30 Days of Stuff: Day 15
Greetings, my excellent friends!
So today it's a fanfic. A slight problem for me as I don't write fanfic, nor do I (usually) read it.
But I have read some by a very talented personage who calls herself doyle_sb4. So I've picked one of those, a brilliant Doctor Who fic. We join the Sixth Doctor some time after The Trial of a Time Lord as he has an unexpected encounter...
Title: The Sky Was Good For Flying
Author: Doyle
There was a discreet little plaque mounted at head height in the hedge. 'This is the private garden of the Royal Family,' it said. 'If you have become separated from your tour group, please follow the signs to the exit.' It pointed to a series of even smaller, even more discreet arrows, all of them carefully placed where they wouldn't jar on the eye of anyone looking over the banks of flowers. The Doctor took a moment to appreciate the thought that had gone into designing this landscape and then cheerfully set off in the opposite direction, reasoning that the directive could hardly apply to him. He'd only been with the tour group for ten minutes, before that guide had lost his temper. You would think he would have been glad, grateful even, to be put right on a few of his more laughably wrong misconceptions about horticulture and this planet's history but there was no pleasing some people.
He passed through an orchard, pausing to pluck a fleshy crimson fruit from a low branch. The sign in this garden was bigger, and more insistent. 'Trespassers will be prosecuted,' it said, the last word written in marker; someone had scribbled out 'decapitated'. 'Eating fruit from this orchard is STRICTLY PROHIBITED'.
"Well, I can see why," the Doctor told the notice, taking another juicy bite. "This is delicious. If this was my garden I certainly wouldn't want everyone wandering in and eating these." He dropped the core in his pocket and wiped his sticky fingers on a handkerchief. "Where to now?"
There was a large greenhouse to his right, but the carnivorous plant warnings on the door were less than enticing, especially when he cupped his hands to the window and saw the inhabitants leaning in his direction, as if scenting fresh meat even through the glass. He veered left instead, through a gate in the hedge and out onto a wide lawn. There were more flowerbeds here, dozens of them arcing in a spiral pattern around the paths, and bushes overhung with white and blue blossoms. There was also, to the Doctor's annoyance, a man in overalls pushing a rake back and forth across one of the beds.
"Oi!"
The Doctor clasped his hands behind his back and developed a sudden and all-consuming interest in the nearest bush.
"Oi, you! In the coat!"
"I'm sorry, are you addressing me?" the Doctor said with what he considered to be infinite dignity.
"You can't be in here!"
He looked down at himself in a pantomime of huge astonishment at finding that he was, in fact, in here. "I think you'll find that I can. Whether I may be here, on the other hand..."
The gardener gripped his rake. "Look, pal, this is the Queen's private garden, all right? Anybody nosing around in here can get..." His shoulders sagged. "Get politely escorted to the front gate and told not to do it again."
"Not decapitated?"
"Not since the old days," he sighed. "The Queen we had when I was a nipper, now she knew a thing or two about keeping people out of a garden. None of this guided tours for aliens nonsense. Heads on spikes all the way round perimeter in fruit-bearing season. Brings a tear to my eye to think of it. Happy days."
"Yes, well, can we just take it as a given that you're not going to be chopping off my head and I'll escort myself back to the front gate?"
Oh, I'm not saying she doesn't know how to run the place - we've three times the land we used to and there's no more burning the orchards for sacrifices, oh no - but this messing around and making new species, it ain't natural if you ask me. Which nobody does."
"What a shame. I should write a letter to someone if I were you."
Rant spent, the gardener seemed to rouse himself. "Here, it's gone noon. she'll be along in a minute. She won't be pleased to find you tramping your great feet all over her downgrass. Sling your hook."
The Doctor was quite ready to expound at length on the right of the common man to go where he liked, the idea that a beautiful garden became pointless if there was nobody to look at it, and that his feet were exactly the right size, thank you very much, when a woman in overalls came through the gate at the far side of the lawn. Another worker, he assumed, until the gardener whipped off his hat and genuflected before scuttling back to his raking. The infamous Queen, then, dressed down for a day in the garden.
He didn't recognise her at all until she was quite close. Even then, she had to speak first.
"All these years," she said, her voice shaking a little, despite the bright smile, "and not even a 'hi, how are you?'"
She'd reached out her hand. After a slow moment, he gripped it tight, ignoring the scandalised sound from the gardener. "Peri," he said.
**
"Didn't know me, did you?" Peri gave him a rueful sidelong glance. "Not that I'm surprised. I mean, it's been close to thirty years for me."
