The Kitten, the Witches and the Bad Wardrobe - Willow & Tara Forever

General Chat  || Kitten  || WaV  || Pens  || Mi2  || GMP  || TiE  || FAQ  || Feed - The Kitten, the Witches and the Bad Wardrobe

All times are UTC - 8 hours [ DST ]



Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 173 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6  Next
Author Message
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 13 - 03/01/1
PostPosted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 12:38 pm 
Offline
9. Gay Now
User avatar

Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 8:45 pm
Posts: 985
Topics: 15
Location: Beyond the orbit of Mars and accelerating...
Wow! Pulp Fiction reference in a lesbian romace/adventure?
Bonus points!

The interconnecting part bit was fun, but it raises an interesting point.
In this world, they might be able to have children together.

Imagine the scene back in regular time:
"Um, sorry about freaking you out Buff. I didn't think you'd pass out like that."
"Anyway, here's my daughter, Lily."
*Thump*

(Not sure where 'Lily' came from, but hey, it's a nice name)

And yeah, i can really sympathize with the expectation thing, it can really weigh down a situation.

But wow, all that build-up and no 'O?'
Yowch!
I don't think i'd be able to think straight :P
(See what i did there?)

Oh boy, i can't wait! :bounce

R :flower


Typo:

Nor had shew heard Willow say it

because that was the sort ** of Ms Rosenberg was
Person maybe?

_________________
“All I feel is sunlight. All I hear is music.” Willow
How i Met Your Mother - By Ariel


My Story: Coming Home


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 13 - 03/01/1
PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 10:28 am 
Offline
Ms. Moderator Fantastico
Ms. Moderator Fantastico
User avatar

Joined: Fri Oct 20, 2000 5:01 pm
Posts: 1183
Topics: 1
Katharyn, I always thought the idea of “bases” was stupid. Now that I think about it.. baseball players are constantly grabbing their crotch area so that must mean they are getting to second base with themselves. Hahahaha. And.. EWW. Now I need to scrub my brain of that image. LOL

I sure didn’t expect Miri to suggest the girls were mating. Maybe Tara should tell the birds and bees to explain the birds and bees to the little fairy. LOL :grin


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 13 - 03/01/1
PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 12:34 pm 
Offline
23. Volumey Text

Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:23 pm
Posts: 3794
Topics: 5
Zampsa - Thank you! I am sure they'll get to that soon :)

Azirahael - I did Pulp Fiction? I mean, I probably did, but not out of a thought process. Just lifting and depositing pop culture into things :)

But I will accept your bonus points!!

*cough* Have you been reading the draft? Your guesses are way too... close. I shan't say more now, but just because it comes up in part 15...

Lily isn't a bad name... ;)

And yeah, I see what you did there (and also more typo catching - nice!)

Kajun - I really never had cause to watch baseball. In all seriousness, this story was the most attention I ever had to pay to anything to do with the game! And as for Miri... she's very direct and working from a slightly limited vocabulary ;)

Thanks all! Next part tomorrow.

Katharyn

_________________
-------------------------
If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.

Chance in *Chance*
-------------------------


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 13 - 03/01/1
PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 1:41 pm 
Offline
9. Gay Now
User avatar

Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 8:45 pm
Posts: 985
Topics: 15
Location: Beyond the orbit of Mars and accelerating...
Sure, Big Kahuna Burger!

Sounds pretty cool, but as far as i know, it's fictional.

Looking forward to part 15 now. :bounce

Hurry!

R :flower

_________________
“All I feel is sunlight. All I hear is music.” Willow
How i Met Your Mother - By Ariel


My Story: Coming Home


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 13 - 03/01/1
PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 2:42 pm 
Offline
23. Volumey Text

Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:23 pm
Posts: 3794
Topics: 5
Ah! Yes. I was scanning it, trying to find what I'd done.

Yup, it's from there though

K

_________________
-------------------------
If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.

Chance in *Chance*
-------------------------


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 13 - 03/01/1
PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 6:16 pm 
Offline
3. Flaming O
User avatar

Joined: Tue Aug 12, 2014 10:23 am
Posts: 118
Topics: 9
Location: Universal City, TX
YAAASSSSS!!! UPDATESSSSS!!!!!!!!!!

*giggles*, practicing. That's...not really something I've heard before, but...I like it. Also a big *giggle* at Willow's "head schedule." “You don't hear yourself, do you?" Pretty much what I would've said. Er...thought...because my voice is too high-pitched so I don't talk much. (young transguy problems) But I would've thought it. I would've thought it so hard everyone would've heard it.

Fabulous update. Very fabulous. I like it. You're awesome.

-William

_________________
"Miss Edith speaks out of turn. She's a bad example and will have no cakes today"

I have a fish named Drusilla. He doesn't know, he thinks his name is Drew. Shhhh...

Spike: Are we feeling better, then?
Drusilla: I'm naming all the stars.
Spike: You can't see the stars, love. That's the ceiling. Also it's day.
Drusilla: I can see them. But I've named them all the same name, and there's terrible confusion.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 14 - 03/04/1
PostPosted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 10:57 am 
Offline
23. Volumey Text

Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:23 pm
Posts: 3794
Topics: 5
Hi Salix

I have to admit, I'm slightly proud of the innuendo (and earning) 'head schedule' :)

Thanks very much!

Katharyn

_________________
-------------------------
If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.

Chance in *Chance*
-------------------------


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 14 - 03/04/15
PostPosted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 10:58 am 
Offline
23. Volumey Text

Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:23 pm
Posts: 3794
Topics: 5
Title: Tara and Willow – The Blessed Unrest – Chapter Fourteen
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: No, we’re not following up directly on the end of the last part.
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: So the redrafting exercise has shown that not only is there a definite lack of discernible plot, but I am – in fact – an enormous tease. Funnily enough this is only something that shows up in my writing where I evidently have much more patience than in real life where I’m more likely to be the teasee than the teaser.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about other stories and other writing and can see that – maybe – one of my planned T/W stories (which would work really great for them) is instead something that is potentially sellable… I’m therefore thinking of writing it without the benefit of the Buffyverse and the T/W relationship behind it. That’s sad in a way, but might help me get somewhere I still want to go. And hey, I can always do the reverse of what that 50 Shades woman did and find replace character names back to fanfic (of course hers started out with sparkly vampires…) 
I’m curious, since I think of it, I often start a chapter by coming in right in the middle of a conversation. How does that strike you as readers? Good thing? Bad thing? Hadn’t noticed? I only really do it in Tara and Willow stories because I feel like I can here… Of course, I just realised that!
Thanks to: Anyone who can stand a tease and keep coming back for more.



“We said that yesterday,” she reminded Tara. “We said that the day before. And we said that for most of last week.”

“Today for sure,” Tara said “Today I’ve got it planned.”

Yeah, Tara had her number now. Appealing to her sense of planning? If she hadn’t been crazy-beautiful, wonderful and just Tara then ‘planning’ thing would still really have done a number on her.

Was this a downside to having a girlfriend who got you in a very real way?

No… Somehow still struggling to see the bad. But now that planning had been mentioned she simply had to know.

“Planned? What do you have planned? Polite interrogation?” she asked. “Very reasonable, un-intrusive questions? Pointed but not-at-all rude queries?”

“All of those,” Tara confirmed with a smile. “Another slice?”

She waved the offer away, she was already stuffed. “Here’s something – something else - that’s been bothering me. Why, if we’ve just been eating fruit and drinking strangely nutritious water for weeks now haven’t we got bored with it?”

Okay, the first time she’d described it she’d said – unfortunately – it was like ‘an orgasm in my mouth’ but even that would get old… wouldn’t it? Depended on just how filthy minded you were, she supposed.

Tara started to answer, but she held up her hand. “And I’ve not finished,” she continued, “I shouldn’t, but I have to wonder why haven’t there been… Okay, I’m going to put it in a nice way. Why haven’t there been digestive effects? Not to get too personal but… I’m just fine.”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Tara said.

“Which means you must be just fine too.” Of course, there was probably a line with anyone – girlfriend and boyfriend alike – where you didn’t ask that kind of question.

“No – I mean, yes… But – But bored? Really? Who could get bored of papple?”

“Apparently not us. Or Miri. Good morning!”

“Good morning, Tara and Willow,” the girl said in that slightly playful, slightly formal way that she had.

“That’s a very pretty dress you have on today,” Tara said.

It was also the first time they’d ever seen her wearing something other than the first outfit they’d seen her in. On an adult, it might well have appeared more scandalous than practical. It was also mostly backless – of course - to leave her wings free but on the girl it really was very pretty.

Which raised a point that they really had no idea how old Miri might be? She might easily be older than both of them put together.
“Thank you. So is yours,” Miri said to Tara, then looked at hers. “Yours is not as pretty, Willow.”

“What did I do?” she asked realising that – somehow – she’d come out underdressed for some occasion she hadn’t known about and never even suspected might exist since every day was much like every other here.

Tara couldn’t have known either, otherwise she’d definitely have said something. But had Tara some innate sense? This was – almost certainly – her place. So, of course, she was dressed appropriately.

“Today is a special day,” Miri said, confirming her worst fears.

Special enough that Miri was puffed up and proud of herself for some – as yet unknown – reason.

“Oh?” And I’m supposed to be dressed for it? Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why isn’t there a calendar with ‘special day’ marked on it? And ‘Willow, wear a nice outfit’ written underneath that.

And what’s wrong with this anyway?


Probably it was just because Tara wasn’t wearing. If they’d been wearing each other’s clothes, Miri would’ve preferred whatever Tara was in.

“Yes.”

“Special? Why? Are you going to show us something?” Tara asked, only teasing a little. Miri always had something to show them. Showing them things was what she did.

“No. I am not.”

Okay, that was… new. Miri had shown them something new every day and there didn’t seem to be any end to the number of things she could – and would – show them. From desperate, make-you-cry beauty in a butterfly’s wings to the majesty of a panorama that you’d cross half a world to see back home and end up surrounded by tourists just like yourself.

Not here though.

Tara’s point, this morning, had been to get her to show them a way to find out how to get home. Not the way itself, just how they could find out for themselves.

Or somehow show them what the rules were that would let that happen.

Or… something useful towards that end.

Something vaguely useful, so they could feel like they were making some – other – kind of progress.

They hadn’t kept an exact count of the days and nights but they could be fairly certain that a little more than a month had passed. By now everyone at home… Well, they’d have probably got over their frantic efforts to find them and accepted that they weren’t coming back. Or that they couldn’t because… Yeah, they probably thought they were dead.

It was Sunnydale, after all.

While that wasn’t a pleasant thought, it did take something of the pressure off. They didn’t have to get home to stop other people worrying about them – unnecessarily as it happened. The best they’d be able to do now was say ‘hi, actually we’re not dead and I’m now we and we’re a couple and did I mention we’re not dead?’

Mostly they just had to get home… well, because it was home. Beautiful and wondrous as this place was, it didn’t have that particular quality. Not for Tara either.

Home was a place where a romantic dinner wasn’t just papple by starlight. Lasagne maybe. Steak. Oysters? Oysters sounded like… there might be benefits, even though she’d never tried.

Home was where a girl could put on a little makeup – just a little – for her girl.

Home was books and computers and college and learning in a traditional sense –

Home was other people.

Just last night, she’d been thinking that it was time that Tara met Mom and Dad. And Xander though… the lesbian conversation might get him a little over-excited so she might have to break that to him upfront, so he didn’t spoil anything when he did meet Tara.

And then there was Buffy who… Sorry, but Buffy was going to need to find a new roommate. Probably… even if moving in seemed a little premature there, it was basically what they’d been doing here for all this time. The idea of not falling asleep and waking up next to Tara by now seemed…

Weird and uncomfortable to contemplate.

But how would I stay warm?

And now that they were content to find their way around to that last, nebulous, base when it happened… There were no questions they hadn’t been able to answer for each other. No reasons not to.

They ate together. Explored together. Washed and dressed together. Slept together. Didn’t sleep but were in bed together. Enjoyed each other’s… touch. Kiss. More touch. Good touch. Never a bad touch. Kiss. Touch…

I’ve really got to get past what a simple caress from her does to me… Not stop it, just get past it so I can have another thought. In some circumstances, that could really be important.

And the great thing was that they also knew when to go find space away from each other and neither of them minded. Before, with that other person who shall remain un-thought of, taking time for herself had seemed… Well, he’d driven over and made an effort and all.

Not here. Not with Tara. Alone time here was… really complete. Really, really alone. It was also precious and good for them both. A few hours here and there…

They pretty much had everything worked out as perfectly as you could want it to.

So what all this was leading to was the question of why couldn’t they move in with each other when they got back? In fact, it only made sense to do exactly that. Buffy was out all hours and especially at times when she’d want to be… in.

With Tara.

Possibly, in some ways they’d not yet fully explored, in Tara.

“So why is today special?” she asked Miri, dragging herself away from the distraction. “Why aren’t you showing us something?”

“Today it is not about you. Today I am bringing someone to see you.”

“You’re showing us to someone else?” she asked, surprised. All this time and… Well, they’d known that there must be more people here. Miri’s family at the very least. But they’d never really gotten her to talk about them. Almost like they didn’t play as big a part in her life as you’d have expected for a twelve year old back home.

Of course, it’d been a while since twelve year olds went off in the woods on their own back home. Especially in Sunnydale because… hey, Sunnydale.

And, yes, remember that she could be decades or centuries older than them. Just because she looked twelve…

“Yes. Because I found you, I get to be the one to show them.” Then Miri faltered in her enthusiasm. “Is that alright? I always have to ask. Sometimes I forget though. Sometimes.”

“Always – Wait, do you mean that you ask the animals and the things you take us to see?”

“Of course.” Miri made it seem like it would’ve been bad manners not to and that she was slightly offended that they wouldn’t think she had good manners.

“And… they answer you?”

Once again, that was apparently a silly question. “Of course they do. So – is it alright that I bring someone to see you?” Miri pressed. “Please?”

“Who - ” she started to ask, but Tara was answering too. “Of course it is, Miri. You’ve shown us so much. It’d be an honour for you to show us to someone else.”

The girl whirled around them which was scarier than it probably seemed in your mind when you thought about it. After all, a twelve year old girl isn’t exactly small and she was moving very quickly.

Oh, and she was flying.

Of course, Miri was also very nimble and never collided with anything. Not that they’d seen anyway.

Tara gave her a look and she realised that this was – perhaps – what they’d been waiting for. Someone who’d answer the kind of questions Miri never, quite, understood. Or if she understood wasn’t able to verbalise an answer to in a way that made sense to them.

Too many things were just obvious to Miri. It’d probably be no different if their roles had been reversed, especially at that younger – mental - age.

At least Miri had never said ‘Duh’ to them. She couldn’t have guaranteed she wouldn’t have in her place when trying to explain how electricity worked or video games or what the World Wide Web was, down to its very base concepts.

Yeah, Miri has far more patience than I would in her place.

“When will they be here?” she asked.

“Soon! I will go and bring them to you.”

“Well, okay then.”

“Will you wait here?” Miri asked, seeming a little nervous. Like they might move and spoil her plans to show them off. To be the guide who knew everything.

“Right here,” she promised.

Was this how Miri operated? Finding something to show them and cajoling it into staying in place until she could deliver the observer to them? If so… it was a neat trick. Probably not such a challenge with a fallen tree or a vista. But did unicorns feel the same way?

Miri – apparently – knew the answer.

“Thank you!” Miri zipped off, faster than they’d ever seen her move before.

“Every day,” Tara said. “Every day, she finds a way to make us forget to ask what we wanted to.”

“She doesn’t make us,” she replied, setting aside that suspicion right away. “We just do… This place is magical that way. But I wouldn’t stay here forever. Not if there’s a choice.”

But if there was no choice at all, and it was with Tara? There’d be things – lots of things – she’d miss. But it wouldn’t be so bad.

“I know what you mean,” Tara said. “Not even with you.”

