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10th_13thdoctor
The Doctor:
The night was crisp and black; to the Doctor, it felt mildly crystalline. The stars like crushed diamonds smeared themselves across the clear sky above his head; high in the inky blackness, the moon hung as a single pale baleful eye glowing, phosphorescent.
He liked nights like this, on Earth. Other places certainly had their own nighttime charms. He thought of the last sunset he’d on Vendi IV which was absolutely glorious – a spectacular gradient of indigo fading upwards into violet and black, its deep juicy colors glimmering and coruscating off the leaves.
But he loved the clear crispness of Earth nights. Especially near rivers or lakes. The water served as a glittery, wrinkled mirror of the sky above. And tonight, he sat at the water’s edge, watching the river undulate and ripple its nighttime reflections.
He’d begun to meditate, his eyes still open, drinking in the scene around him. Suddenly, he heard a strange noise from some trees to his left, shattering him out of his reverie.
He rose from his spot in the grass and walked over to the trees to investigate.
Evelyn:
This probably wasn’t the safest habit that Evelyn kept, these long and meandering walks at two in the morning, but the night winds beckoned as they threaded through the leaves of the oak and willow and pecan, catching the pink flowers of the crepe myrtles and swirling them into gracefully choreographed dances through the air. She couldn’t sleep, and really, any attempt to do so would have simply led her to another world, wandering far from home as her body sapped its strength and left her increasingly weakened, exhausted. She loved her nightly forays, she really did, but the toll they took on her had become too much. Better to answer the call of her wanderlust in more local, terrestrial ways.
Her path had wound through her small-town Louisiana neighborhood, and she had left the sidewalk, moving along a dirt trail that roamed through the scrub pines and cypress as it followed the river. The moon hung full and ghostly in the dark sky, and its pale silver flooded the trail, lighting Evelyn’s path as she emerged from the copse of trees and approached the water. She stopped as she saw movement at the riverbank, a tall, slender figure rising to its feet and moving towards her. She hesitated and tensed, acutely aware that she was out here alone and in the middle of the night, but she stood still, watching as he drew closer. She said nothing, probably a little bit rude, but she wasn’t the most gregarious creature to have graced the world. She always seemed to have two settings– speaking too much, or too little.
The Doctor:
As the Doctor approached, he saw a smaller figure emerge from the trees…obviously the source of the rustling. As he drew closer, he saw more detail: wavy, shoulder-length dark hair and pale skin. Human? He guessed likely, but given this part of the world, one couldn’t be sure. And as he kept walking towards them, they stayed still.
“’Ello?” he called out to the figure in the darkness. “You alright?”
Evelyn:
As the figure drew nearer, Evelyn was able to visually discern more of his appearance somewhat– fine-boned features, a suit that appeared to have pinstripes (though she couldn’t quite make out the color in the dim light), trainer-clad feet, a shock of wild hair and expressive eyes. She gave a polite smile when he inquired as to her well-being.
“Fine, thanks. Just out for a walk. Beautiful night.” She peered at him intently, curiously, trying to get a sense of him. Impressions were vague, not unpleasant or alarming, though something about him did pique her intrigue, something she couldn’t quite define. “Was a little surprised to run into someone out here this late.”
The Doctor:
The Doctor stopped in front of the young woman and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “It is, isn’t?” he replied to her first question. “And I was a bit surprised myself to see anyone else here. Usually it’s deserted this time of night. It’s perfect out here if one wants to just take a walk or meditate. Which is what I was doing over there.” He jerked his head towards the riverbank. “Just started coming out here myself. You?”
Evelyn:
Evelyn smiled, glancing downward. “Have just a touch of insomnia. Walking helps a bit. Besides, I’ve always loved full moons.” She tilted her her head a little to look past him at the nearby riverbank. “It is. Long as you avoid the ‘gators.” Slapping at a sudden stinging on her arm that was accompanied by a high-pitched hum, she added with a little chuckle, “And the mosquitoes.”
Large brown eyes fringed with thick lashes shifted curiously back to the stranger. She was fairly certain she hadn’t seen him about town before, but then she didn’t exactly know every resident of Wisteria, even as small as it was. “It’s one of my favorite places in town,” she said, before inquiring, “And you? D’you live around here?”
The Doctor:
“Actually, no, I’m not from ‘round here,” the Doctor replied, before glancing around at the river and the trees. “I’ve visited this place a few times, however. Recently discovered it after I visited and left New Orleans a while back. And fortunately, I’ve not seen too many alligators. Maybe one, and we had the good sense to leave each other alone.” He finished his last sentence with a small grin.
