This story was written because I asked my sister to give me five words and a theme for a Doctor Who story. The words were: Puffin, fish scales, gold, eggs and yodeling. The theme was "little pitchers have big ears." This is the result of those chosen words. It's all utter silliness but I hope you enjoy it! (:
"Fish scales!"
River Song looked over at the Doctor with one carefully raised eyebrow. "What?"
"Gold!"
"Doctor, what in God's name are you going on about?"
"YODELING! I've got it! SWEDEN!" The Doctor sprang energetically towards River, a greenish cap with a propeller perched atop his head.
"Sweden?" River asked carefully, eyeing the Doctor's hat with distaste.
"Yes! Sweden! You like Sweden don't you?"
River paused for a moment, having uncharacteristically lost the train of the Doctor's thoughts.
"Well, I don't really know all that much about it, but-"
"Excellent! Sweden it is then! Home of the yodel, fish and gold!" The Doctor replied springing over to the TARDIS controls.
"Doctor! What has gotten into you? You promised Amy a tropical planet this time, remember? And in any case, Sweden isn't the home of yodeling!" River shouted after him, following him in a less hasty manner.
The Doctor waved the propeller-ed hat in her face, spinning it. "This is a Swedish hat, River."
River eyed him. "Yes, I can see that."
"Good. Then you understand." The Doctor said ignoring her spluttering and bounding back to the TARDIS controls.
"Doctor, you are not making any sense whatsoever and if you care to remain conscious you will tell me what the hell you think you're doing!"
The Doctor glanced back at her, surprised. "There's no need to be touchy River. Is it that time of the month?"
River gaped at him. "What on Earth do you mean by that?"
"That time of the month when females of all species seem to crave chocolate and take long indulgent baths. Never really understood baths to tell you the truth. All sorts of unpleasant creatures breed in standing pools of water." The Doctor murmured half to himself.
"I think you've had far too many female companions Doctor, and you still don't understand women." River replied shaking her head, trying to stay annoyed. "Now would you please tell me why we are going to Sweden or do I have to sonic you?"
The Doctor shook a finger at her and smiled. "Now River, one should never fight in front of children."
"Children! There are no children on board!" River protested, glancing around as if to make her point. Big eyes caught her attention. She bent down and stared into the face of a small redhead girl who was peering through the rails on the stairs of the TARDIS.
The Doctor smiled at River and looked down at the little girl. "Little pitchers have big ears."
"Doctor...who is that?" River asked, her eyes fixed on the girl.
"That...is Amy Pond. Before she is just 'Pond.' I used to call her Amy, but Pond has such a nice ring to it." The Doctor went on smiling beatifically.
"Why is she so small? Where is adult Amy!" River asked anxiously.
"Regular sized Amy is in Hawaii with Rory on vacation. Rory was getting 'box sickness.'" The Doctor went on as if that explained everything. "I told them I'd pick them up in about a hundred years give or a take a century or two." The Doctor continued glancing at his wristwatch.
"But why is little Amy with us?" River questioned, feeling an unhealthy desire to grab her sonic screwdriver and zap a Time Lord. It was probably illegal to sonic an endangered species, but at the moment she would have been happy to spend a few more years in a galactic jail if she could only get an explanation out of the infuriating man.
The Doctor looked at her, his curiously old eyes and young face working together to give her a look of amazed surprise. "Amy's house has too many rooms for such a little girl. Big Amy is in Hawaii. I need a Pond and Amy needs a place with less rooms. Therefore I picked her up. I'll return her to her proper place in time when I have my full sized Pond back."
"But Doctor, you are upsetting the fabric on the universe by taking Amy out of her own time stream!" River hissed at him.
"No, you see I went back and picked up little Amy ten minutes before I crash landed on her Earth. I haven't changed the time stream because she'll meet me in ten minutes time in any case. Besides, this way she will realize the man who comes storming in and demanding apples and bacon is actually a decent fellow and not a maniac. Well...at least not always a maniac. Eating fish sticks and custard is normal, right?"
River eyed him with disapproval. "You know I think you're brilliant Doctor, but sometimes you do push things a little. Now would you tell me why we are going to SWEDEN?"
"The puffins."
River Song closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. She loved the man, but really...
"There are no puffins in Sweden, Doctor, or at least not very many. They were hunted down long ago."
"Ah yes, but this time they have a Doctor." The Doctor replied jabbing three buttons at once on the TARDIS. River Song started to reply, but the TARDIS shuddered and little Amy's scream interrupted whatever she had been going to say.
River gritted her teeth at the sound of the TARDIS's landing. The Doctor always left the brakes on.
"Ah! Here we are! Sweden!" The Doctor cried flinging open the TARDIS's doors. "C'mon Amy!"
Amy eagerly raced to the Doctor grabbing his hand and the pair of them strode out onto Swedish soil, leaving River to follow behind.