She didn’t take offence at that. Not at all. Because it was perfectly obvious that the place had nothing to do with them being together. If everything had happened a different way, they’d still have found each other.

How do I know that? I just do.

“Maybe this new visitor will be able to explain how we got here? How we could get home?” she suggested.

“I hope so.”

“But when we find out – Even then – Just a minute ago, I was thinking that – really - we probably don’t need to… hurry?”

Tara looked at her, weighing that up. “I think, m-maybe you’re right – if there’s no time pressure on it. I don’t think we necessarily have to rush. Not as such. Better to do it right, you know? Make sure of our facts, so we don’t end up somewhere else we didn’t expect?”

“Or China.”

“China? Why China?”

“Somewhere far away, even if we got home – we could end up somewhere other than Sunnydale – with no money and in the middle of a much less friendly landscape. It’s really better to invest the time, like you said.”

Tara, realising her new worries, kissed her. Which was just as good enough of a distraction as was required. Better, probably.

Kisses led to kisses and the occasional wandering hand and before they knew it, time had passed and they could hear the same excited talk they were very familiar with approaching before they heard the buzz of the wings that carried the speaker her.

Miri was back, guiding someone to see them. The latest attraction. It ended the kisses and the hands but they didn’t move apart. If Miri wanted to show them off, then they could be a ‘them’. What they were. A couple.

“At least today we don’t have to walk far,” she commented as Miri came back into the glade that – in another place – had been the campus coffee shop.

Here… it was the place you felt more awake than anywhere else. Go figure.

They both looked, trying to see who Miri had brought back with her but obviously the girl had rushed on ahead. Usually it was them she was ahead of, impatient with those who stuck to the ground and couldn’t quite forget that they were usually barefoot – even though they very rarely got stuck with anything too sharp. (And Tara never did.)

“I am here,” Miri said, with some ceremony. It was interesting to be on the receiving end.

“Hello, Miri. Have you brought someone to see us?”

“Yes, Tara. Willow. I have. I’ve brought my friend, Niamh.”

Riding into the glade on the back of a pure white horse – no saddle and no reins – was…

No. That couldn’t be right.

She looked at Tara. Looked at the young woman on the horse. No… way…

Which was why it was almost a relief when Miri finished her introductions.

“Niamh, this is Willow. And this is Tara. Tara’s the one I was telling you about. Your sister!”

--------------------------

Wait.

What?

She was pretty sure that Miri had just said… Sister?

While she was struggling with that, the woman introduced as Niamh had dismounted and come to stand in front of her. And it was like looking in a strange mirror. Not quite a fairground, not distorted. The same but not.

The features were very familiar and Niamh’s eyes were like… No, it wasn’t a mirror – really more like looking at a photograph. One of…

Willow, meanwhile, hadn’t missed it at all. “Sisters? You have a sister, Tara? You didn’t mention a sister. I’d have paid attention if you’d said anything about a sister. But not because she’d be as – Shutting up now. You don’t want to hear what I was about to say.”

“I d-don’t have a sister,” she said quietly, but she was talking to Niamh rather than Willow.

Niamh who looked so very like…

“Beg to differ,” Willow said. “But you look – wow… Her hair’s a different - ”

“That’s my natural colour,” she said, staring into too-familiar eyes while Niamh did the same.

“You dye your hair?” Willow asked, shocked. “Oh. Wait… I kinda missed the part where your roots were starting to show. Honestly, I do pay attention but - you do dye your hair – wait, why do you dye your hair when it looks like that? Chestnut’s a great look on you – her – your sister – did I mention that you never mentioned a sister?”

She hadn’t turned her attention away from the strange reflection stood before her. Still. Silent. Saying nothing at all. But calm while she was in shock and Willow did her babble thing.

Shock that made it easier to engage with Willow than her supposed sister.

“Oh, you know,” she said absently. “I was coming to college. They said blondes have more fun.”

“You were looking for fun?”

“I – I guess.”

“And what do you know,” Willow replied. “It worked. I mean, I think I am more fun. Aren’t I more fun than you were having – Don’t answer that – Your sister, huh? So how did that work?”

Neither of them were getting past that anytime soon, even though Willow was trying hard. Probably out of sympathy. She could babble for all the sweetest and best reasons. It was still adorable.

Looking at Niamh – who still hadn’t said anything – it was quickly clear that they weren’t as alike as it’d first appeared. There were little differences like, oh, slightly – but noticeably - pointed ears.

That was one really big difference but… the eyes.

Everyone told her that she had… That her eyes were very like Momma’s. But it was only when she looked into Niamh’s that she’d ever thought that. Maybe that was something about looking at yourself in a mirror, maybe they were the same. Maybe this Niamh really did have Momma’s eyes.

Because that was what they were saying, wasn’t it? Not that her Dad had another child with someone because… no. Momma. They were laying this at her door. And… she didn’t know how she felt about that. What did basic biology tell her?

That it might turn out, when the confusion passed, that she was a little angry about it.

What was being implied, even if no one had said it. No one else might even have thought it yet. Willow didn’t know enough about Momma… But for her… it was there. An uncomfortable truth. Just lurking.

“I told you!” Miri was clearly very pleased with herself. “I told you that you were both the same!”

It was obvious that Miri was talking to Niamh who was now walking around her, looking at her from every angle. It was a little different, being the one who was being shown off, rather than the one who’d been guided here.

“Yes, you did, Miri,” Niamh said when they were face to face again.

“You don’t sound alike,” Willow said. “But why would you – one of you is from here and the other is from… Wow. Two Tara’s. Or… two Niamh’s, depending on your point of view. Wow. Two of everything. Four of some things… Wait, I don’t – I didn’t say that. That was… the surprise talking. That’s all it was. So, sisters – wow! Let’s talk about that.”

“Your mate is a little strange,” Niamh said, the first words her alleged sister ever said to her and she picked those?

‘Mate’ was more than likely what Miri had told her though.

“She’s not – Yes. Yes, she is.”

Even though she wouldn’t have chosen that particular term – ‘strange’ - it seemed pointless denying what Willow was to her. So long as no one used it to - say - introduce Willow to her Dad. But… here?

Sister?

Really?

“Are you – Am I your sister?”

“Perhaps not from your point of view. But as I think of these things,” Niamh said. “Yes, you are, Tara. And I think it’s very nice to meet you.”

“You think it is?”

“Is that not what you say?”

“I – I guess. So you knew – I mean, and you – but you knew about me?”

“Not you, exactly – but yes, I did.”

“B-but – How can I be your sister? You have…” She touched her ears.

“No one here will judge you for your deformity,” Niamh promised with every sincerity.

Not, exactly, what she’d meant. And certainly not – not that word. But… Niamh may well have magically picked up her English from Miri who’d picked it up from her or…? Did they speak English here anyway? “No – I mean – We’re different. But… similar.”

“Yes.”

“And this doesn’t surprise you?” she asked. “Does it? Not at all.”

“No.”

“May I ask… umm, why?”

“Because I have always known about you,” Niamh said. “But from what Miri has said, I suspect you’ve had no idea about me. Or even this place? Do you know how you come to be here?”

“No… we – we never really managed to get Miri to even tell us where we are.”

Niamh nodded. “You’ll have to forgive her. She’s only young. And she has no family in the other places.”

“Other places?” Willow asked.

“Where you came from,” Niamh replied. “But now you’re here. Now you’re home.”

“Oh – wait - ?”

“Home?” Willow asked.

-----------------------------

“So… Miri, does this happen a lot?” Willow asked. There were too many things to worry about. Too many things to keep an eye on. Like watching Tara walk with Niamh while also watching out for the big, bitey white horse that the alterna-Tara had rode in on.

Because, who needed a horse that big? Really?

Especially not if you were Tara sized.

After all, that was a lot of straddling.

Hmm… interesting thoughts. But… Focus on the conversation, Rosenberg.

“There’s always a celebration,” Miri said, unaware of her caution or where that had led her. “But I’ve only seen one. Once upon a time there were a lot of people from your place here and – someone like me could visit your world. Not now.”

“Oh. Wait. There’s a party?” That didn’t sound too bad.

The girl nodded, her wings buzzing faster even though she stayed in place.

“Will there be cake?” she wondered.

“What’s cake?”

She smiled. “Oh, Miri, Miri, Miri. Let me tell you about cake.”

----------------------------

“No, Niamh. I know who – I know who my parents are. Both of them.”

“Nonetheless.”

“I’m not from here.”

“Not this place, specifically, no. But one like it. Not so far away. No more than a few days ride.”

“I was born in Saint Bartholomew’s hospital. Just a little place, but in Montana. In the USA.” she said and then thought maybe she needed to be still more specific. “Earth!”

“I don’t know what any of that is. Everything else is just another place to us. But no matter what you think, you came from here.”

“I’ve never been here in my life, until now…” This part wasn’t true, she might have thought it was a trick but it was clear that Niamh believed it too. So if it was, then it wasn’t Niamh’s trick.

More likely it was a mistake or… something. Maybe someone else was Niamh’s sister. Because it wasn’t her.

“You and your mate, you were in danger and you found yourself here?” Niamh asked, changing tack.

“She’s – we - How did you know - ? We didn’t tell Miri - ”

“It’s how it usually happens,” Niamh said. “Some go their whole lives and never have cause to come back here. No need to create a safe place for themselves. Others – like you – you come home. It’s in your… nature? Is that the word?”

Create?”

“This,” Niamh said, gestured in an expansive arc around them. “All of this, came from your mind.”

“But - ”

“You have that power, you created it – I’m sure you recognise features shared with your world, at the start – at the heart of it? Things I’ve never seen before – things that excite Miri, perhaps? But then the forest?”

“Yes. This has happened before?”

“Less and less,” her so-called sister explained. “But yes. It still happens. Your mother was one of us, Tara. Denial won’t make it less true.”

My mother? What about your mother? If we’re sisters wouldn’t they have to be the same – and how can you be if we’re almost the same age?”

“It’s… perhaps more complicated for you to understand than I,” Niamh said. “In that other place, how would you and your mate have a child?”

“Willow – we’re not – Well, we – wouldn’t. Not together. Not that was a part of both of us. We’d need – umm, someone else.” Did she need to get into the practical elements of the birds and the bees?

“How… barbaric. I’d heard tell of the like, but never expected to meet anyone who existed that way.”

“Why? What happens here?” she asked, having a feeling that she might not want to know the answer.

“Love,” Niamh said.

“Love creates a child? Just love. No… umm… interconnecting bits?”

“If one is desired. And is that how it is there?”

“So – So I hear. So… what happened – how are we sisters?”

“Our mothers loved.”

“My Mom wasn’t - ” like me – “she loved my Dad,” she said. People could have affairs or flings or periods of time they were unhappy together. But… she wasn’t ready to hear that Mom had cheated on Dad just before…

No. Not before. During. They’d been married for a couple of years before having her… No.

“I have no doubt.”

“And he is my Dad, isn’t he?” They couldn’t take that away too. Mom was gone and now this girl was trying to tell her that Dad wasn’t her father? Was that it? Trying to tear apart the world she knew – that was currently so far away.

Was Niamh trying to make her not want to go back? Because she was going to be surprised. She was going home, because she wanted to. Because Willow wanted to. And she was going with Willow.

“Please, do not distress yourself, Tara. I told you – it’s more complicated and yet simpler too. Your mother was one of us. Once upon a time, she and my mother held affection for each other. They did not mate, if that is what distresses you.”

Oh.

“Then… how?”

“I told you, love. Perhaps we have been talking about something we understand differently?”

It was possible.

“Your mother came back to us, one last time. I was told about it. There was a lot of sadness. She had… chosen to stay with your father. Her mate. She had a child already but… she wanted to leave something here and take something of here with her. My mother was her oldest friend, the one she missed the most. They’d grown up together. Done everything together until she’d left…

“Of course they decided that to celebrate that love.”

“Love – just love - creates children here?”

“It’s mating in that other place, isn’t it? From how you talk? It has another significance beyond the physical?”

She nodded. “A man and a woman – I suppose they should love each other, but they don’t have to.”

Niamh shivered, plainly not at all happy with the idea.

“My Dad? Is he…?”

“Part of you?” Niamh asked and she nodded. “I don’t know. Perhaps, it’s not unheard of – he didn’t have to be here. But we’re paired, you and I. Sisters created from the same love. The same respect and affection. The same decision most of all. You might still be part of him, in that place. But here… There were only two people responsible for your birth. Our mothers. We don’t rely on the random rutting of mating to create life.”

“So you don’t – umm…?” There’s no way I can say ‘rut’ to her.

“Of course we do,” Niamh said with a smile. “I have a mate of my own – you would call him a good man, I hope. But if he and I – or anyone else – decided to create a new life, it would be a decision and a choice. Not a question of – what do you call it? Interconnecting parts?”

“It almost sounds better.” Much better then ‘rutting.’

“Perhaps it is. I’ve distressed you, made you sad – Please excuse me, I didn’t mean that at all.”

“This is… a lot,” she explained. “It’s just that this is… Everything I thought I knew, isn’t there anymore.”

“You’ve come home, Tara. Did you know that my mother’s name is Tara?”

“No… You hadn’t mentioned it.” Neither did she.

“She’s gone now,” Niamh said.

“So… So’s my Mom.”

“They’d lived full lives - ”

“My Mom,” she said. “She was – she was far too young.”

“Perhaps in your world, Tara. Here… before she met your father, she’d lived a full life here.”

Was that… better? No, it was still too soon. Because we lost her.

“Did… did she die because she came to – went to my world?” she wondered.

“I don’t know. Perhaps. Perhaps not. I don’t think anyone can say.”

But she had her suspicions. Mom was… older. Much older than she thought she’d been, but then, she’d always had that sense of her. Looking back, her friends in school had Mom’s who seemed barely more than kids themselves. She was nearly their age now… But Mom?

No… she’d always seemed older, more mature than her years suggested. Until now she’d always thought that was just because she was… Mom. But was it possible everything Niamh was saying was true?

Perhaps that was the wrong question. Perhaps she should be wondering if it was possible that it wasn’t.

“If she’d come back here – might she still be alive?” she asked.

Had choosing their world made Momma sick? Had staying there condemned her?

Staying with us.

“She’s still with us,” the other girl said. “Both of them are. We’re all we have of them.”

“And what are we?” she asked, unable to dismiss what she was being told. In the same way that loving Willow had just… clicked, so this seemed just as true. Invisible until now but self-evident and obvious when you knew about it. “Who am I?”

“You’re Tara. And you’re my sister.”

“And who are you – I mean, what are we?”

“We call ourselves Aes Sidhe, but in your tongue we’re more often known as Wood Nymphs.”

*************************

_________________
-------------------------
If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.

Chance in *Chance*
-------------------------


Last edited by Katharyn on Wed Mar 04, 2015 8:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 14 - 03/04/1
PostPosted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 2:24 pm 
Offline
9. Gay Now
User avatar

Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 8:45 pm
Posts: 985
Topics: 15
Location: Beyond the orbit of Mars and accelerating...
Dibs!

Cool!

so Tara has two moms huh?

I'd say that explains a lot, but her sister seems to be straight (ish)

Which makes me wonder, if love = babies, why are there 'males?'
I mean, what are they for?
And if two males mate, where does their baby come from?
and if the baby is born in a Hollow (and not in the more usual way), why do girls have the girl-parts (which are so much fun :))

Also, while i love this story to bits, and don't want it to end... i can't frikkin' WAIT to see Buffy's reaction to their daughter/s! (Y chromosome/male essence? nope.)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHASHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! (PRE-EMPTIVE HILARITY)
Ooops, caps lock.

And i have to say, i'm impressed.
You caught me completely by surprise with the reasons for Tara having a sister.
Which is awesome BTW.

Though, i have to ask, why didn't Tara's mom (name?) tell Tara about her sister?
Or her origins?
Or come home when she got sick?
Or when life turned horrible?

