From This Day Forward - Chapter Three [3/9]

[erthechilde]

“If you could touch the alien sand and hear the cries of strange birds and watch them wheel in another sky, would that satisfy you?”

DISCLAIMER & OTHER WARNINGS

It took Rose about five-and-a-half seconds to realise that she wasn’t back on the Estate as she expected. Instead, she had walked out into a dense, leafy, forested area.

In that same amount of time, she even managed to think a few uncharitable thoughts towards the Doctor - Bloody rubbish driver, couldn’t even get me back home right. Probably landed us in the middle of Hyde Park or something. Won’t that be a treat getting back home, and me without my Oyster? - and wonder how she would explain to her mother where she’d been for… however long she’d been away.

It wouldn’t be the first time she needed to make a long journey home on foot. But she wasn’t about to go crawling back to the Doctor and plead with him to drop her off properly. Not after what he’d said to her.

She realised a further half-second later, the irrelevance of that resolution, when her next step forward pitched her into thin air. The momentum of her furious gait was faster than her reflexes, it seemed, because at that moment she found herself plunging forward and falling into nothingness.

A shriek tore from her throat. Air rushed past her, followed by quite a lot of green, before she ended up on solid ground again. With quite a detour involving slipping, rolling and scraping down what appeared to be some kind of cliff side.

It seemed like several minutes before she came to a rest, landing flat on her back on blessedly soft ground.

‘Ow.’

Dazed, Rose squinted up in the direction she had just fallen from, and dimly realised it wasn’t a cliff she had tumbled off of. Instead a towering, curving structure of bark and leaves stretched up an impossible distance into the sky.

The ground she lay on was mossy, and it took her the better part of a minute to understand she lay at the base of a giant tree. A giant tree in a forest that seemed to encompass the entire area. From what she observed, every tree stretched for kilometres into the sky, as high as mountains.

Not only was she not in Hyde Park nor any other recognisable park in London, it seemed very likely that she wasn’t even on Earth. And she had, apparently, just fallen off of a very large, very high tree branch.

Curiosity and wonder edged her earlier anger and fear out of the way if only for a moment. She stared in awe at the world of giant trees she now found herself in.

The damp smell of forest and rain hit her at the same time as the confirmation that she was no longer anywhere near Earth. The giant branches were all connected together in a kind of network that reminded her of flyovers, yet there was no evidence of cars or other vehicles on them. She could, however, make out buildings; every half kilometre or so there appeared to be a cluster of edifices that grew out of or were built into the woodwork of the giant trees. They were shaped roughly like igloos, but probably made of wood and reeds.

Despite the size of the vegetation, enough natural light filtered down through the treetops to illuminate the clusters of buildings in a comforting green glow.

For an indeterminable amount of time she tried to figure out how she hadn’t died. Nothing seemed to be broken (she’d examined her arms and legs and barring a few bruises she appeared to be fine). She wasn’t bleeding beyond a scrape or two, yet she’d clearly fallen at least a few kilometres.

‘Might be the gravity here is different,’ she guessed as she stood up, remembering that one News Round Extra about space travel as she did so. She gave an experimental hop and was thrilled to discover she hovered in the air longer than she would have back on Earth. ‘Oh, that’s brilliant!’

She grinned in momentary amazement, but the expression faded a second later when she suddenly remembered her circumstances.

She was on an alien planet.

She was on an unknown alien planet, completely alone because she and the Doctor had rowed and all-but kicked her out.

Or thought he had.

A sudden stab of fear lanced through her.

He’d been bringing her home - obviously he hadn’t checked to make sure, what if he didn’t bother to make sure before he left? What if he just up and swanned off, leaving her on an alien planet with no way of ever getting home again?

‘DOCTOR!’ she yelled, staring upwards again and trying in vain to see any indication of his blue timeship in the canopy of trees. There was no answer, and so she called again. ‘Doctor! Help!’

Just as quickly she clapped her hands over her mouth as if it could help keep down the fear fluttering in her stomach.

What a stupid thing to do! End up somewhere strange and start screaming!

Forests tended to have animals, didn’t they? And sometimes people who lived in them. What if they didn’t like stranger on this planet?

She took a shuddering breath and forced herself to calm down, trying to get a handle on the panic and think.

Her words had echoed for a bit instead of fading away, which she took as a good sign. If her voice echoed that way from down here, the TARDIS would definitely make a noise. She hadn’t noticed the sound the ship made when it disappeared, and that would certainly have echoed throughout the silent forest.

The box and the nutter inside it are still here, she reflected gratefully. He hasn’t left… yet. But he could.

She swallowed another wave of panic.

No, I can’t think like that. If I do, I might as well curl into a ball and wait for forest monsters to eat me.

So the next question: what should she do? Every choice depended on the Doctor not leaving, which could still happen at any point. In fact, she remained a bit surprised it hadn’t happened already. Hadn’t he decided he was well-shot of her, bringing her home without so much as telling her he planned to do it?

