You're What?: Chapter Thirty-Nine
Dec. 8th, 2008 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberfocus
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Encased in Amber
“I thought trillium plants were…little,” Rose said looking around her at the towering forest filled with the gigantic blossoms. They were on Mastraginus Five and had landed without one single hitch. That alone made Rose a bit nervous. Combined with the flowers that were bigger than her body she was gripping the Doctor’s hand rather too tightly. There had been an incident before she’d gotten pregnant with mobile carnivorous flowers that she’d never quite put behind her. She tried not to think of it as much as possible, but her surroundings were bringing up the memory despite their beauty.
“The ones on Earth are. This is what happens to plants that depend on photosynthesis to produce their food under the influence of a trinary star system.” Rose glanced up at the sky where two of the planet’s three suns were visible. “One sun is always up here. In fact there’s only two hours in this planet’s day where there is only one visible at a time. The rest of the time there are always two overhead.”
“There isn’t a night? It never gets dark?” she questioned.
“That’s right. It only ever gets less light or brighter depending on the rotation. On occasion there’ll be an eclipse and that’s the only time this planet will ever see any darkness. Even those don’t last longer than an hour at the most.”
“So the plants basically grow 24/7?” Rose asked. “Photosynthesis never shuts down?”
“32/8,” corrected the Doctor, “as local time is measured.”
“Could a TARDIS grow here?” she asked suddenly.
He gave her an odd look. “Yes,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “A TARDIS would grow exponentially faster under a trinary star system, much faster than on the planet they evolved on. When supply was short we’d use nursery planets to hurry up the process, otherwise it could take a thousand years. They never functioned quite as well as those grown under normal circumstances. My ship started life in a lab and then went to a nursery planet. Part of why she gets so scrambled trying to land in specific times and places.”
“I thought that was damage from the Time War,” Rose said hesitantly knowing that was still a touchy subject for him.
“That made it worse, but she’s always had some degree of difficulty with getting things right.” He sighed. “She’s still got plenty of life in her though, and she gets things right often enough. She lets us go back to London to visit your mum in the proper time line quite frequently.”
Rose nodded and steered the conversation back on topic. “So…a TARDIS could grow here?”
“Yes. I said we used planets like this. Still, the nursery planets were never as nice, though this one seems close. They were most beautiful in their natural habitat and functioned a lot better having the full expanse of their growth cycle to live through. Not that it’s possible. That planet…those stars…all gone now.”
Rose slipped her hand into the Doctor’s at the melancholy that had crept into his voice and hugged his arm between her body and her free hand. He so seldom spoke of his past and she knew these memories were hard for him. He’d been freer with her since speaking of his dead wife Alethe and what had happened with his children and she treasured every moment he chose to give her glimpses into his past.
The Doctor shook himself, the faraway look leaving his face. “I’m okay,” he said when he noticed her looking up at him with concern. I’ve got you and Charlie. That’s a future that makes the past not hurt quite so much. Anyway, it’s possible,” he said. “They could be fully grown, just not as well, under lab conditions as well. This,” and he made a sweeping gesture around them, “would be a much better place for them than that. But it would take seeds and my ship is far too old to be dropping seeds.”
“I suppose you’d need a male TARDIS to fertilize them anyway,” she said.
“Not necessarily,” he mused. “All TARDISes carried the ability to self-fertilize within them. It’s latent, but not impossible. With their far flung migration habits it wasn’t always possible to be in a location where optimal fertilization could occur. No, she doesn’t need a male. I think her age would be the most difficult factor in trying to stimulate seed production and I’m not sure it’s fair to ask her. I’m not sure she’d even want to. Why all the questions, Rose?”
Rose placed her free hand on her stomach. “When Charlie becomes a man, he might want to have his own ship one day. I just wondered if he could.”
“I don’t know.” They stood in silence after that, both lost in their own thoughts. Finally Rose broke it, changing the subject that was obviously weighing heavily on the Doctor.
“Are all these flowers varieties of trillium?” Rose asked.
“Well, there are trees interspersed that are similar to cedar and redwoods and many other trees from other worlds. It’s where the amber comes from. But otherwise, that’s all this planet has on it anymore except the keepers and the rare amber hunters. The flowers have pretty much taken over nearly completely,” the Doctor replied.
