a new world hangs outside the window
beautiful and strange
it must be I've fallen awake
I must be

It was a rare sunny winter day, but bitterly cold at least according to Buffy, as she walked down the rolling streets of Dupont Circle with her yoga mat strapped to her back. She didn't slow to admire the charming homes with their endearing front porches and delightful white picket fences like she usual did. Buffy was running late. But in the weeks that passed after the night she's convinced she was drugged at a bar, she didn't slow down for anyone or anything anymore.

Yoga was her "slow down" essentially. She dipped into the studio just as the instructor was wrapping up the first series of "ooommmm" chants to kick off the class and quietly crawled into place on her mat. She didn't bother looking around -- she knew who was in attendance. Mostly, the slew of soccer moms with babies at home. The types that kept an extra nanny on retainer when their two children became "just. that. out. of. hand." They weren't her friends, but they saw her around enough that it made sense in their social world to acknowledge her. Some feigned smiles behind their 6 a.m. applied eyeliner now as their bodies moved into downward facing dog in unison.

It wasn't at all like Buffy to like an activity like yoga. Aside from her daily classes here, her only other hobbies were drinking, chain smoking cigarettes and staking vampires. Sometimes she expanded her horizons by picking up an interesting stranger for the night, but after what happened recently, she'd been a little too gun shy to be all that friendly to anyone of the opposite sex, no matter their human or supernatural status. It had been quite a monumental struggle for the dark hunter despite the fact that a friend had saved her from the experience being even worse. But the incident brought back some terrible memories and the trauma it ultimately caused, that she had worked so hard to put behind her. Everywhere she went, she swore she saw Jason's face in the crowd. It scared her. Buffy didn't appreciate feeling scared.

As such, she hadn't been working much, either. All of that meant that this hour she spent in the yoga studio was essentially the only thing keeping her sane. So as class wrapped up, she smiled almost genuinely to the instructor, and quickly packed up to avoid the awkward small talk crowds. She was just zipping up her thin, grey hoodie as she jogged out along the sidewalk when she felt her phone buzz in her pocket.

Leslie: "Hey. If you don't start responding to my texts I'm going to book an airplane ticket and just show up to check on you. It will be ON YOU then if I fail chemistry."

Buffy cracked a short smile as she read her sister's message, and a hand moved to push a few pesky strands of her dark hair from her face.

Gia: "I'm fine. What else do you want from me?"

She fired off quickly. She could see the three bubbles of her sister immediately crafting a response. But after several seconds of appearing and reappearing, she breathed a heavy sigh and slid her phone back into her jacket pocket. On the way home, Buffy stopped into her neighborhood coffee shop. It was her turn to feign a smile and stiff wave when she spied several women from yoga whom had beaten her there. Nevertheless, she ordered her latte and slid into a cushioned barstool facing the window, blocking her view of their matching neon colored yoga pants and baby strollers.

GIA BUFFY JONES