Chapter one.
It was a warm, sunny morning and the golden sun's rays bathed Rosalind's face with an unearthly halo of light. Ophelia was laid on the grass beside Rosalind filled with joy at the excitement of a proposal dawning upon one of them.
"Rosalind?" Ophelia inquired shyly.
"Yes, Ophelia?" Rosalind whispered.
Ophelia smiled. This wasn't the first lazy response from Rosalind that afternoon.
"Do you think your father will consent to the engagement?" Ophelia whispered tentatively.
"Does it matter? If he doesn't, I will marry my love, either way." Rosalind replied dreamily.
"But he is Lord President! You cannot disobey him." Ophelia exclaimed.
"Just because he is Lord President doesn't mean that I can't disobey him in some ways, the least he can do is let me be with the one I love, and especially after all he has done to me." Rosalind whispered mournfully.
"Yes, I know he has hurt you but you cannot risk being exiled, you know that the other planets aren't like Gallifrey, they are far too dangerous and primitive" Ophelia said in astonishment.
"He wouldn't send me away, we both know that, why do you think that he is keeping such a close eye on me? He knows that if I do something wrong he will have to find another way except for being exiled as just imagine how bad that would look for him, I can just here the gossip now, "the Lord Presidents daughter exiled for marrying the man she loves". He wouldn't be Lord President anymore if the counsel knew he couldn't control his own daughter." Rosalind laughed, she always managed to find away around these sorts of things, and she guessed it was because of how she was raised and who she was raised by. Ophelia looked at her in shock and admiration and whispered "You do realise that you are the only one who is stupid enough to stand up to your father."
Rosalind started to interject but Ophelia beat her to it. " And yes I do mean stupid enough, because that what it is, stupid, we are supposed to be the superior race to all races in the universe and what are you interested in, hmm, Politics? No. Science? No. Philosophy? No. Should I tell you what you are interested in?"
Rosalind looked at her friend with a startled look upon her face; she had never seen her act like this.
"You are interested in petty little things like love, romance and other such nonsense and look where it has got you, you should be in charge of at least five departments because of how smart you USED to be, but now 'love' as you call it has made you dumb, you constantly start fights with your father and you want to leave Gallifrey to travel the stars with your equally dumb lover-boy"
Ophelia sat there panting, she felt as if she had been waiting a lifetime to say that, she looked at her friend and gasped, Rosalind had tears rolling, steadily down her face.
Ophelia reached for her but Rosalind pulled away. "I don't want to infect you with my dumbness, I thought you were on my side but I guess I was wrong."
Ophelia looked down in shame "I just don't want you getting hurt, your my best friend, the last thing I want to do is to hurt you or to see you get hurt."
Rosalind stood and looked down on her once best friend. "What? You thought what you just said wasn't hurtful? Well you have got another thing coming if you think that I am just going to forgive you for that and things will be back to normal." Ophelia looked at her friend towering over her and she was struck silent in fear, for all around Rosalind was a golden glow, it surrounded her, swarmed her, it was even shining out of her eyes.
Ophelia's voice shook as she asked a question that she dreaded the answer to. "What are you?"
Rosalind's gaze turn questioning as the gold around her started to ebb away "What do you mean?"
The only response she got was a petrified cry from her ex-friend as she crawled away towards the trees behind her.
Rosalind stepped towards her and that is what spurred Ophelia to action.
Ophelia stood quickly, picking up a fallen stick as she did so, and turned to face Rosalind then with a thunderous, warrior cry she started running.
SWISH! CRACK! THUD!
Rosalind hit the ground with a thunderous thud, after being cracked round the head with the stick in Ophelia's hand, Ophelia looked down at Rosalind in horror and as she swapped her gaze between her past friend and her hand which held the offensive weapon, she heard a noise surround her filling her ears. Panic started to bubble in the pit of her stomach, filling her with an uneasy dread. She took one last glance at her unconscious friend, dropped the blood soaked stick then fled into the darkness of the trees. The sound engulfing the clearing, which Rosalind laid in, became louder and louder until the sound became sight and the sight faded in and out of existence to finally solidify, no more then ten feet away from Rosalind's helpless body. Ophelia could see from her vantage point in the trees that the shape, that had only seconds ago solidified, was in fact a big, blue box. A big, blue, police public call box, to be exact.
Dread filled Ophelia, there was only one person on the whole of Gallifrey with a TARDIS that looked like that and that was Theta Sigma, Rosalind's soon-to-be fiancée, the one that has caused so much fuss in his previous regenerations.
Well he is on his eighth regeneration. Ophelia thought to herself. Maybe he will be killed a few more times; I bet Rassilon wouldn't mind killing him once or twice for even thinking about marrying his daughter.
Ophelia sniggered at herself. She was shocked that she could even be thinking such wicked thoughts, especially about the Lord President.
As she return her gaze to the tragic scene before her she felt no pity as she watched the so-called great Doctor fall to his knees and cradle his loves limp head in his shaking hands and as he gave out a cry of pure pain, a wicked grin appeared upon Ophelia's face as she ran deeper into the trees a plan already forming in her mind.