Anger flared up in place of fear once more when she remembered the last bit of trouble he had caused, just by going ahead with his whims. She might be an East End bint “who barely set two foot outside the door”, but the first lesson she’d learned growing up was not to trust strangers.

And if the Gelth weren’t strangers, I don’t know what they were!

But no, the mighty Time Lord had just decided not only to accept their story but the fact that their presence might change the world! Even if the Gelth hadn’t turned out to be murderous gas beings and really had been survivors of the Doctor’s War! That didn’t mean he would be able to predict what would happen once they came through!

Bloody hoity-toity, know-it-all, conceited…

On the coattails of that notion was her own mean-spirited insinuations; row or not, she probably shouldn’t have implied he had forced her to come with him. They both understood that she had wanted to even before he had asked the first time.

I should probably apologise for that, at least, she thought guiltily, then shook herself.

She had to come up with a plan and resolutely ignore any chance that she would be stuck here indefinitely.

She should wait where she landed and hope the Doctor decided to come after her. Perhaps he would step out and discover her absence, start calling her name, see that she was down here and materialise the TARDIS beside her.

Of course, that involved the Doctor actually coming after her, which she doubted he would feel like doing now. Even if he did, what would stop him from falling off of the giant tree branch himself?

Well, at least we’d both be stuck down here, and I’d have a chance to say sorry while we try to get back to the TARDIS.

The problem remained that the Doctor might never step out of the TARDIS, might get over whatever was delaying him at any moment, and then take off.

If she waited, she might end up being stuck here. Rose didn’t know when night would fall or what kind of dangers lurked in the tree world.

She ought to try her luck getting back to the TARDIS herself. It looked like the grassy walls and rock-face were climbable, and higher up it seemed like there were paths along the branches. Possibly she might get help from the locals, provided they weren’t cannibals or something equally grim.

Problem with that, she decided as she tried to figure out which branch she had fallen from, is that I might end up more lost than I am right now.

She didn’t even know where she was going. Trying to get back to the TARDIS was all well and good, but she wasn’t even completely sure of what branch the TARDIS was on.

And getting up there - yes, some of the walls looked climbable, but what if the plants in the area were poisonous? Or the insects? She knew absolutely nothing about this world and didn’t even have the luxury of the Doctor being by her side to point things out to her.

A noise sounded suddenly in the distance - a low-pitched, savage howl that made the hairs on the back of Rose’s neck and arms stand on end. She nodded to herself.

‘Right. Time to climb for the TARDIS,’ she decided. Self-preservation and a healthy sense of fear drowned out whatever other qualms she had, as well as the idea that staying put would be the smartest choice. ‘Maybe there’s a path.’

She wandered around the clearing, and then beyond, keeping an ear out for whatever had made that sound. Or any sign of the TARDIS leaving. Of that the Doctor might be looking for her.

Bushes of thick, square leaves appeared to obscure every possible path. Even after forcing herself to take several calming breaths to choose which one she should finally take, she was no closer to braving the foliage and vines than before.

Just when she was about to give up hope, she heard a sudden shout that warmed her heart.

‘ROSE!?’

Her name echoed across the upper branches of the trees, and she barely held back a delighted and slightly hysterical laugh. ‘Doctor?! Doctor, I’m down here!’

‘Rose! I can’t see you!’

I must be really far down if Mr. Superior Time Lord Eyesight can’t see me, she mused giddily.

‘I fell off the tree branch! I’m down on the ground!’

‘Stay where you are, I’ll come to you!’

‘Long as I don’t have to wait too long!’ she called back, trying to force humour into her voice instead of showing off her relief. She didn’t need him believing she was scared, even if he intended to bring her back home anyhow. She wouldn’t have the Doctor thinking her a coward.

Something snapped loudly behind her, and she whirled around, half expecting him to appear behind her.

Wait, I didn’t hear the TARDIS move yet…

And that tread sounded too heavy for the Doctor -

And it wasn’t.

The creature that emerged from the bushes was unlike anything she had ever seen or even imagined before. All she saw for a moment was a violent, electric blue; then colour and form sharpened, and she saw a feathered head that resembled a cross between a bird and a turtle. Intense white eyes, rimmed with black veins glared hatefully at her, which would have been terrifying on its own, without the rest of it.

The animal’s gaping maw was filled with razor sharp fangs and some kind of spike or tusk on each side, ideal for goring and tearing. As it slunk forward, she saw that its shoulders lost the feathers. Instead of the wings she would have expected, they led to leathery looking scales covering the rest of its powerfully built body. It was a quadruped, six fingers on each appendage and with wicked looking talons on each.

Ideal for tearing into any unsuspecting humans that it came upon.

At that juncture she remembered why she had decided not to go yelling in a strange and mysterious alien forest

‘Oh, this isn’t good,’ she said, unable to keep the squeak from her voice as she began to back up.

The creature growled and leaped at her, and this time Rose didn’t hold back her scream of terror.

· ΔΩ ·

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