TITLE: Fringes Aflame
AUTHOR: Dreiser
EMAIL: dreiser0@earthlink.net
YAHOO I.D.: dreiser3
MY REALLY LONG HOMEPAGE ADDY: www.angelfire.com/anime2/superhighway/Dreiser/dreiser.html
BTVS FIC ARCHIVE: www.geocities.com/shaych3/dreiser.htm
CONTENT: Rampant silliness.
SUMMARY: You know, I can't really summarize this one. You'll just have to read it and see.
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing but my brain pills.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I love W/T, I love fic with them, but sometimes I have to make fun of certain things. Don't take this or me seriously. Ever. lol.
Fringes Aflame
By: Dreiser
Did you ever wonder about fashion? I mean, how exactly do people decide what they're going to wear? One day this and the next that. Sometimes people wear certain items over and over, only to never wear them again in a few months. Fashion can be a terribly fickle thing.
Tara herself wasn't exactly a model of fickle fashion. She liked what she liked and she wore what she wore. A prime example of this would be her long skirts and shawls. Now some might say both of these were for old ladies.
But Tara? Well, she wasn't one to let old lady prejudice get in her way of wearing shawls and living out the odd image of a gypsy that her next door neighbor enjoyed saying she looked like.
Then again, her next door neighbor fixated a lot of Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac. It was awfully disarming.
Dressed in her usual attire, Tara readied her room for her two month anniversary with Willow. She hoped it would be another replay of their one month anniversary except less nerve racking and much more enjoyable. If that was even possible.
Humming along with the vague thumping of Fleetwood Mac that came from next door, Tara happily lit candle after candle arranged in her dorm. She wanted it to be romantic tonight and what was more romantic than making love by candle light?
Nothing, in her humble opinion.
The volume of the music increased and Tara could hear the lyrics echoing through the wall. Smiling widely, she let the song sweep over her and did an uncoordinated spin.
Because, lets face it, Tara wasn't exactly the prime example of what a dancer should be. And that was made abundantly clear when moments later, the shawl she was wearing flew up to cover her entire head. Struggling against the shawl, Tara attempted to pull it off, forgetting that it was tied around her neck.
Stumbling around the room, she bumped up hard against the dresser and caused one of the candles to waver in its holder, the flame catching onto the edge of the shawl's fringes. In seconds the room stunk of burnt cotton and Tara was doing something few people could.
Screaming with a stutter.
"F-F-FIRE!" Tara shrieked, twirling around the room, trying to find the door, since right now she wasn't exactly in the mind to cast a spell to help herself.
The screaming caused the music next door to increase ten fold since in dorms noise problems were always solved by causing more noise of your own. While this went on, it should be noted that Tara's extra movement caused from twirling set the fringes more aflame. That was when, by the blessing of whoever, the door to her room opened.
Unable to hear the door or anything else due to her own screaming and the music next door, Tara had no idea that Willow was there until the babbling started.
On seeing her love on fire, the madness began.
"Fire! Omigod, fire! Tara's on fire! Tara how are you on fire?! We have to put out the fire and to do that we need water, H20, the wet stuff! Water, water, I don't have any in bottles with me but there's water in, in, in--"
"B-B-B-Bathroom!" Tara screamed, twirling still.
"Bathroom! Yes, water in the bathroom! I'm going to get that water now!" Willow exclaimed, rushing out the door and leaving Tara alone and twirling around on fire.
The constant and aforementioned twirling led to Tara twirling right out the door of her room and into the hall. Now, there are a lot of things people are used to seeing when living in a dorm but a girl with a shawl over her head who's on fire? That's not usually one of them.
Due to this, a crowd soon formed.
After a few seconds, some of the students who considered themselves part of the ultra hip activist generation decided it was their duty to put Tara out. So they gathered some pillows and bravely whapped at her, hoping to extinguish the flames by suffocating them with velvet plushiness.
