10 Wishes
They lat on the rooftop of the dorm, looking at the stars. Willow snuggled up against Tara, shivering from the chilly night air.
"Look! A shooting star!" Willow exclaimed. Their eyes followed a comet streaking through the sky.
"We have to wish on it," Tara told her, smiling.
"What do we wish for?"
"It has to be secret, or it won't come true."
"All right..." Willow closed her eyes, and Tara saw her move her lips, mouthing her wish. She smiled. Willow did the same thing when she was concentrating really hard on something she was reading.
"My mother and I used to wish on shooting stars," Tara told Willow. "She would say that if you wished on ten in one night, then all of your wishes would come true the next morning."
"Really?"
"Yeah. But we never stayed outside long enough to see more than five stars."
"Maybe we will, someday."
"Maybe."
That was all their relationship seemed to be, a bunch of `maybes' grouped together. When Oz had come back, Tara had expected Willow to go back to him, despite how close they had gotten. It was a huge surprise for her to find out that Willow had chosen her. When she blew out the candle in the blacked out room, and they first kissed, Tara felt more alive than she had ever before.
She wanted to keep that feeling.
"Baby?"
"Yeah, Will?"
"What's that constellation?"
"Uh... it's a polar bear sitting on an island."
"I love your constellations."
"Yeah, me too."
Tara knew that Willow was a powerful witch, much more powerful than she herself could ever try to be. But did Willow know that? Tara had seen magic rip people apart from the inside, without them being able to control it. She never wanted that to happen to Willow. She wanted to keep anything bad from happening to her. Like what was going to happen to Tara is only a few months...
"Look, Tara, there's another one!"
"Where?"
"To your right... it's by the polar bear."
"Oh, I see it."
"Let's wish again!"
And Tara made a wish. She wished that this would last forever. But she also made another wish... she wished that someday, she would be able to tell Willow her secret.