Anyway, today's episode was both epic, and awesome! :bounce
Bravo!
Encore, and other suchlike 'more!' hints :)

R :flower



Typo:
“Yes. Because I found you, I get to be the one to show them.” Then Miri faltered in her enthusiasm. “Is that alright? I have always have to ask. Sometimes I forget though. Sometimes.”

"I have always to ask" perhaps?
or the more typical "I always have to ask"

“Maybe this new visitor will be able to explain how we got here? How ** could get home?” she suggested.
"We", i assume?

_________________
“All I feel is sunlight. All I hear is music.” Willow
How i Met Your Mother - By Ariel


My Story: Coming Home


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 14 - 03/04/1
PostPosted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 8:51 pm 
Offline
23. Volumey Text

Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:23 pm
Posts: 3794
Topics: 5
Azirahael - You're asking questions I - sometimes - haven't thought about LOL

I am sure you can imagine what the point of highlighting the fact that - where they are - you can have two Moms and things work biologically? Or you can have a Mom and a Dad. I must admit, I hadn't considered two Dad's in practical terms though I had included it in possibilities... Hmm. Stork, perhaps.

All that said sex exists there, in all it's varieties. And yes, they still do it for fun. And (not sure if I say this) the birds and the bees would apply (vestigial perhaps...)

But I wanted to pull having a child up out of just having lust. Away from being - sometimes - being an unwanted consequence. For those people love is enough, no matter who it's for (that's why there are storks, I guess... or delivery squirrels!)

I think we'll get more into Tara's Mom's motivations. Not definitively, but it will definitely come up as supposition. Why not say anything? She'd made her choice to be in our world. Probably she was sick and sick was sick... It still would've been sick in this world, so she stayed with her family. And life didn't turn horrible. This isn't the same background as 'Family' laid out with the sole exception she's dead because (I am pretty sure, but it's been a long time) Willow would've known in canon that Mom wasn't around long before Family. The how and what happened in that episode though never would've been put into canon so... kind of throw that away.

Tara's Mom was happy with her choices and Tara's not been through the same things with her Dad - for example - that would've shown up in Family.

The starting conceit of this story was that you could just switch out this background for what was in Family. That might've explained - had things happened the canon way up to then - why she might still have hidden her magical ability from Willow. Maybe she'd still have been nervous about being seen as a 'demon', would the spell have made the distinction? Maybe not. I suppose everything EXCEPT Family would've happened (though I hadn't thought about that when I was writing this) in terms of us knowing and understanding Tara...

Does that make sense?

But, generally, the only bad in Tara's life has been losing her Mom. And a lack of out girls in Montana high school, though that's a different thing...

Typo's fixed - thanks :)

Katharyn

_________________
-------------------------
If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.

Chance in *Chance*
-------------------------


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 14 - 03/04/1
PostPosted: Thu Mar 05, 2015 12:06 pm 
Offline
Ms. Moderator Fantastico
Ms. Moderator Fantastico
User avatar

Joined: Fri Oct 20, 2000 5:01 pm
Posts: 1183
Topics: 1
Katharyn, Interesting concept.. It would make for a much better world if LOVE was a main requirement for conception. And if the interconnecting parts wasn't!

Okay.. Niamh is Tara’s sister, cool. Now what relation is Miri to Tara? I have a very wild guess but won’t post it just in case I’m right.. again. Wood nymph! Heehee! :D

Great job, btw. I may not saying it in every comment but rest assured I'm thinking it! :)


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 14 - 03/04/1
PostPosted: Thu Mar 05, 2015 10:09 pm 
Offline
23. Volumey Text

Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:23 pm
Posts: 3794
Topics: 5
Kajun - I certainly like the idea, which is why I inserted it (so to speak!) here... Though I did have that overlooked M/M element but hey, they're not from Earth on this world... they can pull it off somehow LOL.

Interconnecting parts is very random. Understandable in biological terms, but random when you get to be a species that thinks it's evolved as far as it needs to (we actually resist evolution now in favour of what we consider normal).

Of course, I kind of plucked this all out of thin air when I created Niamh LOL.

Post your wild guess under s spoiler tag if you like. People have posted bigger things and i might even steal it :) But does everyone have to be related though?

Willow will have fun with the word 'nymph'. Of course she will :)

Thanks!

Katharyn

_________________
-------------------------
If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.

Chance in *Chance*
-------------------------


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 15 - 03/07/15
PostPosted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 7:34 am 
Offline
23. Volumey Text

Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:23 pm
Posts: 3794
Topics: 5
Title: Tara and Willow – The Blessed Unrest – Chapter Fifteen
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: Understanding more of what is going on.
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.
I mention some property of Disney in this part. Don’t sue me! I swear, it’s a property that no one even likes!! (Don’t sue me for saying that either, because that’s just factually true. Really, no one likes it.)
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: So in this plotless story, the last part offered up a pretty big plot point. Or at least the promise of a little more explanation about what was happening and where I might be going with this. Well, this part makes it all the more explicit, putting some things on the table. They won’t be picked up, but they’re there… Interesting options for the girls (and I say this as someone who is not usually a fan of that sort of option in any fiction, let alone my own!)
For those interested in the writing process (???) I’m currently doing only 1 day in 3 on this story. The ‘posting draft’ is the final polish before posting (and I still add about 600 words per chapter as a polish LOL) and so the other 2 days are (mostly) spent on writing Raiders 3. That story is coming towards the end of the first draft now (though I have no idea what the climax is yet, but it won’t aliens). Occasionally I spend a day on other (non-TW) ideas…
Thanks to: She who must be listened to, given careful consideration and generally obeyed…



“So? Is she leaving?” Willow asked, watching the retreating Niamh. Miri was alongside Tara’s new sibling, flitting around her like a little sister.

Or so she imagined.

Actually, it was probably how the girl was when she was around them. Maybe she just wanted to be someone’s little sister. Some people liked that idea, while others wished they’d been the big sister, setting the sensible example and able to dish out a smack down when necessary.

No, I doubt I’d ever have done that… Knowing my luck, little sis would’ve turned out to be an athlete and bench-pressed me if I’d even tried.

“Not leaving. Miri’s going to show her the rest of this place,” Tara said. “I said – I said I needed to talk to you and some time to think things through.”

“Fair enough,” she replied, not a little pleased to be the one person Tara chose to confide and take advice from. Okay, so she was the only person available, but that didn’t stop it feeling good.

“So is she your sister? I mean, she looks like she is, but you know what they say – ‘looks aren’t everything’.”

Maybe they didn’t say it about that but… hey.

Tara nodded. “I think she is.”

“So your Mom - ?” That had to be tough to discover, whatever the details were. No judgement involved, but just finding out something you’d never known…

“It’s more complicated than that,” Tara replied. “I don’t even get it all myself but seems like my Mom and her Mom – well they decided to… have kids together.”

“Together? You don’t just mean at the same time?”

“No. I mean together.”

“Oh. Ohhh.”

“I know.”

“And they can do that here?”

“So it appears.”

“And your Dad is…? I mean your Earth-Dad.”

“Someone else my Mom loved,” Tara said. “In a different way. Still the way I always thought, I guess. She chose him and all, to be there – in our world – when she could’ve been here.”

“But is he your Dad?” She felt like dirt just for asking but – that was the implication. One of two possibilities in their world… but there seemed like there were more of them here.

“I don’t think I’ll ever know for sure. But like Niamh said, he raised me – he’s part of me even if…”

“He’s not from here then?”

“No. He’s definitely from Montana. I don’t think anyone could fake that if they tried.”

“But your Mom…?”

“One of the Aes Sidhe,” Tara confirmed. “That’s what they call themselves.”

“And she’s from here?”

“Not exactly, close enough though. But that’s not why I wanted to talk to you – it’s because I… I think I have to apologise, Willow.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because – well, I might have – accidentally – umm, created this place and brought us here,” Tara said.

“Oh – that’s okay – we already sort of knew - ” Wait. What? “Created it?”

“From nothing,” she said. “That’s something else… They – we – I – Well, apparently I can create places here. It’s like, everything here was wished into existence. And it just adds to the rest of the world that was already here and – over time, animals come and people - ”

“The Aes Sidhe?”

“Yes. They explore, they find new things – no one here had heard of or tasted papple until I… umm, seems like I created it so we’d have something to eat.”

“No wonder Miri’s so into them,” she said. Things were starting to make a weird kind of sense around here. Facts were building on supposition, almost like they were supposed to.

For a long time she’d been balancing her long-term belief in science with a growing appreciation of what you’d label ‘magic’ just to have a shorthand. But the two could co-exist. Even here where magic seemed to have the upper hand. “Because, if I was going to create a fruit – that’s the fruit I’d create. Well, actually – I probably wouldn’t because I’d do something weird like a banorange or – never mind.”

Quick thought, off the top of her head though. Science could easily be involved. Here, creation seemed to be ‘potential’ and once in a while someone unlocked that potential. Wasn’t that what Tara was saying? It was positively quantum or infinite universe theory… Nothing that was incompatible with that balance of science and magic.

“Banorange?”

“Banorange. A cross between a banana and an orange. Don’t – if you’re going to imagine something into existence – please don’t pick that. I’m not really sure it’d work as well as papple did.” They seemed like two very different things, after all.

“I promise,” Tara said. “So anyway, I was saying that, eventually, this place will just be part of the greater whole that is their world.”

“And they’ll have their very own woodland version of UC Sunnydale?”

Tara nodded.

“And there’s no danger you could wish it out of existence?” she asked, because the glass wasn’t always half full.

“I – I didn’t ask.”

“Might be one to check on.”

“Umm.”

Tara looked like she didn’t even want to consider it, just because it might happen if she did. And where would that leave them? Floating in the ether with a bunch of squirrels chittering angrily at them because they’d lost their nuts?

“Don’t worry about it, Tara. I think what you’ve done is plenty cool. Definitely don’t apologise for it.”

“Really?”

She didn’t sound like she’d ever been ‘cool’ in any way before, but that was other people’s opinions. Stupid people, obviously. Cos who was cooler than Tara? Or maybe that was a little bias working its way in. But so what? Her opinion counted for way more than stupid people, no matter how many of them there might be.

“Very! Imagine, if you can create anything – any place you can think of or want to see or visit – Does everything get the forest theme?”

“Probably,” Tara said, her voice suggesting there was some sort of story behind that too. They’d get to it, this was just an afternoon of revelations wasn’t it?.

“Okay, so it has this whole ‘forest moon of Endor’ thing going on where an entire world has just one defining characteristic, but I suppose if it’s come about like that, I can understand it. “Wait - are there Ewoks?”

“Huh?”

“The teddy-bear things, from Endor?”

“Again – sorry – but - huh?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen Star Wars?”

“Should I have - ?”

“Sweetie – No, say it ain’t so. Look, the first thing we’re doing when we get home – No. Wait, the second thing we’re doing when we get home is giving you an education in film, honey,” she said. “I told you about Xander right?”

“A few times.”

“Well, Xander would never forgive me for having a girlfriend who didn’t see Star Wars. You necessarily have to like it – but you definitely have to see it.”

“So, the girlfriend thing really wouldn’t bother him so long as I knew about Star Wars? I mean – I know who the bad guy – the one in black is.”

“Say the name…”

“Umm.”

“Tara! It’s the most popular of pop-culture! You must know - ”

“I know. But… I can watch a movie if it will make things easier.”

“Good. Willingness to learn will get you kudos.”

“And I want kudos with your friends?” Tara checked.

“Of course you do. When I show you off, I want them all to get it.”

Tara knew about the ‘unfortunate’ thing where she and Xander had a kinda/sorta affair. It hadn’t been her proudest moment to admit, but there wasn’t anything she wanted to keep from her new girlfriend. Admitting the bad stuff now – in this environment – had seemed like it might keep it from becoming bad again. Bad for them.

So they’d had lives before meeting? Fine. Most people did except for Romeo and Juliet and look how that worked out for them.

“Actually,” she said, “me having a girlfriend would probably be one of the least worst things that had happened to people he’d been involved with. First there was this teacher he had a crush on, she turned out to be a preying mantis after him to fertilise her eggs and you can imagine what came next in that arrangement – it really wasn’t a long term relationship she was looking for – Wait…

“Preying mantis? You’re not one are you? Tell me now if Niamh told you you’re a preying mantis.”

“I’m not a - ”

She held up her finger, urging silence so could finish the sad, tragic tale of Xander’s love life. “Good. I just had to ask. She was super-sexy too. Then there was the time he joined the swim team.”

“Is that so bad?” Tara wondered.

“No, not in itself. They all looked good in speedos but turned out to be fishes. Well, they did when the coach tried to turn him into one. Just say ‘no’ when an old Russian guy offers you fishy steroids. Trust me on that one.”

“That’s not really about a girlfriend - ”

“Well, he was – there was Cordelia and she was a… I have to say it, she was a bitch and a half. That was just a disaster waiting to happen. Then there’s Anya and she’s an ex-vengeance demon. Still with him now.”

“You can become an ex-demon?” Tara asked.

“Oh yes. And she did. So, all in all, unofficial ex that should never have been and really wasn’t that much anyway turns out to be a lesbian… Not really even ranking that highly on his scale of romantic weirdness.”

Tara’s smile made that whole tale worth it. And they hadn’t even started on Buffy’s love life. Necrophilia. End of the world. Parker.

“That’s good, but you know – I don’t mind how you identify. You don’t have to call yourself a lesbian for me. I know there’s been boys. If you’re with me, that’s all that counts. And there’s perfectly good words for people who like both -”

“I know,” she said, pulling in close to her. “I even know what they are. But… You made me realise two things. Three things actually.”

“What?”

“First of all, I know now that I was never really in love with Oz. I loved him, but I wasn’t in love with him and… the physical side was… I should shut up about that but, it was just something that happened alongside that friendship-shaped love. It never – Well, I didn’t know any better, I might’ve gone my whole life thinking I was in love and never knowing… well, what it was like to be in love with you.”

There was silence for a few moments. And then a lot more after that. Silence apart from the gentle sound of kissing because you really should get kissed when you said something like that. It was a worthy reward.

“What were the other two things?” Tara was a little a breathless when she asked. They both were.

“Boobs,” she said. “Boobs are numbers two and three.”

Tara’s laughter made it seem like she wasn’t taking it seriously. Something that had to be put right. This was serious. “I mean it, Tara! I do! Boobs. I… I love you, but I love boobs too. I… I have a whole new appreciation of them. I even love the word. Boobs. Just saying it makes me shiver a little.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Really. I mean it. I mean, yes, I kind of knew that boobs were awesome from the inside out. I got to know mine pretty well and we’d become close. But from the outside in? Wow… Tara-boobs… I say again, wow. I… Wow. And then there’s how mine feel when you’re – So look, it’s just… boobs. Seriously. Can’t wait to see how you’re going to make me feel about things below the belt.”

Tara’s frown was something she really wasn’t expecting. “Umm, just professed my love for you? Just told you about my awesome relationship with boobs. Yours and mine. Why are you frowning?” she asked.

“Oh – We… umm, I don’t really know how to say this.”

“Oh no… You didn’t wish the boobs into existence too did you?” she asked. Was that how they were so perfect?

“No!”

“Did I – because – I hope you like them… I do.”

“No – that’s not what I don’t know how to say.”

“I find just saying it works. It might not work best but it does work,” she suggested. “Eventually even I get my point out there – maybe buried in babble, but out there for anyone willing to dig a little.”

“We – I think we may have to be a little bit careful,” Tara said.

“What do you mean, careful? You mean about… below the belt stuff?” Because last night Tara’s hand had wandered down there and neither of them had known what they were doing in any conscious plan sort of way but… she’d pretty much known what might’ve come next. And… yeah… So very ready for that. “We’ve been taking it really, really slow. Slower than I thought I could bear, sometimes. But now we need to be careful as well? Why? Because I’m not sure we can be more careful than we’re already being?”

“Sort of – no – yes – I know – but – Well, there’s a danger we could get… umm… pregnant.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you just said ‘pregnant’.”

“I did.”

