http://likeajoan.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] likeajoan.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] taxonomites2010-06-19 11:29 pm

036: [ location: castle summers ] / [ visual ] unwelcome visitors

Buffy is washing the dishes. It's a very mundane task of course, and the broadcast isn't terribly exciting. Soap, running water, annoyed mumbling about Dawn and fossilized lasagne, a little humming to the radio - which is playing some happy-sounding salsa music, the Summers kitchen staple.

At a certain point, she pulls the rubber gloves off her hands, pausing to lean against the sink, take a deep breath and stare into the plughole for a minute or two. There's a lot on her mind, evidently. When she finally comes back to herself, she turns to leave the sink, and then there's a gasp as she stops in her tracks, paralyzed with shock.

Her mother is standing beside her. Her mother, standing there silent and pale and unmistakeably dead. She doesn't know whether to scream or to throw her arms around the apparition. "Mom...?" She asks, in barely more than a whisper. "Mom, are you really here?" Still rooted to the spot, her vision already beginning to swim with hopeful tears, she lifts her hand, about to reach out and touch the ghost. She stops, however, when she notices that her mother isn't even looking at her. No, she's looking right past her. Through her. Behind her.

With a feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach, she turns, painfully slowly, feeling every single hair on the back of her neck prickle with the presence of death. She turns to meet the empty gaze of... herself. Only not quite herself, exactly. A version. A version of herself in decay. In the process of decomposition - an informative insight into how she must have looked in the coffin, before her friends brought her back. Her eyes widen with horror as she just stares for a heart-stopping second, and then turns back to look at her mother, only to find her gone. Her head whips around again, back to her cadaverous double, to see that she too has vanished.

There's a moment where she teeters on the edge of sinking to the floor to just cry. Pushing down that urge and steeling herself, she instead fumbles with the tablet, her hands trembling. When she speaks, her voice is mostly level. Mostly. It's also filled with anger.

"Whoever's doing this, the ghosts? Whatever you are, whatever you want, you have no right to use her face. You want to play with me? Fine. But don't you dare use her, because I swear to god I will find you."

[visual]

[identity profile] greenballadeer.livejournal.com 2010-06-24 12:41 am (UTC)(link)
"You're not asking," Lorne asserts. "I'm offering. You may not know it yet, but what you need right now is my polenta recipe. I'll make enough for you and your sister." He doesn't know it yet, but Lorne is probably going to underestimate Dawn's appetite.

Already, Lorne is bustling off to hatch the ingredients.

[Location: Castle Summers]

[identity profile] greenballadeer.livejournal.com 2010-06-29 03:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Soon after, Lorne is at the door of Castle Summers, bearing ingredients. He knocks, feeling quite strange and a little uncomfortable. The last time he was at a castle was in Pylea, and those memories were anything but fond.