hismasterpiece | 1. A Spring Decoration. Still Image

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1. A Spring Decoration. Still Image | Written

[The journal clicks on at the far end of twilight, and the blurring image gradually resolves into a sharply-focused view of a dead fawn strewn with white and purple crocuses. White tea candles halo the little head, which is thrown back. Its tiny thin legs look as though they are leaping across the red-tinged snow.

Anyone who is paranoid about vampires in general -- or who is looking REALLY closely -- might see two tiny, clean puncture holes in the fawn's neck.

The following text soon appears beneath the image:]

I have made a spring picture. Everything melts and runs, and the ground is thirsty for secrets. And empty of them.

[So writes a vampire who is homesick for tombs and crypts and graveyards. This place is so barren of them. It won't do. Won't do at all. Still, she is pleased to have made this beautiful art out of a much-needed meal. Angelus would be pleased, too.]

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[Oh, the slayer. This is delightful; Drusilla had spied Buffy Summers out on the journals. It was a glorious game to write messages to her. Funny messages. Invisible ink. She is careful to obscure her image from the journal's camera.]

He frolicked off the final page and cut himself. Sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad.

[ das unheimliche. mucho das unheimliche. ]

Right. Have you hit your head? Did it hit its head? Did you hit its head?

[ actually -- give her a sec to peer closer and check out what happened to this poor creature in the image. ]

Only naughty children hit. It is very wrong to do that, very wrong.

[ the fact that this could be someone from home? so very far from her mind. lightyears away. lighteons. ]

Okay. So the critter was hit. But that's a lot of blood for a so-called papercut.

Paper deals the cruelest cuts, do you not think? A man writes his sweetheart that he loves her no longer. She fills her pockets with rocks and feeds herself and her unborn to the river. Paper can bleed a woman, and a woman can bleed a deer.

[ ...a heartbroken someone? it almost sounds like a sort of aching delirium. or reads like it, since buffy can only imagine this voice. she patches it together out of other known voices. none of them drusilla's.

her second mistake. ]

...Is that what happened to you? Are you new? [ on her side of the conversation, she holds her breath. some new feather dumped into a mushy luceti spring after offing herself?

god, buffy thinks. no wonder she butchered the fawn. ]

I fish such things out again for the feasting. Have you ever seen a mudlark fly? Find your brolly; their wings drip something horrid, miss.

[The vampire writes with such beautiful, girlish script. Quaint. Old-fashioned, really. There's definitely a Victorian feel to it for those who pay attention to such things.]

[ victorian feel? buffy simply categorizes it as unnecessarily old; this could also place it on just about any medieval times wannabe world. ]

You didn't answer the second question. Or the first, actually. But the second's more important: are. you. new?

Sometimes I feel new. Here? Here I am new. But I've been used ever so much. I'm not new anymore, not anymore! They broke me in long ago, miss.

[ this was not just eerie; this was sad. it sent disquieting jolts along her spine.

so buffy did what she did best -- she ignored the obvious symptoms and focused on trivial details: ] Got a name, newbie?

I'm the wicked stepsister. I was disappointed about that, once.

[ how...unuseful. how mad. ]

Fine. Forget the name. What's in a name, right? Have you at least found shelter yet?

I shelter under the moon, you know; the fair pure Maiden always did when she hunted long ago. He girds her and gilds her and blesses her with quarry.

[ the moon. so much blood. and are those...? is she imagining those marks?

it's a good thing she isn't talking aloud or all the casual helpfulness would just have bled entirely from her voice. bold underlining still gets the job done: ]

Are -- you -- okay?

[ this is not asked out of concern. this is asked out of suspicion that this stranger might not be fit to be around people. ]

Still. Hungry.

Plenty of folks land here hung--

[ and then the slayer spoke aloud -- understanding sinking in. dreadful and chilling. ] You drank it. Didn't you? You...

[ now might be about the right time to bail. while she's still uncertain. ]

[Bye bye, Buffy.]

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