Lorna

by elmo88

My first attempt at fan fiction. I have a feeling this story will have been done many times before but it was fun to write. This is my take on the story of how Lorna Bucket met the Doctor.

Lorna

It was a dry day on the edge of the Gamma forests; a dry, hot, sticky, clinging day that needed breaking with rain. But it was also a day without any clouds, with one sun high in the burnt sky and a second just heading for its rest at the horizon. No clouds, no wind; just the dappled shade of the forest itself.

Lorna watched the leafy shadows from a distance, out of the corner of her eye, fully aware that she herself was caught in the corner of her father's gaze. She was itching to escape into the shade of the forest and away from her chore of helping to pick fruit from the cultivated trees on the edge of her colony. The orchard was too orderly and the trees too sparse of leaf to provide a comfortable shade to work in. Besides, the elders kept snapping at her when she tried to climb the branches, even if she was reaching for fruit, in case the branch broke and the tree was ruined. Lorna had worked in near silence for hours, the only child in that part of the colony… and she was sure her friends were in the Gamma forests playing without her.

As though her thoughts had projected themselves among the branches and leaves, a face appeared around the side of a trunk; a mischievous face smeared with the moist dirt of the forest. Lorna tensed as she made out the messy brown hair, sharp eyes and lithe form of her best friend, Kyle. She forgot herself for a moment. I knew it! she thought, frustrated. He's skived off helping with the harvest yet again! And he didn't even try to get me out of it too…

"Lols?"

Lorna almost fell over when she felt her father's hand on her shoulder, shocked out of her reverie. A guilty blush tinged her cheek as she turned to face him, wondering if he too had spotted that dirty face amongst the trees and would forbid her to join it. But her father was smiling, a little meekly it had to be said, but smiling all the same.

"You looked like you were lost in a bit of a daydream there Lols," he said in that soft, quiet, reassuring voice that Lorna knew he only used on her. "I know today must have been a bit boring for you but, you know, the fruit had to be picked today. There's not much more to do and I promise we'll do something fun this evening. Your grandparents said they would come round to share the harvest with us, and they want to help you finish that patch you were sewing for your prayer blanket. That'll be fun, won't it?"

Lorna was vaguely aware of what her father had just said and gave a noncommittal, "Hmmm," in response, but she could still just make out the edge of the forest and was distracted by the scruffy boy who was pulling faces and making gestures from his shady hiding place.

"Won't it, Lols?" her father prompted.

"Erm, yeah," Lorna eventually replied, forcing her attention back on to her father. For a moment, she was sure that his eyes had fixed onto something in the forest too. But the moment was so short that she decided it must have been a trick of the light. "Yeah, I'm looking forward to it." She forced a weak smile before adding obediently, "Which part of the orchard do you want me to help with next?"

"Hmm, good question," he pondered, tipping his head to one side with his fingers to his chin, pretending to put a lot of thought into it. Lorna rolled her eyes; her dad still behaved like he was addressing a toddler sometimes. He caught the rolled eyes and chuckled. "Alright, Miss Bucket! How about that bit of the orchard over there? The bit closest to the forest."

He pointed over to a section of the orchard just metres from the forest's edge. The trees already looked pretty bare from what Lorna could see. She turned back to give her dad an incredulous look.

But he was still smiling… and it was sort of an encouraging smile.

"Are… are you sure you mean that bit of the orchard?" she asked tentatively.

Her father mused for another few seconds with the same drama as before, but Lorna was gripped now, eyes no longer rolling.

"I'm pretty sure that's the bit I meant," he replied, with just the hint of a wink.

This time, the smile on Lorna's face was wide and genuine. She collected up her belongings quickly, dropping things as she rushed to gather her stuff into her arms, and bustled off in the direction her father had indicated, with a quick shout of, "Thanks dad," over her shoulder. He shook his head a little and chuckled before turning himself and heading back to the part of the orchard still laden with fruit.

