the original writers. The title ‘The Blessed Unrest’ came from and belongs to Sara Bareilles from the album of the same name. Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language. However by and large equivalent to the show. Couples: Tara and Willow forever, that’s all I’m bothered about. Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence. Notes: Having said how this story doesn’t need cliff-hangers, I’ve really done one this time. Like a full on, traditional, as much (non-relationship) tension as this story will ever muster. If you’re into cliff-hangers, enjoy this one. It’s the biggest and best you will get in the story. There, do you think I built it up enough? What if it disappoints? Oh noes… That’s what I call the cliff-hanger for the cliff-hanger to come… Oh, before we get to that though, other stuff happens. And I just love writing Tara and Willow ‘stuff’. It’s what this story is all about. It’s curious though, contrasting this with ‘immediate hook up in the laundry room’. I’m taking things much slower (MUCH slower), and yet when Willow’s musing the way she is in this chapter it’s almost like she’s being… impure. It’s like – in my head – if it’s not immediate and all-consuming then it should be longer and more chaste… Okay, so it’s chaste so far. But not in Willow’s mind (and increasingly Tara’s!) Thanks to: All the Kittens who ever wanted a chapter summary like the one above. LOL.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.”
Willow stretched, moaned and finally opened her eyes to find herself looking into Tara’s. Already awake, not a hint of bleary there and not all that far away.
Easily near enough to reach over and… what?
“I dreamed of you,” she admitted before she realised what she was saying. At least it hadn’t involved following instincts and doing the reaching over and whating…
“Good things?” Tara asked, (un)fortunately all too innocent to appreciate what she might have been saying.
Only might’ve been.
“Uhuh. Because you weren’t a plant monster or anything like that.”
“Umm, so that’s good?”
“Long story, Buffy had this dream about a boy once.”
“And he was a plant monster?”
“No, he was a boy, but kind of an asshole.”
“So where did the plant monster come into it?” Tara asked.
“Oh, there were things going on in town. Giles got a pot-plant and it went a little out of control. Everyday stuff, really but – kind of memorable because… plant monster.”
Okay… way to scare the girl off. This is my life, out of control pot-plants and… Oh.
“I mean it was a plant, in a pot. Not a ‘pot-plant’ like pot.”
“Oh. Right. So the boy wasn’t a plant monster?”
“No… but it turned out he did do pot. Not Giles’ pot because he didn’t have any pot – or a pot plant – he hadn’t done pot since… the stone-age. Or sometime that was all back in the day.”
Tara frowned, very obviously very confused.
Yeah… that was something that -
“Sorry,” she said. “I… sometimes don’t make much sense when you wake up with me. Until I get coffee I’m not really - ”
“Lucid?” Tara suggested.
“I was going to say ‘with it’ but sure, ‘lucid’ is a good word too. Not that lots of people – you know – have woken up with me. Just one person actually – two if you count Buffy and you only get to count her because she’s my roomie. We have separate beds, except when she’s been my occasional anti-monster safety blanket. Certainly not because – Because that’s not Buffy at all. Except for when Faith’s around and there’s some real tension between those two. Then, you do kind of wonder.”
“You woke up with a girl called Faith?”
“No! She’s a trouble on legs, which – means less than I meant it to.”
“But Buffy woke up with her?”
“No! But I often thought things would’ve been different if they had.”
“Oh. And who is this Faith?”
“You don’t want to know. Just consider her a slut-bomb. Keep away.” And… that sounded harsh and judgemental in ways that weren’t very cool.
Faith deserved it but Tara had no way to know that.
“Not that I’m all death to sluts – umm, you know, people who enjoy other people. A lot. I’m not against that. I’m very sex positive and - ” She buried her head in her hands. “Oh, Tara, please… I need coffee… It’s been two days and I need coffee so bad before I say something so bad you’ll hate me forever.”
Every word I say…
The next thing she felt was… a little like her dream actually. Just a little. Tara brushed hair back from her face, put a hand on her cheek. No, she was just stroking it. Just? There was nothing ‘just’ about it. Then the touch was gone, but her words were just as reassuring. “No, that’s not going to happen.”
“Hating me or coffee?”
“Both, I think. Sorry.”
“I only think I’ll regret the coffee,” she said, lifting her face and grinning. “Thank you, for being so understanding.”
“I’ve seen what lack of coffee does to people,” Tara said. “My Dad was used to coffee that had sat brewing and re-brewing for like three days or something before Mom finally made him start a fresh pot. You could’ve stood a spoon up in it.”