Evelyn:
“It’s certainly different than New Orleans.” Evelyn said. “I really do love this little town, though. Maybe it’s silly, and I know it’s a bit run down and old and there isn’t much to do, and the paint’s peeling off half the buildings and there are a lot of abandoned places with overgrown weeds everywhere, and little patches of young impromptu forest springing up everywhere because nothing ever gets built or expanded around here, but somehow that makes it… I don’t know. It’s like nature’s taking back her own. And I like that.” Her eyes drifted back to the gently surging river, and she smiled. “And then there’s this little spot. It’s a bit hidden, actually. Not many people seem to even know about it. Adds to its charm, I think.”
She chuckled at his talk of alligators. “That does sound sensible. More sensible than me, actually. Well, young me. I’m more sensible now, believe it or not. But yes– I saw one on a family outing when I was… oh, about four? Five? Sunning itself on the lake shore. I started walking right up to it, saying hello. Lucky for me it wasn’t hungry and I didn’t get too close, but I about gave my mother a heart attack.”
The Doctor:
The Doctor chuckled. He wasn’t about to tell her he spoke alligator yet. “I can imagine,” he replied. “I dare say I kind of like places like this. My childhood home was on the side of a mountain, just beyond a river. The banks were littered with trees – quite different than these, but absolutely gorgeous. Nothing quite like them, actually.” He paused. “There was a bridge across that river, and sometimes I’d go there alone when I was a boy.”
A thought suddenly bolted through him. “Oh!” he exclaimed, his eyes widening. “I’ve been chatting and I forgot to tell you my name. I’m the Doctor. And you are…?”
Evelyn:
A slow smile drifted across Evelyn’s face as the man spoke, and a feeling somehow akin to wistful nostalgia arose within her. “That sounds lovely,” she murmured. “Where are you from?”
She raised an eyebrow at his introduction, but nodded. “The Doctor? Just ‘The Doctor’? Odd sort of name.” Softening her recklessly meandering words and unintentional rudeness with a gentle laugh, she added, “I’m Evelyn.”
The Doctor:
“I’m from…very far away,” the Doctor replied. “You’ve likely never heard of the place. And it’s just the Doctor. An odd sort of name for an odd sort of man, I suppose.”
He smiled after his last few words. “Evelyn.” He repeated the name as if to lodge it into his brain. “Nice to meet you, Evelyn. And if you don’t mind, I can walk with you if you like. There’s part of this area I’ve not seen yet.”
Evelyn:
She nodded silently, wondering at his reticence but not wanting to probe. An amused smile quickly touched her lips then at his description of himself. “Odd is good. I quite like odd. It makes life interesting.” She gave a small pause, one eyebrow slowly quirking. “As long as by ‘odd,’ you don’t mean a ‘deranged axe murderer’ kind of odd. That’s a little too interesting. I like my life to be relatively axe-murderer free. It’s a personal preference.”
Evelyn titled her head to one side, the shadowy, unkempt waves of her shoulder-length hair flowing in the gentle breeze, and regarded him carefully. All kidding about axe murderers aside, she was acutely aware that she was out here wandering the streets by herself in the middle of the night, and didn’t know the first thing about this man. But her instincts had never misled her, and they were telling her now that he meant no harm. Still, though, it paid to be at least somewhat wary. “I suppose, if you like. Where did you have in mind?”
The Doctor:
“I’m not terribly fond of axes,” the Doctor replied with a smile, “so you needn’t worry about that.”
He gazed around them after as Evelyn spoke. The angle of the moon’s light had shifted, and now it was beaming down and illuminating different places on the river and in the trees from where it’d been before. Evelyn obviously was not afraid of walking by herself in the middle of the night, nor chatting with alien Doctors she’d just met. And he could use some company – he didn’t feel quite like returning to the TARDIS yet.
At her question, he glanced up in thought for a moment and gazed back down at her. “I don’t rightly know…since you’re the local,” he offered, “I thought perhaps I’d follow your lead.”
Evelyn:
“Well…” Evelyn said, and pursed her lips, considering what might be a good place to show him. A bright smile then beamed on her face as the memory unfolded in her mind of the night she had accidentally stumbled on a lovely little spot that looked like it came straight from a storybook. “There’s a great place just through these trees– there’s a little path hidden in there. And it comes out by a swamp after, oh, a half mile or so, and there’s a great big cypress tree growing in the middle of the water, roots everywhere– and it’s the time of year for fireflies, so we might get a light show!”
She pivoted on her heels and stepped towards the copse of trees, craning her head to see past the underbrush for a hint of the path. “It should be just around here… somewhere… oh!” She turned to smile at him as she found the little dirt trail snaking through the tangled grasses. “There it is.”