“No, no, no. See. Because – birds. And bees. And men and women and – what goes where and what comes out of where and goes where and how that swims and goes into this and – can’t happen. Unless… you don’t have… No, I’ve kissed your fingers. I know there’s nothing – There’s nothing going on there is there?”

Maybe she didn’t mask the look of sudden horror. She was ninety-nine point nine-nine percent certain that couldn’t be true but…

“No!” Tara said very firmly. It was firm you could definitely, one hundred believe in. “No. My – my fingers are just fingers.”

“Then…?”

“There’s a thing here – kind of like how this part of this world was created. It can – if two people love each other very much…”

“That’s real here?” she asked. “For us?” They had the love and there was Tara had just said about her Mom… but she didn’t want to be pregnant because of it.

“No – Yes, but – Niamh said you have to want it and it’s not about sex and I really don’t know how it works, exactly but – we probably have to make sure we don’t think about wanting a baby. Together,” Tara said.

She blinked. More than once.

“Well, I wouldn’t have – I mean, I never thought that far in the future. I never really ever thought about kids anyway – but if I did, I’d think about them long after graduation. Like long-long. And… with you? I never… That’s a whole other thing to think about – that I never got around to – there was so much else - ”

“But don’t!” Tara said. “Don’t think about it. J-just in case.”

“I wouldn’t have! But then you said it – what if I start to think it might be a good idea? Will I get pregnant?”

Tara shook her head. “I don’t think so – Niamh and I… we had different mothers who loved each other and – You could get me pregnant, I guess. If I’m really one of them.”

“And we don’t even have to have sex?” she checked.

“Doesn’t sound like it. That wasn’t what their relationship was at all, they were more like best friends –”

“But if we do have sex…?” This was the important part.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Tara said. “According to Niamh.[/i]

“Oh, thank goodness.” She paused, considering what she just said. “I didn’t mean that to sound as… sexist as it did.”

Tara smiled. “I’m glad too. Just… don’t think kids.”

“Stop saying that!”

“Okay.”

“Good. Is there maybe a pill or a root you could chew or…”

“As a contraceptive for love?” Tara asked. “I don’t think it works that way…”

“Not sure I’d want to – since it’s you I’m loving on. So… your mom was a lesbian? Or bi or… something?” she asked, when she’d thought about it.

“No.”

“That’s taking friends with benefits to an entirely different level. But… I get it, I think. I mean, it’s pretty cool that you were born out of love. Didn’t have to be that way. In our world, I mean. It is still our world isn’t it? You’re not… staying here are you?”

Tara shook her head. “We’re going home, when we find out how.”

“Didn’t get to that, huh? Best laid plans and all that.”

“Sorry. I… I had things on my mind.”

She hugged Tara again. Yes, a lot of the certainty she’d had about her life had just been snatched away and replaced with something she’d probably thought was impossible until her long-lost sister showed up.

“No hurry,” she said. “Is there anything else I should know?”

“I’m not what you think I am,” Tara said.

“Marvellous? Sexy? Beautiful? Smart? Which of these things aren’t you?” After all, Tara had basically just admitted to being – sort of – from this place. And being something different by implication if not explicitly.

She could even get pregnant by being in love and both of them wanting it. Forget biology. That was some crazy stuff right there.

So… not being entirely what she’d seemed to be? Not a very big deal.

Blushing, Tara looked like she was about to deny all of them. So…

“But, actually I don’t care.”

“You don’t?”

“You can tell me but – as long as you’re not a preying mantis, I don’t care. Officially.” She called it out to the forest. “I don’t care what you are – preying mantis caveat excluded.”

“I’m really not a preying mantis.”

“And since you have Tara-boobs,” she said. “I really don’t care.”

“Willow,” Tara said, “Boobs aren’t a good enough reason not to care about something like that.”

“Even yours?” she asked, it provoked another little smile. She could add ‘Tara’s little smiles’ to the list of reasons not to care.

Nothing bad ever had a smile like that.

“Tara, we’re very good. You don’t need to say anything else about it unless you want to. Xander’s dating a vengeance demon. He used to date a Cordelia which is actually way worse than vengeance demon.

“Buffy dated a vampire. They’re technically dead. And her rebound was with sort of an asshole.

“And you – you make me feel loved. You make me feel good and you have these smiles I just adore and… Tara-boobs. Best as I can tell you had – and will have – all those things in our world too. So let me say it one more time…

“I. Don’t. Care.”

Tara didn’t hesitate, not because of the big hug she threw in there. Not even because of the kisses and the repetitions of that mantra, whispered this time and punctuated by those little kisses over her face.

“I’m a wood nymph,” the other woman said.

“I told you – I don’t – Wait, did you say you’re a nymph?”

Tara looked at her like she thought she might’ve just added ‘nymph’ to the banned list alongside ‘preying mantis’ and heavily implied ‘vampire.’ Stricken. Well, she needed to be persuaded otherwise. A kiss out to do it.

“Will you grow wings?” she asked after their lips parted.

“I don’t think so – I didn’t ask – I should – probably,” Tara said. “Wardrobe choices and all that.”

“Well, I hope not, because Tara-back is one of my second favourite things. Almost as good as Tara-front, which as we know features boobs and… Your sister looks like she’s still fully boobed. Nor did she have wings so… I think we’re good.”

“So you were looking at Niamh’s boobs?”

“She said she was your sister! Of course I was looking - No – wait, that came out wrong in terms of being any kind of excuse – I mean that I was looking for similarities and differences. If you’re interested in what I concluded… No, you’re not interested are you?” she asked.

If someone else had been here, they might’ve prodded her to stop digging that particular hole.

“No.”

Change the subject. “Ears?”

“Huh?”

“Will you get pointy ears?” she wondered as she ran her fingertip across the smoother curve of her girlfriend’s.

“I – don’t think so.”

“Shame,” she said. “The ears – your sister’s ears are kind of sexy and… Dammit, I should just throw myself in a hole and pull the earth in after me.”

“You’re impossible,” Tara said, trying not to laugh.

“It’s you! You made me start looking at girls in a whole new way and most of the time, you’ve been the only girl around who I’d look at but when your virtual twin shows up and claims to be your sister? What am I supposed to do when I’ve just been spending days and weeks considering the hotness of you, doofus?”

“Well,” Tara said. “I’m sorry to have made your life so complicated.”

“Boobs really aren’t that complicated,” she said, winking. “Oh, come on, Tara. Boobs. I know you love them too. Just admit the boobs. Come on… Come on. Or I’ll have to tickle you.”

“Alright! Alright… Boobs are… great.”

“Especially?” she prompted.

“Mine, apparently,” Tara teased, leaning into her so they could kiss again.

She was doing pretty well for a girl whose reality had just been remade. Literally.

“We can really have a child here?” she asked a little while later.

“Don’t think about it, not until I know how it works - ”

“No – I’m just talking theory. Trust me, I’m very familiar with the difference between theory and reality. It’s solid ground for me. I mean, I love you, but I’m not ready to have a baby with you. I promise and amongst other things, that’s going to be in my mind pretty much all the time we’re… doing anything.”

“Okay, I guess that should hold it…” Tara mused.

“But we could?”

“Maybe one each,” Tara said. “That’s what my Mom – and Niamh’s – had. I really don’t know – it’s complicated, apparently.”

“Sounds pretty simple, actually. But here’s the other question - we don’t have to, right?”

“A choice, born from love. But I’ll tell you this, if you get me up the duff. My Dad won’t be happy with you,” Tara said. “That’d really put a cramp on introducing you to him.”

“Ah, I see, he didn’t send his lesbian daughter to college to get pregnant, did he?”

“It was bottom of the list of things he was expecting,” Tara confirmed. “Same for me, I have to admit.”

“It wouldn’t be the best way to meet him,” she agreed. “Shotgun wedding? Do they do that in Montana?”

“If you got me pregnant, I think he’d arrange one for you even if they don’t,” Tara agreed.

“Might not be so bad.”

“Willow…”

She held up her hands. “In a few years or ten. Until then – let’s just say it’s nice to have… options.” Of course, all they had to do was get home and then – if they wanted to do that – come back and yeah, I pretty much said that I want to be with her in ten years, but if you’re in love and you know it? If you feel it? Why wouldn’t you want that?

“You’re really a nymph?” she asked.

“So Niamh said.”

“So… I guess that means I can be a nymphomaniac? Literally? With you – hmm?”

“You – you’re impossible.”

“No. I’m just improbable, beautiful girl,” she corrected. “Because look whose kissing you.” And she sealed it with that kiss.

************************

_________________
-------------------------
If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.

Chance in *Chance*
-------------------------


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 15 - 03/07/1
PostPosted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 8:42 pm 
Offline
3. Flaming O
User avatar

Joined: Tue Aug 12, 2014 10:23 am
Posts: 118
Topics: 9
Location: Universal City, TX
OMG YAASSSS! UPDATESSSSS!!!!! (Also dibs)

IM SO SORRY I MISSED AN UPDATE. SO SO SO SORRY. I had basketball and orchestra and it's all a big mess.

I laughed at the end when Willow was like "I can be a nymphomaniac." I like it. It's funny.

Dude like I don't even have words for how awesome this is. It's just so awesome. It's fabulous and awesome.

Can't wait for the next one!!!

-William

_________________
"Miss Edith speaks out of turn. She's a bad example and will have no cakes today"

I have a fish named Drusilla. He doesn't know, he thinks his name is Drew. Shhhh...

Spike: Are we feeling better, then?
Drusilla: I'm naming all the stars.
Spike: You can't see the stars, love. That's the ceiling. Also it's day.
Drusilla: I can see them. But I've named them all the same name, and there's terrible confusion.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 15 - 03/07/1
PostPosted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 9:15 pm 
Offline
9. Gay Now
User avatar

Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 8:45 pm
Posts: 985
Topics: 15
Location: Beyond the orbit of Mars and accelerating...
ARRRGH!

Teh internetz not worn meh aboot teh updatz!!!11!



:D

See that? That's my 'I knew it!' grin!

And what's wrong with pregnant lesbians, may i ask? :bounce
I'm really hoping they come back with two girls, one each :)

I mean, hey if you're going to put up with the hassle of pregnancy, it'd be great to have your other half going through it (for realz) with you.

You have inspired me to add more pregnancy to the story i'm writing.

And hey, nymphomaniac, i can get behind that :)
Tara... pretty.
Hehehehe :)

An boobs... yeah, boobs are very fun.

I really liked this week's episode.
I think i like last week a little better, but this was almost as good. :bow
I'm liking the way the story is unfolding.

Looking forward to more :P

R :flower


P.S: Twins! :flower :flower :kiss1

_________________
“All I feel is sunlight. All I hear is music.” Willow
How i Met Your Mother - By Ariel


My Story: Coming Home


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 15 - 03/07/1
PostPosted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:19 pm 
Offline
23. Volumey Text

Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:23 pm
Posts: 3794
Topics: 5
Salix - It's not - yet - compulsory to catch every post at the time it's made. So you are forgiven ;)

Now, see, the 'nymphomaniac' line is the whole reason that Tara has been labelled a 'Wood nymph' rather than a 'wood sprite' which may have been the original. TBH it was because I mis-remembered it first, thought of the nymphomaniac line and then was so into the idea of that one joke that I got rid of sprite entirely.

Now that I think about it I could easily have gone with sprite and had Willow ask if that was like a 'nymph' and when Tara said yes, done the same thing. Ah, well, hindsight!

Thanks so much.

Azirahael - I blame the internetz for everything so... yeah LOL

Not sure you can say 'I knew it' when you've clearly been hacking my laptop and reading ahead ;)

As for what is wrong with pregnant lesbians, apart from being a massive trope in it's own right these days, it'd be slightly irresponsible to go there on the back of knowing each other a few weeks AND while in the middle of their first year at college LOL.

And the point - as you should know if you read ahead in your hacking - is that they'll have a choice. In the future...

Though I agree on the 'share and share alike' side of it.

I'm certain, you see, that Willow is (and was in canon) slightly obsessive on the boob front (pun intended) because... isn't it obvious? LOL

Since you plainly must know what is coming, I can't surprise you ;)

But glad you're looking forward to it.

Thanks
Katharyn

_________________
-------------------------
If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.

Chance in *Chance*
-------------------------


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 15 - 03/07/1
PostPosted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 1:26 am 
Offline
6. Sassy Eggs

Joined: Mon Apr 25, 2005 2:59 am
Posts: 357
Location: Ontario, Canada
I've got a few things to say about this story: firstly, it's got me checking the board daily again for the first time in a long while. Secondly, if it's short on plot, it makes up for it by being long on humour.
Back a few chapters, when the singing chorus of little critters showed up, I was worried that next would appear 7 short guys singing "Whistle while you work." I prefer nymphs over dwarves any day.
Well done -- keep it coming.

Russ

_________________
"There will always be magic with you,” Willow said softly. “Always.” -- Jixer, "The Instruments Available."


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 15 - 03/07/1
PostPosted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 11:00 am 
Offline
23. Volumey Text

Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:23 pm
Posts: 3794
Topics: 5
Hey Russ - thanks! Glad to have you back on the board and more especially here :)

Humour is the main reason I probably write T/W these days because how often can you mix that with the love and not end up with smaltz? LOL

I wish I'd had the idea about the dwarves! One of them should definitely have made reference... ah, maybe another time though :)

Thanks again

PS - next part up in an hour or so.

Katharyn

_________________
-------------------------
If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.

Chance in *Chance*
-------------------------


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 16 - 03/10/15
PostPosted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 12:14 pm 
Offline
23. Volumey Text

Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:23 pm
Posts: 3794
Topics: 5
Title: Tara and Willow – The Blessed Unrest – Chapter Sixteen
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: Conversations with Niamh and each other.
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: So…we’ve met Niamh who’s very like Tara, at least in looks, but was raised very differently. Of course they’re not the same person. Sisters? Not actually. Not in human, biologically-centric, terms, but we’re not talking about human terms, are we? And if there was a DNA test, actually… yeah. So even in a weird biology way. It’s yet another reason to hang around. Another reason not to go home. Another reason not to be thinking about not much more than each other and when for goodness sake they’re just going to do it already?  Hopefully you all know what it’s like when you’ve got something on your mind 
Thanks to: People who tease me with theories they won’t post because they think they’ll give things away if they’re right. LOL. No, see, apart from Azirahael who must have hacked my files, there’s always a degree of being wrong. But when you’re wrong you’re wrong in wonderfully creative ways that are better than what I wrote LOL. Or, you know, you’re holding my past against me and suspecting imminent deaths. Truly. Not one in this! (Except the poor victims in Hush at the very start!)
PS – I’ve just prepped the part where they – finally – come together… So, not very far off now!



“What’s he like?” she asked Niamh.

“Who, Tara?”

“Your… I don’t know what word I should use. Your mate, I suppose.” Taking Miri’s term was the best option she had.

“Taller than yours,” her sister answered, smiling.

There weren’t so many people who wouldn’t be. But Willow was small and perfectly formed. Something she didn’t say right now, it was a phrase that probably meant nothing to Niamh. In fact, she wasn’t even sure where it had come from in her own world.

Strange, you had to step outside the familiar even to ask yourself those sort of questions.

“Ah, but does yours have red hair?”

“No. No, he does not,” Niamh admitted. “That’s very rare here. It’s considered a blessing.”

“You’d have thought…” she shrugged, genuinely surprised by that.

“What?”

“Nothing – I – my name, your name – Where I come from, it’s Celtic. You – we’re probably part of mythology. The Celts, they were the ones with the red hair – where it came from. I think. How it ended up in a Jewish American girl, that’s a different matter but…”

“You say strange things,” Niamh said, listening but not understanding. “I don’t know what a lot of those things mean even though I understand the words themselves. But I hear it in your voice that you love her. That’s something to hold onto.”

“Oh, I intend to,” she promised. “Really.”

A moment’s contemplation of the ‘holding’ part of that.

And some other ‘ings’.