“What’s classified as rare amber?” Rose asked as they began walking through the forest towards the location the Doctor said the heaviest amber deposits were located in.
“Blue amber. Even when it’s there it’s not always easy to find. It shines blue only under direct sunlight. If the sunlight hits it from behind then it looks like plain yellow amber. Same with being under ordinary light. You have to stumble upon it just right to even see it. It does show up under ultraviolet light as well.”
“Yeah? What’s it look like then?” she asked curiously.
“Depends on a lot of factors. Normally, though, it has a sort of fluorescent blue glow. Under ultraviolet it’s more of a milky bright blue.”
“Sounds pretty,” Rose said.
“Kind of garish, I think. I favor the reds myself, though there are all kinds. Black, transparent, orange, yellow, brown and actual amber colored amber.” He laughs. “All we need is simple amber colored amber with the flower trapped inside.”
“Why the flower?” Rose asked. “Why a trillium?”
“Well, it isn’t actually a trillium we’re looking for. It is a different flower called a trilliby. Trilliums are the closest thing to it that exists. The trillibies almost went extinct when…when Gallifrey did.” He sighed and Rose squeezed his hand. He gave an answering squeeze and continued. “It didn’t grow anywhere else, but the trillium is species related. Closest thing I could find to it. I had some in the TARDIS because I liked them and I went back in time and seeded them into this planet’s past just before I met you. I thought they might thrive. They exist here now so obviously I was right.”
“And what’s the significance of it?” Rose asked softly.
“Like the trillium, the trilliby we’re looking for has three inner petals, three outer petals and three bracts. It’s a trinity triad,” he explained.
“Trinity triad?”
“Three in one, three times,” he told her. “It represents body, mind and heart, and it represents it thrice. Once for the female and that’s the inner petals, once for the male and that’s the outer petals, and the third time for the bonding into one union which is represented by the bracts which can wrap around the whole of the petals.”
“And having it encased in amber?” she wanted to know.
“That means that the union is bound tightly by time, unchanging, unmoving. It’s a way of saying…well, forever,” he said.
“And between Time Lords you can have forever,” she said wistfully.
“I’ll find a way to have it with you, too, Rose,” he said urgently.
“I know that you’ll try,” she allowed. “And you’ll always have Charlie even if you don’t always have me.”
“I’ll find a way,” he repeated. He stopped and turned into her abruptly and brought his mouth down hard on hers, kissing her fiercely. He broke the kiss a moment later and let her go again. “I will,” he insisted. He laced his fingers back through hers again and tugged her onward. She decided not to contradict him; that it was easier to let him hold his stubborn belief that he’d one day be successful in altering her longevity.
“What’s the honey represent?” she asked.
“Sweetness to overcome all times of bitterness,” he told her.
“I thought Time Lords weren’t a romantic lot,” she said.
“We generally weren’t, but this is an ancient tradition that goes back millennia before the snobbery and the curses and the general pompous misery that was there in the last days of my people,” he explained.
“Okay then, so why the bitterroot if the honey is there to overcome all bitterness?” she asks.
“Well, because despite everything that goes into a good marriage, Rose, there still will be times of bitterness. But the bitterroot symbolizes that even out of bitterness sometimes something beautiful can still grow. The flower it becomes again shows that bitterness can be overcome. My people had a tendency towards sourness so I think it was doubly important to have two ways of getting past that in our rituals.”
“Oh. So what’s the most important part of the ceremony?” Rose asked.
“The vows of course. Everything else, as important as each element is, it’s nothing compared to the spoken words. Speaking of which, I’m going to have to teach you some words in Gallifreyan,” he told her.
“Really?” Rose was surprised. He usually spoke English with her despite the TARDIS’ ability to translate nearly all spoken languages, because she didn’t translate Gallifreyan, there never having been a need since it was the language native to the Doctor. It was rare for him to even speak the words of his own language in front of her, though they sometimes slipped out during sex when the Doctor forgot himself.
“Yeah. You need to be able to say a few sentences for the bonding. First word you need to know is ravayluh.” He put the accent on the second syllable. “It means heart.”
Rose repeated the word. “Ravayluh,” she said. “Heart.”
