Somewhere high in the Swiss Alps, a young woman sat huddled outside a tent, nursing a cup of coffee. It was the middle of the night, and this makeshift campground was remarkably quiet. Three tents could be seen, one filled with scientific equipment, the other two with sleeping bags. The silence was broken only by the squawking of a radio.
"Unseasonably warm weather has swept across the globe these last few days, along with highly overcast skies that just don't seem to go away. Meteorologists are baffled by what seems to be an entirely illogical series of events. While very little predictions can be made as to when the weather might return to normal, the Swiss government urges the nation to stay calm until this all blows over."
Elizabeth Lancaster reached over and shut off the radio with a sigh. She glanced up at the cloud-covered sky, then reached for the telescope resting on the tripod next to her. Pulling the eyepiece around, she focused in on the clouds above her.
"Something about that isn't right," she murmured. "They're too light, too yellow. Too… something."
There was a rustling behind her, then a sleepy-eyed man emerged from one of the tents. "Still up?" he asked blearily, pulling out a blanket.
"Had a dream." He wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and she smiled up at him gratefully. "Sorry if I woke you, Evin."
"Elizabeth, I'm your fiance. It is a privilege to be woken up by you." Evin was a tall man, well over six feet, with a bit of a paunch unusual in a man in his late twenties. A brilliant mathematical mind and a great cook, Evin had sharp eyes and a sharper tongue. He settled himself on the ground beside her. "The flying blue box again?" She nodded. "I figured. Those always seem to wake you up."
"So I came out here, just to see." She pointed at the telescope, its glass eye still pointed at the sky. "I thought maybe, you know…" She hesitated, then forged on. "Maybe this time it wasn't just a dream."
Evin rubbed his eyes. "Beth, love, we've talked about this. A flying police box that's bigger inside? A man with two hearts dancing about time and space having adventures?" He shifted sideways to face her. "Elizabeth, you're a scientist. Scientists deal in facts, in cold, hard evidence, in numbers and calculations and real knowledge. Be realistic. You know there's no way this could exist."
"Yes, I know," she said defensively. "But it doesn't hurt to dream. Doesn't hurt to hope that maybe, somewhere, this Doctor might be real."
"But he's not," Evin said bluntly. "Time travel?" He shook his head. "Honestly, Bethie. You're smarter than that."
"Smarter than that?" Elizabeth repeated. "Smarter? Evin, I'm 24 years old completing my research for a Ph.d. I've risen through the ranks of Imperial College London faster than anyone I know."
"Elizabeth, I'm not saying that!" Evin put in hastily. "I'm not saying that at all!"
"Then what are you saying?" she shot back. "Daring to believe in something extraordinary is idiotic? Our field is out there, Evin," she said, pointing straight up to the overcast sky. "Out there in the stars. We can't afford to keep our feet on the ground. This kind of work didn't even exist a hundred years ago. Who know's what could be coming?"
Evin started to jump in, but Elizabeth powered right over him. "Besides, with all the millions of stars in the millions of galaxies, how could there not be life out there somewhere? You want numbers, you want cold hard facts? You want realism? Tell me this, then. What are the chances, really, that we are the only intelligent life in the universe?"
Evin couldn't meet her eyes. "Incredibly low," he admitted. "But even if there is, what are the odds that that intelligent life is exactly how it is in your dreams? It's just your subconscious manifesting itself, Bethie. It's not some premonition."
Elizabeth opened her mouth to argue further, but Evin cut her off. "It's the middle of the night," he said wearily, "and we've had this argument before, and we've never gotten anywhere. Just…" He ran a hand through his sandy blonde hair, which Elizabeth found adorable, however angry she might be. "Just leave it be, alright?"
"Alright." Elizabeth sighed, trying to blow out her frustration. Evin settled back, leaning on his elbows and staring up at the sky. They sat in silence for a moment, drinking in the night air.
"So," Evin said at last, "besides the flying box, what are you looking at?"
"The clouds," Elizabeth said, pushing the eye of the telescope over towards him. "They just don't look right. They shouldn't be here." Evin peered through the lens, focusing the image. "And it's not just here," she continued, "it's everywhere, all over the world. I've been listening to the news," she said, pointing to the radio. Evin glanced up at her, surprised.
"You realize that's in German, right? When did you learn German?"
Elizabeth blinked. "Er… I don't remember. I'm not sure I did, honestly. Realize, I mean."
Evin stared at her for a moment, then shrugged. "Maybe you picked it up as a child?"