“Who are we?” she asked, almost blurting it out. They were both brushing Niamh’s horse, which apparently was something Willow wanted no part of but there was a convenient stable located where the parking structure had used to be. Stall after empty stall. Her imagination was considerate to her sister’s needs, clearly.

“We are who we are,” Niamh said. “I don’t understand the question.”

Very like Miri in that regard, but Niamh’s perspective seemed very different to Miri’s. More nuanced, perhaps. Less youthful.

How to explain? “I mean, who were our mothers – here, I mean? I… I don’t know why she came to my world if…”

Look at it all… It was perfection.

“Art,” Niamh said. “Here, your mother was an artist but she took more pleasure in seeing the works of others than creating her own. It made her curious about the other worlds. Things she’d heard from those who’d been, from those who returned. I think she heard of a place. It was a long time ago, but could it perhaps be… Rome?”

“Rome, yes,” she said as something clicked into place and she wondered whether Momma had ever intended to tell her? Or was it a secret she’d always intended to take with her, sure that it wouldn’t matter? Because, really, did it?

“It was where she met my father… He was on leave from a ship docked in Naples and they met and - ”

“She didn’t come back to us for a long time. Long enough my mother worried she’d never see her again. We know there’s violence in the other places, or sometimes just a life so different it claims our kind. We’re an easily fascinated folk as a rule. Once we see something we enjoy it can be difficult for us to pull away…”

Willow…

That might be why she’d been drawn to her so quickly, but nothing Niamh had said suggested it was a bad thing. Not at all.

Staying with her, staying fascinated with her, couldn’t be bad.

“It serves us well enough, but – sometimes, in the other places, it saw us being trapped by shiny, pretty things. Our legends tell us that once this place teemed with the folk, but so many left for the other places – worlds as you call them - that… Now there are more of you out there than of us who remain.”

“That’s sad,” she said.

“Perhaps, but they’ve gone other places. Made their choices. We’re happy for them, but regret their absence at the same time. And besides, once in a while - you’ve come back to us.”

“I… Willow and I – we can’t stay here,” she told her sister.

“This is known. This – around us - is your creation, Tara, but it’s not your place. You were born in that other place, away from the folk. So was she. Love is perhaps the best reason you could leave here for.”

“I’m… I’m pleased that you understand,” she said. It felt like it could’ve been rude to say something like that.

“No one wants you to be anywhere you don’t want to be,” her sister told her so very reasonably. Was it even possible to upset her? “This isn’t your home. At least not yet. Perhaps one day it could be. But it isn’t now.”

“So… There is a way home and then a way back again? Without the danger? Without wishing for someplace safe?”

“Of course there is.”

Yes, because Mom had come back here to… Conceive me. And then went home again… Then she never returned.

Once she had two demanding children and a husband she loved – It was easy to suppose why even this place would no longer be a strong enough lure.

She probably always meant to…


“She loved him, you know? They fought, like couples do sometimes – I was never sure what about because they kept us away from it, but – she did love him.”

“I’m sure she did. But she loved my mother first. In another, different way. They were closer than sisters – but never lovers. Both of them were…oft-mated in their youth. Both of them enjoyed the company of men, do not think it the same as what you and our mate share.”

“No – I – I don’t think I need to hear that,” she said. It wasn’t something she was remotely curious about, but it was a surprise all the same. Somehow… Didn’t everyone suppose that their parents had only ever loved and been with each other?

“There’s no shame in it,” Niamh said. “Or do you think there is? Was that how you were raised?”

“It’s… It’s not the woman I knew,” she explained. But no, Momma hadn’t raised her to be a chaste good girl. Even if it had – almost – happened.

“Is any mother?”

“Yours, apparently.”

Niamh laughed, attracting the horse’s attention, it snorted and she smoothed his nose with her palm. “I found that out long after I was a girl. When we were both older and our relationship changed.”

“I… never got to know my mother that way. I was – when she died – It wouldn’t have been the kind of thing we’d have talked about. That would’ve been later, I guess. But… why didn’t she tell me about all this?”

“Perhaps because you might never have come here, might never have found out,” Niamh said. “Most don’t, sister. You would’ve lived your life and never missed this – missed us - because you’d never have known. It’s a simpler life, if not a better one.”

“But isn’t this who I am?”

“Perhaps you should ask your mate?” Niamh suggested. “Love opens eyes. Ask her whether she’s the sum of her experiences, or is there something to her which recognised a spirit in you that matched her own?”

She considered that, knowing which answer she preferred and understanding the point that Niamh was making.

“We call that ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’ back home,” she said. “People still argue about it – I think.”

“Yet you said the two of you just found each other. That there was no question once you did?”

She nodded. Okay, there’d been running involved but – Actually, Willow believed it had been that look. That smile. All the way back in Wicca Group. Before anything bad had happened.

Willow hadn’t understood what it was. Or why she – apparently – felt like she had. But that was what she said. Who could doubt her?

Certainly not me.

“So doesn’t that answer the question?”

“You make it sound so simple, much smarter people than me have debated it for years and years,” she said.

“Then they are probably blind.”

She smiled, wondering what Willow would think about that reaction to the process. “So… why aren’t we more alike?”

“We are alike, Tara.”

“But – I’d never say someone was blind because I disagreed with them,” she pointed out. It just seemed… rude.

“You mistake me, sister. I did not claim that because our lives had been different we would not be dissimilar. But the fundamental core of a person comes from within. Your mate loves you because she has always been able to – she has just been waiting for the chance and the moment when you would meet. And the same would be true of your waiting to love her.”

“It sounds like you’re talking more about something like fate.”

“Perhaps as good a word as any,” Niamh agreed after considering for a moment. “Perhaps the only one in your language that comes close. We understand ‘fate’ to be many different things, by many different names. But all of it - fate comes from within, Tara. Not from without.

“A person might be good or bad, loving or terrible but their fate is set. It will deliver them to the points in their lives where those decisions will be made.”

“You believe that?”

“I know it.”

----------------------------

“So let me sum this up,” she said, pacing. Tara was already in bed but BIG philosophy was on her mind. Yet another night might go by without them acting on these feelings they were talking about. “To get this straight in my head, I mean you’ll tell me if I’m wrong?”

“No, I mean, yes, I will. I mean - go ahead.”

“Niamh believes - ”

“And apparently she’s not alone,” Tara added.

“Niamh believes that we’re born with a fate? That fate determines whether we’re good or bad or whatever?”

“Well, what she really said was that she believes you were always waiting for me to come along,” Tara said.

That was a distinction, but logically that took you so far and then… You had to ask these questions.

“I do like that part, and I kind of get what she’s saying, I mean… Looking just at us? I’d never – really – thought about girls much. I’d certainly not given as much attention to boobs in my life as I have to yours in the last couple of days.”

Fact.

All sorts of attention.

Visual.

Tactile.

General awareness of their presence anywhere in reasonable proximity.

She’d have listened to boobs if she’d even thought there was a chance there’d been something to hear. Actually, lying with her ear against Tara’s bare chest was kind of like listening to her boobs.

And she’d done that.

Kind of.

Taste… well, there’d been some… licking. So, yeah.

All sense boob appreciation.

“I had noticed.”

“You were supposed to. So, to continue what I was saying before your chest distracts me to where I can’t think straight, there’s no real reason that I’d look at you that first time and just… feel it. When it hadn’t even occurred to me before. Why you? There was no reason for it at all. So I can see what Niamh’s saying, I might even agree.”

Tara nodded. “But if we did then agree with her on that, we’d have to agree with the rest of what she’s saying.”

“That’s right, because what she means is that we have no, real, free will. That we go through life connecting the dots between moments of fate,” she summarised to Tara’s approval. “I’m not sure I like that part as much.”

“It lacks boobs.”

“Oh, boobs might be involved, but not necessarily,” she clarified. “Dots that connected via boobs would naturally be better than dots that didn’t.”

“I’m pretty sure that Niamh’s point is that we only lack free will in hindsight,” Tara said, holding in a smile. She even smirked sexy. “It’s just that the choices we freely make were always those that lead us where we’re supposed to go.”

“So, at that moment we do what we think we have to or want to,” she suggested, “and only later do we have the perspective to say it was fate? So what happens if I try to do something different?”

“Then she’d probably say it was your fate to do that. From the perspective of the future.”

“Which is cheating on so many levels,” she said to Tara’s approval.

“And… even if you could, I guess you’d be acting against your own best interests. We choose - ”

“Based on who we are and what we know,” she finished. “Which doesn’t make it nature. Or fate.” Even though deliberately choosing to do something different was… a product of who she was and perhaps always had been. Someone who didn’t want to just connect the dots.

So what did that mean?

“And yet…” Tara seemed more willing to accept her sort-of sister’s version of things. So now she had doubts about the argument against it. A debate they were fated to have. Apparently.

All she could hope was that this trail of dots made its way back to boobs. I’m pretty confident on that one.

“What, baby?” she asked.

“There are plenty of people – people back home who’d tell you I made a choice to like girls. That I didn’t feel it from the very moment I understood it and myself. That, because I made that choice I’m a bad person. That I could make another one and be happier. But – I don’t believe that either.”

She chewed her lip, thinking for a moment. Ouch. That was a kick in the proverbials in debating terms. A low blow but a telling one. A negative side of choice and free-will? “Maybe I have a different perspective on that?”

“You think it was a choice? For you?” Tara seemed interested rather than defensive about it.

“No… Not that. I think I did make a choice to actually listen to what my heart and not just my heart – I listened to what my desire was telling me too, but I didn’t choose to like this beautiful girl with the lovely hair, the shy smile and eyes that would melt icebergs. I chose her, not to have the feelings in the first place.

“Choosing to act on what I felt.”

“Eyes that melt icebergs?” Tara asked, smiling.

“I know – I – I’ve had to come up with a lot of compliments lately and I’m really trying not to repeat myself too much. And how do you say something – eyes – are really warm without being hot?”

“I don’t know,” Tara said, “but that makes it sound like I have lasers coming from them.”

“Hmm, maybe, but I bet they’d be cute lasers.”

“You’ll really say anything, won’t you?”

“Almost,” she grinned. “But you have a sister… that’s like, big day wow moment.”

“Yeah…”

Ready now, she slipped under the cover. Next to the woman she loved who now – suddenly – had a sister. “Are you okay with that? Or just generally okay?”

“I…” Tara rolled and put her head on her shoulder. Obviously there was one response for that and she stroked her hair. Held her. “I’m okay with Niamh.”

“Really?”

“Really. If I have to have an elven-fairy sister in a strange world I made up then… I choose her. She’s… nice.”

“But?”

“The rest of it is just so huge…”

“I know,” she said. “But I’ve got you, baby. I’m here for you. And we’re not going anywhere until you’re ready.”

“Mmm,” Tara said, snuggling closer to her.

But by then it was too late, she was already feeling like a bitch, even if Tara wasn’t hearing it that way. What was she doing saying that Tara had to leave here?

Why could she assume that she’d still want to now?

So the snuggle was reassuring for both of them.

And, as expected, the dots did connect with the boobs.

----------------------------

“I think,” she said to Willow, “that you should be making jokes right now?”

“Hmm?” Willow asked.

“Nymph-iness?” she suggested. “Or something like that?”

After all, she was naked and ‘frolicking’ in the water in the pool where they washed. Seemed like it might be a nymphy thing to do in the morning. The kind of thing Willow would – should – have loved to point out.

Except there was something on her mind. Very clearly.

“Oh… Yes. Right. Nymph. Oh, I guess.”

Far from the shyness they’d displayed the first time they washed here, now it was an opportunity to enjoy… well, seeing each other. Even showing off a little, which she’d never been very good at but Willow seemed to appreciate all the same.

But this morning boobs weren’t distracting Willow.

Not even boobs reacting as boobs did to cold water.

Something was definitely wrong.

She crossed the pool, to where Willow was sat and just dangling her fingers in it. Yes, sure they could’ve bathed together, but in the past days they’d have wondered whether that was a) safe before they realised nothing here would harm them and b) now that Niamh and Miri were here, whether it was a place they wanted to be caught… frolicking.

Seemed like their frolics needed to be a little more private than they might’ve been otherwise.

Like in front of 200 birds, squirrels and assorted other animals in the morning? No. Night time was their time.

Mostly.

“Love?” She looked up at Willow, sat there by the pool. Touched her fingers.

“Hmm?”

“What’s wrong?” She took Willow’s trailing hand and gave it a squeeze.

“Just a little pre-occupied, I guess,” Willow said.

“That’s what you usually say when you’re watching my boobs,” she reminded her. “Not when you’re ignoring them.” It raised a smile, at least. And yeah, Willow took a look. “So what are you pre-occupied with?”

“I… Last night, I promised I’d be here for you.”

“You did.” What? Now she didn’t want to be? No… Willow wasn’t giving up on her. So what was it if not that?

“So, I said we didn’t have to go anywhere until you were ready?” Willow explained.

“And I appreciate it.” She kissed the tips of those fingers because… yeah.

“I know you do – that’s – Tara, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Again, she wasn’t fond of the obvious explanation for that and so she waited, letting Willow explain more. Trusting that it would come if she waited. And it did.

“What I should’ve said was, ‘we don’t have to go anywhere. Period.’”

She caught her breath because… Was that as huge as it sounded? Two things, two meanings and one was sweet and one was… wow.

“Is that why you’ve been awake all night?” she asked.

“You knew?”

“Every time I woke up, you weren’t snoring,” she teased, even though it was true. They weren’t loud, obnoxious snores – well not often – they were cute, endearing and actually reassuring. “But… What are you saying?” Because she wanted to be clear, wanted to understand what Willow was offering her? If she was reading this the same way that it was meant.

“I’m saying, you come from here and you have family here, you have a sister and… I shouldn’t be putting time limits on finding out about yourself. Meeting your family. Learning about them and your people – I shouldn’t be saying ‘we’re going home when you’re ready’ because… this is your home.

“Kind of.”

“And?”

“And… I guess I’m saying that I’m staying too – if you want me to. As long as you want me to. Because if there’s two places we can be, I’m always going to choose the one with you.”

There was only one obvious response to that. She pulled Willow into the pool with a squeal that echoed through the forest and caused birds to take flight.

Then she helped her up and kissed her. Kissed her hard.

And Willow didn’t seem to care she was all wet.

*************************

_________________
-------------------------
If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.

Chance in *Chance*
-------------------------


Last edited by Katharyn on Tue Mar 10, 2015 3:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 16 - 03/10/1
PostPosted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 1:57 pm 
Offline
9. Gay Now
User avatar

Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 8:45 pm
Posts: 985
Topics: 15
Location: Beyond the orbit of Mars and accelerating...
Dibs!

So, great episode, lots of fun, nice clearing up of some things.
And boobs. Boobs are good. Oh yes :)


Now, on to the deep stuff.

After arguing with an idiot theist, i had an epiphany about the 'it's a choice to be gay' thing.

It goes like this:
For your standard christian bigot, being attracted to your own sex HAS to be a choice.
If it wasn't, then it would be no more 'wrong' to be gay, than it would be to have red hair.
There is no wrongness attached to how you were born, it's not your fault.
And 'god' would be responsible for making you that way.
We've already decided that being gay is wrong, it fits with our prejudices (icky!) and our teachings.
And god can do nothing wrong.
Therefore god didn't do it.
Therefore you did, because there's only you and god in this story.
Therefore it has to be your fault, so you 'chose' to be gay.

Keep in mind, there's no experimental data to back this up, just logic and speculation.
But i think it's pretty solid.

Even when you point it out to them in a really obvious way, they usually don't get it though.
'Fella, if it's a choice, you should be able to decide to be gay, right now. Try it.'
Yeah, that usually gets ignored.