He'd never been very good at judging human ages. The woman walking beside him would be in her fifties now. She didn't look any different to him than she had at eighteen, twenty-one.
"It took a moment," he admitted. "Only because I didn't expect to see you here. I thought Yrcanos was - " He cast his mind back to the last time he'd seen Peri. Too many mad Kings and warlords, that was the problem. After a while they all blended together. "King of the Krontep, wasn't it? Conqueror of some empire, Lord of something he possibly made up. I'm sure he never mentioned Lapparus."
"King of the Krontep, Lord of the Vingten, Conqueror of the Tonkonp Empire, Emperor of the Trafken System, God-King Incarnate of the Seven Blessed Moons of Sernax, and seven or eight thousand other titles. The wedding was six weeks of feasts, carousing and me reciting his family history from memory. Every girl's dream."
He would have said, "I'm sorry to have missed your star performance," but he couldn't summon an appropriate level of sarcasm. He really was sorry he hadn't been there.
"Anyway, one of his uncles was the king of Lapparus, and with no kids Yrcanos was next in line. When he died we took a trip out to see the place." She lifted a creeper from one of the trees flanking the path and trailed it through her fingers. "Which was the point when I realised the Queen had had a garden the size of Kansas, and it could be an amazing place if somebody could kill the weeds, plant some real flowers, lose the severed heads."
"A very dedicated, very impassioned somebody."
She shrugged, smiling at the compliment. "What else was I going to do? Sit in the castle on Krontep and learn tapestry? Yrcanos thought I'd gone crazy - no, crazier, he already thought I was nuts for not wanting to ride into battle with him - till he got the idea that breeding plant species was something to do with sex. Then he went all out for the idea. Even gave me the cash to hire my staff and set up a botanical research college. I never did get to take that botany degree, remember?"
There was nothing in her voice to suggest she regretted the loss of the life she might have had on Earth, if she hadn't crossed paths with Turlough and ended up on the TARDIS, if she'd decided to go home instead of travelling. He'd told her the bare details of being taken out of time by his people, and if she'd wondered why he hadn't come back for her, she hadn't asked. It left him off-balance, this lack of anger on her part.
"I was surprised," he said carefully, "when I was told you'd married King Yrcanos."
"You were surprised? You should've seen my face when he proposed. Or his face when I said yes." She nudged his arm. "Hey, if you knew I married him, you could've looked up the date of the wedding. We had a castle full of Yrcanos's loud, arguing relatives, it would've been nice to have even one person there for me. Careful, that plant's dangerous."
"Peri." He sighed and stopped moving, though he made sure he was out of reach of the innocuous looking bud she'd pointed to. "The Time Lords showed me your death. Later they said it hadn't been true, and for years afterwards I'd think 'I'll go back to Thoros Beta. I'll find out what really happened to Peri.' And every time I'd invent some excuse, some urgent thing to be done, because I was so afraid that I'd find out they were telling the truth the first time."
"So you just never came looking."
"I'm sorry, Peri." He'd needed to say it for years, but had to address it to her back - she'd turned away from him, moved to where the path ended, at a row of trees.
"Come over here a minute," she said.
He hadn't realised the path they'd been walking was on an incline. The hill was gentle and the lines of flowers had been designed to trick the eye. Beyond the trees, the land curved into an immense green bowl of a valley. From here the Doctor could see the white building that must be Peri's college, greenhouses, hedge mazes, dark patches of forests. And flowers. Millions of them, in every colour he'd ever seen.
"My favourite place," Peri said.
"It's beautiful."
"Even if you'd come back for me," she said, "I never would've gone back to my own time. My mom and dad are dead. What was I ever gonna do on Earth? At least here I made something. Maybe it'll only last a couple years, but..."
"Oh, far more than that. This planet is revered, you know," the Doctor said. "It's renowned. Or it will be, one day. A thousand years from now Lapparus is one of the foremost centres for botanical science in this part of the galaxy. The great forest worlds - Gharthan, Cheem, even the Eye of Orion - parts of them came from seedlings grown here. I never dreamed I knew the architect."
She smiled at him, a fierce pride and a love of this place she'd made shining in her. Lapparus's Queen. Almost all of the guilt he'd been carrying since Thoros Beta ebbed away.
The last shred of it, though, made him ask: "But still, Yrcanos?"
Peri laughed at him, wrapping her arm around his middle in a hug that caught him pleasantly off-guard. "Yeah, attaching myself to this really loud, bossy, forceful, kind of arrogant guy? Who saw that one coming?"
(Originally posted here. Thanks to Doyle for permission to "reprint" it here.)
