Switcheroony
by alicorn
Chapter 5
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"I want you each to write down exactly what you each recall Faith having said. Word for word, please." Giles said, "You will probably all remember it slightly differently and we need to have the exact wording if possible. So if I compare all three, I will probably be able to get as close, to what was actually said, as possible without having recorded it. The trick with unravelling a curse is in the wording. Deciphering the hidden meaning in words, etcetera."
Having done their scripts, they handed them into Giles and a debate ensued, as the differences in their recollections, were set before them. Eventually about an hour and a half later, a large white board in the training room, displayed what seemed to be the en-mass recollection of the curse.
"Okay questions first:
Which Goddess?
What temptation?
Who's the Maiden?
What's the hidden truth?
What was the first lie?
What does it mean by fix them forever." Giles said as he started writing on the right side of the white board.
"Then there are the obvious things. The two souls, shoes of another, the withered roots and the single season all seem to refer to Buffy and Willow. Luna is the moon, so that's our timescale, a luna month." Having half filled the right side of the board, Giles stepped back to stare at it, in the hope more would become evident.
Buffy sat numb, in her heart she thought she knew what it was all about, but her fear of being wrong prevented her from speaking. Well not only her fear of being wrong, but if she was honest her fear of being right. Instead her mind took over. 'I'm just seeing what I want to see, there is no way that Faith could seriously have been trying to help, it wasn't in her nature, despite what Angel thought and she was probably only seeing what she wanted to see. How would she know what's best for Willow, she has never said a kind word to her, no, it can't be me.' She scanned the words, finding other meanings. It was referring to a big bad, somehow Willow and her would be fixed this way forever. 'Faith if your on this planet, you are so dead.'
Willow, decided to dismiss Giles' approach and was busy scribbling the sequential letters of each word, then the secondary sequences. Searching for a numeric predictable pattern, a code. She liked the mathematical approach. She was also busy denying all the thoughts and feelings that the verse provoked in her emotionally, this was just another puzzle.
Anya spoke. "Did you say the globe had a Yellow light?"
Willow and Buffy nodded.
"I think you'll find the Goddess is Innana. She was a Sumerian High Goddess. In the days of the Christos when the sacrificial gods Tammuz/Dumuzi were consorts of the powerful Ishtar and Innana, men seeking to honor the Goddess entered the priesthood performing self castration as an act of contrition. To become closer to the Goddess they emasculated themselves in an attempt to be more like women, having a hole, instead of a penus. Then the church fathers emulated the attire of women by adopting robes as an emblem of their "holy" office. Seeking ritual debasement and submission to purge their day to day guilt, at being male. Ahh those were the days, devout monks beating themselves into a frenzy of zealous ecstacy. I cursed quite a few men with the worship of Innana in my time I can tell you." Anya beamed, apparently still unrepentant. "Oh yeh, their robes were always Yellow. The same colour as the hair of their Goddess"
Xander, sat there too, but unlike everyone else, he wasn't looking at the board, he wasn't really listening to Anya, he was looking at his two best friends. Slowly his mind dripped the pieces of another puzzle into place. Willow and Buffy were not as practiced at hiding their thoughts and feelings, behind the faces they were now wearing. He had seen a few things that, well didn't sit as normal.
When what Anya was saying filtered into the puzzle, it came together in Xanders head and the light went on, he stopped breathing, in a vain attempt to stop laughing. Excusing himself, he left the room and headed out into the alley. Where he laughed loud and long. Then realising, he had to say something, the funnies stopped. 'How the hell do I tell those two their in love?' He so did not want to be the one to have that conversation with them.
'Maybe if I just nudge them. Hold on that, what Faith is doing. I'll be damned. She really is trying to do them a favour! Okay world on its axis aside, I need some space, time, thinking time. Anya your gonna love this.'