amberfocus | Wolf Moon: Chapter Twenty-Nine (Reply)

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Here There Be Drayguins

The Doctor was surprised at her capacity to forgive when he in no way deserved her forgiveness. He knew that the words spoken in anger were not forgotten, and he knew that being human, she would need to talk about them again in the future lest they fester in her mind, becoming uglier than they already were. But she’d still forgiven him and he could tell from the way she had looked at him when she’d told him that she had meant it.

There was also, unfortunately, a hooded look in her eyes that spoke of the beginnings of her building a slight barrier around herself. She’d trusted him enough to tell him why telepathy frightened her. At least, he thought she’d told him because he trusted her but maybe she’d done it as a self-defense mechanism. Another way to keep him out. And he deserved to be kept out.

Before he’d lost his people he never even would have dreamed about going into a non-telepath’s mind without permission. But the loneliness of being permanently separated from his species still echoed so painfully in his mind. Their death cries still echoed if he let them. With Rose, he wanted to cling to her mind. He wanted her to seek out his. He wanted so far beyond what she was willing to give and it scared him, because he craved her mind as much as he craved her body. He could only hope one day she’d let him in.

“You’re brooding,” Rose said and he snapped back to the here and now.

“Just thinking hard, really,” he told her. She gave him a look that clearly said she didn’t believe him.

“You’re not, you know,” she said a few minutes later.

“Not what?”

“Second best to his memory,” she told him. “And I don’t see him when I look at you, Doctor. I see you.”

“We look the same,” he said.

“I still see you,” she insisted. “I still…want you.” She was about to go on when the ground dropped sharply in front of them and a gaping chasm at least two miles wide appeared before them. The bottom must have been several miles deep, for when Rose looked down at the burnt umber ground she lost all sense of her depth perception.

She heard them first before she saw them. They called out to each other on the wind, their shrieks like those of eagles. Her eyes sought them and when she finally made them out she gasped in disbelief at the tremendous beauty of their sinuous bodies. “Here there be drayguins,” she gasped.

The creatures snaked through the air beneath their feet, like waving ribbons of blue, green, red, gold, bronze, brown, orange, and yellow. Faceted eyes caught the sun’s rays and gleamed like prisms, shooting out rainbow flares of light. They dove and chased each other and their cries oscillated from the high eagle-like shrieks they’d first heard, to the deeper timbre of what sounded like a French horn.

“What are they doing?” Rose asked the Doctor in awe.

“They’re playing,” he said.

“Playing?” She gave him a skeptical look.

“Yes. Soaring the thermals for fun.”

“I thought you said they were vicious?” Rose questioned.

“They can be. To intruders, invaders, those that threaten the sanctity of their nesting grounds,” he explained. “But not to each other.”

“Ah, so it’s just us who are in trouble.”

“Not if we’re careful. Those are the females playing. You can tell because their scales are so dull,” he said.

“That’s dull?"

"You haven’t seen the males of the species yet,” he said. “They’re much more vivid than that. Bit like peacocks that way.”

“Where are the males?” asked Rose.

“If the females are flying it stands to reason that the males will be down on the ground, protecting the eggs.”

“How do we find the queen?” Rose wanted to know.

“Well, she’s red. The queen is always red. And the biggest unless she’s fairly young and new to leadership. She’ll grow bigger as she’s nurtured by the others. Like the queen bee in a hive, really,” the Doctor said.

“Do they have a hive mentality?” she asked.

“I don’t really know. It was rare to run across them and their planet of origin was named but not really known. As far as I know I’m the first of my kind to ever set foot on Guinyoc’altinish’morclinia-morashnatil,” he said.

“Show off,” she said as she responded to the liquid name of the planet as it rolled off the Doctor’s tongue.

“It’s not that hard to say,” he told her.

“A bit harder than Raxicoricofallipatorius,” she muttered at him.

“You’ve been there?” he asked with an expression of horror on his face.