“I think I like him already,” Willow said and then… Well, that was kind of presumptuous. ‘Oh please, Tara, introduce me to your Dad.’
She’d already knew that Tara’s Mom was no longer with them. They hadn’t really discussed what had happened, but she was always in the past tense. And it sounded like it hadn’t been quick either. But Tara had come through it, come here – or at least to Sunnydale – a well-adjusted young woman.
A hot, beautiful, well-adjusted young woman who… She’s in my dreams.
As for what that dream had been. It was already fading. Hanging onto it was like trying to catch a wisp of steam. It was there, you could feel and see it and then… it was gone.
But there’d been Tara.
There’d been lips.
She remembered that. Tara-lips.
Tara-lips up against Willow-lips.
Kissing lips.
Not exactly X rated stuff. Or even NC-17. R might’ve been considered harsh. But…
It felt like it had been a good dream. And then waking up… inches from making it real? What happens if I kiss her? Right here. Right now. What happens if I kiss her?
And then the opportunity had gone. Maybe she’d telegraphed that desire. Or the dream was seeping into Tara’s mind in some magical way or maybe it was just really bad luck but the other girl rolled onto her back, looking up at the sky.
“It’s raining,” Tara said.
Willow looked too, seeing what she meant. Understanding what that noise was. Outside – beyond the canopy composed of leaves big enough each could’ve used as table-clothes – it sounded like a tropical rain storm. Huge drops of water hitting big, broad folliage and… not coming close to penetrating this open plan bedroom.
A whole storm passing by. They could look up and see it, but never a drop would make it down to them.
“I guess something has to water all these trees,” she said. “Can’t be nice all the time.”
“It’s still nice,” Tara replied. “Look, there’s a rainbow.”
“Where? I can’t see,” she said after looking.
“There,” Tara said, pointing. “You have to look past the branch there, you see?”
It was entirely innocent. Truly. But Willow found herself then on – in – a bed pressed up against the girl she was having serious musings about, had dreamed about just last night and looking down her bare arm.
There was a delicious pressure against her shoulder and she knew it was Tara’s breast but didn’t dare look at it. Even though… breasts were another thing – Tara’s breasts at least – she was considering in a whole new light.
A woman’s lips. This woman’s lips.
All her lips, actually but there was no way she was ever admitting that.
If I turn my head, I’ll kiss her arm without even meaning to. Just with an innocent, accidental movement.
So she didn’t. Because if she did, it wouldn’t accidental. It wouldn’t be truth. And the truth was something she already treasured with Tara – apart from admitting things that could spoil whatever friendship they had.
But that was wasn’t a lie. That was just omission. In a good cause.
“That’s pretty,” she said of the rainbow, finally turning to look at the girl – make that ‘woman’ because there was nothing girlish about Tara’s arm she was sighting along. Nor about the curve that her own shoulder was pressed up against.
Nothing girlish about the heat of her body either.
Or about the smell of her. No longer as manufactured as it probably had been two days before but still seeming fresher than should’ve been possible.
Am I still dreaming? Because… is this too perfect?
She bit her tongue to see.
“Ow.”
“What?”
“I… I bit my tongue.”
“Why’d you do that?” Tara asked.
“Oh, I was just seeing if this was all a dream,” she explained. “My tongue says ‘ow’ and so I’m going with ‘no.’”
“We’re both having it, if it is,” Tara said.
“Unless you’re in my dream, saying that?”
Like you were. With those lips. Could this be a dream within a dream?
Hope not.
“Maybe you’re in mine?”
“I wouldn’t bite my tongue in yours because, that’s a dumb thing to do and I don’t think you think I’m dumb do you?” she asked.
“N-No. I think you’re scary clever,” Tara said very honestly.
And that was what made her sit up, parting from the warm, pleasant sensation of being pressed up against her bed-mate. “Scary?”
“I think genius is a little intimidating,” Tara said, turning shy again.
“I – I don’t want to be. Also, not that clever. Otherwise I wouldn’t have bitten my tongue. Still with the ow. See?” She stuck it out and wiggled it. “Isssh thrr a mrk?”
Tara shook her head, looking away. Why? Ohh.
Maybe ohh. Not definitely ohh. But if it was ohh rather than uggh and Tara was thinking like that and knew what she was thinking…
Which meant she was also thinking it?
Did that mean she was encouraging her to think it though? There was your question that deserved an answer.
“We should probably go bathe or shower or… something,” she said.
And then realised what that sounded like.