This didn't exactly go as they planned.
The pillows set on fire and soon the activists were running around with burning velvet towards the bathroom. As this all went on, Tara's neighbor, the Fleetwood Mac fanatic, opened up her door and the sounds of Rhiannon blasted into the air much to the chagrin of the many ravers present.
Of course, there was something oddly appropriate about that song being played at mammoth volume while Tara whirled, or was that twirled, around trying in vain to put out her shawl that was on fire. And for some reason, it didn't seem to be burning her at all. They didn't much wonder at that. Maybe she was just lucky or something.
And then the elevator doors opened.
Seeing the crowd of students made Buffy think one thing and one thing only as she got off the elevator. They were giving away free food again and she better get hers while the getting was good. Then she got closer and saw that it wasn't free food, it was Tara on fire.
Instinctively, Buffy pulled out Mr. Pointy.
Moments later, she realized he really wasn't of any use and she put him away. So she decided to do what she was second best at, the first being pulling out Mr. Pointy, and that was tackling.
Springing with the catlike grace of something catlike, Buffy tackled Tara to the ground. Causing all the students to ooh and some of them to ahh as Buffy straddled Tara.
They weren't exactly sure what Buffy wanted to accomplish by tackling and straddling some girl who was on fire, but it was still damn fun to watch. Until the sounds of the tell tale babbling returned.
"Tara! I got the water! I didn't have a glass at first so I tried to cup it in my hands and that didn't work so I went to find a real cup but there was none! Finally Barry let me borrow his party kegger beer mug and--" Willow paused in her ever constant and trademarked babbling, although this time not in mode, to stare at Buffy straddling Tara who was still on fire.
Green eyes narrowed and suddenly, Rhiannon was blasting forty times louder. Apparently seeing anything traumatizing made Tara's neighbor sink into a strange abyss of ear breaking Fleetwood Mac frenzy.
Tara being on fire, one supposed, was traumatizing.
Especially now that Willow's evil jealous side had been reawaked by fringes aflame and Buffy straddling. So in a smooth movement, the redhead flung the contents of the party kegger beer mug on the two blondes.
This elicited a loud stutter of relief from Tara and a grumpy noise from Buffy who stood up and off of the other woman, who lay motionless on the ground.
"I tackled her," Buffy explained to Willow. "It was supposed to help." She frowned. "Somehow."
Everyone watched Willow look strangely at Buffy and the hallway was deathly quiet as Tara lay there, her head covered by the shawl, soaking wet thanks to the water.
That was when Miss Kitty Fantastico came bounding out and sat firmly on Tara's back, looking cute and utterly lovable as she sat there. Of course, this didn't stop their Resident Advisor from shrieking at the top of her lungs about pets not being allowed and chasing after Miss Kitty seconds later. And while this all went on, Tara remained completely still, not moving a muscle.
Shaky hands reached up to yank off the shawl and Tara flopped onto her back, ignoring the sounds of her R.A. in the throws of a battle with her kitten, and stared blankly up at the ceiling. Tipping her head to one side, she looked at Willow, her girlfriend and the reason that she'd gone through that strange version of hell these past minutes.
"Willow," Tara whispered, sounding horribly romantic and quite like a Harlequin romance character.
"Yes, Tara," Willow rushed to her side, looking like one of those Harlequin romance characters to boot.
Gazing into green eyes as Willow clung to her hands and they both looked dramatic, Tara said, "Get rid of all my candles and shawls. NOW."
"But Tara--" Willow began, unnerved. Candles and shawls were Tara's traditional accessories. If she got rid of them what kind of Wicca would she be?
"Get rid of them," Tara insisted fiercely. She thumped her head back on the floor and stared up at the ceiling. "From now on, I'm going to start wearing coats. Long leather ones."
Thus ends our story of how one particular fashion trend for Tara began and ended. All thanks to candles, fringes, and fire. Oh, and lets not forget the twirling.
-End-