So today it's a fanfic. A slight problem for me as I don't write fanfic, nor do I (usually) read it.
But I have read some by a very talented personage who calls herself doyle_sb4. So I've picked one of those, a brilliant Doctor Who fic. We join the Sixth Doctor some time after The Trial of a Time Lord as he has an unexpected encounter...
Title: The Sky Was Good For Flying
Author: Doyle
There was a discreet little plaque mounted at head height in the hedge. 'This is the private garden of the Royal Family,' it said. 'If you have become separated from your tour group, please follow the signs to the exit.' It pointed to a series of even smaller, even more discreet arrows, all of them carefully placed where they wouldn't jar on the eye of anyone looking over the banks of flowers. The Doctor took a moment to appreciate the thought that had gone into designing this landscape and then cheerfully set off in the opposite direction, reasoning that the directive could hardly apply to him. He'd only been with the tour group for ten minutes, before that guide had lost his temper. You would think he would have been glad, grateful even, to be put right on a few of his more laughably wrong misconceptions about horticulture and this planet's history but there was no pleasing some people.
He passed through an orchard, pausing to pluck a fleshy crimson fruit from a low branch. The sign in this garden was bigger, and more insistent. 'Trespassers will be prosecuted,' it said, the last word written in marker; someone had scribbled out 'decapitated'. 'Eating fruit from this orchard is STRICTLY PROHIBITED'.
"Well, I can see why," the Doctor told the notice, taking another juicy bite. "This is delicious. If this was my garden I certainly wouldn't want everyone wandering in and eating these." He dropped the core in his pocket and wiped his sticky fingers on a handkerchief. "Where to now?"
There was a large greenhouse to his right, but the carnivorous plant warnings on the door were less than enticing, especially when he cupped his hands to the window and saw the inhabitants leaning in his direction, as if scenting fresh meat even through the glass. He veered left instead, through a gate in the hedge and out onto a wide lawn. There were more flowerbeds here, dozens of them arcing in a spiral pattern around the paths, and bushes overhung with white and blue blossoms. There was also, to the Doctor's annoyance, a man in overalls pushing a rake back and forth across one of the beds.
"Oi!"
The Doctor clasped his hands behind his back and developed a sudden and all-consuming interest in the nearest bush.
"Oi, you! In the coat!"
"I'm sorry, are you addressing me?" the Doctor said with what he considered to be infinite dignity.
"You can't be in here!"
He looked down at himself in a pantomime of huge astonishment at finding that he was, in fact, in here. "I think you'll find that I can. Whether I may be here, on the other hand..."
The gardener gripped his rake. "Look, pal, this is the Queen's private garden, all right? Anybody nosing around in here can get..." His shoulders sagged. "Get politely escorted to the front gate and told not to do it again."
"Not decapitated?"
"Not since the old days," he sighed. "The Queen we had when I was a nipper, now she knew a thing or two about keeping people out of a garden. None of this guided tours for aliens nonsense. Heads on spikes all the way round perimeter in fruit-bearing season. Brings a tear to my eye to think of it. Happy days."
"Yes, well, can we just take it as a given that you're not going to be chopping off my head and I'll escort myself back to the front gate?"
Oh, I'm not saying she doesn't know how to run the place - we've three times the land we used to and there's no more burning the orchards for sacrifices, oh no - but this messing around and making new species, it ain't natural if you ask me. Which nobody does."
"What a shame. I should write a letter to someone if I were you."
Rant spent, the gardener seemed to rouse himself. "Here, it's gone noon. she'll be along in a minute. She won't be pleased to find you tramping your great feet all over her downgrass. Sling your hook."
The Doctor was quite ready to expound at length on the right of the common man to go where he liked, the idea that a beautiful garden became pointless if there was nobody to look at it, and that his feet were exactly the right size, thank you very much, when a woman in overalls came through the gate at the far side of the lawn. Another worker, he assumed, until the gardener whipped off his hat and genuflected before scuttling back to his raking. The infamous Queen, then, dressed down for a day in the garden.
He didn't recognise her at all until she was quite close. Even then, she had to speak first.
"All these years," she said, her voice shaking a little, despite the bright smile, "and not even a 'hi, how are you?'"
She'd reached out her hand. After a slow moment, he gripped it tight, ignoring the scandalised sound from the gardener. "Peri," he said.
**
"Didn't know me, did you?" Peri gave him a rueful sidelong glance. "Not that I'm surprised. I mean, it's been close to thirty years for me."
