The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul
Oct. 5th, 2007 09:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyoftimeThe TARDIS does not have an attic. She knows this very definitely, and this is why she is confused to find herself in one.
It’s a dream, she thinks. Maintained by the link she has with her TARDIS, and extensive exposure to humans and their funny little homes. But it’s real in her head, so real she can feel heat on the exposed skin of her hands and face. Sun shines through the attic’s one small window, revealing in its brilliance dust drifting lazily through the air; bits of old dead skin long ago shed to make room for new growth.
The roof slants on both sides, giving the room the shape of a large triangle. There are boxes stacked in the corners. “There should be penguins in them,” she mutters, but she doesn’t remember why. Something to do with Earth literature. It doesn’t matter.
The first box she opens contains yards of coloured scarf, faded with age. If this was a real attic, she thinks, it would have been moth-eaten. It isn’t. She gratefully drapes it around her neck despite the stifling heat and arranges the long ends that fall to the floor. Underneath the scarf are papers. She pulls one out carefully; the crackling it makes is deafening in contrast to the empty silence of the room.
“The square of the hypotenuse,” she reads aloud, to the attic, to no one, “is equal to the sum of the squares of the other sides!”
She very gently lays it back in the box and turns to the box next to it. It’s darker, newer, covered with only a thin layer of dust. She doesn’t have to dig through it to find out to whom it belongs; the leather jacket draped over it fairly screams its contents to her. She fingers the cover for a moment, but leaves it unopened.
The chest she chooses next is larger, more elegant, made of sturdy wood varnished dark brown. There are no pieces of cloth to distinguish it, no mementos from days past. The sheets inside were once cream-coloured, but now are dulled to a light grey. She examines one closely and finds traces of something written on them before; written and erased, then re-written. There are gaps still in the sentences, a few important phrases missing from the narrative. She digs into her jacket for a bag of jelly babies and carefully lays one on the topmost sheet.
She notices for the first time that the air she’s breathing is stagnant. There’s a latch on the window, old and rusted. Her sonic screwdriver is put to it, but it remains stubbornly shut. Has to have a deadbolt seal, but why a deadbolt seal in an attic?
She nearly trips over the box lying at her feet, and she glances down at it. One more can’t hurt. The box is plain and much newer than the others. It smells faintly of smoke. There is only one paper in it, and it is blackened horribly. For the first time since she found herself in this attic, she feels a stab of fear. She stands up. There isn’t a door, and she tells herself this is impossible. She had to have come in here through something.
She trips over the box again. The lid is open though it wasn’t before, and a page that hadn’t been sticking out brushes her ankle, leaving a trickle of blood in its wake. “If you’re that determined to be read, you could’ve asked,” she snaps at it with absurd irritation and picks it up. Four impossibilities and no breakfast yet, she notes with a flash of triumph. The attic, the non-existent door, the box, the page.
She brushes a strand of hair away from the paper and reads the fifth impossibility. It takes her only a few minutes, but the story written across the page leads her through several hours. She releases her hold on the page, and the it flutters to the ground. “Is that it, then?” she asks the attic. “That’s what I was here to read, my regeneration? That’s something of a let-down, you know.” Anything but a let-down, she corrects herself.
The Doctor stretches outwards, feeling muscles expand and contract with a certain amount of pleasure. She knows how to leave the attic now. It’s quite simple, and oddly appropriate. A wardrobe rests to her right, the only thing in the room that does not have a place in her past. She grasps the handle firmly and tugs it, revealing layers of fur coats hanging inside. She laughs and pushes past them, to the layers of fur coats farther in, until finally, finally, she reaches the world beyond them.
Community:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
relativeprompts
Prompt: 10 - Pick one room in your house/TARDIS/apartment/ship/whatever to explore/describe
Word Count: 784
Author's Note: Title respectfully and affectionately borrowed from Douglas Adams.
Set, er, during regeneration. ...Ish.