Oh.
I just can’t help myself.
------------------------
Willow’s scream rang out through the clearing.
Bright. Loud. Clear as a bell.
In other circumstances, she’d have come running but right now?
Not exactly unexpected, all things considered.
The leaves and wood absorbed it. There was no echo. But she had to look. She had to. After all… something bad might possibly have happened and that was the whole point of being the lookout.
The looking. It included in, as well as out.
But – with almost the best of intentions - she was able to turn away again before Willow noticed her looking at her bare back and not a little of what was beneath it. All above water level.
It was… Well, it was something to think about while she waited – on guard - for her friend to wash in the chilly pool.
And to say she had a little curiosity about what she might’ve seen had Willow chosen to enter the pool of water the other way around would’ve been to understate that curiosity enormously. Even though a slight side on view just then had reinforced how obviously cold it was.
Silhouette’s had always been one of her favourite things and now for a whole new reason…
But, curious as she might be, she resolutely kept her back turned while sitting on the nearby bench.
They’d picked this pool, rather than the fountain they’d been drinking from because… Well, you didn’t bathe in the same water you drank. Especially when it was serving as part of their diet too. A hearty breakfast of papple and water had left them both feeling comfortably full. Also, the best tree – which never seemed to run short of fruit – had been on the way here as well as the fountain.
“Told you it was cold,” she called loudly enough for Willow to hear over the trickle of water and since she was calling in the wrong direction.
“Cold! Very cold! Gods above, that’s so cold! You – you never said it was this cold!”
Surprisingly, cold, Tara had to agree. Now she was wearing one of the dresses that had been in ‘her’ closet, having taken the opportunity to rinse out the skirt and top she’d arrived in. She hadn’t quite dared take off her underwear while in the pool but she’d bathed in it and done her best so… that counted, right?
Yes, there was only Willow around but… undressing – fully – in front of her had seemed needlessly provocative. If she was right about Willow’s growing feelings for her and all.
I could so easily be wrong and I’m not going to make a mistake with the only other person here.
With my friend.
Willow hadn’t been quite as bashful. Probably because the dress the red-haired woman had picked out from what passed for her dorm room had a little more coverage and support built in.
Her dress though? Well, sitting down she only had to keep her arms crossed to stay someway decent.
Standing? There was a pose, just about, that had the same effect, bringing her arms down across her breasts and clasping her hands down below her belly.
And this was the most complete dress she’d actually found. Complete in the sense of the most actual coverage rather than what it showed off.
Especially after bathing without the benefit of a towel…
The sun was warming her up though, it wouldn’t take too long for… well, the ‘wet look’ wouldn’t be why she felt exposed.
This might be like their world, their campus. It might even be that ‘their’ rooms were like their rooms. But this dress? It was like nothing anything in her wardrobe.
She couldn’t even tell what it was made from.
But, when it was just the two of them and they were washing their regular clothes? It’d just have to do because – somehow – going through the ‘closets’ in the rooms that didn’t belong to them felt like a violation. Even though there was no one here to wear the things that hung in those wardrobes.
So while Willow cursed various deities, she rung her hair out and draped it over one shoulder. They’d not found any towels so the sun was going to have to do its work.
Finally the litany of disgust at the cold water ended and she could hear Willow set about washing herself.
“I don’t know how this is so cold,” Willow said from the pool. Behind her. Firmly behind her.
“It’s outdoors?”
“But the air’s warm. And it was last night too – remember we were basically sleeping outside and we didn’t feel cold? I mean, I didn’t. Did you?”
Talking in the other direction, she determinedly still didn’t turn around. “I think my room – the canopy trapped heat. I think. It was probably cooler out here.”
“Maybe,” Willow allowed. “But this is so far beyond cool. I have little bumps all over me.”
I know, I saw the silhouette.
And there was a thought that was all sorts of tantalising.
Almost as tantalising as the considered opinion that Willow was facing towards her as she talked. That presented two challenges. First, what might she see if she turned her head. It seemed rude to talk in the other direction.
Also… what was Willow seeing of her.
This dress was… Well, the back wasn’t much better than the front.
Then, finally, she had to wonder why Willow had chosen to face her. Knowing she’d be… visible. If, indeed, she’d done that.
“It’ll get warmer,” she said and then wondered if it was something she could come to regret. But no, she couldn’t worry about every theoretical innuendo she might utter. Willow’s were bad enough. Bad enough she wondered how theoretical and accidental some of them might be. But…
I think she’s just accident prone with words.