“No,” she hastened to reassure him. “Not really. I mean, we ran up against a rather nasty family of profiteers from there and we did drop off an egg once but he wouldn’t allow me or Jack to actually set foot outside the TARDIS while we were there.”

“Good,” said the Doctor. “Dangerous place, that.” He gazed down the steep slope before them. “We need to get down to the bottom.” He took a step forward but she stopped him with a tug on his hand.

“Doctor?”

“What?”

“How sentient are these creatures?” she wanted to know.

“I’m not really sure, Rose. Maybe like a house cat.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

“Won’t the mother miss her baby when we steal it?” she asked.

“We’re not stealing a baby, we’re stealing an egg,” he said.

“But…nesting creatures protect their eggs fiercely.”

“Instinct,” he said.

“What I mean is what if the mum is cognizant of what’s going on? Won’t we be hurting her, taking her child away?” she asked.

“You’re being silly,” he told her. Rose pursed her lips in annoyance as he brushed her concerns aside.

“What if I’m not?” She tugged her hand away from his and rested her fists on her hips.

He gave her an irritated glance. “Rose, we can stand here playing what if until the sun expands but it isn’t going to change the fact that those are just animals and the mum will get over her loss, if she even remembers it the next day. Now come on. If we want to get down there by nightfall we need to go.”

He started down the rough incline and after a moment she followed him. He might not have any doubts about what they were doing but she did. Rose turned her ankles more than once in the next couple of hours but fortunately never hard enough to sprain. Still she was relieved when the Doctor called a halt in the shade of a twisted tree with odd purple leaves shaped like long, draping fern fronds and brilliant scarlet bark. The ground at its base was covered with a thick lime green moss that was heaven to rest upon.

It was almost cool beneath its shade and she gulped greedily at her canteen. “Slow down,” he cautioned. “You don’t want to make your stomach sick.”

He broke out some dried meat and fruit and they ate a simple lunch. Rose noticed him shooting glances her way out of the corner of her eye while she ate, but she kept her own gaze focused at the soaring drayguins who were now above them in the sky. Their dance was sometimes stately and sometimes playful but at all times mesmerizing.

“Rose?”

“What?” she asked and finally turned to look at him.

He took a breath in preparation for asking her something but then he let it go and his shoulders hunched in on himself. “Nothing,” he said. She kept her eyes locked on his but he didn’t say anything else. She turned back to look at the drayguins again. They were really awe inspiring.

“We should go,” the Doctor said abruptly.

“Okay.” They made short work of cleaning up after themselves and moved on. Rose was drenched in sweat several hours later when they finally reached the bottom of the chasm. They found a clean, raging little stream near some more of the twisted purple-leafed trees with bright scarlet bark.

“We’ll sleep here tonight,” the Doctor said. “In the morning we can scout out the nesting grounds.” The Doctor scanned the water and pronounced it safe.

Rose nodded at him and moved over to the stream, stripping down to her bra and knickers and wading in. She sat down and rinsed the heavy sheen of sweat from her body. A moment later the Doctor joined her in the water, but he was careful to keep his distance from her and if his eyes strayed to her he kept them firmly on her face.

Rose knew he was feeling guilty about their fight, thinking he’d lost the right to touch her through his hurtful words. She knew it wouldn’t last, couldn’t last because they’d have to curl up together that evening to keep the skin hunger at bay. She wanted to reach out her hand and reassure him that her feelings hadn’t changed, despite the bitterness of their row. She’d meant it when she said she’d forgiven him, but she knew he’d have to work that out on his own.

Rose lay back in the water and submerged her head, letting the cold liquid wash away the dust and grime that had accumulated on their scramble down the slope. It felt so good she stayed under for as long as she could hold her breath, surfaced, took another breath and went down again. The roaring of the stream drowned out her own thoughts and she felt some of the tension leave her.