There was no one else in the bare part of the orchard where Lorna dumped her things. However, she still took a few looks around, still tiptoed, still kept a careful ear out for shouting elders, as she crept closer and closer to the forest's edge. For good measure, she sprinted the last section, the bare patch between the orchard and the thinnest section at the forest's closest side.

All was quiet among the thickly set trees. At least, it was to start with. This wasn't the empty silence of the deserted orchard or of the sleeping colony. This was the silence of the trees, deadened by the trunks, limbs, branches, leaves, and it was tense with anticipation. This was a silence that could be broken at any second; by a bird dashing down from a branch to grab something from the forest floor; by some creature scurrying, loping, galloping through the undergrowth; by the gambolling of a stream as it quested for a river; by the wind playing the trees like flutes. It was the green, blue, brown, grey silence, the soil-, herb-, tree sap-, musty-scented silence of the forest, always ready to burst forth into life.

Lorna was happy at last. She broke the silence herself with a heavy, contented sigh and then breathed in the forest when she took in a greedy gulp of air. She closed her eyes for a moment, the better to feel the slight damp chill, to smell the bark and the leaves and the dirt and…

"BOO!"

This greeting from Kyle surprised Lorna less than her dad's hand on her shoulder had done a few minutes earlier. This was mostly because she expected this sort of behaviour from Kyle. Lorna opened her eyes slowly and looked at her friend a little coolly before responding, "Good afternoon Kyle."

She was met with a stern but vexed look. "Are you never surprised?"

"Not by you," Lorna retorted, keeping up her lofty tone.

The stalemate lasted for a few more seconds; then the friends could hold it in no longer and burst out laughing. Kyle didn't have a chance to say or do anything more before Lorna gave him a playful punch on the shoulder. "Why didn't you tell me you were skiving off the harvest today? I could have come too instead of spending all day with the elders picking fruit and being shouted at."

"Because I knew you'd never do anything your dad didn't tell you to do," said Kyle with a little smirk. But Lorna didn't rise to the jibe. It was essentially true. "I'm guessing your dad told you that you could come and play now?"

"Not in so many words…" Lorna trailed off. She fiddled shiftily with the corner of her tunic before adding, "He told me to work in the part of the orchard near the forest. It also just happened to have no fruit in it… or people… and he sort-of winked."

Kyle laughed again, a joyful, mischievous cackle that rattled the leaves on the nearby trees. "Haha, yeah, that sounds about right." He paused for a moment before adding, "Your dad is pretty cool."

"Yeah, I suppose he is, sometimes," Lorna conceded. "But enough about my dad." It was time to get down to the important business of the forest; namely, exploring. "Where are we going today?"

Kyle became serious once this question was asked. He leaned in close as if ready to reveal a secret.

"Well, do you remember the clearing that we passed the other week when we were tracking that Gamma deer? The one that the river passes through, with the crazy-coloured giant lilies?"

"I do… but we tried to find it again once before and couldn't trace the path," Lorna pointed out.

"I know, I know, but, you see, I had another try at it this morning, you know, while you were picking fruit…" Lorna huffed slightly at this but let Kyle continue, "and I think I've found it."

"But how? We already tried retracing out steps. And we couldn't track the river there, either; it disappears under the tree roots as it heads downhill."

"True, all very true," Kyle responded, pacing and gesticulating as if he were a professor postulating on some very serious bit of scientific research. "However, the simple fact of it being a clearing suggests that it shouldn't be covered by a canopy of leaves, and I have managed to spot such a lack of canopy by climbing a tree and observing the forest from this high viewpoint."

For once, Lorna was surprised by something Kyle had said. "How did you get high enough to see over the tops of the trees?"

"How do you think?"

"But… we've never climbed that far up before. How did you get that high?" And then, after a second's pause, "Weren't you scared?"

