Monosyllabic Eccentricity
Title: It Just Was
Author: Karen
Rating: G
Spoilers: Post New Moon Rising
Summary: The realm of Oz's mind.
Disclaimer: Joss owns W/O
Website: OzMIA
Author's Note: This is more surreal than anything else. I'll be happy to attempt explanation. For Trin.
Dreamscapes were what the dreamer made them. Life could be a never ending daymare.
Dreams could drag themselves down into hell of reality crashing in at any moment but for
the most part they lived and breathed and grew according to imagination. Oz slipped
between the barriers of her mind. It wasn't impossible of difficult: It just was.
The membrane between scapes was thin. The life forces that formed them strong and the call
of mate to mate louder than anything human ears could stand. His fingers touched the edges
of her inner thoughts. The sanctum was beyond the soap bubble cover. Tracking her soul by
scent had been difficult, not impossible. In the end the link between flesh called him
past the dreams of millions, settling into the one.
Oz pressed against the bubble. The insides reflected back at him, giving off emotions to
the hot skin of his palms as first one than another broke into her scape. Tumbling end
over end, he crashed into rice pudding left over from a teddy bear's picnic. The sky above
him was a gorgeous blue. She was here in this marvelous flat expanse of grass. He could
taste her skin in the air as if kissing the wind. Blinking as everything about her crowded
into him from her very mind, Oz watched as peanut butter sandwiches floated by on jelly
wings, translucent and beautifully grape.
Watching the world shift with her body as she tossed in her bed, trees erupted and woods
became alive with birdsong. The moon rose full and heavy in the darkening sky as Oz set
out to find her within herself. The land curved up to meet his bare feet. Rocks were soft,
grass was soft and trees felt like chenille here. He smiled at the tender flowers that
sprang to life, uncrushed by his passing. The land before him was a woodland straight out
of fairy tales, he thought as unicorns formed from clouds and dropped to the ground
gently. They eyed him. His voice issued from one of them. "Where is she?" The
unicorn said in his gentle tones. A second unicorn opened her mouth and Willow's voice
whispered, "She is here."
The grass parted like an ocean. Oz walked slow motion through her scape, following the
emptiness where the grass had been. The unicorns watched him, shifting to wolves who
howled at the fat moon. He traveled forever in an instant. A clearing appeared and the
animals took flight as birds. He'd come a long way to find her. A search that spanned
realities and somehow he knew she was near.
Opening his eyes in the park, the sun blinded him. The moon was gone and forgotten, but
only on his side of the dream as he watched Willow standing by a pond. "Oz..."
Her voice echoed and rippled.
He burst from the lake.
Staring at himself from the sunlight park, Oz watched her take his hands and pull him free
of the ice crusting the moonlight lake. Oz sputtered onto the land, cold but not alone.
"I've come a long time to be with you." His words slid onto her like kisses in
the rain.
"Why? She asked, her hair floating around her with her delicately embroidered robe
sitting around her like living purple. He reached for the rich fabric and it flew away
from him becoming crows. She laughed, still dressed in the robe.
"I've missed you...The unicorns lead me here to you."
"You're my unicorn." She whispered, her voice coming from the trees as her lips
refused to move.
The sunlight burned his skin as he watcher her touch his face, dragging the ice away and
letting it fall as rose petals to the soft grass. "I am here." He told them.
"Here. It's why I came."
Willow laughed. She smiled at him in the sunlight and turned her eyes to the moon above.
Shivering on the grass but not cold, Oz reached for her while her burned in the daylight.
The trees shivered and sounded like Buffy laughing. Willow's eyes stared into his.
"You were already here." She took his hand in hers and pointed to the Oz in
sunlight.
The Oz in sunlight watched them in moonlight with a smile. "Oh, I've been here
forever."
The dreamscape shivered, dissolved and left Oz alone in his own bed. A smile gently lifted
his features. He was with her. He always had been. It just was.