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tamingthemuse2016-01-31 10:41 pm
dragonyphoenix.livejournal.com) wrote in tamingthemuse2016-01-31 10:41 pm
Entry tags:
Prompt 498 - Gefilte Fish - Dragon's Phoenix - In a Corner of My Soul - BtVS
Title: In a Corner of My Soul
Willow left just after school to get home to make the call. If she timed it right, he should be just getting back from lunch. The phone ringed five times before someone picked up at the other end. “Howell Mirror.”
“Uh, hello? I’m looking for a reporter? A Mr. Carl Kolchak?”
“You got him.”
“Oh.” Right, so how did she ask him …
“You gonna talk? ‘Cause I’ve got a Gefilte Fish bagel that’s calling my name.”
Gefilte fish? “You wouldn’t eat that on a bagel.”
“No? Maybe it’s whitefish. I don’t know. It’s got sort of a smokey taste but it’s not bad.”
It didn’t sound like he was a very good reporter. Weren’t they supposed to be big on details?
“Look, if you’re not gonna talk, I’d like to get back to my lunch.”
“Oh, right. I wanted to ask about an article you wrote. This was about three years ago. There was this girl, Kris Mansfield, she’d been missing for like nine years and then suddenly turned up.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, I think I recall that one. Odd situation that.”
“Odd? In what way? I mean other than the vanishing and appearing nine years later with amnesia.”
“Amnesia. Heh, You believe that?”
“That’s what your article said.”
“And that’s the story this Mansfield kid was telling.”
“You think she was lying? Why?”
“Whatever she’d been doing between four and fifteen, she hadn’t been in elementary, middle, or high school”
“She hadn’t gotten any schooling at all?” Gosh, that sounded so terrible. “She couldn’t even read or anything?”
“Well, that’s not what I’m saying. She’d been educated but it’d been in weird stuff. Her parents had an assessment done. What did she know vs. what didn’t she. History, math, science, she knew nothing on any of those. She could read only not just English.”
“What do you mean not just English? Somebody kidnapped her to teach her foreign languages?”
“Not just foreign languages, dead languages. Stuff nobody speaks anymore: Latin, Hebrew. Hell, most of them I’d never even heard of.”
“Hebrew isn’t a dead language.”
“Not really my point.”
“Oh, right. So she could speak a bunch of dead languages?”
“More like read ‘em. A lot of them nobody speaks anymore.”
Huh. At least it was looking like nobody had, well, hurt Miss Mansfield. Willow knew that people took kids and did bad things to them. It had felt sort of funny, in a bad way not in a ha-ha way, to think of that happening to Miss Mansfield. “That is weird.”
“That’s not the only thing. She could fight like a hell of a bitch.”
“Fight?”
“That’s right. She joined some kind of karate studio and right off the bat tested out as a black belt.”
Fighting. Ancient languages. Oh. Oh! “Thank you for your help.” Willow hung up the phone.
It couldn’t be the Council. Buffy was a Slayer and she didn’t vanish from her home when she was four. Plus Giles didn’t make her study ancient languages. Unless the Council trained Watchers that way. It had to be tough, finding people willing to dedicate their lives to the point where they could support a Slayer. Maybe the Council took promising kids and trained them up, but that meant Giles had been taken from his family when he’d been practically a baby. And it didn’t explain why Miss Mansfield had been released when she was nineteen. Did she fail at being a Watcher? Or maybe she was working with Giles? Willow had seen her in the library but that had been only that one time and Giles didn’t seem particularly interested in her. Darn! This made even less sense than before she’d made the call.
Fandom: BtVS
Prompt: 498 - Gefilte Fish
Rating: PG
Word Count: 619
Note: Unused scene
Prompt: 498 - Gefilte Fish
Rating: PG
Word Count: 619
Note: Unused scene
Willow left just after school to get home to make the call. If she timed it right, he should be just getting back from lunch. The phone ringed five times before someone picked up at the other end. “Howell Mirror.”
“Uh, hello? I’m looking for a reporter? A Mr. Carl Kolchak?”
“You got him.”
“Oh.” Right, so how did she ask him …
“You gonna talk? ‘Cause I’ve got a Gefilte Fish bagel that’s calling my name.”
Gefilte fish? “You wouldn’t eat that on a bagel.”
“No? Maybe it’s whitefish. I don’t know. It’s got sort of a smokey taste but it’s not bad.”
It didn’t sound like he was a very good reporter. Weren’t they supposed to be big on details?
“Look, if you’re not gonna talk, I’d like to get back to my lunch.”
“Oh, right. I wanted to ask about an article you wrote. This was about three years ago. There was this girl, Kris Mansfield, she’d been missing for like nine years and then suddenly turned up.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, I think I recall that one. Odd situation that.”
“Odd? In what way? I mean other than the vanishing and appearing nine years later with amnesia.”
“Amnesia. Heh, You believe that?”
“That’s what your article said.”
“And that’s the story this Mansfield kid was telling.”
“You think she was lying? Why?”
“Whatever she’d been doing between four and fifteen, she hadn’t been in elementary, middle, or high school”
“She hadn’t gotten any schooling at all?” Gosh, that sounded so terrible. “She couldn’t even read or anything?”
“Well, that’s not what I’m saying. She’d been educated but it’d been in weird stuff. Her parents had an assessment done. What did she know vs. what didn’t she. History, math, science, she knew nothing on any of those. She could read only not just English.”
“What do you mean not just English? Somebody kidnapped her to teach her foreign languages?”
“Not just foreign languages, dead languages. Stuff nobody speaks anymore: Latin, Hebrew. Hell, most of them I’d never even heard of.”
“Hebrew isn’t a dead language.”
“Not really my point.”
“Oh, right. So she could speak a bunch of dead languages?”
“More like read ‘em. A lot of them nobody speaks anymore.”
Huh. At least it was looking like nobody had, well, hurt Miss Mansfield. Willow knew that people took kids and did bad things to them. It had felt sort of funny, in a bad way not in a ha-ha way, to think of that happening to Miss Mansfield. “That is weird.”
“That’s not the only thing. She could fight like a hell of a bitch.”
“Fight?”
“That’s right. She joined some kind of karate studio and right off the bat tested out as a black belt.”
Fighting. Ancient languages. Oh. Oh! “Thank you for your help.” Willow hung up the phone.
It couldn’t be the Council. Buffy was a Slayer and she didn’t vanish from her home when she was four. Plus Giles didn’t make her study ancient languages. Unless the Council trained Watchers that way. It had to be tough, finding people willing to dedicate their lives to the point where they could support a Slayer. Maybe the Council took promising kids and trained them up, but that meant Giles had been taken from his family when he’d been practically a baby. And it didn’t explain why Miss Mansfield had been released when she was nineteen. Did she fail at being a Watcher? Or maybe she was working with Giles? Willow had seen her in the library but that had been only that one time and Giles didn’t seem particularly interested in her. Darn! This made even less sense than before she’d made the call.