Kyle shrugged as if it was no big deal, but his excitement and the little bit of him that wanted to show off overcame him. "I didn't just climb like we normally do, just hands and feet and suchlike. I took a rope and tied myself on as I went so that if I lost my grip, I wouldn't fall too far. And here's the really clever bit." And out of the thin cloth bag that he carried on his back, he pulled a stretch of rope.

Lorna starred at him blankly. "The really clever bit is more rope?"

"No!" He paused for a second, inspecting what was in his hands as if he'd never seen it before. "Well, ok, yes, it's more rope, but it's not just for tying you onto the tree." He thought for another second, panted in exasperation and added, "I mean, it is sort of for tying you onto the tree, but you don't use it like the other stuff. You know the tops of the trees, where they get really bare of branches? I wrapped this around the trunk and used it to hold onto while I walked my feet up the trunk."

Lorna didn't want to look too impressed with Kyle for this idea. Instead of congratulations, she jumped straight to asking, "Can you show me?"

But this seemed to be exactly the response Kyle had been waiting for. Without any further talk, he grabbed Lorna's hand and, half dragging her, skipped and leapt and bounded through the forest.

Their dance through the trees caused a riot of sound and movement to kick off either side of them. Small birds and animals cried out as they fled from the noise of the pair's thundering feet and the twigs and branches that cracked beneath them. The shrubbery of the forest floor and the low tree branches joined in the dance in a blur of browns and greens and blues and sunbeams and shadows as they were swept aside. There was no real wind but the two friends made their own as they sped on, their hair whipping out behind them and their frantic charge leaving a sort of ghostly impression in their wake.

They were both fairly breathless when Kyle called a halt to their stampede at the bottom of a particular tree that had stretched and strained itself above all the others around it. Lorna starred up its length, a little daunted; she liked climbing and didn't want to show herself up in front of Kyle, but still… the tree was exceptionally tall.

The lowest branches also weren't that low to the ground. Lorna could barely touch them with the tips of her fingers, even on tiptoe. "Did you have to use the ropes to start with too?" she asked, keeping the trepidation in her voice to a minimum.

"Well you can if you really want to." Kyle said this casually, a smirk creasing his face again, before he leapt nimbly from the ground, grabbed a branch firmly with one hand and swung himself up.

Show off thought Lorna, a little bitterly.

She took a few attempts to copy Kyle's jump up to the lowest branch, her fingers repeatedly refusing to grip it and then her arms being equally grudging to pull her upwards. But she managed it eventually and, trying hard to hide the fact that this had cost a lot of effort, suppressing her panting breath, she asked, "You did bring two ropes to tie us on with, didn't you?"

"Of course I did!" Kyle replied indignantly. A little too indignantly. A moment's pause and he started rummaging around in his bag quickly, double-checking. "Yes, yes, there's definitely two in there!"

"Not just the extra one for shimmying up the tree?"

"No! Two full ropes and two small bits. You don't get to the top of a tree this size without having a brain in your head, you know."

"I do wonder sometimes," Lorna muttered under her breath. But climbing and exploring were more important to her than the bickering she had started to hide her nerves and so she set off upwards, not bothering with the rope while still low down and climbing as naturally as any animal born in the trees. Kyle followed quickly, matching her pace branch for branch.

As the metres continued to creep by, however, Lorna's anxiety began to creep up on her too. Another branch, and then another; the two friends were no longer in the relatively safe branches of the foliage closest to the forest floor but were beginning to surpass the tops of some of the smaller trees. The branches they were climbing were also getting thinner and sparser and weaker. But Lorna didn't want to be the first to mention the rope.

The pair finally halted their climb when most of the branches began to bend precariously under their weight. They were now so high up that there was a breeze tickling their ears and necks and wrists and ankles, any piece of exposed skin that had unwisely left itself open to attack. Each little gust made Lorna want to shiver but she kept as still as possible; she didn't want to shake the tree and she didn't want Kyle to think she was scared.

