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Author's Chapter Notes:
A very happy Christmas to all readers and authors. Have a lovely, peaceful time.
STARLIGHT, STARBRIGHT

Season Seven. Christmas time and Buffy and Spike have been playing with something they shouldn’t!


Buffy stared round her, as the world spun slowly to a halt. Her companion grabbed her arm as he staggered, trying to keep his balance in the soft sand that shifted under his boots.

“OK, what did you do this time?” The Slayer ’s voice was full of irritation.

The vampire sounded very aggrieved as he replied. “Me? Why is it my sodding fault?”

“Five reasons, Spike - one, I’m standing here in the middle of the desert in the middle of the night holding the antique carpenter’s tool box I was wrapping up for Xander; two, it’s bitterly cold and I want to go home. Three, it’s Christmas Eve; four, I have a house full of Potentials who are upset because they’re missing their families this holiday and finally and most important of all, Five, I don’t think the First is going to take time off to play Secret Santa with us!”

“And again I ask, this is my fault because…?”

“Because you were the one messing about with that demon glass funnel thingy Willow found in that little antique shop. I was trying to wrap up my Christmas presents! You told me if you looked through it, whatever it was pointing at, that was where you went. You must have had it pointing out of the window at the desert, because, hey, here we are!”

“I also said, if you remember, Miss Clever-Clogs, that you had to press the red button on the Szlonbe to make it work. You said it was broken and you were the one who insisted on trying to take it away from me to mend it which was why we were both holding it when it sort of buzzed. Any anyway, what did you buy me for Christmas?”

Buffy glared, wishing it wasn’t quite so dark because that had been a particularly good glare and it was being wasted in the desert night. “Nothing! Vampires don’t do Christmas. You’ve told me that hundreds of times. So have you any idea where we are?”

Spike shrugged. “One bit of desert looks a lot like another to me, pet. There’s sand, stones, lots of nothing.”

Buffy shivered as the cold wind cut through her light top and didn’t pull away when he silently placed the black leather coat round her shoulders.

She tucked the carpenter’s box under her arm and peered up at the deep midnight blue sky. Thick sprinkles of glittering stars cut through the dark.

“Wow, don’t the stars look huge out here away from town? Look at that one up there! It’s blinking. Hey, I bet it isn’t a star, I bet it’s a satellite. You know, Willow can tell exactly where she is in the world by the stars.”

Spike pulled a face. “Red also has all these neat magic tricks up her sleeve to help her, even if she doesn’t use them much at the moment. Pity she wasn’t holding the Szlonbe instead of you. She’d have some idea of where we are and, more importantly, which direction we should walk to find Sunnydale.”

“I think we need to go East and that’s over there,” Buffy said for no good reason other than she was determined to be in charge.

Spike shrugged. “We’d better start walking then and if you could manage not to let the coat drag in the dirt, I’d be grateful. And mind the bloody sheep droppings. They’re every bloody where!”

Buffy glared again, but after a few yards, she had somehow managed to slide her arm round his waist and his arm lay heavily across her shoulders.

“Hey, there’s some buildings down there! ” she said suddenly as they crested a rise, their feet slipping and sliding on the loose shale. “And I think I can see a light.”

“Weird looking place, Slayer,” Spike muttered. “Flat roofs. Little doors. Looks sort of foreign.” He stopped, pulling Buffy to a halt. “I’ve got a funny feeling about this. Gives me the creeps. Roswell wasn’t on the telly when you were looking through the Szlonbe, was it?”

Buffy sighed. “Spike, believe me, there are no vamps, demons, or aliens down there. I’d sense them if there were. We’ll be fine. Come on, I want to get indoors out of the cold. They’re sure to have a phone or a two way radio, at least. Then we can ring Giles and he’ll drive out to collect us. We’ll just have to put up with the lecture about playing with demon artefacts we don’t know how to use!”

Spike stared around them. “Where’s the road, then, Slayer? There’s not even a track that I can see.”

Buffy shrugged and handed him back his leather coat. “Oh, I expect it’s on the other side of the buildings. They’ll have a truck, I expect. All farmers have trucks, even poor ones. They have to get their produce to market.”

The vampire frowned. He still had a very odd feeling about this place. Something wasn’t right but he couldn’t put his finger on just what was wrong.

“Bet whoever lives there won’t be too pleased to see us at this time of night,” he said, doubtfully.

Buffy smiled. “Well, we’ve got to be indoors by the time the sun comes up and there’s no shelter out here, is there? And I know someone will definitely be up down there. Listen - you can hear a baby crying. Come on, I’ll race you!” And before he could stop her, she darted away from him and sped down the slope, her blonde hair flying loose of its ribbon.

Spike grinned and skidded through the sand behind her. They ran down the slope towards the little houses, heading for where a faint yellow light shone out from a dark doorway.

And high above them the giant star Buffy thought might have been a satellite, pulsed in the midnight blue sky and thousands of miles to the West and two millenia away in the future,standing on a shelf in a little house in Sunnydale, California, a Christmas card nativity scene shimmered as two tiny new figures appeared inside it, running towards the Light.





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