She was sleeping. Eyes shut tight, pillow held close, sleeping. Her bedroom was in total darkness, but her mind, oh, her mind was enlightened. That's what used to happen that kind of nights. She'd come walking home, passing by an odd phone box on the way. She'd arrive, eat an apple and go to bed. All lights off, mother sleeping heavy and noisily.
But she dreamed the most amazing dreams. Of time and space, of past times, of different spaces, wonderful, if not perfect, places. Places she'd often dream of visiting. Then, she'd wake up and remember nothing.
Let's not wander off. She was now dreaming of this majestic medieval castle in Ireland. A quiet, enormous castle. She was walking down one of its halls, looking at the paintings on the walls. The hall seemed to have no end.
For what seemed like hours she kept walking, staring at paintings. They were beautiful, but the longer she walked, the odder the pictures would become. What was that blue thing behind the statue? Seemed familiar. Who was that person with the shiny stick on his hand? She was pretty sure she had seen him once or twice.
Suddenly the hall came to an end. She felt relieved, like if opening the big blue door at the end of the corridor and find out what was behind it was her destiny. But still she felt reluctant. Some part of her was telling her not to.
She reached for the knob and pushed it open.
As soon as she did, the strongest wind she ever felt shut it tight with a loud bang. The bang was so loud inside her head that it woke her up. But wait. Was it inside her head? Why was her curtain shining like if it was reflecting sunlight? Was it already time to get up? Nah. Couldn't be.
She looked at the clock: three AM. What?
She got up slowly and walked toward the window. She pulled the curtains open and saw the strangest thing. A tall man wearing a long coat and a bowtie jumping off that odd blue telephone box.
The man looked in her direction and smiled.
It wasn't creepy. Not at all. In fact, he seemed nice. He even waved for her to come outside. And she did.
She put on the first pair of shoes she found (a pair of loud green hiking boots) and the first coat she found (a purple tux) and ran outside.
As soon as she was out the door, the man spoke. "I like your clothing style", he told her.
She laughed.
-"What's your name?" he asked.
-"Nikkie" she said, hesitating a little at first. He was a stranger. But something about him seemed familiar and nice. Like meeting a childhood friend fifteen years later.
He held his hand out to Nikkie. "Nice to meet you. I'm the Doctor". He had a big smile on his face.
-"Doctor what?" asked Nikkie, a little confused, but amused.
-"Just call me Doctor."
-"What- what's this going on? I keep seeing you and your blue box in paintings, in dreams" she said, suddenly remembering, as if her memories had been waiting for the right moment.
-"Dreams? What dreams?"
-"Why don't we go inside? I am freezing, and I'm sure you are too. Come on, my mother won't wake up before ten."
They went in and Nikkie showed the Doctor to the living room. Giggling to herself (she was amused by the way he pronounced "Doctah", because of his adorable British accent), she grabbed a green apple and went to join the Doctor in the living room.
She went in to find him amused with a snow ornament.
Apparently he heard her walk in, because, without turning around, he said "There could be a universe in any one of these, you know". He grabbed one and shook it. "I'm probably upsetting lots of people and causing a couple earthquakes here and there right now."
She couldn't help but laughing.
"Oh-" he turned around to face her. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? DROP THAT RIGHT NOW!"
-"Wha- what? My apple? I love apples!"
-"APPLES ARE EVIL!"
-"Okay, okay, I'll eat something else. Do you want anything?"
-"I would love some fish custard, thank you very much."
-"Sorry- some what?"
-"Fish custard! I'll show you."
She showed the Doctor to the kitchen and he asked for fish fingers. While she set them on the oven, he opened the fridge and grabbed a can of custard. He opened it with a knife.
Nikkie didn't know what to think. That was the most bizarre thing she had ever seen. Fish fingers and custard? Heh, she still liked the guy.
As soon as the fish fingers were done, she set them on a plate and took it, a bottle of water for herself, and the can of custard to the living room table, where the Doctor just started dipping he fingers in the custard.
-"Wanna try?" he offered with a smile.
-"O-okay". It was all food.
They didn't actually taste that bad.
-"So, what is that box of yours? I see it all the time. Everywhere."
-"It's a TARDIS. She's a time machine. You see her everywhere because, well, she has been following you. Maybe she just likes you. It's even possible she took me of some of your dreams." And she remembered.
Nikkie smirked. She liked the TARDIS, too. A time machine? She had no trouble believing it. She had always dreamed of one. It would be her chance to escape a kind of life she didn't like.
Then suddenly a blueish glow started to come out of the snow ball the Doctor had been examining earlier. It started to shake. It slid off the windowsill. It smashed to the floor. It shattered everywhere.