"I think it might be time for some rope," ventured Kyle. He clamped his legs around the now worryingly thin trunk and wormed one arm into a firm hold around the tree in a way that still let him use his hand to rummage in his bag. "Do you want the big rope or just the one for shimmying?"

Now that was a challenge; a real ultimatum. Kyle wouldn't have asked otherwise.

"The one for shimmying will be just fine, thank you," said Lorna, practising that haughty voice that didn't fit her very well. She tried not to think about what her dad would be saying (or shouting) then as she took the small length of rope and passed it around the trunk.

"I think both of us shimmying up is probably out of the question," Kyle pointed out, taking out a rope for himself to make his grip on the tree a little easier. "Tell me when you can see out over the forest."

Lorna nodded. A lump had risen up in her throat, making it difficult to speak, and so she kept quiet and tried not to succumb to the dizziness that threatened as she looked down past Kyle towards the distant forest floor.

Instead, she focussed her attention upwards. The branches on the remaining section of the trunk were little more than twigs and easily bent out of the way as Lorna inched the rope up, some already flattened or snapped where Kyle had ascended earlier. It was slow work and her arms began to ache and throb, but she kept focussing; another inch, and another, and another.

The breeze that she had felt in the slightly lower canopy was now gaining in strength. It was strange, but the sounds that surrounded her were almost like those on the forest floor; the wind in the leaves sounded like water bubbling around pebbles in a stream. But the light; that was completely unlike the muted, dappled, shadowed glow seen below the trees. This light was growing in intensity, like the suns that had beaten down on the orchard earlier in the day but, up amongst the canopy, it somehow felt… fresher.

When Lorna finally broke the top of the canopy, she was completely breathless; partly from the climb, but mostly from the view. She felt like she could see the curve of the planet itself, she was so much higher than she'd ever climbed before. In one direction she could just see the plains where the colony lay, the spiky dots of the fruit trees and the moving black spots gathering imperceptible fruits which were being ferried back to the paper-like shelters of the colony proper.

And in the other direction; it was like the world had been covered in a blanket of moss. There was no perceptible height to any of the trees because they were so evenly matched in their race to the sun. Their height undulated with the hills and valleys and plains of the planet itself and the mass looked so firm, such a part of that world that it must always have been and must always go on. Firm, steady, and yet there was such movement and life in it too. Light and wind skimmed across the surface, making ripples and waves and great rattling, whistling, scuttling noises, as if all that life was conspiring together to find a voice.

Lorna was lost. For a long time, maybe seconds, maybe minutes, she just stared. The wind was now gusting at her, buffeting her and snatching at her hair and clothes, and the sunlight in all its intensity dazzled her almost as much as the view. But she still stared.

Her trance was eventually broken by Kyle calling from below the canopy. "Have you seen the clearing yet?"

Lorna shook her head a little in an attempt to get her mind to focus on detail. Once she concentrated, it didn't take her long to find what Kyle had seen earlier. Not too far away, a mile or so maybe and to the west of where they were perched in their tree, there was a hole in the canopy. It was almost like a rip or gash in the surface of that near-perfect blanket of trees, a gaping maw that occasionally appeared to swallow birds.

"Yes, I can see it, over to the west!" Lorna called back. She would have pointed but all her limbs were beginning to tire and she was pretty sure she would fall if she took any one of them off the tree trunk. "It's not so far, I think we could be there in 20 minutes."

She took one last, parting look out over the expanse of forest before starting her careful shimmy back down to where Kyle was waiting. The wonder was obviously still clear in her eyes when she reached him. "It's completely different, seeing the forest like that, isn't it?"

Lorna nodded, struggling to find the words she wanted to describe what she'd just seen and do it justice. Kyle smiled back with understanding. It wasn't even his usually mischievous grin; the grandeur of the forest from above was nothing to be smirked at.

Kyle was the one to break the awed silence. "Now we know where to find the clearing, at least."

