| ON THE BEACH
Author: Jo
Feedback : Pretty please, whatever you thought of it. It will feed my muse for the next story – honestly. Send it to thelibrarian2003@yahoo.com
Distribution: The Angel Texts; Dark Star’s Blood Roses Forum; The Angel Elders Mansion
Rating: General
Content: Angel and Buffy.
Takes place between ‘Earshot’ (3.1 and ‘Choices’ (3.19).
ON THE BEACH
Rose sat in the shadowy dimness of her tented booth, gazing at the gaudy pink and purple stripes of the canvas. It was fading now, and patched. She made a living, but not enough to replace this as often as she should. She hoped it would hold out for another year.
Gypsy Rose, Fortune Teller. That’s what it said outside. She’d tried Gypsy Lily, or Gypsy Hazel or Gypsy Lilac, and any number of other flowery combinations, but they just didn’t have the same ring to them. So, hackneyed as it was, she’d settled for Gypsy Rose. Her real name was Mary, but that didn’t have the same ring to it, either.
The Gypsy bit was right, though. At least, it was if you listened to her mother. The family were descended from Gypsies, on her mother’s side, but they’d been thrown out of the clan over a hundred years ago. 1898, that had been, and it had been the year they’d come to America. She didn’t really know why that long dead couple had lost their heritage, and had travelled so far from their own people. Some ancient shame about disagreeing with the tribal course of action over something to do with vengeance, and calling the Elders fools, and then it had been thank you and goodnight, don’t call us, we’ll call you, and never darken our doorstep again. When she’d asked her mother more, she’d been told that the old people used to whisper about it, but never when the children were around, and never in the darkness. Only when all the lights were lit. Her mother knew nothing else, except that she thought she’d heard the words ‘soul’ and ‘vampire’ once, before she’d been hustled back to bed.
Rose sighed in frustration. It didn’t make any sense. She would have loved to know what rebellion had cast her family onto this side of the ocean.
She reached into the drawer of the small cabinet behind her and pulled out the black velvet cloth that she used to cover the crystal ball. Her tarot cards were stacked neatly on the table at which she sat, their gold and black backs contrasting starkly with the thin, grey moquette tablecloth. Her blank charts for horoscopes she put back into the drawer. Time to pack up for the night. Then she heard voices. There were two people speaking, and they were down on the beach, below her booth. Some quirk of the acoustics carried sound up here very clearly, and she had never been above using that to enhance her small talent. Even a gypsy needed to eat, after all.
“It’ll be summer soon. When all this is over… If we… you know…”
The girl’s voice trailed off, replaced by that of a man, strong and soothing.
“We’ll be okay. We’ve managed before and we’ll manage this time. I’m sure of it.”
“Afterwards… after it’s all over, I thought I’d go away for a while, visit Dad in LA. Would you… would you like to come, too? Not to Dad’s, I mean. But you could find somewhere to stay, right? We could have a vacation, just for a few days. Relax, you know…”
The girl sounded embarrassed to be asking. Rose guessed that these were two lovers who were still uncertain around each other. The girl had a young voice, probably not yet out of her teens, although the man had seemed a little older, more sure of himself.
“Yes. I’d like that. A holiday… Still, this is a holiday tonight, isn’t it? The beach, the ocean, the open sky…”
Rose wondered what nationality he was. He’d sounded American, but ‘holiday’? She read for a lot of tourists and that sounded British. He hadn’t finished speaking, and she listened more closely.
“Come on, there are those caves a little way down the beach, with the things… those things I promised to show you… They’ll be a nice change of pace.”
“Okay. But… Wouldn’t it be good, if only we could see the future…”
Rose took her cue from the girl’s almost pleading tone. Perhaps she could get a last ten bucks tonight. She’d drop it to five if necessary… She stood up and strode to the flap in the canvas.
The two lovers were facing each other. She was petite and blonde, very pretty, and the man was much taller, dark-haired and almost beautiful rather than handsome. But, it was the character in their faces that caught her interest. The conversation might have been ordinary, but these two had greater depths to them. Her professional interest was piqued.
“Hi! How’re you both doing tonight? I’m just about to close up, but I’ve got time for a couple of readings if you like.”
She saw the uncertainty and then the interest on the girl’s face, although the man’s seemed to close down into something blank and unreadable.