This time when she surfaced she sat back up and wrung out her hair. Then she stood up and emerged from the water, the droplets sluicing off her body as she walked back to their little makeshift camp. The Doctor had spread out a couple of thin aluminum emergency blankets on top of the moss that encircled the base of the trees. Although soft and springy the moss held in a lot of moisture and would be like sleeping on damp earth without some kind of barrier.

Rose prepared their dinner without bothering to dress. “You want me to wash out your clothes?” the Doctor called from the stream.

“If you would,” she said. She smiled at the idea of him doing anything as domestic as laundry but she’d learned that this particular Doctor did in fact do domestic, if only because the TARDIS had him trained through use of irritating punishments if he was a slob.

The Doctor finished up in the stream and laid their clothing out on some boulders to dry then joined her by the little camp stove where she had the aluminum kettle on for tea. Iced tea would have been better at the moment but it was hardly a possibility in their circumstances. She handed him bread and cheese and some stew that she’d reconstituted from freeze-dried packets. The only time the Doctor spoke was to remind her to take two of the little pink tablets. He also injected her with a dose of the serum and then took it himself.

The sun descended while they were finishing their meal. “Oh, it’s gorgeous,” Rose said as the brilliant red, green, purple, and orange streaks crossed the sky. When the stars and moon came out a scant half hour later she sighed and repeated her earlier statement. The light of the moon was bright enough to clean up by and after everything was safely stowed away in their packs again, the Doctor stretched out on one of the aluminum blankets.

Rose looked at the second one laid out within arms reach of his. She knew he was giving her space but she didn’t want it. She knew that even if she did manage to fall asleep without being in his arms she’d still wake in the night desperate with the need to touch him. She bit her lip as she stared down at his prone form.

She wanted to snuggle up with him but what if the reason he was giving her space was really because he needed it, too? She couldn’t just assume that he’d welcome her next to him anymore. He’d made a few things clear earlier and maybe it would be better to wait until the skin hunger overcame them and they had no choice but to act on their need.

“We don’t need to touch until we have to touch,” the Doctor said still staring up at the branches and not in her direction.

Rose let out a frustrated little noise and retreated down to the stream. She sat on a rock and soaked her feet in the water, willing it to drain away her frustration with the whole situation. She might not have felt like a horny adolescent any longer but she still wanted to hold him while she slept and feel the comfort of his lean body holding hers. But he didn’t seem to want that. She’d forgiven him but maybe he was still angry with her. What for she wasn’t sure of. She’d never been sure of. His anger that she’d loved before she met him, that she’d given herself to a man she wasn’t in love with, maybe.

She heard a noise behind her and felt his hands begin to massage the tense muscles of her shoulders and she sighed in relief. He sat down behind her, his legs coming around on either side of her, and he scooted his body forward until her back was resting against his chest. “I thought you didn’t want to touch me,” she said.

“I always want to touch you. Just didn’t think I deserved it after earlier. Couldn’t stand it anymore. Not the skin hunger, either. Just wanted to be close again with you.”

“I forgave you, you know. I meant that,” she said softly.

“I didn’t forgive myself,” he told her. He rubbed her shoulders for several minutes before bringing his hands down to hold her around the waist. She leaned further back into him.

“Have you forgiven me?” she whispered.

“There’s nothing to forgive you for,” he told her seriously. “I’m the one being a jealous old idiot. You can’t help what you did or who you knew before me.”

“I don’t want anyone else,” she told him. “I just want you.” She yawned. “Sorry,” she muttered. “Here I am trying to be all romantic and I’m barely awake enough to think straight.”

“Come on then, Rose. Let’s get you to bed.” He stood, helped her to her feet, and with a protective arm curled about her shoulders, walked her back to the aluminum blankets. They lay down and she snuggled tightly against him, her head resting in the hollow of his arm, and within minutes she was fast asleep. “There’s plenty of time for romance,” he whispered against her hair. “All the time in the world.”

Ch. 30: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/17971.html