"Yeah," Lorna responded, a little mechanically. The clearing seemed less important now than staying up in the high canopy and exploring the forest from above… but her strength was already sapped and she knew that she couldn't stay safely up in the treetops for much longer. It was time to return to earth. "I can't believe it's so close. How didn't we find it the last time we searched?"

"I know, it's weird, isn't it," said Kyle. "All that time searching and it must only be 2 miles from the colony."

Kyle untied his rope and began working his way down the tree. Lorna followed on quickly, although climbing down felt more difficult than climbing up; it involved staring down at the dizzying height. She kept close to the trunk, with a new appreciation for the strength and steadfastness of that column of wood. It wasn't long before the pair were back to a height that they were used to and, when they reached the lowest branches, they both jumped nimbly to the forest floor.

"Do you still have your bearings?" Lorna asked Kyle, glancing around herself for the usual signs they followed for north, west, south and east.

"Of course!" Kyle retorted, taking affront, as if Lorna had insulted his sense of direction simply by asking the question. "It's… this way." And he set off confidently.

He marched back to where Lorna was standing when he realised that she hadn't moved. She was still stood at the bottom of the tree, arms folded. "What?" Kyle asked, still disgruntled.

"Are you sure that's the right way?" Lorna asked slowly and politely. "It's just that I can hear the river off towards my left, and I know that travels from east to west, so surely we need to be going that way," she added tactfully, pointing quite a way to the left of where Kyle had just walked.

Kyle stood for a few seconds pulling a very peculiar face. He was clearly running through Lorna's reasoning while trying to give the appearance of not doing so at the same time. Lorna wasn't fooled. She waited a few more seconds, arms folded, looking at Kyle inquisitively…

"Fine, it's this way," snapped Kyle, marching off again in the direction that Lorna had indicated.

They moved through the forest more slowly this time, being careful to keep walking along a constant bearing, which wasn't always easy in the forest without a compass. Their quiet passage also meant that they caught sight of animals and birds through the trees, some ferreting around in the undergrowth, some perched among the trees, all unaware of the two friends sneaking by.

Sounds from the river crept up on the pair at random intervals, sometimes quite loud, other times barely distinguishable. But they'd already been fooled by the river once before when trying to find the clearing. Just managing to make out the directions that both the suns were shining from through the trees, they continued to get their bearings from the light rather than the deceitful river music.

Lorna and Kyle began looking round for signs of the clearing once they judged that they'd walked about far enough. The sounds of the water were muted but Lorna suggested, "Maybe if we head to the river now, we might actually find where it meets the clearing?"

Kyle nodded and the pair worked their way over to where the river was flowing calmly and slowly through a particularly level part of the forest. It had widened on the even ground, spreading luxuriantly from swirling murk in the middle to shallows filled with swaying weeds and tiny, flitting fish. Lorna's eyes were dragged down the length of the river by the current and…

There it was; the clearing at last.

The sunlight was cascading in through the hole in the canopy that had looked so black from above. But now, everything sparkled. The river was shining, a great silver ribbon laid across an oval filled with plant life different from any other in the forest. There were enormous flowers in pinks, yellows, purples and off-whites on tall stalks basking in the sunlight, leaves that could have clothed Kyle or Lorna, they were that big, and lilies the size of stepping stones fighting with the current on the river.

There was something else odd about the clearing. There were no animals. No birds; they all remained firmly in the surrounding canopy and never ventured down to land in the clearing itself. There didn't even seem to be any insects. Whereas the rest of the forest was teeming with life, the silence never a true silence but one just waiting to be broken, the clearing… the only noise that was ever heard was the slow, steady, almost imperceptible but persistent sound of the river.

"Well, we found it," said Kyle, but much more quietly than he would normally speak, as if he was afraid of disturbing the quiet.

The pair stood at the edge of the clearing but didn't venture in. The highest tree canopy had been odd, with its gusting winds, intense sunlight and dizzying vantage point, but it was an environment they were at least familiar with. This clearing, with all its magnificent size and colour but total lack of life, was simply unnerving. Neither Lorna nor Kyle particularly wanted to disturb it for reasons that they couldn't fully explain.

