Title: Once In A Lifetime 10/24
Author: Karen Jephson
Disclaimer: Not mine, unfortunately. Want to adopt and treat them better
than their owners, but I don't have enough.
Feedback: Live for it.
Note: To Trich and Gail. Thanks for your nagging, your precise beta, and your
constant encouragement.
Giles leaned over Willow's shoulder, reading the text on the computer screen. "I think you're right. Well done, you two." The witches exchanged congratulatory smiles.
"So? Are you going to let the rest of us in on the great discovery?" Frustration had tinged Buffy's voice with sarcasm.
Giles removed his glasses, unconsciously playing with them in his hands. "Actually it's several discoveries. Or rather, a convergence of several occurrences at the same time."
Willow jumped in eagerly. "Every five hundred years, we have a delta solar alignment. Last night was the beginning of a three day alignment."
"A what?"
Giles turned toward Xander, to answer his question. "Not so much an astrological alignment as a mystical one. The suns from four solar systems align to create the four points of a rhombus in which the energies of the universe converge in on themselves. A great curiosity for the mystic astrologers and scientists, but nothing truly portentous or threatening to the equilibrium of things."
"But?"
Before Giles had a chance to respond to Buffy's question, Anya's hand rose. "What's a rhombus?"
Willow chimed in automatically. "A figure with four equal sides, but whose angles aren't ninety degrees."
Tara smiled at Willow's eagerness before addressing Buffy's question. "On its own it isn't much. But it could act like a booster to another occurrence. It's Halloween and the feast of Beredac."
"And he is?"
"She, actually," Giles intervened. "Goddess of mischief and the masque. Last night there was some sort of fog. If there are traces of her power, that might have combined with the power of All Halloo's and the eclipse to create the power to meld the two universes for a fraction of a second and allow the transference between myself and your Rupert."