Or something’s in her subconscious.
Me? Maybe?
“P-p-promise?” Willow asked. It wasn’t playful, in fact it almost seemed… nervous. Like she knew how that could be taken and was – just about – happy for it to be understood that way.
Or was that some sort of wishful thinking?
“It did for me. Kind of.”
“I didn’t look,” Willow blurted. As if she’d asked. Or even accused.
“Oh. Good. I guess.”
“Not while you were out of the water.”
What was she supposed to say to that? “Umm. Thanks.”
“I’m pretty much under the water now,” Willow promised. “You can turn around if you like.”
“No… I really can’t. The dress, you know?”
“Oh… Really? It’s that bad?”
Bad? It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve owned and if Daddy caught me wearing it I’d get the belt for only the second time in my life, even though I’m old enough to be away at college.
Of course, Daddy was a long way away.
Probably.
But it really was a different thing she was worried about. She hadn’t gone to college in Montana. And even if she had, they were very far from there. If it had just been the two of them, friends and all… Yes, she’d have worn the dress and just been self-conscious. The additional pressure was… this was Willow.
And the feelings that she thought Willow was experiencing. That was kind of nice. Kind of scary with it though.
But this dress – which wasn’t who she was – wasn’t the one to face a girl who seemed more and more into her in.
Not with too little underneath. Some people might take it as a signal. Some people inclined to be looking for them and she already knew that Willow was an evidence based woman. And if she found that evidence… like in some signals? Well, that might…
Not be so bad.
But it still might be.
They’d not figured that out yet. Part of being the girl who wouldn’t usually wear a dress like this was that she preferred the idea of Willow discovering who she was without looking.
On the other hand, of course – and apart from this actually happening in the woodland realm – it was exactly the sort of situation she’d hoped might come about in college.
Meeting new people. Meeting someone who might be more than a friend. Someone who was interested.
Someone who was open.
Someone who was free from entanglements and drama.
Someone who didn’t have to know she was into girls already, but once she realised… was very okay with that.
Someone who turned out to be Willow shaped because, these feelings she was having suggested she really did have a type now. It was slim, pale and red-haired with an adorable nose and – the rest.
But… In all those musings on the possibilities of college, she’d never really thought through how to get from ‘interested’ to what came after that. Not realistically anyway.
It hadn’t been a factor before and - at the time - had seemed like too much detail in her romantic hopes and dreams. In every girl’s romantic dreams (she guessed, having never asked EVERY girl), it seemed like that sort of thing should just happen when that imaginary interest transitioned to full blown relationship via a couple of whispered words, an unexpected kiss and maybe a whole lot of touching.
With Willow Rosenberg – if she really was interested – it was this whole other thing. More grounded in certain facts, if not reality itself. Look at where they were…
Neither of them was going to be what you’d call ‘highly experienced’ in navigating the early stages of relationships. From what she knew, it sounded like both of them had probably been the ‘pursued’ in their previous relationships. The one who didn’t need to be quite so bold.
Maybe she was wrong about that, but – if any of this was real - Willow also had to deal with questioning herself about her new desires too. That had to be true, because no one who’d contemplated being into girls before would’ve let herself say half the things Willow had done.
Not deliberately – at least she didn’t think so – but at various times in the last two days Willow had been –
In anyone else, anyone who knew what they were saying, it would’ve been the most outrageous flirting that she’d never, in a million years, have found attractive or appealing. The litany had just gone on and on… Funny. Ridiculous. Verbally klutzy. (And all kind of appealing, when it came to making her wonder about every, single, word.)
In Willow – just recently – she had someone blatantly talking about going down (stairs) or fist (sized jewels) or flicking their tongue at her (to check for bite marks) or getting wet (the water), eating her (also the water) and the other half dozen euphemisms and suggestions Willow had inadvertently come out with…
She’d never have stood for it if someone had been actively trying to seduce her. Not that she’d have been rude and walked away, but she would’ve said something.
In Willow Rosenberg though… It was somehow… endearing.
Unless she did know the things she was saying in which case this was a deceit and… No, Willow really didn’t understand get it. When she thought about it – sometimes – yeah, a certain amount of babble resulted. But what spilled out of her mouth initially, it was pure Willow. Deceit in this sort of thing wouldn’t have occurred to her. That much she was certain of.
And that was all why she couldn’t just turn around. Not wearing this. Not in these circumstances.
“It’s… not really me,” she said about the dress.
