A day for the dead.
Clara looked down over a small cottage, surrounded by snow and lit by three moons. She tried to turn her head, forgetting for a moment that her body was no longer a part of her. Her view was not through her eyes but through the static charge of a million particles. She willed herself to drift apart to allow a shimmering waterfall of turquoise droplets pass through her without interrupting their cascade. She thought it the most beautiful thing she would ever see. She was wrong.
A few hours earlier The Doctor and Clara were preparing for a winter walk.
"Why are we going there?" Clara asked as she zipped up her snow boots.
"It's a mystery!" The Doctor said matter of factly, tapping out a few last commands and giving the mobile monitor a hearty swipe around the console.
"Surely you must know something."
"I mean to say Clara, it really is a mystery. No one who ever visits this planet ever recounts their experiences."
"So you have no idea what goes on there or why people visit it?"
"Nope!"
"How very daring, Doctor. What if a big bad lurks there?"
"Well, if a big bad wants to lurk, who am I to stop him or her. A bit of lurking never hurt anybody, it's the biting and ripping that tends to hurt and cause problems."
The TARDIS set down gently at the edge of a wood, near a cottage. The Doctor stepped out first and sniffed the air. "Just in time!" he said.
"For?"
"A midnight feast!"
Clara could smell the smoky tang of really good food wafting in the freezing air.
They crunched through crisp snow towards the cottage where candles flickered in every window and were welcomed in by a young teenage boy. The boy smiled politely and beckoned them to enter and take a seat by the open fire. At the centre of the room was a table set for seven. In one corner was a cot, neatly made with hand embroidered sheets of such fine quality it seemed fit for a King. The boy called upstairs and an older woman came down to greet them.
"We have fifteen minutes," the woman chanted in a whisper, "until it happens."
Clara could not read any expressions on the faces of these people. They had pale blue skin, stretched smooth over highly accentuated cheekbones. There were no clues. The old woman ushered the boy in from the kitchen. He carried bowl after bowl of glorious succulence to decorate the table. Each setting had a plate and beside each plate sat a small present, with a name card attached.
Clara watched the firelight for a moment and knew that his eyes would be flickering about the shadowy room, taking it all in. The Doctor caught her eye with a wink and directing her gaze to the cushions spread out all over the wooden floor.
A bell tower in the distance started to chime and on the thirteenth stroke she saw the Doctor fall to the floor like a rag doll, lifeless.
Her heart seemed to drop to the pit of her stomach and as she tried to move towards him, her legs gave way under her and she fell too. The Boy and his mother also fell where they stood. The only sound left was the snap of the fire.
She was wrong because the next thing she saw was overwhelming. Near her was a cloud of light filled with diamonds and set at the heart of each diamond were the flames of a burning sun. "Clara!" a whisper from the source of the light. "I think I can see you, think of the colour red for me."
She imagined a crimson sunset. "Yes, Clara I thought it was you. We are having an out of body experience."
Clara whispered back "How do I look?"
"It's mainly a dialogue between two types of particles who agree to pass on a message of sorts."
"No I meant what does my soul look like?"
"It looks like it wants to cry, but no need to worry the boy seems happy."
The waterfall of turquoise tumbled through the air and swept between the tree tops.
"This must be temporary or our minds would have slowed down to recall our best bits, which takes ages with me." The Doctor said excitedly.
The Doctor's soul moved off towards the village, where the bell had tolled, and Clara followed. They could see movement below, people heading towards their homes ready to eat the meals lovingly prepared for them by the ones they left behind. A couple ran towards one another and embraced under lamp light. Children played together in the moonlit parks. Some walked slowly and alone, heading nowhere.
Clara naturally gravitated towards the diamond light, until she was enveloped within the Doctor's soul. She could see the reflection of something in all the multi-faceted surfaces. It was her face, but it could not be her face because at that moment she consisted of no-body. Her mind began to race a little at the realization that she was inside him. She had never felt so safe.
