First lines meme
Oct. 20th, 2004 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quesarahI posted a version of this story in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mosca's lj. I've since revised and decided to grow some ovaries and post it here. It's longish, so it will be posted in two parts.
The basement apartment was chilly in winter, but on days like that one, when August was taking out its humid frustration on the Midwest, the concrete trapped the weak spray of air conditioning, and the basement was the most comfortable part of the house. Giles removed his glasses and wiped the sweat from the bridge of his nose. He sighed, allowing himself the small luxury of a moment's resentment. As of today, Buffy was in Rome, Willow in Buenos Aires, and he in Cleveland.
Cleveland.
Sometimes he found his sense of obligation tiresome. He found it particularly so on August days when the air hung thick and wet, fogging his glasses and plastering his shirt to his back. Still, there was a Hellmouth to monitor and he was best suited for the assignment. From the texts at his disposal, he gathered that the magical portal lay beneath the Cuyahoga River, possibly in the river bed itself. If so, the waters of the river and Lake Erie would disperse the magical energy; it would be less attractive for powerful demonic beings like the Master but would still draw lesser demons like a Siren. His observations certainly seemed to support his hypothesis; he recognized the newspaper stories of late-night stabbing deaths in the Flats and inexplicable drownings as attacks by vampires and water demons, even if no one else in the city did. They seemed even more stubborn in their denial of the existence of evil than the denizens of Sunnydale had been. How any of them had witnessed a river on fire and not recognized it as a clear portent of Apocalypse was truly astounding. A river. On Fire. Baffling.
He needed more information and lost little time beginning his investigation into the mystical history of this Hellmouth. It'd taken a little while to locate the arcane bookstores-- the ones of any use, anyway-- and as he stood outside the tiny brick storefront he'd briefly debated chucking it all to take the next flight to Heathrow. He wasn't sure what to expect from the stooped elderly Polish woman sitting behind the counter, and he had stood blinking in the threshold as his eyes adjusted to the dim overhead light.
She had eyed him appraisingly. "What are you looking for?"
"I was hoping you'd have some, erm, books. In-in particular, about-- well, ah, about the river."
She nodded and led him past the charms and cheap pentagram necklaces to a bookshelf in the back of the store. Her collection of reference books was small but impressive, and over the next six months he spent countless hours notating, annotating, and cross-referencing everything he read about the river. He became such a fixture that the old woman -- whose given name, he learned, was Maria Magdalena and whose surname was a juxtaposition of consonants better suited to an unlucky Scrabble draw-- let him stay even after she locked the door and her granddaughter Eva swept the floor and tidied the displays.
mosca's lj. I've since revised and decided to grow some ovaries and post it here. It's longish, so it will be posted in two parts. The basement apartment was chilly in winter, but on days like that one, when August was taking out its humid frustration on the Midwest, the concrete trapped the weak spray of air conditioning, and the basement was the most comfortable part of the house. Giles removed his glasses and wiped the sweat from the bridge of his nose. He sighed, allowing himself the small luxury of a moment's resentment. As of today, Buffy was in Rome, Willow in Buenos Aires, and he in Cleveland.
Cleveland.
Sometimes he found his sense of obligation tiresome. He found it particularly so on August days when the air hung thick and wet, fogging his glasses and plastering his shirt to his back. Still, there was a Hellmouth to monitor and he was best suited for the assignment. From the texts at his disposal, he gathered that the magical portal lay beneath the Cuyahoga River, possibly in the river bed itself. If so, the waters of the river and Lake Erie would disperse the magical energy; it would be less attractive for powerful demonic beings like the Master but would still draw lesser demons like a Siren. His observations certainly seemed to support his hypothesis; he recognized the newspaper stories of late-night stabbing deaths in the Flats and inexplicable drownings as attacks by vampires and water demons, even if no one else in the city did. They seemed even more stubborn in their denial of the existence of evil than the denizens of Sunnydale had been. How any of them had witnessed a river on fire and not recognized it as a clear portent of Apocalypse was truly astounding. A river. On Fire. Baffling.
He needed more information and lost little time beginning his investigation into the mystical history of this Hellmouth. It'd taken a little while to locate the arcane bookstores-- the ones of any use, anyway-- and as he stood outside the tiny brick storefront he'd briefly debated chucking it all to take the next flight to Heathrow. He wasn't sure what to expect from the stooped elderly Polish woman sitting behind the counter, and he had stood blinking in the threshold as his eyes adjusted to the dim overhead light.
She had eyed him appraisingly. "What are you looking for?"
"I was hoping you'd have some, erm, books. In-in particular, about-- well, ah, about the river."
She nodded and led him past the charms and cheap pentagram necklaces to a bookshelf in the back of the store. Her collection of reference books was small but impressive, and over the next six months he spent countless hours notating, annotating, and cross-referencing everything he read about the river. He became such a fixture that the old woman -- whose given name, he learned, was Maria Magdalena and whose surname was a juxtaposition of consonants better suited to an unlucky Scrabble draw-- let him stay even after she locked the door and her granddaughter Eva swept the floor and tidied the displays.
