(no subject)
1) BRAND NEW DAY by humansrsuperior is everything I love about New New Who crammed into 3:36 minutes of brilliantly timed vid. (Also I may have a thing for songs with bells in.) Late rec is late, but if you haven't watched it, do so. There's this grin all over my face now that I couldn't get rid of if I tried.<3
2) Cherry blossoms are molting all over several roads that I regularly walk on. Is it bad that the first thing they bring to mind is Senbonzakura? *snerk*
3) Haven't seen Flesh and Stone yet. Will do when there's time, in between ferrying census forms around my neighborhood, temping in a local school office, and, um, reading.
4) Specifically, The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill (true story, epic movie, etc). Was meaning to compare its pacing and exposition to The Guns of Navarone (fiction), but maybe HMS Ulysses would be a truer comparison -- first book, larger cast, more congruent themes -- except I don't want to read that one again. :P
5) Okay, now the fic is done.
This fic: is half a year late, and comprises Part II of my sixathon story for eclecticmuse. (Part I is here.) The Sixth Doctor's mind is difficult to inhabit at this stage in his career, but it helped to think of Eleven in his future instead of mainly Ten.
Fandom: Doctor Who (5th, 6th, Peri)
Genre: G; humor, angst, character study
Written for: eclecticmuse
Summary: Running into a long-lost companion can be welcome, pleasant, perhaps bittersweet. Running into a previous incarnation? Not so much. Especially when it involves chasing chickens.
Title:
Founding Feathers
(Part I)
Part II
Chikkeries were a nuisance. Their feathers got everywhere. They all looked alike, save for small differences in coloring of which the Doctor did not deign to keep track. The males tried to attack anything that moved, the females were just as aggressive if something threatened their nests, and the friendly ones had a disconcerting habit of mobbing intruders in search of treats. Worst of all, they were fast.
Had he been in a better temper, the Doctor might have felt expansive toward the fleeing bird that had had the misfortune to tangle the Neiref's thin chain around its foot. After all, chasing it had led them far away from the rioting village, and from the second TARDIS which he didn't feel like explaining to Peri. But the sun burnt him, and the heather pricked at him, and the long grass tickled his nose, and he was not in a grateful mood.
"It's coming towards you!" called Peri.
"Don't let it get past you this time!" shouted the Doctor's former self, from somewhat further afield.
"I wasn't the one that spooked it!" the Doctor shouted back. So far, he and his counterpart had been able to keep a reasonable distance between them -- a small mercy indeed.
The chikkerie, with the deceptively harmless-looking amulet glinting and skipping behind its claw, waffled from side to side, aware that something was afoot. The Doctor, holding his arms akimbo (he'd left his coat behind after all, as it had proven cumbersome), cautiously herded it toward a rocky outcropping, and then groaned as the bird flapped its wings and flew clumsily over and out of sight.
"Again," complained the other Doctor, shambling up out of the grass.
The Doctor looked him up and down.
"You look like a bale of straw."
"Have you seen yourself lately?"
"Did I always get quite that out of breath just from climbing a hill?"
"Well, I'm certainly not looking forward to your side of this little jaunt--"
"Just stop!" yelled Peri, practically right into their ears.
A few choice curse words ran through the Doctor's mind. Careless, careless... couldn't have her putting two and two together; she still had to be bewildered and confused when his previous self was going to have breathed his last. (It had all got a bit muddled after that.)
But Peri apparently hadn't heard; she was eying her companion in a cagey, worried manner that reminded the Doctor uncomfortably of those muddled days. He brought out the worst in himself, apparently. If there was a moral to that, he didn't want to know.
"--Seriously, you haven't gone on like that since we met the Master! And you -- you're leading him on! Can't you just stop it and get along until this is over?" She leaned forward, arms akimbo, staring them both down in that brave, blustering way she had when she knew no one would listen but was pretending it didn't sting. "If that necklace thing's so dangerous, it'd be stupid to lose it just because you two can't have a civil conversation."
Turning her back, she stalked toward the low end of the rock, hoisted herself up with both hands and one foot in a jagged crack, swung her legs over and disappeared.
The younger Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets, looking troubled. The older one slid him a sideways look and said in a tone full of irony, "After you."
"Oh, no, my dear fellow," said Peri's Doctor. He'd long since stopped trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. "After you."