“I understand all about limited wardrobe choices, my Mom shopped at Sears for me right up until I came to college. And I’m going to see it anyway,” Willow said. “So we might as well get it out of the way, right?”
It sounded very reasonable but…
“I’m still wet,” Tara said, wincing even as the words passed her lips. Talk about euphemisms. That just skipped euphemism and went right to ‘dirty talk’. “So it’s kind of clingy.”
Not to mention still being chilly.
“I understand,” Willow said.
“You do? I mean, thanks?”
“Yes. I do. Once, I wore a miniskirt for Halloween and a top that… well, it wasn’t there much. I was so embarrassed that I put a sheet over it. You know, like a ghost?”
She smiled, twisting her head to look back. From the corner of her eye she could see that Willow really was neck deep in the water. Everything was fortunately – and yet disappointingly – hidden in the water. So she shuffled a little way around. Not far enough for Willow to see anything but enough it didn’t hurt her neck so much to look back.
“How did that go?” It sounded… very out of character. And really intriguing for that reason – though not for any other. Because she liked Willow’s character just as it was. Weirdly wonderful.
Girls in mini-skirts were obviously ten-a-penny – though not here – but there was only one Willow Rosenberg – Stevenson – 214.
“It was unfortunate,” Willow said. “One of those Buffy nights. So I ended up insubstantial and dressed like a hooker. And not the expensive kind – at least, I don’t think so.”
“Huh?”
“Long story.”
“Maybe you’ll tell me, one day.”
“Only in exchange for one of yours,” Willow said.
She shook her head. “I’m all kinds of b-boring.”
“No,” Willow said, not even arguing. She was just stating a fact. “You’re really not.”
And – maybe for the first time – she believed it.
------------------------
“There’s been too much build up,” she said. “It can’t live up to it.”
“And that’s how you t-try to make people feel better?” Tara asked.
Oh. Right. Maybe, from a certain point of view, that hadn’t been the most complimentary statement she could’ve made. Even though her heart had been in the right place. Maybe, from that point of view, she’d just suggested that this wasn’t going to be worth looking at all.
And somehow… she really didn’t believe that.
“Oh, boy. Sorry - Not… exactly, no. Sorry. But – I meant well, do I get points for meaning well while being verbally challenged?”
Tara was apparently way more stressed about being seen – full frontal – in the dress than she ever had been about taking a dip in the pool. A friend might have pointed out that some kinds of wet, white underwear did have a tendency to go kind of see-through anyway. That, maybe, such a friend might have – very briefly – noticed that and chosen not to say anything at the time, recognising that it would only increase the discomfort.
Maybe a friend would’ve done that. But she didn’t want to seem like the kind of friend who’d be paying that kind of attention at all. Even though she totally was. And it really had been a total-honest-to-goodness accident that in that split second she’d been looking in precisely the right direction.
You never knew when a peeping-tom squirrel might’ve happened along either.
Apart from them not having seen anything more advanced than a tree in the entire time they’d been here.
Did the trees have eyes?
If they did, they’d have probably been watching over Tara too. Keeping her safe and secure while she bathed (with remarkably little cold-related cussing or screaming).
And just because Tara had had demonstrated that you could be on watch – even when your new friend was buck-naked and frozen in that same pool – without actually looking didn’t mean that she was a bad person.
Not exactly bad.
Then, when you considered it had all been for the very best of reasons then, actually, it was a good thing. ‘Not exactly bad’ and ‘very best’ averaged out at ‘good’ right?
Some people might actually buy that. People who were mathematically inclined.
Probably not Tara. But some people certainly would.
The sorts of people who understood that sharing a room for the night, part undressed, hadn’t left a whole lot of mystery.
On the other hand, it would’ve been a different kind of person who noted that the wet look was…
Stirring. Stirring things that hadn’t really been stirred before. The things that responded – negatively – to an ice cold bath.
Yeah, okay, she’d long since realised an attraction to Tara and a definite curiosity about her in a physical sense. But when it came to ‘stirring’? That was something new.
New and good…
Oh, I’m bad.
“You do get points for meaning well,” Tara agreed.
“So?”
“I just - ”
“I’m wearing mine,” she pointed out, the new dress was clinging to her in all sorts of new ways.
“Not the same at all.”
“No, but it’s a dress from here. Is it my fault my seamstress was a little more conservative?” If there’d been seams.
Seamlesstress?
Tara sighed, felt for her still wet clothes and was faced with either sitting here until they dried, covering herself up with her hands for the next few hours or… showing the only other person around here what she was so embarrassed about.
