When the breezes pick up over the Gobi desert, they lift great iridescent swathes of sand up and around each other, that rise and fall like waves in all directions, rolling into each other and coiling back on themselves. What was, moments before, a still and undulating waste comes alive, roiling like so many ribbons charmed by magic, gold on the rich crushing blue of the night.
Over all of this, by fifty metres or so, a lighter blue. A box, with one side open, casting orange light out like a lantern. And two pairs of legs dangling down into the dark.
River is as excited as a child, pointing and cooing and eventually leaning so far forward that the Doctor panics, and grabs hold of her by the back of the shirt. When he pulls her back to sitting, she smiles at him, a little too broadly, a little too much of a smirk. "I don't even care if you fall," he tells her, making a point of looking away, into the sky. "It'd just be a terrible bother finding you in all of that tomorrow, when it's all settled."
She puts an arm around behind him, leans in against his shoulder. Sighs, prettily, "I don't care if you fall, either." She shoves him hard and pulls him back with the same movement, giggling when he cries out. He glares, and she stops. Slowly, though, it spreads across her face again and suddenly breaks.
"No, don't, it's not funny, River, I spend far too much time hanging out of this Tardis, it's really rather unseemly when one is trying to be a cool, collected capitaine, you really mustn't…" But she's still laughing. Her body is weak and propped up on both arms behind, her head thrown back, all of her shuddering with it.
She notices, after a moment, that he has trailed off. Composes herself enough to ask, "What?"
How is it, he wants to ask her, that even when you're laughing at my evident you-caused distress, it still suits you. There's still no malice in it. That even with half of you lit in unforgiving Tardis ambers and the other in cold, ethereal moonlight, you still glow all by yourself. Wants to. Wants to ask her that. Isn't sure how to phrase it, though and says instead, "You're not even listening."
He tries not to flinch when River puts both hands around his arm and pulls close again. This time there's no trick. He tries looking down at her and sees nothing but hair, and so contents himself with simple sensation; the warmth of her face against his shoulder, the sound her clothes make against his, the peculiar, questioning strength of her grip.
"How do you find these things?" she asks eventually, pointing with one foot at the shifting desert.
"I've been around a while."
"But you know about everything. On all the planets, all the times. Nobody's been that far around and come back again."
"Well, I read, don't I?"
"Fine then, don't tell me." A moment's silence. Then, "Is it another woman. Is it other women? Do you have women all over time telling you about interesting things? Is one them smarter than you? More than one? Are you into older women? Is that difficult for you?"
"No, to all of them above, except the third one, but it's not just women."
"Okay… Wait, what was the third one?"
"Rule Forty-Six, River…"
"If you can't keep up with yourself, don't expect anybody else to keep up with you. …Is there a reason I'm in Cell Forty-Six at Stormcage, by any chance?"
"You killed all those people that time, remember?"
"In fairness, it was over an extended period."
"That's no excuse."
"What about 'Have gun, will travel'?" she says, and from some baffling depth he can't quite fathom produces the excuse in question. In her age, the gun will be clunky, a relic, the equivalent of a modern day soldier carrying a turn-of-the-century revolver. The fact of the matter is she likes it, and due to the technology being era-non-specific and unattached to any central mainframe, it's good for anything from dinosaurs to the super-reptilian life-forms that will one day survive the fire apocalypses of the Ninth system. Also it's a terrifying weapon of utter destruction and he edges as far away as he can into the Tardis doorway.
"Why did you bring that?"
"I have no idea. I just have this completely irrational fear that whenever we meet we're likely to get attacked by somebody. Prison psychiatrist is working on it, though, don't worry."
"Well, put it away." She doesn't. She raises it up, takes careful aim and steadies the butt with her other hand. Fires a single green bolt with perfect precision into the heart of a star called Mildraica. "What are you doing?"
"Target practice. Don't worry, the energy will die long before it hits anything."
"You are literally shooting at stars. This is where all the UFO stories come from, you know, some nomad down there's going to turn us into a god. Again."
"We are a UFO," she says, and takes seven quick pot shots at the nymphs fleeing Orion. Mutters to herself, "Frigid little things… Have you ever fired one of these?"
"Who, me, or the Naiads?" She eyes him, and there's a comment on her lips that he feels the need to stop. "No, never, don't want to either so why are you- No, R- N… Stop it!" She is trying, forcefully, to put it in his hands, and with her finger still dangerous close to the trigger she pokes him in the stomach when he won't take it. "I don't want it."
"You should be practiced. In case you ever need to."
He challenges, "When?"
"To destroy something from a distance in a peaceful non-violent way. " He stares. "I'll warn you, now, should you refuse I am going to engineer a circumstance to meet those conditions for the sheer pleasure of saying-"
"You told me so, I know, fine then." He takes it from her barrel first, holds it between two fingers and turns it delicately for study.
"It's a gun, Doctor, not a butterfly." And she wraps her arms around him to demonstrate the proper grip, to guide his index finger to the trigger. "Alright? Ready?"
"Yes."
"You're sure now? About the big bad gun? About being a trigger-virgin?"
"River, seriously-" And while he is complaining her finger squeezes in on his squeezes in on the trigger. The Doctor would recoil, but her hand is on his shoulder and he is not so afraid of gunfire as he ever has been. From them wound together at the Tardis door, another future earth legend disappears green, impossibly fast. Not just into the sky, not into any distant star, but into the perfect round white of the moon. "Shooting the moon, is it? Typical us, variations on the impossible…"
"Wait," she tells him.
Climbs to her feet and runs to the space beneath the console and fishes something quickly from amongst the pipes and wires.
"We're not," she says, rushing back to him, clapping a telescope into his hand, guiding it to his face.
The Sea of Tranquilty lies silent and dark.
Then, tiny but so very real, there's a twinkle, like a star but green. A little puff and a crater left behind darker still.
"Not what, River?"
"Impossible."