The Doctor (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ladyoftime) wrote2009-08-27 09:09 pm
ladyoftime) wrote2009-08-27 09:09 pm
(no subject)
Silence.
It’s the first thing she notices. Silence, heavy and thick, coating the planet. She accidentally crushes a pile of dead leaves under her boot; she feels the crunch, but doesn’t hear anything. The sound is snatched away before it can reach her ears, gobbled up the silence.
She stands still for a moment, considering possibilities, then climbs a nearby cropping of rocks for a better look at the place, her movements eliciting no sound. From the top, she can see a city, unnaturally still, and a road, and a sign that might once have read “5 miles” or “1 mile” or “Population 1,000,000” but is now blank.
She purses her lips and sets off down the road.
The town is equally barren. No children play in the parks, no curious faces peer out at her from behind curtains, no glimpses of motion to indicate anyone is there at all aside from her. She stops in an empty grocers’, vaults over the counter to have a proper look around. “Hello?” she tries to say, “is anyone there? You’ve got a customer!” She can’t even hear her.
After a few moments of fiddling with papers to find some sort of date or name or anything to tell her where she is or what’s happened, she helps herself to a bag of crisps, noting that the taste had gone out of them as well as the crunch. She chucks them in a rubbish bin and eyes the room speculatively.
Her next stop is the library. Every single one of their books are blank, of course; she lets out a heavy sigh and tucks a small leather volume into her pocket. She’ll test it later, see if it’s still blank in the TARDIS.
The library is right next to the empty park; she settles onto a swing set to give herself a moment to think. A planet that’s been stripped of its people, she mouths, just to try it on for size. And its sound and taste and words, she adds hurriedly, because that’s important, too.
People can move, of course. They can pack up and leave a planet. But people don’t leave everything behind.
People can be forced to leave.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear, does it still make a sound?
She shakes her head to no one in particular. That’s ridiculous, she thinks sharply. And then, unless you’re already warping reality in some way on a massive scale. Something big, and ridiculous, and completely against the laws of the universe. Something that can let you do away with the population of a planet.
A flash of colour in a puddle of water by the swings catches her attention; a wisp of blue skirt passes out of sight in the reflection.
She stands up suddenly, fumbling through her pockets for her sonic screwdriver. Reflections. The mirrors. The people are in the mirrors. They have to be, she can feel it, she can fix this, she can break the mirrors, set the people free. All she needs is an amplification system, and with a silent cry of triumph she spots an innocuous little store with musical instruments piled into the window displays.
The store itself is in disarray; someone wasn’t a very tidy owner, but then what could you expect from musicians? She stumbles through a pile of stringed instruments and a tangle of horns and music stands and into the electric section (such as it is).
“All right,” she tries to say, scanning the wires for a promising system. It has to be big, to reach the whole town, the whole planet. Something she can work with, something very much like the device encompassing an entire wall, too big to miss. “Oh, you beauty,” she murmurs, running her hands over it for a moment before shoving the sonic screwdriver into the works. At first, there’s nothing, an eerie moment in which sound and time feel like they’re suspended; and then a screech, bypassing her ears to head directly for her bones. It overpowers the silence, cutting through the air and her head and the sound of glass shattering all over the building, the sound echoing and reverberating and traveling. The sound system blows, but it can’t stop what’s already out there, the planet so desperate and wanting that it makes a way to preserve it, carrying it on through to shatter more mirrors, free its people.
She imagines if you were to look at the planet from space, right then, it would glitter.
Eventually, the chatter of people, muffled greatly by overtaxed eardrums, cuts through her consciousness, and a large chap with a musical note on his shirt stumbles out from the back room to gape at the burnt-out amplifier. The Doctor waves cheerily to him and picks her way to the door to see that everything is set back to rights. She has questions to ask, investigating to do.
Unfortunately, so intent on this task is she that she completely fails to miss the library book fallen from her pocket, or the symbol finally visible on its cover.
