The Last of Her Kind

I watched her as she pulled down the flight lever. Her eyes were full of excitement, ready to behold our next misadventure, and I wanted to smile with her, as her joy is always so infectious, but melancholy overtook me and stopped my weak attempt at a smile from ever making it to my eyes.

It's hard to look at her these days. It was the same with River. The knowing. It's time like this I wish I were an ignorant, a loutish oaf trudging through the day, aware only of what was visible before me and nothing else. Or rather, like the mayfly. To have my whole existence planned from birth to death and to be unaware of the pain of sentient being. Oh to be a mayfly!

But I am not.

I'm a Time Lord. I have to watch while my companions experience their lives in treasured moments while my own existence is cataloged and stored in my synapses by the decade. Is this what Time Lords were born to do, to hear the sounds of the trees falling in the forests? To bear witness? Would the universe even exist without me?

I am the last of my kind.

I've tried not to press her on the subject. The end of us. But she's made it clear enough, on several occasions, that she'd rather to be a mayfly than a Time Lord. She doesn't want to outlive anyone else that she loves. I don't blame her. I know it's the reason she's still traveling with me. She's burning through her years, experiencing all she can before her father, her grandmother or even I can die on her. She thinks it will break her.

But what about me?

She's chattering to me now, something about Tae Kwan Do, and I'm doing my best to listen. Shaking my head and nodding. But every time I look at her I want her to tell her that I remember. That I remember her from when I was a boy and that in my pocket is the toy soldier she gave me, and that I squeeze it tightly in my hand whenever I'm afraid, and that I want her to understand how much I need her, how much I love her, and how much losing her is going hurt. I want to rage against her logic and to make her understand…

…that she is the last of her kind!