Frontier Buffy

Buffy is sitting on a three-legged wooden stool. There's an apron over her soft blue linen dress and straw hat rimmed with flowers sitting firmly on her cascading golden hair.

The wash sits in a bucket in front of her forgotten. Dusk is coming and she watches the sunset in glorious orange and pink. The sky is different in California. It's beauty sharpened against the harshness of life working the land and building a home.

They're not so far from town and when it gets dark, if she strains hard enough, she can see a soft glow in the distance from the boomtown down the road and across the river. Three women running a homestead would be a risky endeavor but they would be underestimating her strength. And they'd regret it.

After her father had left them they'd shored up their resources, considered their options and Buffy had suggested, out of the blue, that they go west. She couldn't explain it to them then, but she'd already felt drawn to the place.

In her dreams she saw the sky over the ocean, the rhythmic waves calling to her. But now that they were here? The dreams throbbed louder, more insistent. Now she felt alone in her dream on a vast beach with a storm hanging above the unimaginable expanse of water stretching out forever. It was getting chilly, the nights could cool down quickly, but she felt hot, her skin too tight.

She didn't expect to see many vampires out here. She was sure they were in the boomtown hunting. On the journey here she'd never found a place without their own local haunt.

On the east coast they had been thick as thieves. Another reason her mother and sister had been happy with the plan for a fresh start.

There was one dead mine on the property, already looted for gold, but the river sometimes gave up her shiny stones to a day of panning. It was night now but still not full dark. Stars seared down from the indigo sky. She was soaking in the sight as her underthings soaked in the tub when a sound thumped to life coming from the direction of the boomtown. Buffy's eyes narrow and she frowns as she watches the strip of road that crosses the river and cuts through the edge of her land.

A man on horseback is racing, no saddle, gripping the galloping stallion, with a long leather duster fanning out with each lope. His hat must have been lost and his ice blonde hairs catches the pale moonlight. She sucks in a breath at the strange sight.

Now she can hear the thunder of more hooves and she leaps off her stool to run to the edge of their coop so she could see and not be seen. The man on the stallion looks back over his shoulder and she catches piercing blue eyes before they slide to the road behind him. His pursuers are catching up and his horse is slowing down.

The rider suddenly veers off the road and cuts through her property. Her mouth opens in shock as he angles his slowing horse toward her mine! He slaps the back of the horse and it leaps off in the opposite direction before he slips into the darkness of the cave like opening angled down into the earth.

The riders pass not far from the coop but never veer into her land. They disappear down the road that only ends at the ocean. Meanwhile she has someone in her mine and she's not sure if he's really just a man. She felt the tightness at the sight of him. Her brain focusing on him like a dog with a bone.

Was he going to be covered in blood lurking for her? It was time to find out.