Anyway, very thought provoking episode! :bow
Bravo! :banana

More please? :bounce

R :flower

:kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1 :kiss1

_________________
“All I feel is sunlight. All I hear is music.” Willow
How i Met Your Mother - By Ariel


My Story: Coming Home


Last edited by Azirahael on Wed Mar 11, 2015 1:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 16 - 03/10/1
PostPosted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 2:01 pm 
Offline
9. Gay Now
User avatar

Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2010 12:51 pm
Posts: 922
Location: Kaskinen, Finland. Citizen of Kitopia
Yay for great update-y goodness... Now that they have sorted out the little difficulties, I'm sure Willow takes full advance of Tara's Nymph-yness...

_________________
We Few, We Happy Few, We Band of Buggered

Posting while nude improves your mood...


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 16 - 03/10/1
PostPosted: Wed Mar 11, 2015 12:48 pm 
Offline
3. Flaming O
User avatar

Joined: Tue Aug 12, 2014 10:23 am
Posts: 118
Topics: 9
Location: Universal City, TX
Yay! Updates!

I don't have much to say. So I'll just say I liked it. I liked it a lot.

-Will

_________________
"Miss Edith speaks out of turn. She's a bad example and will have no cakes today"

I have a fish named Drusilla. He doesn't know, he thinks his name is Drew. Shhhh...

Spike: Are we feeling better, then?
Drusilla: I'm naming all the stars.
Spike: You can't see the stars, love. That's the ceiling. Also it's day.
Drusilla: I can see them. But I've named them all the same name, and there's terrible confusion.


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 16 - 03/10/1
PostPosted: Thu Mar 12, 2015 12:04 pm 
Offline
23. Volumey Text

Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:23 pm
Posts: 3794
Topics: 5
Azirahael - Thanks!

The boobs line is really an inspiration LOL

The 'choice' thing was important to me. I do believe in an element of choice - as Willow says - which is the choice to act on what you know when society still expects you to conform (and will assume that you do unless shown otherwise). That's a big enough choice and the only one that you can really point at.

I think the religious logic you point out has a lot of truth to it, though they wouldn't put it in those terms because some people would just accept without even questioning the logic. That is - after all - faith (small F)

And yes... more will be coming :)

Thanks

Zampsa - 'Full advantage' is coming very soon. And for more than one episode.

:D

Thanks.

Salix - Thank you very much :)

Katharyn

_________________
-------------------------
If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.

Chance in *Chance*
-------------------------


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 17 - 03/13/15
PostPosted: Thu Mar 12, 2015 9:48 pm 
Offline
23. Volumey Text

Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:23 pm
Posts: 3794
Topics: 5
Title: Tara and Willow – The Blessed Unrest – Chapter Seventeen
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: Niamh puts Willow on one of those big, bitey things. You can imagine maybe she’s not totally happy with that.
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: I have form. I know this. I have a certain set of readers who – thankfully – come back story after story (bless you!). Having read my stories and the twists and the betrayals and my ideas of surprises etc, they expect certain things. They have ‘dead-pools’ where they try to decide who I’ll kill off. Yes, I am guilty. I have done all these things (either when I’ve REALLY made you care or I REALLY hate the character and just want rid of them early on). So I wonder, as I redraft this, whether they’re a) reading and b) if they are whether they’re privately convinced I’m about to find a way to kill characters who aren’t even present. If there’s a big, evil plot I’ve hidden until… NOW? There really, really isn’t. Not this time.
This is like a character based plot-what-plot story, without the smut. Must be kind of disappointing really on so many levels! LOL. It occurs to me that – after this – maybe you will think I’m past it and I won’t get you to believe I could kill someone who annoys me… Hmm. Must give that some thought, but not in this story!
Thanks to: For the – presumably bored – dead-poolers.



“Niamh.”

She found Tara’s sister on her horse, trotting through what had once been the college quadrangle. The sharp tap of the hooves against the stone here had given her away. There seemed no real urgency to her progress either.

Someone else who wasn’t going anywhere then.

“Mistress Willow.”

“I’m not her mistress – oh, you mean… Hi.”

“Hello,” Niamh said patiently. She had the same sort of little smile as Tara, but it wasn’t quite so pretty or beguiling.

Clearly there was no substitute for the real thing, even when weird magical genetics were at work to make the pair so similar in other ways.

“I’m glad I found you, I wondered if we could talk?”

“I was just about to head west,” Niamh said, without actually ruling out that talk.

“You’re not coming to see Tara today?” She was a little surprised, if that was the case. Who wouldn’t want to see Tara?

Maybe someone who saw those same features in the mirror every day? Just with pointy ears and a little less adorability.

“I’m here to explore after all,” the mounted woman said. “I will see Tara when I return. I don’t expect she’ll be going anywhere without you.”

“Oh… Well, I – kind of wanted to ask you some things. Without Tara actually… being here.” Now how would Niamh treat that? A betrayal – because sneaking around even a teensy bit felt like… Yes, I feel bad, even though I told Tara where I was going.

And why.


“Then ride with me, Willow,” Niamh said, reaching down to offer her a hand up.

She laughed. She had to. Because… Niamh wanted to pull her up. There. Onto a horse. Riding?

A horse.

She laughed again, but then it died in her throat as she saw that Niamh wasn’t joking at all.

“Ohh. Wait. You’re actually serious?”

“Yes. Ride with me. We will talk.”

“No, see - I… I have this thing with horses,” she said. “I respect their space and they don’t bite me. I really can’t respect their space if I’m… riding them.”

My horse will not bite you,” Niamh assured her. The horse even looked at her, as if to say the same thing. Or actually something closer to ‘why would I bite you – you don’t look tasty’? “Come.”

“Won’t it be too heavy with two of us?” she asked hopefully.

“You weigh little more than I do,” Niamh said.

“I weigh less, I think – but isn’t that too much?”

“No. Come.” The hand was still outstretched.

“How about I just walk? You can talk down at me. That’d be okay, I don’t mind being talked down to.” Given the alternatives and all. Just staying back far enough to avoid being kicked. That was the other thing to watch out for. Big, bitey teeth and big, dangerous hooves.

“Willow, I will be going too fast for you to walk, once away from this stone. I seek the open water this morning,” Niamh said, stretching for her again.

“The coast? About ten miles that way…” If the coast here was in the same place as it was in the parallel land back home. Since Tara had admitted to going to the beach many times, seemed like it should be.

“Come or stay, Willow,” Niamh said, still offering her hand.

“I hope this is worth it,” she murmured to herself, circling around front to stare the horse in the eyes before agreeing to grasp Niamh’s hand. She couldn’t see actual malice in its eyes. Doesn’t mean it’s not there, just because I can’t see it..

Once she gave Niamh her hand she was almost being swung upwards and just about managed to get her leg over in time to - “You’re much stronger than you look.”

There. That wasn’t so bad. Though something seemed…

“And you are backwards.”

“Oh… right… umm.”

The dismount wasn’t exactly dignified. Nor without fear of being kicked. More of a slide and a fall than a neat move.

The second time they tried was a little more successful in terms of getting the direction right.

So she found herself pressed up against Niamh’s back, straddling a whole lot of horse. Which was something she’d never expected to do and was never ever going to mention because there was way too much potential for sounding really, very dirty.

Actually, it was potential for whatever was beyond and way out the other side of dirty.

“Better,” Niamh said.

“Yes, thanks,” she replied and then realised it hadn’t been a question but rather a statement of fact.

Ah, you might be able to ride a horse, missy, but can you hack Sunnydale Light and Power with a Macbook and a 128K landline? I think not. Brains will always out over straddling and grasping with your thighs.

Right?


“There are – ahhh – Oh… There are a few things I wanted to ask you,” she said, trying to focus on getting her words out rather than the rather peculiar motion of the animal between her legs, the jut of its spine against… well, rather intimate areas and at the same time not clinging to Niamh like the frightened child she assumed Tara’s sister must consider her to be.

And, actually, she thought she was doing rather well so far.

Sure, it had only been a few steps at a slow walk but… Yay me.

Also – she thought as she adjusted one hand – another objective is to not grip Niamh in certain areas best left for gripping Tara.

What did you do today, Willow?

Well, Tara, I straddled a rather large animal and groped your sister. What about you?


“Eeek!” she almost screamed as Niamh picked up the pace. “I mean – oh - it goes faster – it doesn’t have to go faster does it?”

Was that how Tara would laugh when she was taking advantage of her insecurities?

Probably – she hoped – Tara never would.

But yes, it’d sound a little like that. Apart from their accents, there were some similarities between the sound of Niamh and Tara’s voices. Their verbal manners.

“Ask your questions,” Niamh told her, ignoring how tightly she must’ve felt she was being held onto.

At least now her hands were in the right places instead of the very wrong ones though. Lesson learned.

“I – I don’t know if I can – ooh - do this!”

“Of course you can. Ask.”

“Please – can we just – I feel – I think if I do anything but hang on I might be sick…” Shaking up this morning’s papple breakfast wasn’t like a high risk food but… The motion was extraordinary. Not at all what she’d expected.

Or even feared.

Niamh just went faster, but allowed her to be silent and focused on staying on board. Determined over anything else not to puke down Tara’s sister’s back.

And her own front, because yes… they were pressed pretty close.

Eventually, after what seemed like several hours but couldn’t have been, Niamh slowed and the wind stopped rushing through her hair and her life stopped flashing before her eyes. And…

“Ow…” she said as she slipped to the ground.

Or ‘fell’ might’ve been a more accurate way of describing it. This dismount was lacked any semblance of grace even though she’d been the right way around this time.

Falling had never felt so good and – once she thought the world had stopped moving – she opened her eyes and looked around. That roaring she could hear was… The coast. Familiar yet different, like most things here. But this time more familiar than not.

What had been carparks and roads and desert was forest here, almost up to the cliffs. But the shape of the coastline… That beach down below. Tara must’ve been here enough, maybe walked on that beach, to know it well enough to bring it into existence.

And, in their world, just down a bit was the sewage outflow from the town that the swimming team had supposedly left through. Exiting Sunnydale’s overlarge sewer system. Here though… Here the waters were clear and blue except where they crashed against the rocks where white foam bubbled until the next wave came along.

“Thanks for - ” Letting me down? Not letting me get eaten by a horse? “Bringing me here. It’s… pretty.” That wasn’t doing justice to it at all, but relief was taking her words away.

“Is your world like this?” Niamh asked, staring out at the magnificence of it. She seemed just as impressed.

“Drier – our part,” she replied. “But the coast, the ocean are… Yeah, pretty much like this.”

“I’ve never seen so much water,” Niamh said. “It’s why I wanted to come.”

“Really?”

“We… We’re wood nymphs,” the other woman gently reminded her. “Salt water is not our realm.”

“That’s one of the things I wanted to ask you – what does that mean? A wood nymph, I mean?”

Niamh hesitated before speaking, giving her question a moment’s thought. “What does it mean to be human?”

“I see,” she said, understanding the futility of the question. “I suppose I meant, what are the differences between me and Tara.”

“You are human. She is a nymph.”

That simple, huh?

“But what does that mean – how does that manifest?”

“You have power,” Niamh said.

She nodded. “Some, yes.”

“I can feel it. But it is alien to this place. Tara’s comes from here. From places like it in your world. Yours… comes from somewhere else.”

“Is that it?” It seemed like a small thing, even though she had no explanation for where her power might actually have come from.

“Yes. Tara – no one in your world will be able to tell the difference,” Niamh told her. “Though here, we look at the two of you and you’re completely different to each other.”

“So where we are makes the difference?”

“Of course.”

“Sorry,” she said. “This isn’t obvious to me – I guess you grew up knowing all this. Me… kind of new to it. Kind of new to a lot of things recently.”

“Ah. Tara told me that it’s unusual for two women in your world to mate?”

“I… don’t know the numbers,” she replied. “I probably should look them up. I probably would’ve done, if I’d been at home. But – it’s fair to say it’s more unusual than usual.”

“And you hadn’t…?”

“No.”

“Don’t hurt her,” Niamh said.

She stopped, shocked by the very idea. Or that Niamh thought she needed to say so Nothing was further from her mind. Nothing that could do that was further from her mind. Not any of it. “I won’t. I promise. Wait… is there a wood nymph vengeance cult I should worry about?”

“No.”

“That’s a relief and… ow.” Trying to sit down, after the ride, revealed a new kind of specifically localised pain.

That too seemed to amuse Niamh. “I no longer feel it.”

“You’ve got a numb ass then, or a tough one?”

“Tough, I suppose,” Niamh admitted and walked over to the cliff edge, threading her way out over a narrow path that fell away on either side and looking back at her from the top of the narrow promontory. “I thought you had questions?”

“I have questions here,” she said. “There… there I have paralysing fear. That could collapse into the ocean at any moment. Just look at it.”

“I doubt it. It’s old. It will be many winters before the ocean takes it.”

“Doubt isn’t the same as knowing,” she said under her breath.

Tara, baby, I’m doing this for you. Remember that if I fall, get dashed on the rocks and drown. Then she followed Niamh. With less grace and much, much slower but… she did follow.

“You did that for her, didn’t you?”

“Are you reading my mind?” she wondered. That was pretty spot on.

“No. But you hated the very idea of this and yet… here you are. Something greater than mere curiosity motivates you. And your questions.”

“Mere? No, you’ve not seen my curiosity,” she said, finding a smile despite the precarious position. “But – yes, I did it for… There’s things I want to know, Niamh.”

“I told you, there’s nothing you need to worry about Tara being a nymph. It’s the source of her power, but she is as she appears to be.”

“Good to know, but I was wondering about - ”

“If you were worried about what’s inside her, perhaps you ought to… look?”

“Not very practical – Oh…” Blushes. Obviously. “So you have innuendo here, too?”

Niamh looked – as both she and Miri sometimes did – as if she was processing a new word, coming to understand it as she absorbed it and then nodded. “Yes, we do. We have entire stories, epic tales where every other line is nothing more than a play on words for exploring each other… Something you and Tara had not yet finished doing.”

“Did she tell you that?” she challenged, hoping it wasn’t the case.

Hoping that Tara didn’t feel the need to get advice from her sister about that because…

Well, because.

“No. You did. I see energy and yours… It’s been a while for you. Not as long as Tara but… It’s considered unhealthy here. To hold onto it for too long.”

“And you can see that too?” Because, if there were some things you didn’t want your sister in law to be able to read. That was right up there as one of them.

“Yes.”

“Can Tara?”

“If she chooses to look and understands that she can,” Niamh said. “For me it’s obvious and natural. We see the patterns as life flows through nature. Every bird, every tree, every blade of grass. You. Me. All of it. We see the energy and how it collects, how it flows. In you, for example… It’s… stuck. It just stops.”

“Where?” she squeaked, sure that – really – she didn’t want to know.

“Here,” Niamh said, reaching out to touch a totally unexpected spot considering the question.

Unexpected like her head, in case anyone was wondering.

“Here is where it stops.”

“So you’re saying I think too much?” she asked. Actually, she was proud of her thinking. It was one of her best features. But, she had to concede that… Maybe it was the one that was holding her back. With Tara.

“Both of you do,” Niamh confirmed. “She’s no different. But I say sometimes you should just ‘do’ rather than think. Is this not so in your world?”

“We get closer to doing,” she said. “We do. We’ve been getting close to ‘do’ and closer and closer to ‘do’, actually, for some time. Sometimes we think should just ‘do’ and then we don’t because…”

The reasons had seemed sound at the time, but now that she thought about it… Maybe… Do.

Because blocked energy flow. Couldn’t be a good thing, could it?

I take so little persuading? Some pointy-eared nymph tells me that I should be ‘doing’ my girlfriend and I just fall for it?

Actually… Yes. Because, hey, that’d been part of her desires for some time now. Too long, perhaps.

“We’ll probably try to get right on that,” she said, hoping to draw that phase of the conversation to a close but her next topic wasn’t likely to fare any better. But it did have the virtue of being planned. “So… what’s this about Tara and I having babies. I mean, with each other?”

Because a girl needed to know. A girl needed to take precautions.

This didn’t sound to be the sort of thing there was a Plan B for and the nearest chemist was… Well, it seemed to be a spice garden. Make of that what you liked.

