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There's no vertigo, just a slight feeling of dizziness.
It's the girl from her ballet class, the one she always watches in the mirror. Dawn doesn't know her name, but she can't stop watching her --
The girl has long hair, darker than her own, as long as hers used to be before she cut it. She is peering through it, over her tucked-in knees. Dawn doesn't say, where am I.
-- the graceful way she moves, and sometimes she doesn't do what the rest of the class is doing,
doesn't point her toes, or spins around with her arms outstretched -- or leaps across the room while the rest of them are at the barre.
doesn't point her toes, or spins around with her arms outstretched -- or leaps across the room while the rest of them are at the barre.
The teacher never says anything. This is why Dawn is sure the girl's not really there.
Fire and molten ash, like one of those silent movies except projected onto the flat surfaces of her real life. It could be the past or future, which, either way, no big whoop. She knows without asking what each of them would say: traumatic flashbacks (perhaps you should see a therapist)... or prophetic visions of the (next) apocalypse (Dawnie's special after all)... or a hell dimension being shown to her by a really annoying demon (what did you steal this time?). She almost buys a phone card in Germany but then her great European backpacking trip would be over like that and Buffy would be cranky and everyone would be worried. It will probably go away by itself, anyway.
It gets stronger when she goes back to school, but by then she doesn't want it to stop.
It should terrify her. But it's not like last time when she was fading out; she's still here, she's real and something new is fading in.
Because there's people. And worlds, horses and rich merchants and clever thieves, little planets and big neon towns and empty space, all around stretching out forever, and a girl pirouetting to the stars.
The girl who isn't there smiles and
"I felt you turning,"
reaches out to her.
And when River touches her, it's not a surprise, that they're both real, that they can feel each other, touch each other. No one's pushing her. She's just spinning through space, turning and turning and opening everything.
