for I go for ever, and come again no more.

There is a planet at the co-ordinates 10-0-11-0-0 by 0-2 from galactic zero centre. It has a name of its own, the one its people speak; and it has other names, too, the ones for being spoken by outsiders. They are not the same name. The outsiders can only capture snapshots of this planet; frozen in youth, in the heyday, or filled with awe for a mythical planet long since destroyed. Only one name encompasses the whole of its existence. That is the name its people speak.

This is not home.

Perhaps it would have been, once, in seconds lost to eternity, in the twist of decisions and relentless flow of time. It is, is not, once was but will soon never have been, home.

Humans have a saying, home is where the heart is. It is anachronistic to apply to a Time Lord; their hearts lie in their chests, reliable in the steady tandem rhythms. To speak it is as obvious and useless as it is to say that home is in the body. Of course it is. But it is not the true home, the one hidden in metaphor. And if it isn’t true, then it isn’t really home at all, but merely a place of dwelling.

Time. Is ever-changing. Must we really even consider it?

It would be unreasonable to assume someone accustomed to the evolution of existence, cells dying and regenerating, minds dying and regenerating, to consider something as stagnant as a fixed point home. Home is so much more, so much more amazing and fantastic than any one space. And in the traveling, the journey – that is home. That is right.

On one dark night on Gallifrey, a man who will come to be known as the Doctor steals an elderly, out-of-date TARDIS slotted for destruction. And for the first time in his life, he is home.



Community: theatrical_muse
Word Count: 312
Prompt: 327 - "Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home."