Chapter Text
The drive to South Carolina is long and awfully unpleasant.
The Rosenbergs aren't a close family-they never were, not so long as Willow can remember- so much of the journey is filled with silence. A tense, unforgiving, and for the most part unbroken silence. Willow can scarcely bear it.
The funny thing about the silence though, is that as far as Willow is concerned it isn't half as bad as talking. Every once in a while Sheila decides that they are a family again, and families do things... like visit wax museums and look at the largest ball of yarn in twenty states (doesn't that sound exciting, Willow? Ira, pull over) and so that is what the Rosenbergs must do. They don't really talk much, and so eventually Sheila decides that it isn't really worth it before they all pile into the car.
It isn't exactly like Willow is deaf or anything, so she hears just about everything her parents grumble about teenagers in what they believe are hushed voices.
Willow doesn't complain though. It's the first time she's seen them talk, just the two of them, in a long long while. Instead, she practices Latin and tries memorizing new sigils for as long as she can before carsickness forces her gaze out the window.
They stay in motels without decent internet connections, and Willow is sick for home. In an act motivated by pure, unadulterated teenage angst, she draws an angry dragon in her notebook.
The dragon is silly looking and Willow crumbles it up before tossing it at the trashcan. She misses.
Traffic and frequent stops force the journey to continue for a total of four days. By the end, Willow has taken homicide as a form of stress relief into serious consideration.
It is hot, humid and rainy when the Rosenbergs finally pull into town. They drive slowly down a muddy road past old trees covered in lichens and Willow catches glimpses of a fast running stream through the trees. Her parents seem put off by the weather, as though nobody told them most places weren't as sunny as California.
Loathe as she is to admit it, Willow thinks the place sort of beautiful, albeit in a gloomy sort of way. Long, tangled up masses of Spanish moss sway in wind and Willow counts 1, 2, 3, 4.....4 skinny brown rabbits in the underbrush.
The town is small- smaller than Sunnydale even, and decidedly more peaceful.
It is when Ira turns the corner that Willow sees the girl. She's blue eyed, with brown hair and a kind face- Willow waves at her, for some unknowable reason. The girl doesn't notice, which is likely for the best.
Ira Rosenberg turns another corner and the girl disappears from Willow's line of sight.