A tiny but somewhat sobering spark of common sense flickered in her mind then, and she turned to him, gesturing firmly with one hand as she narrowed her eyes at him in what she hoped was a fierce expression (though that ferocity was probably downplayed somewhat by her short stature, which necessitated that she tilt her head to look up at him while speaking). “I should tell you, I’m an expert in… in… in Kung Fu and I can thoroughly kick your ass if you try anything.” Okay, it wasn’t exactly true. She didn’t know Kung Fu, didn’t know any martial arts. But she had in the past found herself inexplicably fighting off an attacker in a way she had no memory of learning, and while she didn’t fully understand where all of that had come from, she was fairly confident that she could handle herself if the need should arise. Still, though, she felt no threat from this man, despite the peculiar sensations she felt when she tried to get a mental impression from him.
The Doctor:
The Doctor followed Evelyn’s gaze as she described the area through the trees. His eyes followed the dirt trail that snaked behind them, cutting through the tall grass and winding to the point off in the distance that she indicated. “Alright,” he assented. “That sounds lovely.”
At her comments about knowing Kung Fu, he simply nodded. “I’ve no intention of trying anything, but I’ll take your word for it,” he replied, waiting for her to turn around and begin walking so he could join her.
Evelyn:
Allowing a brief smile to flit across her face, Evelyn gave an approving nod and then forged ahead through the underbrush until her feet found the little trail. “Watch out for snakes,” she cautioned her new acquaintance. “And fire ants. And those little stinging caterpillars that live in the oak trees, those are especially unpleasant, and they’ll just drop right down on you if you’re not careful.” She slapped at a mosquito that had decided to help itself to a vein in her arm, moving at an easy pace in the humidity-sodden nighttime warmth. It had been an especially hot summer this year, but a brief rainfall earlier in the day had lowered the temperature to more comfortable levels.
The path seemed to go on much further than she had remembered, and she wondered if she had accidentally started on the wrong one. “It shouldn’t be too much further,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “Just up ahead.” Her pace slowed, though, when she caught sight of a flurry of tiny glowing things, flitting about like dancing sparks just ahead of them. Instead of the soft golden glow of fireflies, though, they were a brilliant cerulean, swirling and swarming in elegant patterns through the air. Evelyn stopped walking and stared with unabashed curiosity at the sight, her head inclining slowly to one side. “Well. Now that’s different. Never saw blue fireflies before.”
The Doctor:
The Doctor nodded as Evelyn cautioned him about the less pleasant fauna in the woods. “I will,” he replied. “I will say I’ve encountered nastier creatures than even these in my travels.”
As they walked, a few mosquitos hovered towards his arms, but as soon as they were close enough to detect his scent they quickly buzzed away. He wouldn’t have been a good meal for them, anyway – his blood would have killed them even if they tried to ingest it.
Peering over her shoulder as he followed her, the Doctor watched woods give way to more woods, The humidity hung around everything like invisible damp curtains soaking the air: even the hanging branches seemed to bend a little under their heft, their long vividly green fringed leaves gravid and swaying when a gentle breeze blew past them.
And once Evelyn saw the blue fireflies, he did too. Little creatures swirled around like congregations of blue Christmas lights in the small clearing ahead of them. “My word,” he breathed, stepping forward past her to get a closer look. “What are they doing here?”
Once he was in the midst of the blue pin-prick light chorus, he held out one of his hands, palm upward. One of the creatures flitted to him and hovered over his palm, casting a soft cyan glow onto his pale ivory skin. He tilted his head and studied it. The blue glow was more characteristic of marine creatures on this planet – he’d never seen them in fireflies. Not on Earth anyway.
Evelyn:
Another few steps closer, and the tiny hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end, a shivery tingle beginning to roll its way over her spine, her arms, her scalp. She watched in mesmeric fascination as the tiny, luminous creatures drew close to the Doctor’s outstretched hand. Her own hand, small and delicate, reached toward the swirling constellation of blue lights as she continued a slow, enthralled advance forward. “What do you suppose they are?”
The humidity seemed to be weighing more and more heavily in the air with every step she took, trickling dampness over her skin and creeping into her clothing until it clung sodden to her body. Paradoxically in this heat, she shivered as another prickling sensation coursed through her body, an indefinable pressure of knowing scraping against the recesses of her mind. A dizzying suspicion began to shimmer into her consciousness like a mirage taking form, that they were somehow, impossibly, elsewhere.
She stopped walking. The blue fireflies were still dancing about them in their incandescent swarm, and the light from their little bodies illuminated the dripping trees surrounding them on all sides– the huge, primeval trees that twisted and arched, looping root and branch and mossy frond in an endless weave until it was near impossible to tell one tree from the other. From somewhere nearby the cacophony of flowing water reached her ears, not the softly bubbling whisper of the river, but something larger, louder, the echoes of it seeming to resonate through the waterlogged forest from all directions, even somehow below them, so she couldn’t tell where it originated from. As she peered through the trees, she caught a flicker of moonlit, frothy white in the distance that seemed to be falling from the sky in a vertical stream, and an instant later a rush of giddy disbelief washed over her as she realized she was looking at a waterfall plunging down the jagged face of a cliff.
