"Fantastic!" The Doctor grabbed for Lucy's hand and lead her, laughing, to where she last parked the TARDIS. "That's her," she announced, pointing, and unlocked the door for Lucy to enter and inspect the interior. "The TARDIS." Lucy should be used to bigger-on-the-inside things.
"Simple light manipulation. Comes in different colours, too, see?" And she drew a little pink diamond in the air. The light from the moons augmented it, made it shimmer a bit.
The Doctor grinned and followed Lucy into the squares and hexagons and circles. "I'm sure I've got something we could use as markers somewhere." She produced a bag of jelly babies and offered them to Lucy, both for use as markers and to eat.
Lucy giggled with delight, and popped a jelly baby in her mouth before dropping one in the proper square. It bounced slightly into the air before settling. "Oh," she said happily, "I haven't had this much fun in ages." She did, in many ways, mean ages; it seemed like the last time she'd been so joyously happy without reserve or something to spoil it later, it had been the golden age. "Do you always have so much fun, Doctor?"
"Always," the Doctor assured her. "Sometimes different kinds of fun, and sometimes it takes a little while to get to the fun, but if you look hard enough, it's there." Even when running for her life. She tossed her jelly baby and hopped and skipped to the proper square.
Lucy laughed joyfully and took it up again, skipping upwards and landing properly in a new place. "You must have the most fun of anyone in the whole world," she decided after a moment. "You get to see new things, things nobody on Earth has ever seen before! Or at least, never seen and talked about. That sounds to me like the best life imaginable."
It was rare, in Lucy's experience, for grownups to appreciate just how good laughter, play, and wonder could be. She felt as if she had found a kindred spirit, of sorts, a true friend, someone who didn't think her absurd because she loved to be light of heart.
The Doctor, too, tossed her jelly baby and skipped to her next place. "In the whole universe!" She corrected and laughed. "And it's best when other people come along to see it with me."
"Do you often take people with you?" Lucy asked, grinning as she tried to spin backwards in the air and land facing the doctor. She stumbled a little coming down, but made it into her next square. "If you've gone so many places as it seems you must have taken lots and lots of people with you."
"As often as I can. It makes it more fun to have company." The Doctor actually fumbled on her next jump, accidentally landing on a line and erasing part of it. She busied herself with redrawing it. "Yes," she said somewhat guardedly. Talk of past companions tended to make current companions jealous, but she didn't think Lucy would be.
"Were they from where you're from?" Lucy asked, openly curious. To be jealous had not really occured to her; she, after all, was having a marvellous time, and watched the Doctor redraw the square with interest. Then she glanced behind her, and tried this time to make the jump backwards. She tripped a little on land, and fell, but landed so lightly that she was laughing and completely unhurt. "Oh," she said, giggling as she stood up, "oh dear."
The Doctor restarted her game, tossing her jelly baby onto the appropriate geometrical square and hop-skip-jumping to it. "Mostly I seem to end up with humans- they're my favourite species- but a few of them were my people. Most didn't appreciate the universe like they should have."
"...so what exactly are you?" Lucy asked, pausing her game to eat one of the doctor's jelly babies. "And really I mean, what do your people call themselves?" She always felt odd asking this question, but didn't know really how else to say it.
Lucy stopped jumping too, hesitating a moment as she looked at the Doctor. She wondered if she'd done something wrong. She wasn't exactly sure what to say next. "...did I ask the wrong question?" Lucy asked quietly, hoping she hadn't offended the doctor, or brought up bad memories.
The Doctor glanced at Lucy. "Of course not. You didn't ask me, say, if my face always looked like this or did I get into a fight with a Dalek, or was I born colour-blind, or anything like that."
Lucy was somewhat confused by this, not knowing what a Dalek was, and not seeing anything wrong with the Doctor's face. (She thought it was a nice face, actually, very pretty.) "...why would somebody say those things?" She asked, repressing the urge to ask the doctor if she was colourblind, because it was clearly a sore spot.
"I don't know," she admitted and tossed her jelly baby to the next figure. "But they would be very good wrong questions. Along with 'What are you writing?' and 'You really like the Red Sox, do you?'." She tossed off the last couple examples lightly, clearly not taking them seriously.
"...red socks?" Lucy asked, confused yet again. "Do some people very strongly about red socks being better than blue or green?" Oh dear. There was so much she didn't understand, not just about the Doctor (though she was very certain she knew less than she didn't know, or maybe she didn't know more than she knew, either way it was odd disconcerting knowledge) but about the world at large. And what are Daleks? she wanted to ask, but for some odd reason felt awkward about.
"Absolutely. There are more than a few races who place a lot of importance on the colour of their socks. Wearing mis-matched socks could get you arrested," she said, looking completely serious.
"...oh dear," Lucy says, stifling the urge to giggle. She pauses to look at her socks, which are blue, and match. "...and have you ever been arrested for such a breech of fashion?"
"Absolutely not," she responded, sounding horrified and insulted. "Well, maybe just the one time, but it was a complete misunderstanding. They didn't understand that my socks were matched, really, just not to the untrained eye."
"Oh," Lucy says, unable to hide her amusement. "Oh I see." After a moment, she actually giggled. "In Narnia I used to like to go around without any shoes, much less socks. Susan thought it was shocking."
"Yes, sir," Lucy says, unable to keep from giggling yet again. "If only my advisers had told me! None of the Narnians ever wore socks or shoes you see, except the giants and perhaps the dwarves. And a sock for a giant is about the size of a very large bed..."
"We couldn't actually let the giants inside Cair Paravel," Lucy admitted, "there were no doors large enough. So thankfully, we never had to worry about anyone being suffocated by a dirty sock." Except maybe Edmund's socks, they always smell bad, even still. Lucy imagined for the first time what Edmund's room at school must be like, with so many boys, and so many dirty socks.
"Well, that's a few awkward situations and several resignations averted," the Doctor observed and tossed her jelly baby marker again with a hop, skip, and a jump. Then she paused, and turned her head a bit like she was listening for something. "Did you hear that?"
{...Because the Doctor never gets to just have a quiet game of hopscotch, d'you mind if I throw in a bit of light-hearted fun in the form of cranky aliens who dislike people accidently trespassing?}
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-08-12 01:24 am (UTC)The Doctor grinned and followed Lucy into the squares and hexagons and circles. "I'm sure I've got something we could use as markers somewhere." She produced a bag of jelly babies and offered them to Lucy, both for use as markers and to eat.
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Date: 2007-08-12 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 01:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-12 01:50 am (UTC)It was rare, in Lucy's experience, for grownups to appreciate just how good laughter, play, and wonder could be. She felt as if she had found a kindred spirit, of sorts, a true friend, someone who didn't think her absurd because she loved to be light of heart.
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Date: 2007-08-18 01:08 am (UTC){...Because the Doctor never gets to just have a quiet game of hopscotch, d'you mind if I throw in a bit of light-hearted fun in the form of cranky aliens who dislike people accidently trespassing?}