They clambered up together, looked over the top of the boulder, and then threw themselves backwards out of sight as whining bolts of electricity tore through the air where their faces had just been.
"What--?"
"It's the perimeter--"
They both stopped in the middle of a breath. "Peri--"
"Doctor!?" She was scrambling back over the rock, panic in her eyes.
"I'm fine," the Doctor said automatically, and felt it like a blow to the chest when she snarled, confused and angry, "I wasn't talking to you!"
He staggered upright, braced his back against the stone and stewed as Peri's Doctor nattered breathlessly about the colony's automatic defense system and how they had just been classified as dangerous. Of course that was absurd. "Dangerous," the Doctor scoffed, popped up to get a look, and was hauled back down by his counterpart in the nick of time. I had strong hands at least warred in his mind with leave go, I'm not helpless and infernal cheek, doesn't it know what it's shooting at? and he felt among his curls for traces of the near miss, but there was no smell of singed hair, so that was a positive sign.
When he looked at his past again, they were shoulder to shoulder, checking the range on the younger Doctor's scanning device. The Doctor watched them for a moment, trying to think about rogue technology instead of escaping birds.
The answer hit without warning, as important things so often had.
Pulling an arm out of his coat, he flipped the empty sleeve up above the rock. Nothing happened. Then he waved his hand into the danger zone, pulling it back immediately. A blue bolt crackled overhead.
"Will you at least try not to get killed off?" hissed the other Doctor.
He ignored himself. "Peri," he exclaimed, "you didn't get shot!"
"Thanks for noticing," she said dryly.
"But that's an automated defense mechanism. You were on the other side of the rock, and it didn't shoot you."
"Maybe I was too fast for it," said Peri uncertainly. But the other Doctor stared in dawning comprehension. "No. Oh, no, don't even start--"
"It could be because she's human," the Doctor mused, ignoring him. "This is a human colony at this stage. It makes sense. Whatever the reason, the system doesn't recognize her as a threat."
"You'd take that chance with her life?" demanded Peri's Doctor.
The Doctor kept on ignoring him. It had seemed to work out the first time. Beyond his younger self, framed by a streak of sunlight inching around the far end of the rock, Peri looked worn out and at patience's end.
I know you better than you know yourself, Peri Brown, he didn't say. I know how loyal you are, and how compassionate, and how brave, and how forgiving. I know your laughter, and the look in your eye when you think you're left behind, and the tilt of your head when there's no way out.
I know where you came from.
I know why you stayed.
"I'd like to see you succeed," he drawled, "where two Time Lords have come up dry. Pity betting's illegal here."
Peri gave him a look that was altogether too wise. "You're not trying to reverse-psych me into going out there, are you?"
Drat. "Wouldn't dream of it."
"Liar."
"Moi?"
"You're sure whatever's defending that field isn't dangerous?"
"Not to you. I am being entirely candid." And what's more, the me whom I used to be knows it.
"Well." She scowled, stubborn, and strands of hair blew across her face as she looked back at the rock. She'd cut it soon, he remembered, and later let it grow longer again, forever tinkering with the fine line between style and practicality.
Then she nodded, and despite himself, he smiled.
.o0o.
A few minutes' investigation revealed the location and range of the automated defense system, and confirmed that it didn't recognize Peri as an enemy. With that small reassurance, she clambered over the rocks again and set off across the field, while the two Time Lords crouched at the low end of the ridge with an improvised periscope made of oddments from their pockets, muttering blackly and jostling one another for a better view.
The chikkerie seemed to have reached the edge of its normal range; it tracked uneasily to and fro, seeking a way past Peri and back to its flock. Peri, not slow to take advantage, determinedly blocked its path, heckling it in tones ranging from peevish to incensed. Tired as the bird might be, the girl seemed even more frazzled, and after a brief time, the Doctor pulled away from the periscope, rolled back against the stone with his hands laced over his middle, and pretended to go to sleep.
It was a peaceable little planet, as he recalled: quiet, unspoiled; a tranquil paradise. (Aside from the rioting in the village.) There was a warm meadow smell and a soft breeze, and Peri's shouts blended nicely into the background. Too bad we didn't come here before, he thought. Well, after. Back in his fishing days. She might have liked it.