“Ah. You do want children with her?”

“Children? Niamh – as we just established, I haven’t had Tara yet! In amongst the lack of ‘doing’ there wasn’t any ‘having’ going on either. In either direction, because I’m not saying that I’d be doing or having her or that she’d be doing or having me. I think – first time – she might be doing the doing and the having but I like to think that I’d be doing some doing and having of my own – that, actually, we’ll do and have each other but… umm… I’ve known her maybe a month now and… children? Why would I have even thought of that?”

“I’ve already told you that you’re a strange woman,” Niamh said. “Haven’t I?”

“Most people do,” she replied. “Children… I don’t know. We’d need to talk. And graduate first. Maybe live a little. I don’t have to decide now do I? No, I don’t, because… I understand there’s such a thing as turkey basters.”

Another pause, another moment where Niamh – somehow – picked up the meaning of the rarer words in the language. A neat, magical trick. But then there was a look of horror on her face.

“What do you do with that?” Tara’s sister asked.

“Well, I’m no expert but – Oh, use your imagination.”

“Why?”

“Because we don’t make magical babies out of love where I come from!” She snapped a little more than she intended to. “For humans it needs… well, it needs – on some level – a man and a woman and if you want to mostly take the man out of the equation, probably a magazine, a sealable container and a turkey baster. I think.

“I’m sure even here you know where that has to go.”

“And you would choose that rather than a child that was both of yours?” Niamh asked, still fairly well up the horrified scale.

“No! I wouldn’t choose that – especially because… Well, unless Tara knows some attractive geniuses who wouldn’t mind helping out then… well, we might be stuck with Xander and that’s not – Why am I even thinking about this?”

Niamh looked at her. Like that was exactly her point.

“Willow, if you love her – if you want children, then you must come here. Not now. But in the future. You must come here. Together.”

“And I’d… Me too?” She gestured at her belly, the universal symbol for ‘bun in the oven.’

Niamh shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps – here – perhaps not. But Tara, certainly.”

“So I can’t – maybe I can’t carry our child – if there was going to be one, but it’d still be mine?”

“If you love each other. If you wish it to be so… yes. It’s been known amongst those returned to the folk.”

She mused on that for a moment. “That is much more appealing than anything that’s come from Xander being anywhere near either of us,” she said and realised she was speaking out loud.

“Who is this Xander?”

“He’s sweet. He’s a friend. But… not the sharpest tool in the box. Not that – I never let him near my box even – Just – don’t go there. One day I’m sure he’ll be a great Dad but… Not of my kids.”

“Then your course is clear,” Niamh said, like she’d won the argument they hadn’t even really been having.

“You said that Tara and I should come here together – so you mean back here, which obviously means… we can leave? Right?”

“Of course you can.”

“But… how?”

Niamh shrugged. And that was just like Tara too. “I don’t know, I’ve never left.”

“But – then how do you know we can?”

“Our – Tara’s mother came and went freely for many years before Tara and I were born,” she said. “By her choice.”

“So Tara can take us back?” After all, if they could get pregnant by wanting it and being in love then going home should be a cinch. Right?

“You came together.”

“Not yet – Oh… You mean - Yes, yes we did.”

“And you will need to leave together. I suppose you just… want it,” Niamh said.

“It’s not that simple.”

“If you say so, I told you, I don’t know.”

“We – we didn’t know where we were, we – We didn’t want to leave,” she realised. “All this time, we never wanted to leave. Not really. There was always something. The place, Miri, you. Us…”

Always a reason to stay.

Perhaps it’d been rooted in fear at the start, returning where they’d come from and what they’d find there. The Gentlemen waiting for them… What might have happened to their friends?

Buffy could’ve lost. It was possible. Slayers… died. And this time, it would’ve been in silence… not even a quip to mark her passing.

No. Buffy had lived this long. That hadn’t happened.

But later… a little more selfishly, everything here was perfection. From Tara to the world itself to there being with so many things to discover and find out to… Tara again.

She liked to think Tara would feel the same way about her.

Maybe we really never wanted to leave for all we talked about needing to know. Maybe we just knew that one day we would.

“What if we wanted to stay?” she asked.

“This is Tara’s home.”

“And me?”

“You are Tara’s.”

“So… I’m welcome here is what you’re saying?” she checked.

“Of course.”

“And will I ever talk to animals and – make a dress change colour just because I want it to and - ”

Niamh shook her head, but the news was better than that gesture suggested. “Some, perhaps. But you are not like us. I’m sure in your world there are things I could not do?”

“You could pass unnoticed at a Star Trek convention,” she said under her breath. After all, the ears… “No, not really but… I could bring clothes and I don’t mind Tara picking fruit for me or generally waiting on me. I could get used to that. Again.”

Niamh’s smile showed she realised that was all a joke. But the next question was deadly serious.

“Do I have to ride horses?” she asked, looking over at the offending beast as it looked up from its grazing. “If I stay here would I have to do that?”

“No.”

“Good… Then it’s definitely an option.”

“I’m glad. My sister loves you, Willow.”

“I love her too.”

“Then why does the place even matter? Why not turn thought to yourselves and your relationship?”

Good question.

****************************


PS - Next part... no more waiting.

_________________
-------------------------
If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.

Chance in *Chance*
-------------------------


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 17 - 03/13/1
PostPosted: Thu Mar 12, 2015 11:05 pm 
Offline
9. Gay Now
User avatar

Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 8:45 pm
Posts: 985
Topics: 15
Location: Beyond the orbit of Mars and accelerating...
Dibs!

Also: Woohoo!
Answers!

Sort of, anyway.
I guess if you're not a lorekeeper, or their version of a scientist, you don't know how stuff works. It just works.

To be honest, as real and story appropriate as the attitude is, that attitude has always annoyed me.
"I'm just gonna rely on this thing, build important parts of my life around it even, and i don't know how it works, exactly what it does, or even its capabilities. Because... meh.'

I imagine willow would want to know too.
"So i just stand here and wish really hard that she's pregnant? What if we're dreaming? What if we start thinking about it while we're y'know, busy?. This could happen by accident!"

Niamh's comments about the ocean, make me wonder what the rest of Faerie looks like.
I'd imagine a lot of greenery, but that's not necessarily the case.

anyway, it was interesting watching Willow dealing simltaneously with Niamh, her horse issues, and horrible embarrasment.
All more-or-less at the same time.
Poor Willow.
Snuggles will make it better.
Especially as it's all in the name of good health :P

Heeheehee, def looking forward to the next bit.

I might have to re-read this episode to pick up on the subtlties.
And possible typos :)

_________________
“All I feel is sunlight. All I hear is music.” Willow
How i Met Your Mother - By Ariel


My Story: Coming Home


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 17 - 03/13/1
PostPosted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 2:43 am 
Offline
9. Gay Now
User avatar

Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2010 12:51 pm
Posts: 922
Location: Kaskinen, Finland. Citizen of Kitopia
Yay for excellent update-y goodness... I'm glad that Willow got somethings sorted out... Willow definitely needs serious Tara-loving after all that horsie riding... I guess later they meet with Nymph elders who can tell exactly how that traveling between real word and faerie world works...

_________________
We Few, We Happy Few, We Band of Buggered

Posting while nude improves your mood...


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 17 - 03/13/1
PostPosted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 12:33 am 
Offline
23. Volumey Text

Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:23 pm
Posts: 3794
Topics: 5
Azirahael - I like your explanation better than mine... 'I never did it so what does it matter' A bit like I don't know - exactly - what it takes to send something into orbit. Other people handle that so I can have my satellite TV :)

I am not sure that Niamh is 'meh' about it. As she says, it's not something that happens that much. More of a curiosity than anything else.

Willow's obviously going to obsess about the 'accidental pregnancy' cos... yeah LOL

The rest of 'faerie'... Well, in a way it is what it's been made to be. I'd imagine that much of it is woodsy, but anything people brought with them. Probably there's no 'raw' state (or at least not left) and so it's not a world that has to make geological sense (and other -ogicals.)

And yes... Willow will make more of the horse than anything else.

Tara might have to help her out with her aches and pains. :D

Zampsa - Don't worry. Willow will get all the Tara loving she can handle, and partly out of sympathy for the horse thing :) As for your guesses... I can't say, of course LOL

Thanks both!

Katharyn

_________________
-------------------------
If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.

Chance in *Chance*
-------------------------


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 18 - 03/16/15
PostPosted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 12:01 pm 
Offline
23. Volumey Text

Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2005 1:23 pm
Posts: 3794
Topics: 5
Title: Tara and Willow – The Blessed Unrest – Chapter Eighteen
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: So… Willow’s back. She’s sore and… finally.
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: I’ve been teasing them for long enough (and possibly you), finding all sorts of reasons why what was obviously needing to happen just didn’t. That stops… This isn’t a smut fic (much as I am capable of it!) so things don’t get all that… graphic. But I think you’ll see enough to know that everything’s just as it should be.
I referred to a great line from a vlog a few parts ago, once I intend(ed) to use once we got to the appropriate point. Well, I’ve delayed it. I think there’s a better way to use it… (Yeah, I am really building this up too much! It’s just a line!)
Thanks to: Everyone who was only hanging around for this. Don’t leave us now!



“Oh, Willow!”

Watching her girlfriend stagger back, barely even able to manage the last of the steps, was the possibly the worst thing that had happened here. Which kind of said something about how well everything in an alien world had been going.

Until this point at least. “What happened?”

“Niamh,” Willow gasped. “Niamh happened.”

“Niamh? Why? What did she do?”

“She… She put me on a horse, Tara. She put me on a horse! Twice. She put me on it… twice. I thought it was over… and she put me back on it.”

“A horse?” Really? That was all? Willow was moving like she was a crippled old lady back on her feet after a hip replacement. Not…

“It was a big horse. You’ve seen it. There was a lot to straddle! What? What are you smirking at? This is not something to smirk about, Tara Maclay! Really. I’m in all kinds of pain here. I mean it! I’ve straddled more than I ever want to…”

Of course that just made her smirk even more. Which – in spite of her discomfort – set Willow off because she loved something in her smile. Really, really loved it. Even a smirk, it seemed.

Maybe especially a smirk.

“Oh, poor, baby. Come and sit down.”

“I… I don’t know if I can,” Willow complained. “My butt is… I only know it’s there because it hurts so much. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me, Tara?”

Willow collapsed onto the soft bed. Face down too.

“I… I didn’t – I didn’t know,” she said, playing along.

“How could you not know who could possibly not know about this?” Even muffled, the distress was very evident.

And she did have sympathy, but it was kind of funny too.

“Because – I guess I first rode a long time ago. I was just a kid.”

“And you went again?” Willow’s voice was muffled.

“I went a lot. When I was big enough I had a horse of my own. She’s still out at the farm,” she said. “Her name’s Daisy.”

Willow rolled, then moaned as it tweaked her sore butt. “Daisy? Really? I thought Daisy was what you called a cow?”

“I don’t know about that, I just liked ‘Daisy’.”

“And you rode this… Daisy?”

Willow face turned to look at her, though the rest of her stayed flopped there. Exhausted and pained.

“Uhuh.”

“First, I’m insanely jealous – of Daisy. Not you. But second, why?”

“Well, it didn’t hurt and – well, I have to admit that sometimes, at a gallop, it could also feel… umm, kinda good,” she said, knowing she was blushing but also that Willow wouldn’t believe her anyway. She was too caught up in her discomfort for that.

“No. No. See, there’s nothing good here. And faster!? That’d just make it rub more.”

“Yes, but…” No. Now wasn’t the time to explain. Maybe there’d never be a good time to explain that. Not even to your girlfriend. “On the bright side, you’ve done it now.”

Willow groaned.

“So did you manage to talk to her about the things you wanted to?” That was why she’d gone out after Niamh at all.

Willow nodded. “It was – strange. She looks so much like you, especially when she pushes her hair back – and then you see the ears and that’s different but… She’s a very different person to you but at the same time there’s these little things.”

“Like what?”

“Like… She teases me too.”

“I don’t tease you!”

“What?! You’re the biggest tease… Oh, wait – I didn’t mean that like it sounded. I mean – Oh, I’m too tired and too sore. Look, you know what I mean.”

“You are very easy to tease though,” she said.

“So you admit it then?”

“I… Maybe I’m overcompensating,” she said. “I mean, most of my life people have been teasing me. And not always in a nice way. So…”

“Now you’re making up for it because you’ve found someone so smitten she’ll put up with it?” Willow suggested.

“I didn’t mean to. I can stop - ”

“Don’t you dare! What makes you think I want you to change one thing about you?” Willow asked. “Or about us?”

“You didn’t sound like you liked the teasing?”

“I could’ve done without Niamh doing it. With you… It’s just adorable. Like I said. Smitten. I’m a smitten kitten. Wait – we have to skirt around feline things, right?”

She nodded, but actually was thinking more about what Willow had said.

Adorable? Really? “Maybe I should try harder, I don’t think I can be doing it right if it’s ‘adorable’,” she said. Teasing probably shouldn’t really be ‘adorable’. Right?

“I think the adorable part comes from it being you. Whatever you were doing, pretty much it’s going to be adorable, wonderful or at least really, really interesting,” Willow said, looking back at her. “Give me a massage?”

The whimper and the pout were so pathetic that she was half way to doing what Willow wanted before she even thought about it.

“I… I never did that before?” she said, surprised to even be asked, if not that Willow needed it.

“That’s okay,” Willow said. “I never had one either. So there’s zero expectations. But – right now – I just feel like, I need a massage. I’m aching, and the parts that aren’t aching are hurting.”

“Sounds bad.”

“I know you can make it better,” Willow said with a hopeful smile. Talk about looks that made you melt, as Willow had on many occasions. That was hers. The hopeful smile. When she wanted something – even if it was just to know – Willow got this look. Her eyes lit up, her smile was… And the lips were…

Her sigh wasn’t one of resignation. It was because there weren’t proper words.

And Willow knew it.

“I don’t have any oils,” she said. “I’m pretty sure there’s supposed to be oils.”

“Well, while that does sound fun – but I think it’d probably just make a mess anyway. It’s your fingers I want – Oh… Wait. Oh, look – can I stop correcting inadvertent innuendo, Tara? How about I don’t correct myself and we take your teasing as read? How about that for a plan?”

She considered the offer for a moment. “No… Actually, I think I prefer to tease you. And hear you realise what you said.”

Willow rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. It’s your hands I want.”

“Actually – that’s not entirely better,” she said through a laugh.

“What? Why?”

“There – I never – well, there’s a thing where – No. I… I’m not going to say it, but… fingers, hand – it all… Umm, causes the same problem. I mean, in terms of saying things you really didn’t mean to.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“And… people enjoy that?”

“I don’t know but – I guess they must or else they’d… not and it wouldn’t be a thing, I guess…”

Now she was officially out of her depth. Knowing that something existed wasn’t the same as understanding why or appreciating it the same as the aficionados.

“Well… Leaving that aside, because ouch – I think – I… No, I’m not getting over that any time soon. Are you really sure?” Willow asked.

“There was… The campus LBQT group had a – there was a talk…” she revealed.

“You went?!” Willow probably sounded more shocked than she should’ve done. A talk was all about knowledge. Something she was supposed to be very into.

“No, but I’d been to some others and they handed out flyers at the one before - ” Actually, she’d been more than shocked to discover people talked about that kind of thing than that they’d do it.

“What – what was it called?” Willow asked. “The talk, I mean.”

“Umm, I think it was ‘Fisting – Are you doing it right?’”

“Did people go?” Willow asked, eyes wide.

“I… don’t know, I told you – I didn’t.”

“Ouch…” Willow said again. “And I thought riding a horse was bad but… You have a dirty mind, Tara Maclay, to even think about that when I asked you for a massage.”

“I didn’t! I was just – correcting you when you thought you’d said something innocent.”

“No, you just pointed out that I’d – inadvertently – said something even dirtier! Because you knew about it and your mind went there. For once, this wasn’t me. It was all you.”

