In West Philadelphia born and raised...

*collapses in giggles*

JOSH: I'm just saying, if you were in an accident I wouldn't stop for a beer.

DONNA: If you were in an accident I wouldn't stop for red lights.

And that right there, that is the moment I fell heads over heels for Josh and Donna.

*sighs nostalgically*

Resuming normal service: more bi-monthly bookkeeping!

Total Count: 23/64
German: 12/32 English: 8/24 Rusian: 3/8

Alexander Pushkin: Евгений Онегин [Eugene Onegin] 5/5(Goodreads)
Boris Vian: Der Schaum der Tage [The Foam of the Days] 2/5 (Goodreads)
Paul Auster: City of Glass 3/5
Paul Auster: Ghosts 3/5 (Goodreads)
Paul Auster: The Locked Room 4/5
Juvenal: Satiren [Satires] 4/5 (Goodreads)
Heinrich von Kleist: Die Marquise von O... / Das Erdbeben von Chili [ The Marquise of O / The Earthquake in Chile] 3/5
div: Texte zur Theorie der Autorschaft [Texts on Theory of Authorships] 4/5
Janet Evanovich: Four to Score (Stephanie Plum #4) 2/5
Andrea Maria Schenkel: Tannöd [The Murder Farm] 4/5 (Goodreads in German)
Faith Erin Hicks: The Adventures of Superhero Girl 4/5 (Goodreads / LJ rec post)
Boris Zhitkov: Мангуста [Mangoose] 2/5 (Goodreads)

( ramblings on readingCollapse )

Title: Forget-me-not
Author: Mierke
Fandom & Disclaimer: Buffy’s not mine, it’s Joss Whedon’s. I’m just borrowing his world and very thankful for the chance.
Pairing/Characters: Buffy, Xander, Willow, Giles
Prompt: Ensemble/any, it's ten years since the fall of Sunnydale - where are they now, who goes back, what happens next? by brutti_ma_buoni for the Sunnydale High School 10 Year Reunion Anniversary Comment!Ficathon
Words: 1,278
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Spoilers/Timeline: Post-Chosen
Summary: Every year they say goodbye.

The crater where Sunnydale used to be was bathing in sunlight. Over the years grass had started growing, trees had found their footing. Small insects were buzzing about. It wasn't jungle life by far, but the darkness that had permeated these grounds for so long had finally evaporated.

The town-that-was didn't get many visitors. People tended to avoid evidence of how the world was falling apart. But on this day, four different people came to the hole, sitting down at the edge.

Buffy was the first to arrive, setting herself elegantly down, just outside of the town line. So lost in thought was she that she didn't notice Giles until he was talking to her.

"Strange, isn't it?"

Buffy gave her former Watcher a smile. She noticed the aging around his eyes, but decided that it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Putting down his active role in the Slaying business had done him a lot of good. She had no doubt he worked just as hard now he worked exclusively as Head of the Council, but at least that head wouldn't be concussed anymore.

"Very. It's weird seeing Sunnydale so... peaceful. It doesn't seem true, somehow. All the things that we had happen, here. As if it was all a dream. Or a nightmare, more like."

Giles grabbed her into a hug and she happily let him. It had been a while since they had seen each other. After she had opted to leave England for a sunnier destination, they only talked on the phone now and then. She hadn't realized how much she had missed seeing him in person.

"Can I join in?"

Willow's voice came from behind them and not even a minute later her arms were around the two people on the ground. In her over enthusiasm she almost managed to roll them all down into the crater, but with a little magical help she kept their balance. After a sigh of relief she started giggling and soon Buffy joined in. Giles shook his head.

"It's a miracle I survived all these years with you two."

"That's because you had me to protect you."

Willow squealed and jumped up to hug her oldest friend. Xander twirled her around.

"Love the new eye-patch, Xan."

Xander set Willow down and looked at Buffy, his chequered eye-patch covering his left eye. He put his hand over his heart in an exaggerated thank you, then broke out in a grin.

"Look at you! You look happy!"

"I am!" Buffy smiled and hugged Xander.

"I see the sun every day. Believe me, that does a lot for a person. Life is good, mostly."

Buffy squeezed him tight, taking in the familiar Xander smell before he let her go.

"And you look way better than last year."

Xander had turned to Giles, who was watching the three friends with a smile on his face. He hadn't stood up and now he squinted at Xander.

"Thanks, I think," he replied.

"I say it out of love, Giles," Xander said, as he laid a hand on Giles' shoulder, squeezing it tightly for a moment. Giles lay his hand on Xander's.

"I know," he smiled. "Shall we?"

Buffy, Xander and Willow turned quiet and sat down. The four of them were sitting at the exact place they had stood now ten years before, at the exact place they had sat every year since then. For a minute they didn't talk, all of them lost in memories. Buffy took a deep breath, pulled her bag closer to her and grabbed a box out of it. As she threw the first of the vaguely stake-shaped coneflower seeds into the crater, she said:

"We lost fifteen this year. We lost Maddy, Isa, Toni, Xaviera and Maryann in a near Apocalypse. Teegan and Angeline were killed by vampires. Angeline had only been Called two months before. I still don't understand how she was put on the patrol roster. It shouldn't have happened."

Buffy stopped for a moment to control her breathing. One by one she kept throwing the seeds to Sunnydale, commemorating all the Slayers she had lost. Just before throwing in the last one, she darted a quick look to Willow.

"Kennedy. Killed by cancer."

Willow had a sad, wistful smile on her face.

"She must have hated that."

"She really did," Buffy replied. "She wanted to go out fighting. She was brave up until the end, though. Was teaching the new Slayers until she literally couldn't stand anymore."