As expected, his former self didn't let the silence linger.
"Not worried at all, are you?"
The Doctor didn't open his eyes. "I give her a thirty percent chance of actually laying hands on the creature. She was always--" he waved a hand, seeking the right words -- "appallingly resolute."
The "was" hung in the air between them, but he didn't dare take it back. Peri's Doctor was silent, mulling over the implications without lowering the periscope. With both of their minds tightly closed against temporal contamination, it was impossible to hear his thoughts, yet far too easy to follow their thread along the most likely -- the inevitable -- lines.
"You're obviously traveling alone."
"How very observant."
"Are you always this disagreeable?"
"It's part of my natural charm."
"I was afraid of that."
"You know, she can't remember any of this," said the Doctor callously. "I'll leave that up to you, shall I? Find a convenient moment and--"
"You never stop, do you," said the other Doctor through gritted teeth.
There was a shout from the field, and they both scrambled for the eyepiece. Some distance away, Peri was kicking at the chikkerie, shouting furiously as its sharp spurs hooked in at her leg again. She shouted, waving her hands, and the bird darted backwards again, still cut off from the perimeter.
Both Doctors sat back, the elder ostentatiously fanning his brow with one hand. The younger looked troubled -- why had he ever worn his emotions so openly? -- and defiant, which, if the Doctor recalled correctly, usually meant that he was about to say something very brave and very, very unwise.
He looked at himself, feeling his jaw set in a way he hadn't had in him until such a short time ago, and lied, flatly and realistically.
"As I said. Nothing whatever to worry about."
The other Doctor, unconvinced, tried to stare him down. Didn't back off, there was that much to say for him. (Yes, that was how it went. Nothing could ever threaten the ones he chose to stand with him.) He stared back, though, his eyes careless, heavy-lidded, and at last they both turned for a look through the lens.
Just in time to see Peri hit the ground.
They both stood instinctively, ducking instinctively as electricity shot over their heads, each nearly shouting, each swallowing his words as he realized Peri had thrown herself deliberately on the chikkerie. There was a moment's struggle, and then the rumpled fowl was haring past them to freedom as Peri held up a victorious fist with the glittering amulet dangling from its fine chain.
"She did it," whooped the younger Doctor, breaking into a beaming smile and raising his voice to call, "Peri! Well done!"
The Doctor said nothing. He'd already spoken more in the past few hours than he had in a week. Instead, he retrieved his small mirror from the periscope and moved off toward the high portion of the rock where he couldn't see Peri stomping back to them, smudged all over with unnameable muck, flushed, irritated, and triumphant.
"Well." He brushed off his trousers ostentatiously, though between this and Twer Vexithea, the TARDIS filters would be clogged with feathers and bits of ground cover for days. "Best be off then. Give my deepest personal regards to Miss Brown. I doubt we'll be meeting again."
"Give her your own regards," said his counterpart, brows rising into his lank hair. "Weren't you after the Neiref?"
"I only came so the people here wouldn't get hold of it. You're welcome to the thing; I wouldn't think of depriving you." The long grass sloped down into the valley whence they'd come: less than a mile, as the crow flew (or the cat meandered), to where they'd left two time machines and one blue coat.
"Doctor."
He stopped, half-turned toward his younger self -- only half-turned, since the crisis was over, the enemy conquered, the prize won, and it wasn't as though there were anything left between them.
"Yes, Doctor?" he said neutrally.
The young Doctor's mild voice was even and perhaps faintly recriminatory. "Tell me I'm not going to moon about like that forever."
The Doctor held still for just a touch too long, but it was too bright a day to whip up a satisfactory head of thunder. He spread his hands disarmingly, smiling a smile meant to be grand, eloquent, artistic, aloof, and just a bit mad. Rather like himself.
"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about," he said, and was almost sincere.
He spent the next few days muttering balefully at short circuits under the console, getting wire-burns and grease all over his fingers and shirt, because chikkerie feathers really did get everywhere. But the ship still flew, and time went with it, and neither seemed any worse for a good harangue.
