taxonomites | [Location: Café] Happy Birthday (open)

Tara sat at a café in Wilde, not far from Tamper and Trick, warming her hands with a chai latte. There was a bit of a chill in the air, but the sun was peeking through the clouds, and with a jacket, being out was nice enough.

She thought about the sun. With the influx of new visitors recently, she'd been thinking more about how Taxon worked, about how this strange half-life could be settled into. How easy it as for her to slip into work at Tamper and Trick, which wasn't quite the Magic Box, dates with Willow, who was a few months away from being her Willow, and living in Castle Summers, which was familiar to her friends, but not to her. How easy it became to ignore the Extras, to weather a glitch, to take it for granted.

She thought about people who'd gone and come back. The Doctor. Stefan. The Master. She wondered if she'd been before, and just forgotten. If Xander might come back, slate wiped clean. It didn't fit, exactly, with the zoo theory, but it didn't fit with the little glimpses they'd had of the 'real Taxon' either. Then again, if it was a glitch as she'd suspected, their captors had just turned Piper into a monster, so none of her working theories were right just yet.

She thought about the people she missed. Hercules. Rose. Sam. Giles. Ethan. Tara had to believe that the were home. Safe. Happy. She wanted to believe that so very badly.

It was her birthday. The first one she shouldn't have been alive to have. And that knowledge made it a little bittersweet.

She sipped her latte, and took a few moments. Then she'd head to the shop. Happy birthday to her.

[Open to new friends as well as old. Come say hi.]

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Spencer hesitated for a moment, then sat down. Tara's smile was very reassuring and genuine.

"I've uh.. been living in Shelley.. since I left the hotel.."

"Did you find an apartment? Or did you bring some place with you?" It really was a sign of being in Taxon too long when this was a normal question.

"I found a place, actually... It was interesting... I just wandered around a bit until I felt drawn to this particular building. It's done in a turn of the century style that I found very appealing, and when I opened the bedroom closet I found my clothing from home already in there. I suppose that's some sort of sign."

His thoughts drifted back to Beckett, and how he wished it wasn't a sign.

"Did it happen that way for you as well?"

"No," she said, softly, "some of my friends were here first, so they offered me a place to stay. But I've heard of that sort of thing. With the clothes, I mean." She sipped her tea.

"Especially when people first arrive, things sort of arrange themselves, in a slightly creepy way."

"Did that help to alleviate your fear a bit? Finding that you had friends here?"

Spencer knew consciously that he would never wish this place on any of the members of his team, but deep down he wished that there had been someone here to greet him when he had arrived. He decided to run his clothing theory by Tara, since she had been in Taxon longer than he.

"In your experience, have you noted that the appearance of clothes in a certain place indicates a desire to stay in that place?"

"Um. I'm not sure. Not many of my clothes appeared, but when I came, they hadn't started using credits yet, so you could just hatch whatever you wanted. It sounds plausible, though?"

She got the feeling that he had more of a basis for the theory than she would. He sounded a bit authoritative, to her.

"And it did help, a little. I think it would have been much harder to accept that I was trapped, if I was surrounded by all strangers."

Spencer nodded to himself.

"I'll have to see if I can do some more research on that.."

He tapped his fingers against the table, not being particularly good with conversation.

"Ah.. what district do you live in?"

"Shelley too. The, uh, big castle, if you've run across it." Tara's gotten used to living in a castle, slowly, but it still felt funny to say so.

"Oh, yes, I've seen that. I was wondering who lived there. Your friends from where you're from live there as well?"

"They didn't when I knew them, back home, but they do here. They're, uh, from my future? So Buffy gets a castle, later on, and she brought it with her." That sounded a lot less silly before she said it aloud.

Spencer thought about that, nodding his head.

"How does one acquire a castle? Did she gain wealth or some title of nobility?"

He knew that Tara was from around the same time period that he was and that people in the 21st century generally did not live in castles.

"You know, I never asked." It was a symptom of being friends with Buffy, more than Taxon, that she just accepted that Buffy had a castle. Spike had a soul, Dawn was dating Xander, and Buffy had a castle - behold, the future.

"I assume it has to do with her job, though. She, um... she's sort of a special kind of soldier, in some ways, and it makes sense to have a headquarters that's well defended." ...though it's still a castle.

"Soldier? ... US Army? Or something like the CIA?"

Still though, a castle? This did not logically follow for Spencer.

"Are you and your friends not from late twentieth century California?"

"We are, but it's... it's a little complicated." She smiled. "I was going to say you wouldn't believe me, but I guess we've been kidnapped by aliens, so you might."

Spencer shrugged. After what he had experienced over the last month and a half, little would surprise him anymore.

"You can try me."

"Buffy... she has some abilities most people don't." Tara hesitated, then says, "She kills vampires. I mean, other things too, but mostly vampires."

"Vampires?"

Two months ago he would have laughed out loud and called her crazy, but in Taxon he had seen the vampires for himself.

"We have some vampires here... has she been sent to kill them?"

The idea comforted him a bit.

"Um... not directly, I don't think. Most of the ones here, they behave. So far, at least." And Buffy was dating one of them, but she felt like that revelation could wait for another time. "But if they stopped, ever, I'm sure she would take care of it."

[Location: Café] Happy Birthday (open)

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