Suddenly, a great crash sounded from the other side of the clearing, sending birds flapping, flurrying, squawking into the sky. At first, Lorna thought that one of the giants of the forest must have fallen. But, in those densely-packed trees, it wouldn't have fallen fast or hard enough to make the ground shake and the whole forest quiver, as this noise had done. And then, crash, it happened again. Crash, another, crash, and another, and Lorna suddenly realised; they were footsteps.

Crash. Both Lorna and Kyle were fixed to the spot, as rooted as the trees around them. Crash. Fear was telling both of them to flee in the opposite direction to the noise but their bodies rebelled.

Crash, crash, crash. At last, Kyle mustered the strength to move and, grabbing Lorna's arm, managed to choke out, "Lorna, come on, we need to go!"

Crash, crash. But Lorna didn't move. She had just seen something that Kyle hadn't.

A man had just come running into the clearing, running away from the crashing sounds. He stopped when he reached the clearing and turned to face the noise. Lorna could tell immediately that he wasn't from the colony. All the people that she knew wore practical clothes crafted from homespun materials, made for going out into a field or an orchard, to be worked in. But this man… he might as well have been from another planet.

Patent leather shoes, slim, dark trousers held up with red bracers, white shirt with a blue bow tie, tweed jacket and a flop of brown hair falling across his forehead. Nothing about his appearance suited the forest. His manner also didn't seem to match the situation. He didn't seem frightened by the noise. He seemed excited.

Crash, crash. "Lorna, we've got to go, please, just move!" Kyle was tugging at her arm but it was no longer just fear fixing Lorna to the spot. Crash, crash. "Lorna, something's coming, please, Lorna, we've got to get away from here!" Curiosity had mastered her fear. Who was this man? Where had he come from? Why wasn't he afraid?

Crash, crash, crash. Kyle kept tugging at Lorna's arm but she shook him off. He still hadn't looked back at the clearing, still hadn't seen the man and, in desperation, thinking that Lorna really couldn't move from the spot, gasped, "I'll go to the colony, Lorna, I'll go and get help." Crash, crash. With one last, desperate look at his friend, Kyle fled through the forest towards the colony.

As soon as Kyle had gone, Lorna moved behind one of the trees on the edge of the clearing, hoping for a sheltered spot from which to spy on this man. The crashing continued, slowly getting closer, but all the while the strange man was playing with something in his hand that flashed with blue light and gave off a high-pitched, pulsating sound. Every now and again the man hit it, muttering and gesticulating with a combination of excitement and frustration.

"What is it with me and dinosaurs?" she heard him say quickly, his voice just distinguishable over the sound of the footsteps. "They're supposed to be extinct, confined to the earliest history of life on earth but I can't seem to go a regeneration without stumbling across dinosaurs in London or on a bloomin' spaceship or stuck in the air conditioning on the TARDIS… No times eddies this time, wrong planet, there wouldn't be any simple transference, and definitely no Silurian involvement… So how the heck did it get here? And why haven't I made a setting for them on this thing yet?"

He was still fiddling with the device in his hand, every tweak he made causing a corresponding change in the sound it gave off. "Definitely another one for the sonic to do list; one dinosaur setting… and one wood setting, come to think of it, still not got round to that one…"

The crashing was getting exceptionally close to the clearing. And it really was just sound anymore. Although the volume was intense and now seemed to include those falling trees that Lorna had originally blamed for the noise, everything in her line of vision was also shaking rhythmically in time with the beat of what must have been enormous feet. The approach seemed inexorable, relentless, but Lorna held her nerve, just as the strange man held his, still muttering and pointing and seeming completely oblivious to just how close oblivion was getting.