_____
eclecticmuse's prompt was: "Post TOTTL, solo-traveling Six somehow manages to run into Five and Peri on some adventure pre-Caves of Androzani. Feel free to include the standard Doctor-meets-Doctor sniping, and explore Peri's reactions to this violently colored Doctor. Bonus points for internal (or external) angst on the fact that he's seeing Peri ALIVE." Late as this is, I hope it delivers.~
2) Cherry blossoms are molting all over several roads that I regularly walk on. Is it bad that the first thing they bring to mind is Senbonzakura? *snerk*
3) Haven't seen Flesh and Stone yet. Will do when there's time, in between ferrying census forms around my neighborhood, temping in a local school office, and, um, reading.
4) Specifically, The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill (true story, epic movie, etc). Was meaning to compare its pacing and exposition to The Guns of Navarone (fiction), but maybe HMS Ulysses would be a truer comparison -- first book, larger cast, more congruent themes -- except I don't want to read that one again. :P
5) Okay, now the fic is done.
This fic: is half a year late, and comprises Part II of my sixathon story for eclecticmuse. (Part I is here.) The Sixth Doctor's mind is difficult to inhabit at this stage in his career, but it helped to think of Eleven in his future instead of mainly Ten.
Fandom: Doctor Who (5th, 6th, Peri)
Genre: G; humor, angst, character study
Written for: eclecticmuse
Summary: Running into a long-lost companion can be welcome, pleasant, perhaps bittersweet. Running into a previous incarnation? Not so much. Especially when it involves chasing chickens.
Title:
Founding Feathers
(Part I)
Part II
Chikkeries were a nuisance. Their feathers got everywhere. They all looked alike, save for small differences in coloring of which the Doctor did not deign to keep track. The males tried to attack anything that moved, the females were just as aggressive if something threatened their nests, and the friendly ones had a disconcerting habit of mobbing intruders in search of treats. Worst of all, they were fast.
Had he been in a better temper, the Doctor might have felt expansive toward the fleeing bird that had had the misfortune to tangle the Neiref's thin chain around its foot. After all, chasing it had led them far away from the rioting village, and from the second TARDIS which he didn't feel like explaining to Peri. But the sun burnt him, and the heather pricked at him, and the long grass tickled his nose, and he was not in a grateful mood.
"It's coming towards you!" called Peri.
"Don't let it get past you this time!" shouted the Doctor's former self, from somewhat further afield.
"I wasn't the one that spooked it!" the Doctor shouted back. So far, he and his counterpart had been able to keep a reasonable distance between them -- a small mercy indeed.
The chikkerie, with the deceptively harmless-looking amulet glinting and skipping behind its claw, waffled from side to side, aware that something was afoot. The Doctor, holding his arms akimbo (he'd left his coat behind after all, as it had proven cumbersome), cautiously herded it toward a rocky outcropping, and then groaned as the bird flapped its wings and flew clumsily over and out of sight.
"Again," complained the other Doctor, shambling up out of the grass.
The Doctor looked him up and down.
"You look like a bale of straw."
"Have you seen yourself lately?"
"Did I always get quite that out of breath just from climbing a hill?"
"Well, I'm certainly not looking forward to your side of this little jaunt--"
"Just stop!" yelled Peri, practically right into their ears.
A few choice curse words ran through the Doctor's mind. Careless, careless... couldn't have her putting two and two together; she still had to be bewildered and confused when his previous self was going to have breathed his last. (It had all got a bit muddled after that.)
But Peri apparently hadn't heard; she was eying her companion in a cagey, worried manner that reminded the Doctor uncomfortably of those muddled days. He brought out the worst in himself, apparently. If there was a moral to that, he didn't want to know.
"--Seriously, you haven't gone on like that since we met the Master! And you -- you're leading him on! Can't you just stop it and get along until this is over?" She leaned forward, arms akimbo, staring them both down in that brave, blustering way she had when she knew no one would listen but was pretending it didn't sting. "If that necklace thing's so dangerous, it'd be stupid to lose it just because you two can't have a civil conversation."
Turning her back, she stalked toward the low end of the rock, hoisted herself up with both hands and one foot in a jagged crack, swung her legs over and disappeared.
The younger Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets, looking troubled. The older one slid him a sideways look and said in a tone full of irony, "After you."
"Oh, no, my dear fellow," said Peri's Doctor. He'd long since stopped trying to keep the irritation out of his voice. "After you."
They clambered up together, looked over the top of the boulder, and then threw themselves backwards out of sight as whining bolts of electricity tore through the air where their faces had just been.