He'd never been very good at judging human ages. The woman walking beside him would be in her fifties now. She didn't look any different to him than she had at eighteen, twenty-one.
"It took a moment," he admitted. "Only because I didn't expect to see you here. I thought Yrcanos was - " He cast his mind back to the last time he'd seen Peri. Too many mad Kings and warlords, that was the problem. After a while they all blended together. "King of the Krontep, wasn't it? Conqueror of some empire, Lord of something he possibly made up. I'm sure he never mentioned Lapparus."
"King of the Krontep, Lord of the Vingten, Conqueror of the Tonkonp Empire, Emperor of the Trafken System, God-King Incarnate of the Seven Blessed Moons of Sernax, and seven or eight thousand other titles. The wedding was six weeks of feasts, carousing and me reciting his family history from memory. Every girl's dream."
He would have said, "I'm sorry to have missed your star performance," but he couldn't summon an appropriate level of sarcasm. He really was sorry he hadn't been there.
"Anyway, one of his uncles was the king of Lapparus, and with no kids Yrcanos was next in line. When he died we took a trip out to see the place." She lifted a creeper from one of the trees flanking the path and trailed it through her fingers. "Which was the point when I realised the Queen had had a garden the size of Kansas, and it could be an amazing place if somebody could kill the weeds, plant some real flowers, lose the severed heads."
"A very dedicated, very impassioned somebody."
She shrugged, smiling at the compliment. "What else was I going to do? Sit in the castle on Krontep and learn tapestry? Yrcanos thought I'd gone crazy - no, crazier, he already thought I was nuts for not wanting to ride into battle with him - till he got the idea that breeding plant species was something to do with sex. Then he went all out for the idea. Even gave me the cash to hire my staff and set up a botanical research college. I never did get to take that botany degree, remember?"
There was nothing in her voice to suggest she regretted the loss of the life she might have had on Earth, if she hadn't crossed paths with Turlough and ended up on the TARDIS, if she'd decided to go home instead of travelling. He'd told her the bare details of being taken out of time by his people, and if she'd wondered why he hadn't come back for her, she hadn't asked. It left him off-balance, this lack of anger on her part.
"I was surprised," he said carefully, "when I was told you'd married King Yrcanos."
"You were surprised? You should've seen my face when he proposed. Or his face when I said yes." She nudged his arm. "Hey, if you knew I married him, you could've looked up the date of the wedding. We had a castle full of Yrcanos's loud, arguing relatives, it would've been nice to have even one person there for me. Careful, that plant's dangerous."
"Peri." He sighed and stopped moving, though he made sure he was out of reach of the innocuous looking bud she'd pointed to. "The Time Lords showed me your death. Later they said it hadn't been true, and for years afterwards I'd think 'I'll go back to Thoros Beta. I'll find out what really happened to Peri.' And every time I'd invent some excuse, some urgent thing to be done, because I was so afraid that I'd find out they were telling the truth the first time."
"So you just never came looking."
"I'm sorry, Peri." He'd needed to say it for years, but had to address it to her back - she'd turned away from him, moved to where the path ended, at a row of trees.
"Come over here a minute," she said.
He hadn't realised the path they'd been walking was on an incline. The hill was gentle and the lines of flowers had been designed to trick the eye. Beyond the trees, the land curved into an immense green bowl of a valley. From here the Doctor could see the white building that must be Peri's college, greenhouses, hedge mazes, dark patches of forests. And flowers. Millions of them, in every colour he'd ever seen.
"My favourite place," Peri said.
"It's beautiful."
"Even if you'd come back for me," she said, "I never would've gone back to my own time. My mom and dad are dead. What was I ever gonna do on Earth? At least here I made something. Maybe it'll only last a couple years, but..."
"Oh, far more than that. This planet is revered, you know," the Doctor said. "It's renowned. Or it will be, one day. A thousand years from now Lapparus is one of the foremost centres for botanical science in this part of the galaxy. The great forest worlds - Gharthan, Cheem, even the Eye of Orion - parts of them came from seedlings grown here. I never dreamed I knew the architect."
She smiled at him, a fierce pride and a love of this place she'd made shining in her. Lapparus's Queen. Almost all of the guilt he'd been carrying since Thoros Beta ebbed away.
The last shred of it, though, made him ask: "But still, Yrcanos?"
Peri laughed at him, wrapping her arm around his middle in a hug that caught him pleasantly off-guard. "Yeah, attaching myself to this really loud, bossy, forceful, kind of arrogant guy? Who saw that one coming?"
(Originally posted here. Thanks to Doyle for permission to "reprint" it here.)