The cold hit River first, followed by a series of trilling squeals that put her teeth on edge.
"Doctor! Stop yodeling!" She hissed.
"Hmmm. Throat's different. I used to be able to do that." The Doctor muttered to himself.
An unusual chainsaw like growling, far more grating then the Doctor's failed yodeling, distracted the small group of time travelers and the Doctor raised a hand to his eyes, as if to shield them from the non-existent sunlight of overcast Sweden.
"Puffins! And a good sized colony by the sounds of it." The Doctor remarked, starting down the slope.
River hurried after him. "Doctor, what are we doing here?"
"Saving an alien race."
"Puffins!"
"Old race puffins. Tufted Puffins to be exact. Amy's been telling me about them."
"Amy?" River asked, perplexed. Amy was just a little girl...what did she know about aliens?
The Doctor stopped in his downward plunged and looked back at River, still gripping Amy's small hand. He used his other hand to spin the propeller on his hat. "Time is circular my dear River."
"Yes, dear, I know that, but how does Amy know that these puffins are aliens!" River demanded. "And would you please take that ridiculous looking thing off your head." She continued, exasperated. She inched a few steps closer, tempted to snatch the thing off his head.
"Propeller hats are cool. I wear one now. And why do I have to keep telling you and Pond this. Honestly, it's as if you two never listen to a word I say..." The Doctor replied, stepping out of River's reach. Little Amy looked up at him.
"I like your hat."
The Doctor grinned at her. "Why thank you little Amy. Now if only you could convince your future self of this it would make my life all the more fashionable."
"More embarrassing you mean. You're so bloody stubborn." River retorted. The Doctor clucked his tongue at her and covered little Amy's ears with his hands.
"Not in front of the children. Little pitchers and all that. Though I really don't understand the whole pitcher bit...she looks human to me." He added glancing down at mini Amy. "Anyways, onwards!" He continued taking a hold of Amy's hand and starting down the slope again.
There was an urgent growling noise as he got close to the cliffs. He scrabbled down the cliff, dropping little Amy's hand to find purchase on the rocks. He came to stop in front of one of the burrows and pulling out his sonic screwdriver he pointed it at the entrance. After a moment or two a female puffin waddled out of the burrow and eyed him narrowly.
River, who had followed closely behind motioned for Amy to stay back and maneuvered closer to the Doctor and the tufted puffin. The bird was giving the Doctor a wary look out of one small bright eye. The Doctor reached down slowly and drew a few odd looking symbols in the hard packed earth between the rocks. The puffin cocked its head as if reading the symbols and bending down followed suit, scratching a few circular symbols in the earth with its beak. The Doctor tilted his head to read the symbols and looking at the puffin intently said pleasantly,
"why hello there. I'm the Doctor. You must be Matrona, the clan leader of the Azili. I'm here to help."
The puffin cocked its head at him again and scratched some more letters in the earth. The Doctor read them, nodding slowly as he did so. Finally he turned back to River.
"River, Amy; allow me to introduce you to the survivors of the Azili race. The rest of the Azili were murdered by the Daleks before the Time War. They were, until this day, presumed extinct." The Doctor added a touch bitterly. Little Amy, who had followed behind quietly and in complete disobedience, peered over the Doctor's shoulder.
"Those are the characters I saw in my picture book." She said staring at the symbols and then at the innocent, fluffy looking bird. The Doctor, who had been peering at the script intently, smiled at her.
"Clever girl. I always knew you were brilliant. These symbols are old Azili script, thought lost for centuries."
"But how did the Azili end up here? I thought they were all killed? And why do they look like puffins?" River demanded, her eyes fixed on the puffin in astonishment.
The Doctor turned to her. "Not extinct, but in hiding. The Azili planet Aaziine is not far from this solar system. Earth is in fact the closet habitable planet to Aaziine so they sought refuge here when the Daleks attacked. They needed to be near fish for their transformer to work which is why they chose puffins-"
"Fish? Why fish?" Amy interrupted, her forehead wrinkled in childish disgust.
"Well, fish scales are what they need technically, herring being the best fish for the job due to the reflective nature of their scales which boosts the transformers signal allowing them to disguise their entire population as puffins." The Doctor continue rapidly all the while frenetically scratching yet more symbols into the dirt. River and Amy exchanged disbelieving looks. The Doctor caught the shared look and blithely ignored it. He bounced a few steps to his right to scan the area with his sonic screwdriver continuing his rapid explanation.
"Eighty-three percent of the Aaziine planet is covered by water and to avoid using up valuable land space the Azili built most of their equipment to function underwater. Fish scales due to their composition and reflective nature boost the Azili equipments range and power, allowing them to bounce the signal off of the millions of herring in the sea and onto land keeping the Azili hidden as puffins. But," he continued waving the screwdriver around for emphasis, "as they came to realize Sweden has gold ore, a metal not present on Aaziine which interfered with the proper function of the transmitter, preventing them from returning to their original forms once the danger of the Daleks was past."