"What--?"
"It's the perimeter--"
They both stopped in the middle of a breath. "Peri--"
"Doctor!?" She was scrambling back over the rock, panic in her eyes.
"I'm fine," the Doctor said automatically, and felt it like a blow to the chest when she snarled, confused and angry, "I wasn't talking to you!"
He staggered upright, braced his back against the stone and stewed as Peri's Doctor nattered breathlessly about the colony's automatic defense system and how they had just been classified as dangerous. Of course that was absurd. "Dangerous," the Doctor scoffed, popped up to get a look, and was hauled back down by his counterpart in the nick of time. I had strong hands at least warred in his mind with leave go, I'm not helpless and infernal cheek, doesn't it know what it's shooting at? and he felt among his curls for traces of the near miss, but there was no smell of singed hair, so that was a positive sign.
When he looked at his past again, they were shoulder to shoulder, checking the range on the younger Doctor's scanning device. The Doctor watched them for a moment, trying to think about rogue technology instead of escaping birds.
The answer hit without warning, as important things so often had.
Pulling an arm out of his coat, he flipped the empty sleeve up above the rock. Nothing happened. Then he waved his hand into the danger zone, pulling it back immediately. A blue bolt crackled overhead.
"Will you at least try not to get killed off?" hissed the other Doctor.
He ignored himself. "Peri," he exclaimed, "you didn't get shot!"
"Thanks for noticing," she said dryly.
"But that's an automated defense mechanism. You were on the other side of the rock, and it didn't shoot you."
"Maybe I was too fast for it," said Peri uncertainly. But the other Doctor stared in dawning comprehension. "No. Oh, no, don't even start--"
"It could be because she's human," the Doctor mused, ignoring him. "This is a human colony at this stage. It makes sense. Whatever the reason, the system doesn't recognize her as a threat."
"You'd take that chance with her life?" demanded Peri's Doctor.
The Doctor kept on ignoring him. It had seemed to work out the first time. Beyond his younger self, framed by a streak of sunlight inching around the far end of the rock, Peri looked worn out and at patience's end.
I know you better than you know yourself, Peri Brown, he didn't say. I know how loyal you are, and how compassionate, and how brave, and how forgiving. I know your laughter, and the look in your eye when you think you're left behind, and the tilt of your head when there's no way out.
I know where you came from.
I know why you stayed.
"I'd like to see you succeed," he drawled, "where two Time Lords have come up dry. Pity betting's illegal here."
Peri gave him a look that was altogether too wise. "You're not trying to reverse-psych me into going out there, are you?"
Drat. "Wouldn't dream of it."
"Liar."
"Moi?"
"You're sure whatever's defending that field isn't dangerous?"
"Not to you. I am being entirely candid." And what's more, the me whom I used to be knows it.
"Well." She scowled, stubborn, and strands of hair blew across her face as she looked back at the rock. She'd cut it soon, he remembered, and later let it grow longer again, forever tinkering with the fine line between style and practicality.
Then she nodded, and despite himself, he smiled.
.o0o.
A few minutes' investigation revealed the location and range of the automated defense system, and confirmed that it didn't recognize Peri as an enemy. With that small reassurance, she clambered over the rocks again and set off across the field, while the two Time Lords crouched at the low end of the ridge with an improvised periscope made of oddments from their pockets, muttering blackly and jostling one another for a better view.
The chikkerie seemed to have reached the edge of its normal range; it tracked uneasily to and fro, seeking a way past Peri and back to its flock. Peri, not slow to take advantage, determinedly blocked its path, heckling it in tones ranging from peevish to incensed. Tired as the bird might be, the girl seemed even more frazzled, and after a brief time, the Doctor pulled away from the periscope, rolled back against the stone with his hands laced over his middle, and pretended to go to sleep.
It was a peaceable little planet, as he recalled: quiet, unspoiled; a tranquil paradise. (Aside from the rioting in the village.) There was a warm meadow smell and a soft breeze, and Peri's shouts blended nicely into the background. Too bad we didn't come here before, he thought. Well, after. Back in his fishing days. She might have liked it.
As expected, his former self didn't let the silence linger.
"Not worried at all, are you?"