Wherever they were, they were most certainly not where they had been.
Oh yes, do let’s inadvertently lead this poor random stranger through a doorway to another world, she thought wryly. Sounds right down your alley, Evelyn. Her voice took on a feebly whimsical tone when she finally spoke again. “Uh… and here we have the… um, local primordial rain forest, and apparently a great big waterfall that wasn’t there before…”
The Doctor:
“They aren’t from Earth…I can tell you that,” the Doctor replied, watching the cloud of glowing blue creatures float above their outstretched hands, then swirl around them. He peered at the rather…orderly formations in which they assembled themselves: first, a vertical fuzzy disc with three fuzzy arms that looked strangely like the Milky Way galaxy; and next, a loose swirl cradling several brighter pinpoints of light which looked unmistakably familiar. He gasped, as his eyes widened as he realised it was..the constellation of Kasterborous.
Then, he felt landscape around them seeming to slowly morph. On the periphery of his senses, he first noticed the trees change: out of the corner of his eye, the large bald cypress trees shifted into these gigantic, gnarled beings whose limbs twisted into and wrapped around each other. Ahead in the distance, he saw the waterfall too, its water glittering as it rushed down the side on a cliff face and plunged into a pool at its feet.
“Quite right, Evelyn,” he muttered. “It’s not that it wasn’t there before. It’s that we weren’t here before.”
Ribbons of consciousness seem to emit from from trees now; he opened his mind and reached it out to sense them. These trees were alive, certainly, but were they sentient?
He got his answer shortly. Not of our world, you two.
Evelyn:
She could feel her eyes widening as she gazed at the primordial landscape. It was beautiful- oh, it most certainly was that. A small smile played at her lips as she pivoted slowly in place, mentally absorbing every detail. There was a feel about these woods, something murky and indistinct but unrelenting, pulsing softly against her mind like a heartbeat. She supposed she should be worried about suddenly finding herself on an alien world. It would be quite sensible of course, and perhaps later she would take a brief pause for an appropriate moment of consternation, once reality had begun to set in a bit.
Mostly though, for the moment, she was utterly enchanted.
Casting a quick sideways glance at her new friend, she wondered what he was making of all this. He didn’t seem to be panicking, at least. In fact, he appeared to be just as fascinated by all of this as she was.
There was a sound like a sigh of wind through the leaves, only it was inside her mind (though it was also all around her, as though carried on the wind, or the moisture in the air), and it seemed almost to form words. It was as if someone were attempting to communicate from a great distance, and she couldn’t quite discern what they were saying. Her eyes darted to the Doctor.
“Did you hear that?”
The Doctor:
“I felt it,” the Doctor replied softly, sweeping his gaze up and around at the trees surrounding them. “And if I didn’t know any better, I’d say that the trees are trying to communicate with us. They know we’re not from here.” He turned to Evelyn. “And the formations that the fireflies made…both were illustrations of our points of origin in the universe.”
Biting his lip and thinking for a moment, he decided to try reaching his mind out to them. Truthfully, to any other sentient beings in this place, for he had the feeling that the trees weren’t the only ones. Like pulling a spindly, auric thread from its lustrous spool, he unwound an inquiry and sailed it out to whoever in reach could pick it up in their minds. You are correct. We are not from here. We walked through an unseen portal into this place.
Waiting silently for a moment, he opened his mind up even more and tried to detect thought patterns, psychic messages in bottles, winds of thought, anything. Soon, he felt a gentle chorus of voices: a congregation not just of the trees, but tiny indigo lights in his mind floating up to greet them from the fireflies, of winged creatures who sailed in the air above the green leaf canopies, and little creatures on the ground who chirped, squeaked, barked, and mewled.
“Evelyn,” he breathed. “This is absolutely amazing…nearly this entire ecosystem is sentient.”
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Evelyn
Date: 2015-10-06 07:06 pm (UTC)She heard the slight hesitance from the entity as it stated her place of origin, and wondered at it.
"Your song is beautiful," she said, quietly, simply, with open sincerity, and the dulcet resonance of her voice carried the modulated cadence of someone far, far older than she appeared to be. Someone long accustomed to walking on many worlds. "What should we call you?"
The Doctor
Date: 2015-10-07 12:56 am (UTC)The Doctor nodded. You are correct, he admitted, before glancing up in thought for a moment. Returning his gaze to the water, he finally projected: May we call you Water Spirit?
Water Spirit...curious. The entity seemed to puzzle for a moment silently after it spoke. I am not the only spirit in water on this world. And this is not the only water. If you like, I am the Great Forest Water Spirit, I suppose. For you are standing near the largest forest on our world.