"Maybe if I…" He made one particularly vigorous alteration to his device, which immediately gave off the highest note it had yet managed. He pointed it in the direction of the crashing… with no apparent result. "Ok, fine, not that then. Maybe if I reversed the polarity…" He sighed and chuckled at his own words. "Oh, that would be old school. If only the Brigadier was here, he'd have appreciated that one. And probably tried to shoot the dinosaur, yes, but at least I'd have someone around to appreciate my jokes."

Lorna could actually see trees falling on the opposite side of the clearing now and, rising up through the canopy, there was a dark, looming shape. And still the man tinkered with the device in his hands, completely unperturbed.

"Ok, this has to be it," he said firmly, pulling a face of equal resolution. He pointed the device at the looming shape again and, as he pressed something along its length, the light flashed rapidly and the noise it made went so high that Lorna had to cover her ears. Suddenly, the sound stopped, although the light on the end of the device kept up its frantic flashing, and after a few seconds pause…

CRASH, ROAR! CRASH CRASH CRASH CRASH CRASH!

"Oooor that was absolutely the worst thing that I could have done!" the man exclaimed as the giant feet increased their rhythm to a running pace. "Who knew dinosaurs responded badly to dog whistles?" And with that, he finally turned and began running, heading straight to the edge of the clearing where Lorna was hidden.

The man was running so fast in Lorna's direction that she barely had time to think how to react. She'd been so absorbed in watching his antics and listening to his ramblings that, now it was time to move, she couldn't think where to move to.

Before she'd stood from her crouching position or taken her hands off the tree trunk in front of her, before any of this had even had time to cross her mind, the man reached the edge of the clearing and was about to fly straight past her. Lorna looked straight into his face and, to her surprise, his eyes suddenly met hers.

He stopped just as suddenly, grabbed her hand and gasped, "Run!"

And this time, Lorna did run. She had little choice; the hand grasping hers was firm and reassuring, like the trees of the forest, or her father's hand, but it was also persuasive and moving at quite a pace.

Lorna didn't have time to look back while she fled through the forest with the strange man, all of her concentration put into dodging trees and low branches and leaping over tricksy, tangled bushes. She wasn't sure if they were running in a particular direction or simply away from the monster, and she seemed to have little say in this; the strange man was doing all the steering. He ran through the forest just as fast as Kyle would have done, a blur of patent leather and tweed, limbs that had looked ungainly before now seeming to know the best path through the shrubs and the undergrowth. Lorna did her best to keep up, perfectly aware of the peril that was pursuing them, feeling the drag on the hand that was being pulled, but then…

Thud. Her had was ripped from that of the strange man as a root grabbed firm hold around her ankle and pulled her to the dirt. All the wind was forced from her lungs as she hit the ground hard, her hands smarting from the impact, her knees ready to blossom into purple, blue, yellow bruises were they just given the chance. Fear hit her too as the ground came level with her eyes, fear that the man would leave her where she had fallen and that the monster that was still pounding through the forest would pound its giant feet straight over the top of her…

But the man didn't leave Lorna. He rushed back to where she had fallen and knelt down, gently but quickly disentangling her foot from the tree root. While he worked, Lorna's eyes strayed back behind them through the high foliage, back to where a path was being cleaved through the trees, and she caught sight of another face that didn't belong in the forest at all.

There weren't many reptiles living in the Gamma forests. Lorna was used to creatures having fur or feathers and had only ever seen one reptile, a small lizard, when it was brought to the colony by a traveller. She had been unnerved by its slit-like features then, by the dart-like tongue that flitted out after flies, by the scales and wrinkled rolls of skin and spiked spine and long, splayed claws. And now she saw it again, multiplied a thousand-fold.

The thing, the dinosaur (Lorna thought she had heard the man call it by that name) looked into Lorna's eyes for a second. She stared back, transfixed… still slightly unnerved, but with less fear as the creature slowed and let out a plaintive call, more gentle and sad and questioning than before.

Just then, the man freed Lorna's foot and pulled her upright. He made time to briskly brush off the leaves and twigs and dirt that had stuck themselves to her clothes before grabbing her hand again and pulling her onwards.