The Doctor's voice was much louder here and made her particles vibrate a little. "This must be a very real Halloween where the living sacrifice one day of their lives every year. They can never talk to the departed again. They can see but must remain unseen."
"How long do we have and what do I look like?"
"Considering this event was rung in, I suspect it will be rung out in a similar fashion. My guess is a full turn of the planet. You look..." he paused and the flames within the diamonds burned orange instead of yellow for a while "... ready for anything."
As they flew back to the cottage they passed over a frozen lake. Seeing an opportunity here she extracted herself from the diamonds to hover a foot above the cold mirror. Her soul changed colour and shape constantly like the northern lights, mesmerizing waves of undulating, pulsating colour that melted into one another endlessly. She remembered a time ago actually witnessing the northern lights, whilst standing on the prow of a ship off the coast of Shetland. Yes there was a scientific explanation for those colours, they were just particles or something, but so was she right now. To those people below on the streets, those 'un-dead' people, she was their northern lights.
At the cottage, the Doctor and Clara passed near their bodies lying slumped over the cushions. The table was full of people dining, laughing and joking, opening their presents and reading the letters written to them by their son, mum, wife or brother. A baby started to cry in the cot and an elderly man rose from the head of the table, wandered over and lifted the baby from its cot, held it close and returned to the table with his young prize. The baby concerned itself with playing with the wrapping paper strewn over the bowls of fruit.
A perfect sphere of white hovered near the corner of the ceiling, a few feet above the cot. It pulsed like a heartbeat, never moving from its position.
"I want to try something before we run out of time." The Doctor moved away and upwards through the ceiling, Clara followed. "You don't often get the opportunity to fly through space without a ship." He shot up into the sky.
As dawn arrived they left the atmosphere and surged upwards past the three moons, around four stunning gaseous planets and a purple blue sun, towards a nebula packed with brand new stars. Faster and faster they flew interweaving around clusters of asteroids and charging past icy comets. The whole of space was their playground. Clara had never felt so free. Her body had been a cage not a temple.
Death couldn't get much better than this, simply floating without feeling too cold, or too woozy in the tummy, without feeling anything on the outside of her at all. No nasty nerve endings to prevent her complete enjoyment of simply drifting effortlessly through space.
The Doctor's soul stopped dead in mid space in front of her and spread out into a thin ring, slowly turning. She too stopped and formed a sphere and hung in the centre of the hole he had made. Before them however was a much larger thing, a very dark thing where light goes to die. A black hole lay only a few light years away like the gaping mouth of death. It seemed hungry for them. Maybe even a soul can die in there.
The bells were starting to peel as Clara and the Doctor returned to linger over their bodies. It took a while to feel normal again. Even weeks afterwards Clara could feel herself floating sometimes. The Doctor flexed his long fingers and smoothed out his collar. Clara could see her hair was afflicted with bed-head but left it unkempt.
"Why do you think no one ever tells about this then?" Clara asked him.
The Doctor walked over to the corner of the room to speak with the mother, who was making the cot up again, straightening the sheets. The old woman pressed her palm over the Doctor's mouth and they both nodded in agreement and understanding.
"Why indeed, Clara. Long ago a visitor came to their planet and buried its treasure. A treasure so powerful it can grant an impossible wish. It is hidden so well that no one can find it and the legend goes that if anyone tells what goes on here the wish will be broken and the treasure lost forever."
Clara's eyes widened and met the gaze of the old woman.
Back on the Tardis...
"They are very lucky here Doctor. I wish … "
The Doctor interrupted her, "be careful what you wish for, you never know who might be listening."
"I am puzzled though, do you not want to know what your soul looked like?"
"What makes you think that souls will always look the same?"
"When I was inside you, I saw something I couldn't understand..."
He interrupted her with an "Ah!"
"What?"
"We cannot discuss anything we saw or did on the planet."
"But we are in the TARDIS, alone!"
"No, we are not alone... but that is a whole other story."
End