Joyce Summers sat in the living room, marveling at how entirely quiet the house was for once. Both Dawn and Buffy were staying at their Dad's for the weekend. Dawn had been excited, but Buffy was extremely reluctant. Hank had hardly been in their lives for a while now, only very occasionally calling up claiming he wanted a father/daughter weekend (usually, Joyce had figured out, when he had broke up with his most recent secretary). Dawn was always delighted by this announcement but as she had got older, Buffy had become less and less enthused, developing a cynicism about her Father that eldest siblings from divorced families tended to develop.
And so, Joyce had the house to herself. Which had been wonderful the first few hours...and then it got lonely. Sure she may constantly complain about the noise and the mess her daughters made, but when they weren't here...the house just didn't feel the same. No matter how much she claimed to need time to herself, she always missed them when they were gone. Always.
To make the emptiness of the house even more noticeable, when the girls were away none of the others ever stopped by, almost as though forgetting she were still there. Not that it was surprising. After all, she wasn't one of their...what was it she had heard call Dawn call it? The Scoobies, that was it. She wasn't one of those, so it wasn't surprising that when Buffy wasn't here they chose not to stop by. Occasionally Xander would come over for a few hours with mostly homemade food on his mind, but nevertheless she was always glad to see him, and even more occasionally Rupert would stop by, perhaps in desperate need of some adult conversation which, being the mother of two young daughters, was a need Joyce could understand.
So when their was a knock at the door, Joyce immediately presumed it was one of these two, so she didn't even bother to look out the window before she pulled open the front door.
However, it was neither Rupert nor Xander stood there. Not even Anya or Willow, which it very, very occasionally sometimes was but instead was a petite blond girl, wearing jeans and a red top. Looking very normal, very average, but for some reason she struck Joyce with a feeling of familiarity. Blinking the low, almost-set sun out of her eyes, she tried to focus on the girl seeing if some recognition would come to her. It didn't.
"Hello," Joyce greeted her, but her own puzzlement spoke in the word and it came out more of a question.