“Ten bucks for the both of you, how about that? Special vacation-time offer.”
The girl tugged at her boyfriend’s arm. He took one look at her, and caved. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a few folded bills. He peeled off a ten and held it out to her as they climbed up from the sand to the booth.
“Just for Buffy. Not me.”
The girl didn’t argue, and Rose shrugged. She took the ten, though.
Back in the booth, the girl sat across the table from her, while the man moved the second chair further away, out of the light. It was dwarfed by him, and the shadows seemed to cling around him. His face showed nothing, even to an astute observer like Rose.
“Tarot, crystal, horoscope, palm or tea leaves?”
“You do all those?”
Rose smiled.
“Yes, they’re all just a way of focusing. Which would you like?”
“Horoscope.”
“Date of birth?”
“I’m Capricorn, on the cusp of Aquarius.”
She gave Rose the date.
“Time of birth?”
“Oh! I don’t know. No idea.”
“If I do a horoscope without that, it will be very general. I can’t give many of the more specific details. Do you want to make another choice?”
The girl hesitated.
“No. I think general will be good. General might be better, in fact.”
She looked at the man, but he just shrugged. Rose took out one of her blank charts and started to plot. It didn’t take long, without some of the key information. When she looked at the finished chart, there was little more there than you could find in any one of the pop astrology books. And yet… and yet it was as if something in her gypsy heritage had stirred. She knew she could give a better interpretation than the raw data on the chart.
“Well, my dear, if you know that you’re Capricorn, you know that it’s an earth sign, and all about realism.”
The girl nodded.
“You have more responsibilities than most people understand, and you don’t like people trying to find out about you or your life. I think you’re drawn to the occult?”
The girl remained silent at this, her face closed, and Rose hurried on.
“Most Capricorns are. Anyway, you’re witty, but it’s an ironic wit, and you understand all about life’s incongruities. You joke about them. You still take life seriously, though – it has to be mastered if you want to survive.”
She thought the girl blenched a little, but it was hard to tell in the gloom of the softly-lit booth. The man looked down at his shoes.
“Capricorns are often ruthless, and definitely have a hard time giving up control, and yet you only want control for the better, to help those around you. You want to build a world that’s better for others.”
The man was looking at Rose keenly now, and she felt a little unnerved. It was the girl’s turn to look down.
“Usually, Capricorns have two halves to their lives. The first half, the first thirty years or so, can be really hard and can involve a burdensome responsibility picked up in childhood. They feel responsible for keeping the world turning. I sense this in you. But don’t worry. Those first thirty years are all about preparation. The next half of your life is about achieving an inner ambition, one that you already know about, and would dearly love to realise.
“So far as family is concerned, Capricorn women often have a difficult, complicated relationship with fathers, and often marry men who can play the father figure.”
The pair exchanged glances, and Rose could see secret amusement from both of them, although she didn’t understand it.
“There’s an Eastern teaching about souls called the Bhodisattva – these are ones who, having reached the portals of the divine, turn back to see the rest of humanity suffering, and choose to travel back down and help those who are still imprisoned in the darkness, instead of remaining with the Light. Capricorns are sometimes compared to the Bhodisattva.”
Rose heard an intake of breath from the man, and only realised then that she hadn’t heard any noise from him until that moment, not even the slight sounds of respiration.
“You have to be careful, though, my dear. Capricorn, like all the other signs, has a shadow side, and if it gets out of hand, it’s like Yahweh in the old Testament – do as I say and don’t question it. Be careful if that starts to happen – Capricorns are often lonely and isolated, and letting the shadow side dominate will drive your family and friends away.
“Capricorns are romantics, but the realism is greater. You think with your head, not your heart, and you never let your romanticism dictate your decisions. It’s good to be sensible, and you should hold onto your realism, but perhaps you should loosen up on that, just a little. Choosing the world before love can lead to a lot of pain.”
The girl’s hand clenched on the tablecloth. Rose had hit a raw spot, and it was plain to see. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the man’s knuckles were white, although he hadn’t moved a muscle. She hurried on.
“Capricorns find it hard to handle relationships and love well. But my dear…”
Here, uncharacteristically, Rose put out her hand and laid it over the girl’s.
“My dear, don’t let set backs get you down. For you, love is going to be a reward for all your early ordeals, even if you have to wait to see it fully fledged.”