“Revelo is body and sarenvoh is mind.” Rose wrapped her tongue around the new words and then looked over at him for the next one.
“This one’s a bit more difficult to pronounce,” he said. “Torvinumesolin.” The accents were on the second, forth and fifth syllables of the long word. Rose stumbled a bit over it and had to repeat it four times before she got it right. It reminded her a little bit of learning to say Raxicoricophallipatorius.
“What’s that mean?” she asked.
“Commitment,” replied the Doctor. “Next is javenoh.”
“That one I recognize. You say it when we make love.”
“Yes. It means love. Javenoh.”
“Javenoh. It’s a pretty word,” Rose commented.
“It’s a pretty language. Very musical,” he said. They moved on to conjugation and the simple words meaning I, you, me and us. By the time they reached the first of the amber deposits Rose had memorized the bonding speech.
“I thought amber came from trees,” Rose said looking around her at the piles of it. “I don’t really see any trees here.”
“It does. It’s formed from tree resin and then eventually it hardens and becomes fossilized and that creates the amber. Any remaining parts of the tree have long since rotted away or become petrified wood,” the Doctor explained.
Rose shoved a large plant out of her way and started sifting through the chunks of amber in front of her. She’d been searching for an hour when she asked him, “What happens if we don’t find one with a trilliby flower inside it?” She’d found several with spiders and ants and other insects and one with a leaf before she looked up at him.
“We will.”
“But if we don’t?”
“This planet has had trillium on it for millennia,” he told her. "We can always substitute one of them if we can’t find a true trilliby. Or we can deliberately place a flower over an outpouring of tree resin and then go forward in time as many years as necessary and find the finished product,” he said.
“Isn’t that cheating?” she asked.
“A bit, yeah. So keep looking.”
In the end it took three and a half hours to find the perfect specimen. It was the Doctor who found it. He scanned it with the sonic screwdriver and smiled cheerily. “It’s even a blood trilliby,” he said happily.
“What’s the type got to do with anything?” Rose asked wearily as he pulled her to her feet and then showed her the chunk of amber.
“Nothing. It’s just my favorite. It’s the prettiest.”
“What color was the original flower?” she asked peering through the amber to see the burgundy petals.
“Blood red. The amber darkens it.”
Rose took the piece of amber from him. It was about the size of her hand and the flower was preserved in exquisite detail within. “It’s beautiful,” she said her fingers stroking over the uneven surface.
“Yes. I’ll have the TARDIS polish it up for the ceremony, smooth out all the roughness, if you want,” he said.
“I kind of like it this way. Roughly cut, unpolished, but gorgeous. Bit like you,” she told him with a soft smile.
He gave her his slow, sexy grin, the one that made her insides flip over and then he dropped a kiss on her forehead and hugged her to him. “You hungry?” he asked. “We should probably eat before we head back to the ship.”
“Yeah.”
The Doctor started pulling food out of his transdimensional pockets and they had a little picnic on the edge of the field of amber before heading back to the TARDIS. “I think I’m going to need a long soak in the tub when we get back,” Rose said. “My muscles are stiff from all the climbing about.”
“Not too hot,” cautioned the Doctor.
“I didn’t just get pregnant yesterday, Doctor. And anyway, the TARDIS won’t let me make it so hot it’d hurt the baby.”
“I just worry sometimes,” he said.
“I know. Tell you what? If you’re that worried about it, you can join me in the tub and rub anything you want,” she said with a tired grin that she still managed to make cheeky and inviting.
He laughed. “You’re on.” Somehow the walk back to the TARDIS didn’t seem to take nearly as long as the walk out with that to look forward to.
Ch. 40: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/180487.html
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Date: 2008-12-09 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2008-12-09 10:46 am (UTC)Erm... sorry for going off topic, but how's HM going? And Possibilities?
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Date: 2008-12-09 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 12:26 pm (UTC)This is, of course, lovely as usual! Can't wait for more (I suppose I'll just have to reread it, again! Not like it's a chore!)!!
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Date: 2008-12-10 02:41 am (UTC)*Drifts back*
I love the bit about the trinity triad, so lovely.
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Date: 2008-12-11 01:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 03:15 am (UTC)Very cool language stuff, by the way!
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