"Probably," she answered, but she wasn't quite convinced.
After an awkward pause, Evin continued. "So what were they saying on the news?"
"Oh, right. So these clouds are all over the world, all at the same time. But they're higher, extremely high, and nobody knows why. And it's warmer, too," she continued, waving her hands around at the Swiss night. "It shouldn't be this warm, not this high up. We're having extra rainfall, too. It's like…" She hesitated. "It's like the planet is preparing for a crisis."
Evin pulled away from the telescope. "Well," he said carefully, "I'm no meteorologist, but the clouds do look a bit yellow to me, yes. But what can we do about it?" he asked. "We're here to view the lunar eclipse, remember? Taking new photos to strengthen Eddington's proof of relativity? Although if this keeps up," he muttered, scowling up at the overcast sky, "we'll miss the eclipse entirely."
"I know, I know," she said with a groan. "And I know there's probably nothing we can do, but nothing ever got done by not trying." She stretched and yawned. "Besides, if we're going to miss the eclipse, we might as well be doing something."
"I suppose."Evin got to his feet, bending down to kiss her gently. "Goodnight." She watched him stumble back to his tent and crawl inside, trying not to laugh as he struggled to fit his tremendous height into the narrow canvas structure.
She waited until she could hear his faint snores, then turned back to her telescope. Fitting the eyepiece to her eye, she scanned the skies again, searching for even a single star. She moved the lens slowly, scanning each patch of darkness for something unusual before moving on to the next. It all seemed so remarkably the same.
Elizabeth was just about to give up when she saw it: A patch of clear sky, with clouds still roiling around it. She glanced up, following the path of the telescope up, up, up until she saw the few visible stars poking through.
But that wasn't all. One of the stars was falling - no, not falling, she realized, but crashing. And it certainly wasn't a star.
"A spaceship," she murmured in awe. True, it wasn't a blue box, but there was no mistaking it - this was a genuine space ship, and it was headed her way.
As she watched, a smaller pod broke off from the main ship, careening off into the sky. The main ship plunged farther and farther down until it was lost from sight. The pod, on the other hand, though clearly damaged, was winding its way through the mountains - winding its way, Elizabeth was suddenly certain, towards her. She winced as it went down, smoking, in a stand of trees hardly a kilometer away from her own two feet.
"I'm coming," Elizabeth whispered, grabbing her boots and pulling them on. "Don't you go anywhere." Abandoning her telescope, she plunged into the darkness.
After what felt like ages, Elizabeth arrived at the crashed pod. She bent over, trying to catch her breath and cursing herself for not joining track at university. When at last she felt she could breathe, she stepped cautiously forward.
The pod had torn a hole in the forest copse, leaving charred tree trunks and loose pine needles in its wake. A woman was clambering out of the wreckage, surprising Elizabeth - she hadn't expected anyone could survive such a crash. She shrank back into the trees, deciding that it might be better to begin with observation.
The woman certainly appeared to be human, which somehow disappointed Elizabeth. She was wearing a tan dress with an almost vest-like top and a sharp V-neck, with a thick brown belt strapped around her waist. Just below it was a another brown leather belt, this one with two gun holsters hanging from the sides. Knee-high boots and dark leggings completed her ensemble. And her hair! This may have been the most remarkable thing about her: a mass of dirty blonde curls that created a sort of wreathe around her head.
She looks, Elizabeth thought, like she means business.
As if reading her mind, the strange woman leapt free of the battered pod and strode straight towards where Elizabeth was concealed. "I'm Professor River Song, archaeologist," she said briskly, sticking out a hand. "And you are definitely not human."
A.N: Hello everyone! It is wonderful to see you again after my, what, three days of hiatus? If you are a new reader I highly highly recommend reading that one first, as everything will make ever so much more sense once you have. If you're one of my old fans then welcome back, it is so very good to see you! I hope you're as intrigued as I am regarding this next adventure of Miss Elizabeth, or should we say, Mystery. If you haven't worked it out and didn't read my other author's notes, this takes place after the last chapter of Mystery Girl but before the epilogue, which is fun. The rest you should be able to figure out from context. So! It is wonderful to be back! If you're curious as to what I did during my very short break, the answer is that I wrote a little one-shot about Amy and Rory right after Angels Take Manhattan entitled Together Or Not At All, so if you want to go have a look at that that would be fantastic. Good to see you all again, and allons-y!
-Forever the Optimist