It's a funny thing when stars align--no
one actually knows it. There
may be astronomers with their telescopes
and astrologers with their
charts trying to keep track, but they
can't see. . .not really.
The light from one star might take two
hundred years to reach the
earth. The light from another might take
a few thousand. By the
time someone saw the cosmic connection
it would have long since
ceased to be, and, because of the world's
limited vantage point, the
alignment the person *did* see would only
be an illusion.
We never see the real deal. The real deal
happens without our
noticing, and without our even having
the ability to notice. Perhaps
a mathematician of the genius variety,
an Einstein or a Hawking,
could figure it out if they knew what
to look for, but there are so
many stars. . .
With all the bits of light and matter following
their own paths of
motion, no one could be expected to sense
the true moment when the
connection had been made. And, given the
speed of light and the
distances traveled, by the time someone
understood the connection all
that would be left would be the light
and shadow and aftereffects.
Aftereffects like the mist enveloping
the cliff where not too long
ago a witch gathered forces too dark and
too powerful for her to
control. The black magic had been siphoned
off her and channeled
into the earth where, in the fading light
of dusk, a gray tendril of
preternatural brume stretches from the
cliff down the hill to the
graveyard where beings of unearthly power
had violently been turned
to dust.
Fate may have noticed the alignment. Fate
may have foreseen the
events that produced such consequences,
and, if the Earth had been an
inch to the left or spinning a fraction
of an second faster, the
whole mess would have been avoided. But
Fate was a bitch and
didn't really care. Besides, this was
Sunnydale and stuff happens. . .