Another moment of silence passed. Then Willow called forward her Weeping Willow seeds, the seedpods protected by magic so they wouldn't break until they hit fertile ground.

"We were lucky. We only lost three. Anita and Roni were killed by vampires. Just the standard variety, you know? It always saddens me to realize how many of these deaths still happen that way."

"It only takes one good day," Buffy whispered.

"Huh?"

"It something Spike said to me once. When I asked him how he had killed those Slayers. He said that it didn't matter how many vampires a Slayer had killed, or how good she was, because in the end, all it took for a vampire to kill that Slayer was one good day. I guess he was right."

Willow gave her friend a quick hug. Buffy tried to shrug it off, but she held on extra tight.

"Keira got killed in a car accident," Willow continued. "They are still just girls, you know? Sometimes I forget that. They always seem so... invincible."

In the silence Xander took a bag out of his pocket. He blew the first of the hyssop seeds away; his seeds were vaguely eye-patch shaped.

"We lost seven. Amanda and Monica should never have been out together, but we were in the middle of a situation. We can't say for certain, but I think they killed each other. Sometimes these powers seem to drive the girls to insanity."

The others nodded. Willow grabbed Xander's hand and gave him a soft squeeze as Xander recounted the tales of how they had lost the other twelve Slayers.

"We lost two," Giles said, as his primrose seeds got caught in the wind. "Gwen and Tabitha. There was a nest, close by. It didn't feel like a high-danger situation and I made the call to only send three Slayers. I don't think Vi will ever be who she was. She hasn't said a word since."

He closed his eyes in pain.

"It's been three months."

The four friends linked hands and looked over at the town they had left behind. They waited two minutes in absolute silence. Buffy cried and tears were falling down Willow's face. Xander blinked and shook his head, shaking off the tears that were threatening to fall. There was a shine to Giles' eyes that didn't go away, no matter how much they closed them.

After the two minutes, they stood up as one, saying their goodbyes to each other as well as their goodbyes to the ones they had lost.

"Until next year," Giles said and turned away.

"'til next year," Willow whispered and teleported out.

"I'll see you in a year," Xander said, grabbing Buffy into another quick hug before leaving.

Buffy stood there for another moment, her eyes following the now familiar contours of what had once been her home. She never quite knew why they came here and she imagined the others didn't either. But there was no doubt in her mind that it was the right thing to do. With a small, sad smile, she left Sunnydale's crater and all was quiet again. Until next year.

---

I'm fleeing LJ. This entry was originally posted at at http://mierke.dreamwidth.org/129073.html. You're welcome to reply either here or at DW.

BBC News: Gay marriage - Commons passes Cameron's plan

I already know my MP likely voted against it. I've written to her before about this, but thankfully it passed the Commons with or without her. Now fingers crossed the Lords votes the same way.

Not ashamed to say this legitimately had me sobbing like a little girl.

Grant's Final Victory - Charles Bracelen Flood
Non-Fiction
Pages: 288

Ulysses S. Grant is one of my favourite historical figures, a real larger-than-life character, a man who, with Lincoln, changed the course of American history. He was the kind of man who met every challenge in his life head-on and, with the exception of his final year, overcame them all. But he couldn't overcome the cancer that killed him at the age of sixty-three, after suffering through a lingering year of pain and discomfort.

That said, Grant's final year was a triumph of sorts. After suffering a financial catastrophe when one of the partners in his firm Grant & Ward swindled Grant, his family and their investors out of significant sums of money and left them virtually bankrupt, Grant decided to embark upon his memoirs in an effort to provide his wife with the means to live after his death. In a single year, suffering unbearable pain, exhausted, unable to eat, by the end scarcely able to talk, Grant wrote his two-volume masterpiece - a military memoir which is ranked, even today, with that of Julius Caesar. Grant died three days after completing his work, and many believed, Mark Twain included, who was publishing the work, that Grant forced himself to live long enough to complete his work and provide for his family.

Somehow we never imagine historical giants like Grant just...fading away. They go out in a blaze of glory in battle or are struck down before their time, like Lincoln. As such, this is an incredibly moving read - I spent most of it with a lump in my throat and tears pricking at my eyes. When Flood comes to the end and describes William Tecumseh Sherman standing to attention at Grant's tomb sobbing, I just about lost it myself.

Do you ever go back and read some of your old fic? It's quite a strange feeling reading fic that's three or four or five years old. Some of it is dreadful tosh, of course, but others, I go back and read and think, 'hey, this isn't half bad!'

It's as though time removes some of the emotional connection with it and you can look at your own work with a certain amount of objectivity. Because normally I'm convinced everything I've written is awful. And that's not a less-than-subtle plea for praise; it's the honest truth. I'm my own worst critic and I usually hate everything I write. That's why I'm such a slow writer, and why I have such long gaps between bursts of creativity.

I was just re-reading some of my old Pike fic from the 2009 Star Trek reboot. Pike...

I tend to perch on the edge of chairs, rather than sit back in them. Particularly when I'm sat at a computer. Partly because I'm short and my arms aren't so long, and I have to have my chair scooched all the way up to the desk in order to reach my keyboard comfortably, and then I tend to knock my boobs on the edge of the desk. Yeah, I know, awkward visuals. I'm just setting the scene here.

So anyway, I perch on the edge of my chair, and Bandit likes to come and lie behind me, between my back and the chair back. And every so often I forget that he's there and lean back. Cue a somewhat indignant squawk and claws in my back as he not-so-gently reminds me of his presence.

I just thought I'd let you know the pain I have to endure in order to remain active on the internet.