Also, posted now because I suddenly realised I'd forgotten to archive this to Eleven's journal.
It’s a dream, she thinks. Maintained by the link she has with her TARDIS, and extensive exposure to humans and their funny little homes. But it’s real in her head, so real she can feel heat on the exposed skin of her hands and face. Sun shines through the attic’s one small window, revealing in its brilliance dust drifting lazily through the air; bits of old dead skin long ago shed to make room for new growth.
The roof slants on both sides, giving the room the shape of a large triangle. There are boxes stacked in the corners. “There should be penguins in them,” she mutters, but she doesn’t remember why. Something to do with Earth literature. It doesn’t matter.
The first box she opens contains yards of coloured scarf, faded with age. If this was a real attic, she thinks, it would have been moth-eaten. It isn’t. She gratefully drapes it around her neck despite the stifling heat and arranges the long ends that fall to the floor. Underneath the scarf are papers. She pulls one out carefully; the crackling it makes is deafening in contrast to the empty silence of the room.
“The square of the hypotenuse,” she reads aloud, to the attic, to no one, “is equal to the sum of the squares of the other sides!”
She very gently lays it back in the box and turns to the box next to it. It’s darker, newer, covered with only a thin layer of dust. She doesn’t have to dig through it to find out to whom it belongs; the leather jacket draped over it fairly screams its contents to her. She fingers the cover for a moment, but leaves it unopened.
The chest she chooses next is larger, more elegant, made of sturdy wood varnished dark brown. There are no pieces of cloth to distinguish it, no mementos from days past. The sheets inside were once cream-coloured, but now are dulled to a light grey. She examines one closely and finds traces of something written on them before; written and erased, then re-written. There are gaps still in the sentences, a few important phrases missing from the narrative. She digs into her jacket for a bag of jelly babies and carefully lays one on the topmost sheet.
She notices for the first time that the air she’s breathing is stagnant. There’s a latch on the window, old and rusted. Her sonic screwdriver is put to it, but it remains stubbornly shut. Has to have a deadbolt seal, but why a deadbolt seal in an attic?
She nearly trips over the box lying at her feet, and she glances down at it. One more can’t hurt. The box is plain and much newer than the others. It smells faintly of smoke. There is only one paper in it, and it is blackened horribly. For the first time since she found herself in this attic, she feels a stab of fear. She stands up. There isn’t a door, and she tells herself this is impossible. She had to have come in here through something.
She trips over the box again. The lid is open though it wasn’t before, and a page that hadn’t been sticking out brushes her ankle, leaving a trickle of blood in its wake. “If you’re that determined to be read, you could’ve asked,” she snaps at it with absurd irritation and picks it up. Four impossibilities and no breakfast yet, she notes with a flash of triumph. The attic, the non-existent door, the box, the page.
She brushes a strand of hair away from the paper and reads the fifth impossibility. It takes her only a few minutes, but the story written across the page leads her through several hours. She releases her hold on the page, and the it flutters to the ground. “Is that it, then?” she asks the attic. “That’s what I was here to read, my regeneration? That’s something of a let-down, you know.” Anything but a let-down, she corrects herself.
The Doctor stretches outwards, feeling muscles expand and contract with a certain amount of pleasure. She knows how to leave the attic now. It’s quite simple, and oddly appropriate. A wardrobe rests to her right, the only thing in the room that does not have a place in her past. She grasps the handle firmly and tugs it, revealing layers of fur coats hanging inside. She laughs and pushes past them, to the layers of fur coats farther in, until finally, finally, she reaches the world beyond them.
Community:
relativepromptsPrompt: 10 - Pick one room in your house/TARDIS/apartment/ship/whatever to explore/describe
Word Count: 784
Author's Note: Title respectfully and affectionately borrowed from Douglas Adams.
Set, er, during regeneration. ...Ish.
Also, posted now because I suddenly realised I'd forgotten to archive this to Eleven's journal.