They were running in the direction of the colony. This worried Lorna. She didn't look round at the dinosaur again but she could tell from the rate of the crashing sounds that it had slowed, that it was more following them now than pursuing them. But still, if it got to the colony, even in a placid state, there was no telling what damage it would do. She had no idea if the man really knew where he was going, however confidently he trod. She wondered whether she could persuade him, could steer him away from the colony…

As the edge of the trees came into sight, the man let go of Lorna's hand and gave her a gentle push in the direction of the colony. Momentum carried her on before she really realised what was happening. She burst out into the sunlight on the edge of the forest just in time to turn round and see the man pointing the noisy, flashing device at the dinosaur, drawing it away from the colony and back to pursuing him. She barely evenly noticed as Kyle, her father and a large group of adults from the colony came running up to meet her.

"Lorna, are you okay?" her father asked breathlessly, an arm flung quickly and protectively around her shoulders. Everybody else was gabbling questions at her but Lorna only heard her dad say, "Kyle said something about a noise in the forest a…"

He trailed off as the group spotted the dinosaur. They all gaped up, their words stolen from them by its appearance. It thundered on by, completely oblivious to their presence as it chased the strange man with his strange device.

"What…?" Lorna's dad managed to choke out.

"Dinosaur," replied Lorna, with a mixture of matter-of-factness and disbelief.

A high-pitched sound suddenly drew their attention away from the dinosaur and onto the strange man, who was still running, the device held up in the air like a beacon, or a tiny carrot for some enormous donkey.

"Wh… who…?" Lorna's dad stammered.

"I… I don't actually know," she confessed.

The man was skirting the edge of the forest now, always staying amongst the trees, leaping over the undergrowth as if his feet had memorised the forest floor. Lorna was still wondering where he would run to, why he was leading the dinosaur on a merry rampage, when she spotted yet another thing that didn't belong in the forest, and it seemed to be what the man was aiming for.

It was a blue box.

It was a little taller than the strange man, and a few times wider than him too, but rather dwarfed by the surrounding trees. It had panelled doors topped with criss-crossed windows topped with indistinguishable writing topped with a lamp. It seemed to Lorna as if it must have looked perfectly ordinary somewhere, somewhere that wasn't the Gamma forests, somewhere distant and close by and long ago and far into the future.

A strange sense of wonder and expectation came over her as she looked at it. When the man reached the box, something amazing would happen.

And so it did. The dinosaur was gaining on the strange man as he took his last few jumps and reached the door of the blue box. He flung the door open and leapt inside with a leap that had surely taken him headlong into the other side of the box. But the door closed quickly behind him and it was a mere second before the light bulb on top began to flash and the whole box began to whoosh with a mechanical wheezing, breathing sound that set Lorna's hairs on end.

Just as the dinosaur was about to crash straight into the blue box, a golden, shimmering net flung itself out from the lamp on top and covered the beast, freezing it mid stomp. The whooshing breath intensified, filling Lorna's ears and thoughts as the blue box began to fade out and in and out of view, taking the snared dinosaur with it. And…

Not suddenly, but with a finality that made Lorna's heart sink, the blue box and the strange man and the enormous dinosaur were gone. The whooshing sound lingered, an echo in the atmosphere, and a few trees that had been ploughed aside by the dinosaur's final steps thudded to the ground. But the only remaining physical trace of the strange visitors was the path of fallen trees.

When all the sounds had ceased and all movement in the forest had returned to normal, Lorna turned to look at her father. He was still staring at the space where the blue box had vanished from, eyes wide, mouth slightly open, realisation and a touch of anxiety in his face.

"Dad," Lorna croaked tentatively, her voice a little meeker than usual after her flight from the dinosaur. He didn't look round. "Dad, are you alright?"

"I know who that was," he replied, at first speaking to Lorna alone but then turning to address the whole group. "I know who that man was."

"That was the Doctor."