The Time of Change

The Time Before Her

I didn't realize I was holding my breath. Shakily I breathe outward, and I feel something wet leak from my eye. I don't bother trying to wipe it away, because another follows it. And another. Their descent is silent but it rocks me to my core. It still feels cold in here, much colder than I would normally keep the TARDIS.

With staggering steps I make my way back to the chair in which I started, and sink down into it like I hope it will devour me whole. My legs are weak, and they shake even after I'm seated. Tears are still slipping out of my eyes, though I can't necessarily feel when they're coming, nor do I know how to stop them. The strangest part is, I don't really feel anything. I've numbed all the pain out. I've blocked it. I'm not letting it in. I can't let it in.

Two perfect, hollow circles collide inside my hand, the metals grinding together in a way that causes it to create a gritty sort of vibration on my skin. Very gingerly I unfurl my fingers, and my eyes take their sweet time in looking down. I try to will them to speed up. I try to make them get it over with, because I want this anticipation and this suspense to end already, because I can't take it anymore, because I still can't let it in.

Gold glistens purely in a greenish light from across the room. One band is thicker than the other; it's a bit bigger in circumference, as well. I touch the smaller of the two with my left index finger, flipping it over onto its other side. I can see the angular letters carved on its inner loop, and the tip of one letter curls gracefully into the next, and it just looks like a never-ending trail of thinly-lined promises that went forgotten for far too long.

"My impossible girl," I whisper to myself. The air does not seem to want to cooperate and bend itself so that my words can have leverage, but I suppose that it isn't all that important for them to be audible. Nobody can hear me. Nobody will ever know what those words mean, other than myself. Nobody will ever be able to grasp the depth behind them, stretching for three thousand or more years. Nobody could ever understand why the Doctor, the man who cannot love, is crying as he slips a thin wedding ring into his coat pocket, and the other onto the third finger on his left hand.

Impossible, indeed.

I close my eyes, and the room around me sways, probably due to the fact that I've lost so much water with my crying. My head feels light and the floor tilts sharply upward, almost like it's angling itself to ninety degrees. I scrunch my eyelids tighter together, attempting to ward off nausea and the urge to pass out, and suddenly a light beams through them. It's so bright, so warm and natural, that it catches me off-guard momentarily. I don't think I can stand to look at it, because even with my eyes closed, it's near blinding. Carefully I inch my lids apart, peering through my eyelashes at what I expect to be the grated floor of the TARDIS.

That is not what I see.

Beneath my knees is reddish sand. It ripples slightly in a wind that blows through my hair and chills my bones. In my periphery vision I see buildings rising several stories high. People walk along the sides of the dirt road I'm kneeling on, chattering and carrying on as if they haven't noticed me. Their clothing immediately strikes me as odd, and I pick up my head, blinking hard so I can adjust my eyes more quickly to the brightness. Everyone wears robe-like attire, heavy-looking and billowy. Some are a deep color, crimson or navy or black; others hold happier hues. Shorter people -- children -- scurry past in identical storm cloud-gray tunics. None of them have on shoes. Bare feet poke out from beneath the folds of the sweeping cloth. A skyline whose grandiosity instantaneously tops every other I've seen rises in the distance, sparkling as the rays of three boldly orange suns shine down upon its tiers and glass roofs. At the dead center, miles and miles away, is a huge, spherically-shaped building, its height at least triple the size of the next tallest in sight. It glints with the same glorious luster as a freshly-cut diamond first seeing the light of day. There's a smell to the atmosphere here: sort of musty, with a hint of sugar and just a little something floral. It's a combination that brings to my consciousness the memory of spectacular soothing sunsets, beautiful hymns sung in perfect harmony, warm soup in the afternoons, and a war that broke the universe.