Fake snow, a gooey liquid was flowing out of the ball. Nikkie ran for napkins to wipe it, but she stopped in her tracks when it started to glow. It all became blue: the snow, the goo, then the ornaments inside the ball, then the glass. The Doctor started to search his pocket, and, after pulling out a few coins and a glove, he grabbed a silver stick that looked like a pencil, pressed a button, and its further end started glowing with a loud green light.
The blue glow became stronger, then the green one. Was it possible? Was the ball, already shaking again, shrieking with pain?
Suddenly, it seemed like the world had exploded. And somehow it maybe did, because Nikkie found herself standing next to the Doctor in a bright white room, surrounded by little blue people.
She couldn't be any more confused. She tried to ask the Doctor, yelled at him, shook him, but he didn't budge.
She tried everything. But then she remembered the bottles of water she had grabbed.
She splashed the whole content of one of them onto the Doctor's face, which caused him to shake with an odd electric sound and then get up quickly.
-"Water." he said, all of a sudden.
-"Yeah, it was water… Why?"
-"These little buddies- they're made of electricity. What counterpowers electricity? Water. We need to get water. Otherwise, this little guys will take over the world's electric network- they can do that in a minute- and manipulate to their favor, and coming from B11-Cylon, they are going to want to make it explode, which means, only we and some water can stop the planet from exploding!" he said all of this very quickly, and still with a smile on his face. They could do that, yeah, she thought and smiled.
Water? Wasn't water an electricity conductor? She decided to trust the Doctor.
-"But everything there is is this white nothingness-" said Nikkie, her smile suddenly dropping.
The Doctor got out his green shiny thing again, and started flashing it through every corner of the room. It seemed to make the little electric guys freeze. Then, when he finished sweeping the room with it, he clicked it again and the whole room flooded with green light. A doorknob was hanging from the roof, a little to the left over their heads. -"Aha!" shouted the Doctor. The glowing light coming out of the stick started to flash intermittently, like if battery was running low. The little monsters started to unfreeze.
"Quick! Run left!" the Doctor shouted to Nikkie. But running quick wasn't an easy task for someone wearing slippers, especially if you didn't know exactly what was on the floor.
She looked up to the trap door on the roof. They were apparently trapped in some sort of basement. She kept on running towards the door, wondering how on Earth were they going to get from the floor to the ceiling.
Nikkie started thinking. Why water? Water was an electricity conductor. But the Doctor had said so. And apparently, these things were aliens. So she couldn't trust her basic terrestrial knowledge.
Why was she still running? She looked up. The room seemed to never end. The door was a little closer than before, but still far. Where was the Doctor?
She looked back. No sign of the Doctor nor the aliens- she still did not slow down.
Eventually she reached the trap door. There was a rope that hung from it. Everything was silent.
She decided to wait- she waited, waited and waited. After what seemed like half an hour, she was sick of waiting. "DOCTOR!" she screamed. It echoed.
She heard a faint "Nikkie!…" as an answer. "DOCTOR!" she replied, louder this time. It was five minutes of this, the "Nikkie!"s getting louder each time, until she saw a green light flashing. He was here. Followed by tons of blue aliens.
Nikkie started to search her small bag frantically. Then she remembered. Her bottle of water! She pulled it out and opened it, and waited for the blue buddies to reach them. When they were close enough, she started to spray them with it. The little things started to explode with a funny "puff!" noise. She kept going- it didn't take much water to explode a monster. There weren't that many of them as it seemed before. She thought it may have been an optical illusion.
Soon enough, the monsters were all gone and the water too. Nikkie and the Doctor stood on guard, waiting just in case more monsters showed up. They didn't.
Nikkie pulled the trap door rope, and the Doctor examined the black opening with his green glowing thing. "What's that?" Nikkie asked. "A sonic screwdriver", he answered. She thought it was better not to ask.
The Doctor assured the opening was safe. There was a light at the end of it: it was the Crack they went into the snowball through.
The Doctor jumped and held on the border of the trap door with his hands, and somehow pulled himself up. Then he held his hand out to Nikkie. She didn't know what to do- he wasn't going to just pull her up with his hands, was he?
Well, he was. And surprisingly he did. He was really strong for someone so skinny.
The Crack spit them out and they both fell face-first onto Nikkie's living room floor, next to the broken snowball.
The Doctor got up quickly and ran outside. Nikkie followed. He opened the TARDIS's door and was about to step inside, when he turned on the spot to face Nikkie and said "Wait. Want to come?"
She didn't even think about it for a second. She ran inside the TARDIS and impulsively hugged the Doctor, who answered effusively too.
And so they left, they started for everywhere, for tomorrow, for yesterday. For beautiful places, different times.
Nikkie loves to travel with her eyes closed.