The first thing Donna noticed was that she had begun to prefer her steak rare. She didn't understand why, all she knew is that she quite enjoyed the taste of raw meat, of blood. She, of course, had no knowledge that Gallifreyans where natural carnivores.
Donna was stronger than she had ever been before, more athletic. She often felt as though she could run forever. She would get up early in the morning sometimes, look outside, and feel the urge to run as far as her legs could carry her. She felt as though could run across the cosmos, if she really wanted to.
Donna's senses where heightened. She could hear better than ever before, see ever so slightly better in the dark; just subtle changes, really, yet changes nevertheless.
Sometimes things would happen, big events on the news, and Donna just knew they had to have happened. It could not have happened any other way. They were fixed in time forever, and she just knew this, she didn't know how. Donna had begun to see time itself in a very different way. It was not linear, no. All of time was happening, everything that ever existed and everything that ever would exist where still out there, just not at this very moment. It was not linear, no; it was more like a big ball of…stuff, yes, a big ball of timey whimey stuff.
Life went on for Donna Noble, despite these small changes. Shaun wanted children. They tried for children many times, but Donna never came to be pregnant. Eventually she went to see a doctor. He told Donna she was infertile, he had called her a "bizarre case".
"Look here," he had said, "If one is to mate two different species, say a lion and tiger, sometimes the chromosomes don't match up, and the offspring ends up with something called Hybrid Inviability. Infertility is often a result of this. That's why ligers can't breed. It's strange; Miss Noble, but you show multiple signs of this Hybrid Inviablity."
"Are you suggesting I'm part tiger!" scoffed Donna, "That's ridiculous."
"No, Miss Noble, I'm not suggesting anything. All I'm saying is I'm never seen anything like your case before."
Donna had gone home crying. She could not give Shaun the family he wanted, she could not have the family she wanted. It was strange; Donna remembered having something like a family a long time ago; children, and a husband. Yet, somehow it was never real. There was something about a library too, yes a great big library. It couldn't be true though. It must have just been a dream. Often times Donna seemed to remember things that never really happened: other worlds out among the stars, other times that have long passed or have yet to come, and all the strange creatures.
Donna often found herself looking at the stars at night. Trying to remember these times that never happened, these dreams. Donna often felt like she belonged out there, among those stars. She felt a longing, a sort of homesickness for a home she never knew. Somewhere out there, in some corner of space during some moment in time; there was a world with two suns, covered in blazing hot savannas of red grass, the endless red grasslands dotted with sliver trees. How she longed to run across those savannas under those two suns. Yes, that was where she belonged. Donna sometimes told Shaun about this, he would just laugh and would tell her she had quite the imagination.
Donna had begun to grow weak and sickly. She went to see the doctor once again. The doctor could not tell what was wrong with Donna, it resembled nothing he had ever seen before, in humans, that is. Once again, he brought up the topic of Hybrid Inviablity.
"It's strange, Miss Noble, but you're condition perfectly matches that found in Hybrid animals. I have no idea how it could be possible, in fact, I would go as far as to say it is impossible. Yet nothing else matches you're condition." He had said.
Donna grew more and more sickly by the day. The doctors tried to help the best they could, yet nothing they did helped. She was dying. Shaun tried his best to support his wife, yet Donna still felt ever so alone in the world. Yet still, she looked up at the stars, and she tried to remember those marvelous things that never happened, that happened in a dream, another life. And she thought about that endless red savanna, and those twin suns. She would have dreams of that grassland, of running free. Yet she was not alone in those dreams. There was someone else, a man.
And then she remembered.