Snowing
It was cold outside and snowflakes drifted lazily to the ground. Faith tilted her head up and caught one in her mouth. It melted instantly on her tongue and she smiled. Her watcher Maria sighed in frustrated silence at the young girl's antics.
They had been standing in the cold training. Faith really didn't understand why they couldn't just train indoors where it was warm and not snowing. Maria had said something about being able to fight in any terrain in any weather. Whatever that meant. Her watcher gave her a look and Faith turned her attention back to the task at hand.
The movements were easy enough to do despite the biting cold and the ankle deep slosh. In no time Maria suggested a small break. Faith grinned knowingly but kept her mouth shut. One of the few adults that she had learned to respect was Maria. Beatrice was the other. Bea was Maria's sister and the equivilant to Annie's watcher.
In the past ten years Annie and Faith had run off a number of the Tweeds. All of them muttering something about hellions and whores. The two girls would just laugh and send their best wishes to the Council. All that changed with Maria and Beatrice. The two watcher sisters showed them with quiet dignity who was in charge.
They weren't so bad as adults went. In fact Faith had come to rely on them despite her normal distrust of anything that reeked of Tweed. Bea and Maria were good to her and Annie. They always kept their promises and were there to help patch the little sqabbles that seemed a part of adolesence. Thinking of the squabbles spawned by the thing named puberty Faith, thought about Annie.
Her best friend since forever. The smart half of her brain. They were inseperable most of the time. The slayerling wished now was one of those times. Annie was sitting inside the nice warm house reading a book. Sure Bea was most likely hovering over her and drilling her on endless sub dialects of Latin and Gaelic. But warmth and sitting was a good compared to cold and standing.
Almost as if Annie could hear her thoughts she turned her head to look out the window. She watched Faith standing in the cold trying yet again to catch snowflakes in her mouth. Annie smiled and shook her head. Outside is where she wanted to be, out goofing off in the snow with Faith. Her mind was wandering away from her Latin book.
Beatrice sighed and gently turned Annie's head back to the dusty tome on the table. The older woman clasped her hands behind her back and stood in front of the window blocking out Faith's figure. With a nod she gave the cue for Annie to repeat the lesson. The young girl rolled her eyes but did as requested. The sooner she got through it the sooner she'd be outside.
It was still a few hours from sundown when Maria and Beatrice finally relented to the pleading whines from the girls. Faith didn't wait for them to change their mind, she grabbed Annie by the wrist and took off down the street. They'd have to be back to patrol but until then it was play time. Annie followed along giggling and rambling about something or another and Faith gave her usual grunts, grins and smirks.
Somehow at that moment being fourteen and a walking hellmouth or slayer didn't really seem as hard as it usually was. They were sitting on a park bench talking about Annie's latest crush. Some guy who had a band. Big surprise. Faith did the dutiful friend deal and listened before letting her bad ass evil twin take control of her speaking ablities.
She spent the remainder of that time spewing obsenities that would make even the unperterble Maria blush, and trying to convince Annie that she needed to just jump this guy make him want her. Annie listened and spit out her own string of explicatives while giving Faith every reason in the book for not being a skank. They laughed about what Maria and Beatrice would do if they ever found out half the stuff they'd done.
Faith got quiet as she watched the last rays of sunlight slip past the horizon. Annie sat perfectly still and watched the sunset too. They weren't normal and they would never be. That wasn't such a bad thing considering that normal meant preppy. Now -that- was a horror beyond anything they ever battled. At least not being normal meant being together.