“Yours would’ve gone there,” she said – feeling just a little defensive – as she sat by Willow’s feet. “If you’d known. You know it would.”

“Maybe but Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda. You were the one who did. Actually, you’re right. We shouldn’t skip the teasing. It’s fun.”

Blushing, she slapped Willow’s butt.

“Youch!”

“Pants off.”

“What?”

“If you really want a massage, you have to undo your pants,” she instructed. “Get them off.”

“Top too?” Willow asked, sounding hopeful.

She didn’t even dignify that with an answer, instead she tugged on Willow’s jeans when she’d undone the button and the zipper, baring her almost-fresh washed – and only pair of - underwear. Knowing Willow had spent yesterday running around commando style while they dried had been… interesting too.

Especially when Willow had picked the shortest, most easily blown dress that had been in her wardrobe here.

Luckily Miri hadn’t been around, she might’ve fetched Niamh to show her a natural wonder…

But what choice did they have? Wash day meant interesting times here…

“You’re enjoying that, aren’t you?” Willow asked, lifting her butt and hips up a little to help them get stripped off.

She briefly considered denying it but, even after so short a time, Willow knew her too well for that. “It’s a new perspective. Oh, ouch…”

“What?” Willow asked.

“Umm, you’ve got some… red marks, honey.”

“Marks?” Willow asked. “It feels like – Oh, what’s the use. Anything I say you’ll just turn into another little joke.”

“I’m all sympathy,” she promised, resisting the urge to run her fingertips over the marks. Especially since they disappeared on both sides under Willow’s underwear.

“Good. Because I did it for us.” Willow was struggling, face down, with the top but with a little help got it off and lay there. Her bra unfastened, but not off. Head on hands. “How’s the perspective now?”

“Better… You know, I think I get it.”

“Get what?”

“Backs, you kept going on about my back. Now I get it. They’re very - ”

“I know!” Willow said. “Very.”

“So… this massage,” she asked, hoping for a little guidance. “You want me to… rub your butt? Right?”

Willow draped her arms down alongside herself, relaxing before she even had cause to. “Tara, do you really think I undid my bra so you could just rub my butt?”

“I guess not…”

You watched massages on television. You thought you had an idea of what it was all about and – yes – everyone had a feeling of what tight muscles were all about from experiencing them. But something didn’t ring true from that…

“Willow?”

“Mmm?”

“You… don’t seem to have a lot of tension here.” The shoulders were first because, that was just what you did with a massage right? You started with the shoulders. And you tried to ignore everything below the shoulders, because paying too much attention to anything else would… be distracting.

“Oh… Well, it’s not been a tense sort of day,” Willow said. “Or… month, really.”

“So I really should just be rubbing your butt?” Honestly, she had no idea what Willow was likely to choose given that choice.

“Don’t skip it, but… no, you can keep going as you are because ooooh!”

“Did I hurt you?” she let up on the pressure, just in case.

“No… No… Not hurt. That just felt… very good. Wow, Tara… you have magic fingerrrrrrs.”

Encouraged – and ignoring the obvious double-entendre - she continued her work. Except it wasn’t work. Just touching Willow was like slipping into a warm ocean, currents and eddies flowing around you. The warmth suffusing through your body. Add in what it was obviously doing for Willow, the feedback in the magical connection and…

If this was work then it was very likely the best job in the world.

“So… Niamh?” She shifted her position and then decided that, actually, she needed to be astride Willow’s back to do her any justice at all. Which, all things considered, didn’t seem like a bad place to be. Could be there’d been too much emphasis on straddling…

It was – almost – like a sympathetic gesture, right? After Willow had been ‘forced’ to go riding?

Almost.

And the moan, when she was barely being touched, suggested Willow thought the same? A good thing and sympathetic. No danger that someone sat across the small of her back would bring the trauma back for Willow. After all, it was the horse that had been ridden. And – apparently – Willow was all for it.

In hindsight, not really such a big shock.

“We can leave,” Willow said. “Just by wanting to.”

“So I guess we didn’t,” she replied, after considering for a moment. “Want to leave, I mean.”

“And you can commmme back. You did that deliberately!”

“What?”

“You did that, right then, right on that word.”

Oh. “Not deliberately.” After all… It wasn’t like they had. Yet… Close, but no cigar. Actually, that wasn’t a phrase she wanted to… no.

They’d spent so many nights together now and most of them had involved some sort of… exploration. Probably it was astounding that one of them hadn’t… well, come. Certainly they could’ve gone there without much more… exploration than they’d already gone near.

Many times.

Maybe it was one of those invisible lines, one which when crossed might’ve forced them to ask if they were rushing even though they knew the answer was a resolute ‘no, not rushed at all.’

Not nearly enough rushing going on.

But somehow ‘completion’ had seemed a secondary concern to the more intimate, longer term pleasure of being together. Touching. Holding. But… there was more. They both knew it. They both wanted it. By now they wanted it a lot. There was so much more, because love wouldn’t go away just because you took it a step further.

She didn’t believe it’d necessarily get any stronger either, but it might find additional expression.

I do like the idea of additional expression. Was this the time? Was it going to get sexier than this? Possibly, but not much.

“What else?” she asked, working down Willow’s spine with firm presses of her thumbs. Was it a real massage? Was it doing a good job she was doing?

Good or not, Willow seemed to like it if the moans were any indication. And… the energy was changing. That charge when they touched, Willow’s side was changing in character. Almost… melting.

They’d talked about melting before.

“What else?” she asked, struggling to keep a sudden urge to be husky out of her voice.

“How do you know there’s more?”

“I can just tell,” she decided. Even if she hadn’t before, she did now. Willow sucked at every level of deception. There probably wasn’t a secret she could keep.

“Mmmm. Well - we talked about… well, how you can have a baby without a guy or a turkey baster and how Niamh thinks turkey basters are the worst thing ever invented – in our world at least – and… Because you can leave and come back when you want, that’s not something you’d have to do now.”

“You mean ‘we’,” she said, digging her thumbs into one of the few knots of tension she’d found. From the moan and the way Willow’s hips pushed down, into the bed, you might’ve thought it was a very specific sort of tension.

“Ohhh – God Yes – I mean no - I… didn’t want to put words in your mouth. Other things, but not words.”

It was perhaps a measure of how relaxed Willow was becoming as to how easily she let that slip out and didn’t even realise it. Or it might’ve been a reflection of the fact that this girl was still grinding down against the bed, even when there was no pressure down her spine.

And she didn’t think it was a coincidence that – between grinding down – Willow was pushing back up at her. Given that she was straddling Willow’s back, that was… interesting.

Interesting but very unlikely to be a coincidence.

How does she seduce me, facedown and naked under my hands?

Possibly the dumbest question in the whole world. Ever.

“You didn’t put words in my mouth,” she said, looking down that the woman under her. Her back, her hair. A slender neck. Pale skin. Tantalising hints of squashed curves. “You didn’t do that. I don’t know how, but… I feel it. I know you do. We’re…”

“Wherever we are, here or there,” Willow said. “We’re going to be there together. IT feels like that, right?”

“Right.”

“And you want to know why?” Willow asked.

“Tell me.”

“Well, where else am I going to find me a nymph?”

“I don’t even want you to look,” she said.

----------------------

She felt the whisper of cloth being pulled across her back. Then gone. The shift in the weight straddling her.

Knew, rather than saw, Tara had taken off the dress and thrown it aside.

Knew, rather than saw, that her lover was all but naked apart from that.

Something was different. Something had changed.

And it wasn’t a surprise. Tara’s impromptu massage had made her… very ready. Very… And by pushing back at her, she’d really tried to amp that up. Now, maybe, Tara had proven that she was absolutely on the same page.

It was important to be on the same page – Oooohhh.

The hands were back and the sensuality had been ratcheted up another notch. They were having a discussion about being pregnant and choosing to have children and love and all the BIG stuff that there could be. More pressure than a new relationship should ever have to bear and yet…

It was only fuelling the desire that they were obviously both feeling.

Is this it? Is this the night we take another step? Maybe all the steps?

The question wasn’t – as it had been – ‘what do I do if it is.’ Not anymore.

Now it was simpler.

How do I make sure it is?

“Niamh said something else,” she breathed, feeling husky even if she didn’t sound it. That’d be all the moaning, it was sometimes hard to continue to speak regular, understandable English because Tara’s figures were working a magic spell she hadn’t been involved in.

Tara had beautiful fingers. Sexy fingers. I noticed them the first time we met too… I just didn’t know why. Now I do… And I hope she’ll show me why.

“What did Niamh have to say?” Tara asked, pausing where she was. Her thumbs pressing and releasing and pressing and releasing right at the base of her spine. Just above what anyone would consider firmly part of the butt.

“She said there was a blockage in our energy flows and – Oh, hell, she just thinks there should be taking and having and – She thinks we should be doing it.”

“I’m not sure that my sister - that I didn’t know I had - deciding that is a recommendation,” Tara said, not letting up with the sensual touch.

“But is she wrong?” she sighed, challenging Tara’s desire. It was there. It was real. Pressing back up against the intersection of her legs… It must be time, right? They’d more than amply demonstrated it but… it was time. It was time.

All their worries had gone away. They could stay, leave and come back. Anything they wanted. They knew each other, loved each other. What else was there to wait for?

And – partly thanks to the massage – she was more than ready. More ready than she’d have dreamed was possible. Hence upfront, eager and just a little bit slutty Willow. Because who didn’t need some slutty in their life?

Maximum slutty, focused on one – beautiful/sexy/smart/sexy/beautiful – woman named Tara.

Tara didn’t immediately answer her question, almost as if she was having to think about it.

And when she had, Tara didn’t say ‘yes’ either though. Instead she felt lips touch on the back of her neck. She felt a soft, warm, pressure lower down her back tipped with harder points as Tara leaned down over her. Pressed down into her. Felt the heat between her soon-to-be lover’s legs as she bore down. Sought. Needed.

Felt those taut nipples move. The lips descending at the same rate. Kisses moving down her back before Tara’s body lifted away from the resting over her upper thighs and moved down the bed.

And the kisses traced the same route as the fingers had just before until they were also littering the line where back became butt and she was suddenly very glad she wasn’t clothed. Not a stitch...

Desire overwhelmed her and as Tara’s lips lifted away, she lifted her hips and followed – what was she doing?!

Not finding what she wanted, she drove her hips down again, seeking the pressure where it was needed most – at least until Tara could get to it. For now though, Tara’s lips returned and continued their journey. Finding the ouchies now that her fingers had never gotten to and easing the pain with more kisses. No, the kisses weren’t removing the pain. But they were masking it, replacing it with that mystical, magical and now sensual touch.

Leaving her tingling in a way she never had.

It wasn’t the first time they’d been naked around each other. Wasn’t even the first time they’d been naked and sexual around each other. But it was the first time that there was real, overwhelming and desired-fuelled intent behind it.

No hesitation. No second-guesses. There’d never been any guilt, but now there was no doubt either – and maybe that too had never really been there.

Not doubt. Maybe just a fear of moving ahead of each other.

Then there was a pressure, a tiny pressure, on the inside of her knees. An encouragement she didn’t need but very much wanted because she knew what it meant without having experienced it before.

She complied with the demands, of course, opening her legs and sighed once again. Both knowing and not knowing what was coming.

Wanting it all the same.

Whatever it turned out to be, she was already certain it was going to surpass her increasingly detailed fantasies.

Not even fantasy-Tara could hold a candle to the girl who was about to add another entry in the ways that she loved her.

-----------------------

A moment of practicality slipped into her mind as she opened Willow’s legs. This wasn’t… the right away up. It that way, at least, it was all new.

But then she was certain… I can definitely make this work.

There was nothing lewd about this. Neither Willow nor her obvious desire. Some might call it ‘wanton’ but in truth it was just pure beauty and she said so, unable to keep it to herself.

Willow moaned her appreciation, sounding like it was all she could trust herself to do.

Wanton? Wanting, more like. And in that she was right there with her soon to be lover.

She returned to the kisses, tracing both the abused, red parts and those that tantalised her more and were unmarked. Stronger, more insistent where it wasn’t going to hurt. Rewarded by Willow’s hips lifting and falling in time with her attention. Seeking more. Following her for it. It was instinct. That was all it could be. Something inside Willow had always known. Wanted.

Just as it was her instinct to return the favour, following in turn. Circling lower and lower. Closer and closer…

Yes, she did realise how momentous this was. What she was about to do and what it meant.

It meant the fulfilment of a fate they’d gladly embraced and worked towards since the night they’d come here.

There’d really never been any doubt that they’d become lovers in every sense of the word.

Everything else had just been… making sure it was the right time. And now it was.

Nothing could’ve stopped Willow from crying out when her lips touched the most intimate part of her.

Nothing could’ve made her withdraw from it, awkwardness of the pose be damned.

She kissed her way over the tender flesh. Slipping the tip of her tongue through Willow’s lips and making her girl – her girl shiver with anticipation before she even reached the lowest point that had to be her girl.

Making Willow lift her hips again without touching or asking. Her need was way beyond obvious. Visual. Aural. Even the scent of her. The taste… There was no other way she could’ve got where Willow wanted – needed – her to be.

Pressing backwards, leaving her hips suspended in the air with her legs bent, Willow was entirely open to her now and she took advantage of it. Her tongue darted, sought out and found the very centre of her need. Flickered against it and the response was immediate and very, very vocal.

Somewhere it disturbed the birds that in the morning would flock to their bedroom. She didn’t care… It was impossible to be anywhere but in this moment.

If massaging Willow had been erotic, kissing and licking at her so intimately was everything she was ever capable of being, at least in that elongated moment. Following the cues of Willow’s body, the noises she made. The way it moved – what was too much and caused her to hold back and what was needed and wanted and made her press forwards. Press deeper.

The taste of her, as her tongue slipped inside Willow, circling and causing a whole new set of reactions including setting her thighs – which she had her arms looped around – jumping.

Crying out.

Demanding completion from a pleasure-greedy girl…

And quickly able to reach it, when she did what was required.
What she delighted in.

*********************

_________________
-------------------------
If I wanted a little pussy, I've got my own to play with.

Chance in *Chance*
-------------------------


Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 18 - 03/16/1
PostPosted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 12:06 pm 
Offline
9. Gay Now
User avatar

Joined: Sat Sep 24, 2011 8:45 pm
Posts: 985
Topics: 15
Location: Beyond the orbit of Mars and accelerating...
Dibs!

Edit: so i dibs'd, but got dragged away before i could read & review.

Which i have now done.

OMG!

I just about pee'd myself laughing.
Much to the annoyance of my flatmates.

Quote:
‘Fisting – Are you doing it right?’


Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe!

so many funny bits. So much smut. Some of the smutty bits were funny. It was good.

I'd quote more of my favourite bits, but if i did that, i'd be quoting a third of the chapter. :bow

So i'll just say: Awesome :kiss1

The down side, is that it's going to be hard to top that effort, both in terms of sexiness, and funnyness.
Uh, turns out that's not a real word.
Never mind :)

I can't wait. :bounce

R :flower

_________________
“All I feel is sunlight. All I hear is music.” Willow
How i Met Your Mother - By Ariel


My Story: Coming Home


Last edited by Azirahael on Tue Mar 17, 2015 12:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

Top
 Profile  
 
 Post subject: Re: Tara and Willow - The Blessed Unrest - Chp 18 - 03/16/1
PostPosted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 5:54 pm 
Offline
7. Teeny Tinkerbell Light
User avatar

Joined: Sun Aug 08, 2010 6:33 pm
Posts: 573
Location: Los Scandalous, CA
I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaack!

Give me a day to get caught up.

_________________
The kitten formerly known as SMGOVAN ~Official Head of Security for the Finey_McFine fan club. Ass whippings will be handed out liberally!


Top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 173 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6  Next

All times are UTC - 8 hours [ DST ]


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 42 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Search for:
Jump to:  
cron

W/T Love 24/7 since July 2000
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group