Rebirth - Chapter 3

Somewhere deep in the forest sat a girl on a rock. This in itself was most unusual. She had golden blond hair and bright blue eyes but this detail wasn’t very relevant to her; in fact, she wasn’t even aware of it. The rock beneath her was large, flat and high enough so that she could curiously watch a plume of smoke coiling itself above the tree tops.

The girl took a deep breath, savoring the damp air, and smiled to herself. The rain had eased off and left the forest in a misty image of quiet calmness. If there had been any birds living on this planet, they would have been deadly quiet, as though trying to preserve this perfect still moment.

Swinging her bare legs around, the girl jumped off the rock and, pausing long enough to enjoy the mud squelch between her toes, disappeared into the trees. She pushed herself through the scrub until she reached the smoldering remains of the TARDIS.

It lay on the floor, face down, and covered with a light littering of leaves and branches. The girl stopped and considered it for a moment. It didn’t look like anything impressive to her… which she found incredibly surprising and mildly annoying.

She shrugged off her displeasure at the sight of the ship and crouched down beside it, running her hands slowly over the grainy surface. After a moment, another smile spread across her face as her first impression gently changed. True, it didn’t look notable or exciting, but it felt right.

The girl studied the blue box… there were no signs of any doors, so she supposed they were underneath and the object was in fact lying face down in the mud. Happy with this conclusion, she dug her fingers under the rough edge of the ship and strained her muscles. Extraordinarily, the TARDIS began to lift up.

Once again, if anyone had been watching, they would have gasped at the sight in front of them: the small girl, who was lifting the large, heavy box to an upright position as if it were a giant, blue feather.

Unfortunately, once again, the only witness was the small koala-creature who had retreated back up the tree. It watched the happenings below with its usual bewildered expression, occasionally clicking it tongue and making gentle purring noises.

As the TARDIS lifted, it revealed the body of the Doctor lying still in the mud. As luck would have it, the ships doors had been left wide open, meaning that when it had dropped on him, he had merely become trapped inside of it, instead of being squashed to death.

The girl bent down beside him.

He was unconscious.

She put her head to one side and let her eyes travel across his face. She could tell there was nothing broken about him, at the most there would be bruising… his right arm... anyway, he would recover, she knew. But it wasn’t just his apparent state that kept her starting at him… For some reason, she found it incredibly difficult to remove her gaze, he was just…fascinating.

For a fleeting moment, she wondered what would happen next. She knew what was supposed to happen, what had to happen otherwise they would surely die... but she realized that she had no way of confirming that it would. How would he react when he woke up? Would he trust her? Would he go with her?

For the first time in her short life, she was unsure of what the future would hold and this, in her child-like mind, created a deep sensation of confusion and fear.

She stayed by his side, watching him for a long time, growing used to his face before backing away and sitting down on a fallen tree. Once there, she sat completely still, not moving an inch, and waited. Waiting was something she was very good at.

**********

A deep and loud whistle echoed through the workshop, signifying the end of the seven hour shift. Madison straightened up from behind the large, green sweeper which she used to collect discarded wool, and heaved a contented sigh as the whirring of the machine died down and finally stopped.

Her job was probably the least sort after job in the whole of the town… in the whole of any town that sat upon the planet, in the whole of the planet, in the whole of the solar system, in the whole of the universe, in the whole of any and every universe that ever existed in any time and any place… ever.

Madison realized she was staring bitterly at her sweeper. She shook her head and began pushing the machine into the storage bay, ready to use tomorrow… and every other day after that… probably for the rest of her life…

It wasn’t really that bad. She tried to comfort herself and focus on the good points of her job. Apart from the hard work and complete boredom there was… there was… it was close to her home. She shrugged half heartedly, that was only because she lived in a pokey little room next to the factory.

‘Finished for the day, Mad?’

Madison turned around and looked into a heavily bearded face.
‘Ah,’ she said trying to force a friendly smile onto her face and making it look more like she was deeply inhaling dog poo, ‘hello, Ryan. How are you?’

Ryan’s beard beamed at her.
‘Good thanks, been a good day, just got my pay check.’

Madison nodded. She didn’t care. In fact, that was a lie. She did care, she cared so much it made her want to set fire to Ryan’s chirpy little face. She should have been the one to get the promotion, not him. He used to be a sweeper just like her, but then he got lucky and now… now he got everything he wanted.

‘You simply must come round to dinner sometime, Mad,’ Ryan said, as though he actually cared one inch about her. ‘We’d love to have you.’

Madison considered the man in front of her. He clearly had no desire to let her ever set foot in his beautiful, sterile house, but you could almost, almost believe that he did. Even Ryan’s beard was good at lying.

The man shrugged one shoulder, flashed a grin, and strutted out of the workshop. Madison watched him leave and resisted throwing something at his retreating back. She hated everything about the greasy man, even the way he called her Mad.

Locking the storage bay doors and retreating to her small bedroom, Madison realized that as long as Ryan was working in the same place as her, he job was most definitely, with out a doubt, the worst job in the entire world.

*****

It had been eight hours, but that meant absolutely nothing to the young, blue eyed girl, and she sat and stared relentlessly at the unconscious Time Lord. Time was as irrelevant to her as the politics of Geneva is to a rock.

Very slowly, she tore her gaze away from the Doctor and allowed it to flit over the koala-creature in the tree. It blinked stupidly at her. She sighed and re-focused her attention back onto the man. There was a sensation that it would be soon…