Frankly, she wasn’t sure how the front could be any more scandalous than the next-to-non-existent back. But she was strangely looking forwards to finding out.
Strangely? No. There was nothing strange about it.
“I promise not to - ” She thought for a moment. “What is it you don’t want me to do?”
“Look,” Tara said. “Ideally.”
“Oh, I might not be able to help you there. Just having eyes open and all means I would - But – I definitely promise not to laugh.”
“Laugh? Why would you l-laugh?!”
“I… I don’t know,” she said. Not laugh. What then? “I won’t stare?”
“Good.”
More reassurance seemed to be needed.
“And I won’t… Umm… I won’t judge?”
Tara didn’t seem to have thought of that one. But once she had, she seemed to be even unhappier.
“Tara, I tell you what. There is one, single solitary picture of me in the Halloween slutty-ghost outfit. Just one in the whole world. If you feel that you deserve it, because I let you down, then… I’ll let you see it.” Of course, it was also the only photo of her that showed as much cleavage, thigh and belly as she hoped someone might find… intriguing.
There was no bad.
“Cross your heart?” Tara asked.
“And hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye – but not really, because… eww. But bad things, if I’m lying. Definitely. Also, a dollar.”
Finally, after more than ten minutes of chiding Tara stood up but still had her hands crossed across herself.
“Come on. Just do it. Hands by your side,” she said.
She watched Tara twitch once, twice. Trying to make herself do that. Psyching herself up to it. Of course, when she did she was looking off to her left, up in the air. Not wanting to meet her eyes – or rather to see where she was looking.
And actually, she wanted to do the friend thing. Genuinely. She wanted Tara to feel good about herself.
It was easy too, because two things were apparent.
No. Not those two things. Well, okay they were… pressing without being as obvious as Tara feared – but two other things. “Beautiful,” she said.
“Don’t.”
“I mean it, Tara. You’re beautiful – you’re beautiful in the dress,” she added quickly. Because who said that otherwise?
Only someone who…?
Maybe not only – but yeah.
“And you know what?”
“What?”
“It’s really not as bad as you thought it was.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s really not.” Which was a tiny bit disappointing on a personal level, but she felt much better for Tara because of it. “Clingy in some places, but not all over and it fits you perfectly. It even hides – well, it hides the things you were worried about.”
To the curses of enquiring minds etc.
“It does?”
“Really. Look.”
Tara looked down at herself, then went to the pool that – within seconds of the last disturbance – had already flattened so perfectly it served as a mirror. “How…? This was… You know that word, d-diaphanous? That was what it was.”
And yes, she’d thought the same thing. But now… the dress was darker, more concealing than she’d expected – than either of them had expected – and in just the right places. Was it what you’d wear to a formal dinner to meet your prospective in-laws?
(Why did those in-laws look familiar in her mind’s eye?) No. But you could wear it for the fanciest night out in Hollywood and not get gossiped about too much. Probably not make many magazines and definitely not the cover.
Even so, no starlet had ever looked quite so perfect as Tara did in that dress. It was like it had been made for her. Grown for her, even.
“Perhaps it’s magic?” she mused.
“Do you think?”
“Well…” She gave it some thought. “So much here couldn’t exist if it obeyed the laws of our world. These trees could never grow like this. Maybe… maybe the dress picks up on what you want it to be?”
Tara looked at her reflection, concerned that perhaps she was about to find herself all but naked.
Of course, that wouldn’t be her wish. Even if… Enquiring minds.
“Why don’t you test it? Maybe see if you can make one part of it change colour?”
Unfortunately Tara tugged at the hem rather than picking a more interesting part of the dress where something might’ve gone wrong in intriguing ways. Focusing on it, visibly concentrating her brow furrowed and right there in front of them both… it darkened.
“Wow,” she gasped. “Do it again.”
This time it turned a deep scarlet, the colour of some of the red leaves on the bushes.
Then emerald green.
“Wow. Again.
“Tara, you could make a fortune back home with that!”
Her friend beamed, happier when she’d altered the shade of the entire dress to be much more demure.
The good thing was that the dress was so thin, you didn’t need to see through it. Not really.
But it’s not perving when it’s ‘curiosity’. Almost ‘research’, really.
Yeah, research is the thing.
Now, I wonder if I can do that to my dress?
Before she had time to find out though, Tara shushed her. “Willow, I think we’re being watched.”
*************************
_________________ ------------------------- If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.
Chance in *Chance* -------------------------
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