Nightmares and Ideas

"What can't we face if we're together?

What's in this place that we can't weather? 

Apocalypse?

We've all been there.

The same old trips...

Why should we care?"

-Buffy, the musical episode

Hi, this is Bree again. Ever since my last, rather revealing conversation with Senara, I've been pretty stressed about the whole thing. Senara, on the other hand, seems strangely calm - like by telling us, it was the final acceptance of her fate or something. Which, of course, I'm not alright with. We're going to need her to fight... to "rage, rage against the dying of the light," to quote poet Dylan Thomas... rather than just going along with what they're planning. We'll do our best to save her life, though, whether she helps us or not. It'll just be easier if she cooperates a little.

Because of all my fretting, it's not really all that surprising that I'm having bad dreams, too. I keep having the same nightmare - the giant werewolf attacking Senara, her white robe staining red. I'm not sure why that detail about the robe got so stuck in my head. I guess the whole thing is just so upsetting that I need something more minor to focus on. Somehow, that just seems symbolic of the cruelty of the whole thing; dress her in white, so everyone can see the blood when they make their "sacrifice" of a young girl to be werewolf food.

Fortunately, not all my fretting has been nonproductive. I've actually come up with some ideas that I think may be decently helpful. That is:

Okay, we have the problem of an indestructible fairy-augmented werewolf, right? The whole reason for this sacrifice is that the fair folk couldn't come up with any way to destroy him, so odds are we won't be able to either. For about a day, this stumped me. I was talking to Summer about it... and suddenly I had a brainstorm. We don't have to destroy him, necessarily. We just have to find some way to contain him. If we can just imprison him for awhile - and I don't think it'll need to be for that long, since he's close to the end of the seven year cycle and is due for a feeding - he'll revert to being a regular werewolf. Which, you know, is still fairly daunting under most circumstances... but we have our own werewolf, four vampires, three people with fae blood, and a bunch with super powers. If Carrow's enchantment wears off, we can totally take him. Unless the fair folk get rid of him first, even.

Another potential problem is that because of the vow we made to be Senara's hosts, Senara is confined to our house. There's like an invisible force field thing that keeps her in. We're not sure how far it extends; it's at least far enough that she can attend my school with me, but that's within walking distance. We doubt she can leave the city, though... and keeping her at a distance would be very helpful in protecting her. I had an idea about that too. And luckily for us, all it really involves is telling the truth to the fair folk. They don't even have to know that we know about their plans for Senara.

On the first day of June, we fly to the United States, where we'll meet up with Blakeney's mother, and fly with her to Italy to begin our trip. When we thought Senara might really just be here as an "exchange student," we booked a ticket for her too, because we thought that traveling would be good for her education about humanity. I was thinking about the trip today... and another idea hit me.

We should contact the fair folk and let them know about the trip, but act like we don't know what their game is. If they're going to stick to their story that they sent us Senara so we could teach her about the human world, I don't see how they could say no. We don't know where the force field boundaries are - but they're definitely not as far as Rochester, let alone Italy or Eastern Europe. If they say Senara can travel with us, they have to let her off the leash. And there isn't much excuse for them to say no without dropping their charade, which we don't think they're going to do. All we have to do is act innocent enough that they don't suspect a hidden motive.

I'm still pretty tense about the whole thing. But now that I've actually had a couple of ideas, I feel a lot more confident than I did. The odds no longer seem impossible. Tough, sure... but tough is doable.

Love,
Bree