"What do they look like normally?" Amy asked frowning at the puffin.
The Doctor grimaced. "Hideous. No offense intended." He added looking half-apologetically at the Azili leader. It glowered. "Kind of like fishy, snake-like things with eye stalks. They can live in both land and water, a nifty trick really. I've always hoped that along with ginger hair I might grow a few gills, but no such luck yet."
"And because everyone thought they were extinct no one thought to look for them, not knowing that they were here, on Earth, right under our noses all the time." River continued, finishing the explanation for him.
The Doctor gave her a cheeky grin. "Knew you'd catch on. So in any case they had no way of returning to their original form and escaping Earth and, stuck here as they were, they were easy prey for humans murderous habits. You really are a brutal lot." He added glancing up at Amy.
"But that's all going to change," he continued. "I won't have an entire alien civilization eaten on my watch." He glanced back at Amy again. "Is that the correct metaphor? Humans say the strangest things." She nodded dumbly.
"But how did you know they were here? And how did Amy know about them?" River insisted.
"Oh my dear River, that's the simplest part of all. When I went to pick up my dear Pond she was reading some sort of children's rif-raff encyclopedia (whoever wrote it was wrong about everything by the way), the sort with all the pictures, and brilliant Pond had found these odd symbols in the picture of a puffin. Being the charming, brilliant fellow that I am I got her to show me the pictures. I couldn't believe my eyes at first, but there it was! Clear as mud! No, no...that's not right...hmm, hang on a second...clear as... day! Much better..." he muttered to himself.
River rolled her eyes. "Go on, sweetie."
"As soon as I saw the symbols I knew something wasn't right just as little miss Amy did, but it wasn't until I read what they said that I knew the Azili were still alive..." The Doctor paused turning to look at Amy and River. The pause lasted a few more seconds. River looked down at Amy.
"He likes to wait for us to ask him 'why.' It makes him feel important. Time Lords..." She sighed dramatically. "Alright sweetie...WHY."
"Because," the Doctor started grinning. "Because it said, roughly translated into English, 'Any TIME now. Or do we have to wait for you to finish evolving.'"
River and Amy both started at him blankly and uncomprehendingly. The puffin blinked.
"It was a joke!" The Doctor said looking from River to Amy and back again for some sign of comprehension. The pair just stared at him. With a sigh of frustration he explained, "the Azili used to compare us to primates and humans all the time every since we compared them to pond scum...Do you get it now?...um, right, well, anyways...suffice it to say that when I read the words TIME and 'evolving' I realized they meant the Time Lords and that the only race that would use those exact insults were the Azili. They were asking to be rescued in the roundabout way of their species. And well, then I hurried here to rescue them before the humans could eat them into extinction."
"Alright, that all makes sense and I understand the fish scales and the gold, but what was the yodeling for?" River asked.
"Oh, that?" The Doctor replied innocently. "That was nothing. I like yodeling. Or at least I did. Vocal chords don't seem to be up to it anymore."
River crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow. "I knew there was a reason I was supposed to meet you later in your time stream."
The Doctor frowned at her. "And what's that supposed to mean?"
River smiled at him. "Spoilers."
"You mean I missed talking puffins! All me and Rory got to do was swim around a few islands. You got to meet talking puffins!" Regular sized Amy exclaimed stalking the Doctor as he fiddled with the TARDIS controls.
"Oi! I liked the swimming! And the beach...and the waves. It was peaceful..." Rory protested.
Amy smirked at him. "Of course you liked it! You spent half the time asleep!"
"Well, yeah...I was tired and sick. I've spent the last two-thousand years watching you sleep! That would make any bloke tired."
"Poor baby..." Amy said sympathetically, patting his cheek. Rory blushed.
"Well, now it really wasn't that exciting. The puffins didn't talk, they wrote. And quite eloquently I might add. We dropped them off at a suitable planet before picking you two up. Quite a lot of work it was getting all those eggs out of the burrows..." The Doctor murmured.
"Where's River?" Amy asked after a moment of silence.
The Doctor looked up. "River? Oh, yes...she's off waiting for yodeling to die out."
Amy raised her eyebrows. "Yodeling?"
"Yes, quite. It seems she prefers her men tall, dark and silent."
Amy grinned. "Now I know why we get along so well...we have the exact same taste."
Rory stared at her in bewilderment. "Oi!"
She smiled at him. "Just kidding, love. So, where are we off to now then Doctor?"
The Doctor glanced over at her his face serious. "How about Switzerland...I hear there is lovely yodeling there."
Amy laughed. "Sure, why not!"
The Doctor grinned at her. "Get ready then.
"Yodel-ay-hee-hoo!"