Community:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse
Prompt: 297 - Crushed
Word count: 886
Serial: Through a Mirror, Darkly
It’s the first thing she notices. Silence, heavy and thick, coating the planet. She accidentally crushes a pile of dead leaves under her boot; she feels the crunch, but doesn’t hear anything. The sound is snatched away before it can reach her ears, gobbled up the silence.
She stands still for a moment, considering possibilities, then climbs a nearby cropping of rocks for a better look at the place, her movements eliciting no sound. From the top, she can see a city, unnaturally still, and a road, and a sign that might once have read “5 miles” or “1 mile” or “Population 1,000,000” but is now blank.
She purses her lips and sets off down the road.
(This is not that story. This is the story of beginnings, and endings, and the bits in the middle. If it muddles, well. Once upon a time can be overwritten.)
The town is equally barren. No children play in the parks, no curious faces peer out at her from behind curtains, no glimpses of motion to indicate anyone is there at all aside from her. She stops in an empty grocers’, vaults over the counter to have a proper look around. “Hello?” she tries to say, “is anyone there? You’ve got a customer!” She can’t even hear her.
After a few moments of fiddling with papers to find some sort of date or name or anything to tell her where she is or what’s happened, she helps herself to a bag of crisps, noting that the taste had gone out of them as well as the crunch. She chucks them in a rubbish bin and eyes the room speculatively.
Her next stop is the library. Every single one of their books are blank, of course; she lets out a heavy sigh and tucks a small leather volume into her pocket. She’ll test it later, see if it’s still blank in the TARDIS.
The library is right next to the empty park; she settles onto a swing set to give herself a moment to think. A planet that’s been stripped of its people, she mouths, just to try it on for size. And its sound and taste and words, she adds hurriedly, because that’s important, too.
People can move, of course. They can pack up and leave a planet. But people don’t leave everything behind.
People can be forced to leave.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear, does it still make a sound?
She shakes her head to no one in particular. That’s ridiculous, she thinks sharply. And then, unless you’re already warping reality in some way on a massive scale. Something big, and ridiculous, and completely against the laws of the universe. Something that can let you do away with the population of a planet.
A flash of colour in a puddle of water by the swings catches her attention; a wisp of blue skirt passes out of sight in the reflection.
She stands up suddenly, fumbling through her pockets for her sonic screwdriver. Reflections. The mirrors. The people are in the mirrors. They have to be, she can feel it, she can fix this, she can break the mirrors, set the people free. All she needs is an amplification system, and with a silent cry of triumph she spots an innocuous little store with musical instruments piled into the window displays.
The store itself is in disarray; someone wasn’t a very tidy owner, but then what could you expect from musicians? She stumbles through a pile of stringed instruments and a tangle of horns and music stands and into the electric section (such as it is).
“All right,” she tries to say, scanning the wires for a promising system. It has to be big, to reach the whole town, the whole planet. Something she can work with, something very much like the device encompassing an entire wall, too big to miss. “Oh, you beauty,” she murmurs, running her hands over it for a moment before shoving the sonic screwdriver into the works. At first, there’s nothing, an eerie moment in which sound and time feel like they’re suspended; and then a screech, bypassing her ears to head directly for her bones. It overpowers the silence, cutting through the air and her head and the sound of glass shattering all over the building, the sound echoing and reverberating and traveling. The sound system blows, but it can’t stop what’s already out there, the planet so desperate and wanting that it makes a way to preserve it, carrying it on through to shatter more mirrors, free its people.
She imagines if you were to look at the planet from space, right then, it would glitter.
Eventually, the chatter of people, muffled greatly by overtaxed eardrums, cuts through her consciousness, and a large chap with a musical note on his shirt stumbles out from the back room to gape at the burnt-out amplifier. The Doctor waves cheerily to him and picks her way to the door to see that everything is set back to rights. She has questions to ask, investigating to do.
Unfortunately, so intent on this task is she that she completely fails to miss the library book fallen from her pocket, or the symbol finally visible on its cover.
Community:
theatrical_musePrompt: 297 - Crushed
Word count: 886
Serial: Through a Mirror, Darkly