The Doctor didn't open his eyes. "I give her a thirty percent chance of actually laying hands on the creature. She was always--" he waved a hand, seeking the right words -- "appallingly resolute."
The "was" hung in the air between them, but he didn't dare take it back. Peri's Doctor was silent, mulling over the implications without lowering the periscope. With both of their minds tightly closed against temporal contamination, it was impossible to hear his thoughts, yet far too easy to follow their thread along the most likely -- the inevitable -- lines.
"You're obviously traveling alone."
"How very observant."
"Are you always this disagreeable?"
"It's part of my natural charm."
"I was afraid of that."
"You know, she can't remember any of this," said the Doctor callously. "I'll leave that up to you, shall I? Find a convenient moment and--"
"You never stop, do you," said the other Doctor through gritted teeth.
There was a shout from the field, and they both scrambled for the eyepiece. Some distance away, Peri was kicking at the chikkerie, shouting furiously as its sharp spurs hooked in at her leg again. She shouted, waving her hands, and the bird darted backwards again, still cut off from the perimeter.
Both Doctors sat back, the elder ostentatiously fanning his brow with one hand. The younger looked troubled -- why had he ever worn his emotions so openly? -- and defiant, which, if the Doctor recalled correctly, usually meant that he was about to say something very brave and very, very unwise.
He looked at himself, feeling his jaw set in a way he hadn't had in him until such a short time ago, and lied, flatly and realistically.
"As I said. Nothing whatever to worry about."
The other Doctor, unconvinced, tried to stare him down. Didn't back off, there was that much to say for him. (Yes, that was how it went. Nothing could ever threaten the ones he chose to stand with him.) He stared back, though, his eyes careless, heavy-lidded, and at last they both turned for a look through the lens.
Just in time to see Peri hit the ground.
They both stood instinctively, ducking instinctively as electricity shot over their heads, each nearly shouting, each swallowing his words as he realized Peri had thrown herself deliberately on the chikkerie. There was a moment's struggle, and then the rumpled fowl was haring past them to freedom as Peri held up a victorious fist with the glittering amulet dangling from its fine chain.
"She did it," whooped the younger Doctor, breaking into a beaming smile and raising his voice to call, "Peri! Well done!"
The Doctor said nothing. He'd already spoken more in the past few hours than he had in a week. Instead, he retrieved his small mirror from the periscope and moved off toward the high portion of the rock where he couldn't see Peri stomping back to them, smudged all over with unnameable muck, flushed, irritated, and triumphant.
"Well." He brushed off his trousers ostentatiously, though between this and Twer Vexithea, the TARDIS filters would be clogged with feathers and bits of ground cover for days. "Best be off then. Give my deepest personal regards to Miss Brown. I doubt we'll be meeting again."
"Give her your own regards," said his counterpart, brows rising into his lank hair. "Weren't you after the Neiref?"
"I only came so the people here wouldn't get hold of it. You're welcome to the thing; I wouldn't think of depriving you." The long grass sloped down into the valley whence they'd come: less than a mile, as the crow flew (or the cat meandered), to where they'd left two time machines and one blue coat.
"Doctor."
He stopped, half-turned toward his younger self -- only half-turned, since the crisis was over, the enemy conquered, the prize won, and it wasn't as though there were anything left between them.
"Yes, Doctor?" he said neutrally.
The young Doctor's mild voice was even and perhaps faintly recriminatory. "Tell me I'm not going to moon about like that forever."
The Doctor held still for just a touch too long, but it was too bright a day to whip up a satisfactory head of thunder. He spread his hands disarmingly, smiling a smile meant to be grand, eloquent, artistic, aloof, and just a bit mad. Rather like himself.
"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about," he said, and was almost sincere.
He spent the next few days muttering balefully at short circuits under the console, getting wire-burns and grease all over his fingers and shirt, because chikkerie feathers really did get everywhere. But the ship still flew, and time went with it, and neither seemed any worse for a good harangue.
_____
eclecticmuse's prompt was: "Post TOTTL, solo-traveling Six somehow manages to run into Five and Peri on some adventure pre-Caves of Androzani. Feel free to include the standard Doctor-meets-Doctor sniping, and explore Peri's reactions to this violently colored Doctor. Bonus points for internal (or external) angst on the fact that he's seeing Peri ALIVE." Late as this is, I hope it delivers.~