She took her hand away.
“Now, today is a very auspicious day for you. Whatever you undertake will be successful. The next few weeks will be hard, but you must persevere. You won’t get everything that you want, but you will succeed in the most important enterprises.”
She knew she was glossing over this future. There were some very dark times ahead, many losses, and many tears, and yet, the most important undertakings were there for the winning. This girl could do it, whatever ‘it’ was. She would do it largely alone, though. For now. Yet, in the far future, the second half of her life, there was the reward.
“For the future, you can achieve whatever your heart desires. Remember that when you need to. When things seem to be too hard.”
Rose added a few other things, platitudes that went down well with everyone. She was too drained to find more individual trends in the chart. Then she was finished.
The girl looked shaken. The man looked steady, dependable, and completely closed off. They stood to go, and the girl muttered a word of thanks.
“Would you like a reading, too?”
Rose desperately hoped that he would say no. She didn’t think she had the mental resources to do another. She tried to rally. After all, he’d crossed her palm with silver – paper, at least – and he was entitled.
“Do you want to tell me when you were born?”
“No. No thank you.”
He reached out towards the girl, and as he did so, his sleeve caught the top of the tarot pack. A card drifted down. With the reflexes of a cat, he caught it, and laid it face up on the tablecloth.
It was a card from the major arcana. Number 13. Death.
He was unusually pale – something else that had made her wonder whether he was a tourist – but he seemed to pale even more when he saw the card. The girl stood as still as a statue. She hurried to reassure them, although her eyes were fixed on him.
“No, it’s alright. This doesn’t actually mean death, not that you’re going to die.”
“I know.”
“Truly, it doesn’t. It means some sort of change, an ending, a breakdown of what is, leading to a transformation, a release. It means a new start, even if the way there is painful.”
As she had with the girl, she put her hand over his. It was cool to the touch, and he didn’t flinch away.
“It’s a good thing. Would you like me to do a full reading for you?”
Her head ached, but it seemed important to use whatever talents she had for these two. She felt an obligation.
He took his hand away.
“No, no thank you. Some other time, maybe. Thank you.”
He moved towards the door flap, and the girl followed him, looking back at the last moment before disappearing through the canvas, and tossing a ‘Thank you’ over her shoulder. Rose stayed in her seat, exhausted.
++++++
Buffy and Angel walked down the beach, hand in hand, towards the fire demon nest that he’d found early that morning. He could have dealt with the eggs then, but he’d decided to leave it so that he could enjoy the beach with Buffy.
“Why did you want your fortune told?”
She shrugged, a good imitation of one of his non-committal shrugs.
“Everything is so serious. I just wanted it to be fun. You know? Make fun of the future?”
They were both silent while long minutes ticked by, the only sounds the low roar of the ocean and the rustle of the sand as they walked. Angel looked around. They were alone, in the dark.
“Feels like we might be the only people left in the world. Just us, on the beach…”
“Waiting for the Apocalypse.”
“You read that?”
“On The Beach? Sure. But we’ll be fine, won’t we? I mean… We’ll stop the Mayor from ascending. I know we can’t… you know. But something will come up. For us.”
Angel looked down at her. He stopped, and his grip on her hand made her stop, too. He bent over and kissed the top of her head.
“It always does.”
On that, he started walking to the fire demon’s cave. That was as far as he was going to imagine. But a vacation in LA sounded good.
The End
July 2006
Author’s Note
1 ‘On The Beach’ is a novel by Nevil Shute (and a film was made of it). In the story, the last group of people on Earth wait on an Australian beach for the deadly clouds of radioactivity left over from the human apocalypse that will kill them as everyone else has been killed. It probably didn’t have much of a holiday feel to it.
2 I didn’t make up the Capricorn bit (although I simplified the ‘cusp of Aquarius’ bit). Buffy tells us in 4.11 ‘Doomed’ that she’s Capricorn, on the cusp of Aquarius, and what I’ve said about Capricorns comes from Liz Greene’s ‘Star Signs for Lovers’, published in 1980. Joss must have read it.
3 The Tarot card XIII, Death, means just what I said. If you want a run through of the Tarot and their meanings, you can’t do better than look at carmen_sandiego’s BtVS Tarot pack at http://host180.ipowerweb.com/~perchanc/carmen_sandiego/buffyindex.htm
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