Osha had to admit that when she'd stepped through the door of the dusty blue box, the last thing she expected was to see a beach, blue sky and green alpine forests. Osha had asked to step back through the doors to go back to Camp Meerkat, but the doors back seemed to have vanished completely as well.

To be fair, the Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan seemed far more put out about this situation than she did. It seemed to be taking them a while to adjust to the journey. Since arriving, the trio had done little more than argue, pointing vehemently around them saying strange phrases like 'Console Room', 'block transfer' and 'Where the hell is my wardrobe?' The bizarre series of screeching noises that Tegan was capable of making was impressive, but tiresome. After trying to get everyone to negotiate peacefully, Osha gave up and parked herself on a log by the beach and just tried to enjoy the view. The clouds were light and fluffy and the cool breeze was a welcome relief after weeks in the desert. She took off her boots and let her toes wriggle in the pebbly sand a bit.

After about a half hour or so of their 'discussion', Tegan stormed off down the beach, with Nyssa in pursuit. A tired, rather downbeat Doctor plopped himself beside her on the log, pausing only to dip his finger into the lake water. 'Interesting,' he exclaimed before popping the finger into his mouth. 'New Zealand... South Island...Lake Poteriteri if I'm not mistaken... I haven't been here in ages. I think.'

'So... you can tell where we are by tasting the water?' Osha held back a sigh, but pulled out her notebook and started rummaging through her pockets for a pen to take more notes. She might get a seminar out this trio...

'Well, mineral content, salinity and ambient temperature... it's a rough guess. Lacustrine geolocating isn't an exact science...'

'I rather doubt it's a science at all, at least not one that can be performed with your tongue,' Osha countered. 'Mind you, considering we were in Africa less than an hour ago, colour me impressed.' Osha could sense that the Doctor wanted desperately for her to ask questions, but she found that pained, yearning look to be quite tedious. She'd seen it in the faces of dozens of CEO's at her old job, mostly when they had her at a disadvantage, which she didn't like at all.

At least sitting by the lake shore was very relaxing. The lake was surrounded on all sides by steep, forested slopes that were broken only by the odd U-shaped glacial valley. It was breathtaking, if a trifle chilly. She really wasn't dressed for this. 'I'll tell you what's even stranger...' she pulled out her mobile, 'this is a quad-band phone... I can get reception nearly anywhere, except Japan... and here...' She paused, giving the side of her phone a slap with her palm, 'I get only two bars of signal.'

The Doctor frowned and snatched the phone, stared at the screen, sniffed it, then popped the back off and started fiddling with its innards. 'Very odd. We're here, but we're not... we can't be...'

He was obviously fishing for her to ask what he meant. Instead, Osha poked around in one of her pockets, found a cereal bar she'd been saving for a post-breakfast snack and started munching.

They sat in silence for quite some time.

'Do you notice anything strange?' The Doctor asked eventually.

Osha assumed that the question probably wasn't related to the celery bizarrely affixed to his lapel and considered the question. Besides, she liked that he was the one asking her questions. 'Well, excluding the fact that we travelled thousands of miles in an instant by stepping into your lab equipment cabinet... I had noticed that if you look closely you can see here at the shoreline the wind is blowing; wave action is actively eroding and depositing sediment, as it should. I've never seen some of these species of vegetation, yet as I've never been to New Zealand before that's to be expected. However, despite the large number of flora...'

'... there are no insects, no birds, no fish... in fact no animals of any kind,' the Doctor finished. He picked up a handful of pebbly sand and watched it fall through his fingers and scatter on the beach. 'However, the environment is quite real, no pixilation, in fact there are no indications of any virtual reality at least. Yet this is definitely not Earth...except it is...'

Osha started poking around in her bag for a breath mint. She'd put them in there this morning, however everything had gotten tossed about a bit during the running and, what was the expression he'd used? 'Temporally dislocated via the transducer matrix'. She found a Mentos lodged at the bottom of the bag, picked away the fluff and sat quietly sucking away while watching the breeze tease the edge of the lake. The sun would be setting shortly; and it would be cold. The skin on her legs was already speckled with goose bumps. She brushed off the sand, re-socked her feet and started the awkward lacing process. But she remained obstinately silent.

It was less than forty-two seconds before the Doctor started babbling out explanations and theories. Osha let him talk, let the words rush around her. Having three children had taught her patience. Having five grandchildren had taught her that when her input was needed, it would be asked for – and that was rare indeed. Through his flow of words, she gathered that his blue box had been a ship that held many rooms, and all were now gone. Originally, the Doctor thought that the inside of his ship had been made to look like where they were now, yet if he was still in his ship he 'would know'. Therefore, they were somewhere else, somewhere he'd never been, yet it had been made to look like a glacial valley in New Zealand. Or maybe it was.

All of which, Osha acknowledged in her head, was quite wonderful, in a way that she could not have imagined when she woke up this morning. The world was new, again. And as old as she was, it was changed once again. As the world had a tendency to do. Which again was wonderful. Better still, the Doctor did not seem to think that her meerkats, nor the team was involved or harmed in any way. Yet he had no way of returning to them, at least not yet.

The Doctor's words eventually drifted into silence that sat uneasily at her feet. Then something around them happened that made Osha smile. 'Doctor,' she held out her hands, palm upwards. 'Did I ever tell you what my name means?'

'Oshadagea,' the Doctor breathed, pronouncing every syllable perfectly and translated: 'Will rain down water again.' He unfurled his hat from his pocket and jammed it on his head as raindrops softly pelted the sand around them.

'Yes... yes it does,' replied Osha, surprised once more. One of her tiresome CEO's or beleaguered academics, the man was most certainly not. Today was certainly going to be a record day for surprises. It was only as Osha reached for the sun umbrella in her satchel that she saw what the rain brought with it-

'Run!' was all she heard as the Doctor wrenched her to her feet and they sprinted for the forest.

But terrified as she was, Osha knew that no one could out run the rain itself.

It had taken away so much.

Tegan stumbled through the forest, long having since left Nyssa behind. Tegan feared nothing that the forest might hold. She just kept walking forward, walking always forward, her mind blank.

No. Not blank. She wished it was blank. She wished the fury she'd just displayed back at the beach was in any way real. Wished that she actually felt a moment of it, wished that she still cared, which was why she went further and further and took it way too far. And she knew it. So she walked away, and kept walking.

The Mara had filled her mind, showed her such awful things. Which was terrible of course, but it had done that before. Now it had just left nothing, filled her up like a balloon with hate and rage and intellect and now she felt as if she'd deflated, and her own self couldn't fill the remaining void. Such small things set her off, such odd things... she'd lost control. Again.

And she didn't really care. She didn't want to put herself back together. She just wanted to go home, except that didn't really exist anymore. She had nowhere to really go back to. Which perhaps was the worst part of all. The fact that the TARDIS seemed to have vanished and left them in this forest ripped away the last of what she had, the last familiar thing. She couldn't care anymore. So she just kept walking.

Images teased at her mind, tried to find a way in, but she just batted them aside with annoyance.

It was only when her foot stepped on something solid and warm that she paused, only came back to the world around her Nyssa called out her name – and the old man whose leg she trod on gave out a yelp.

'I'm so sorry,' Tegan bent down to help the old man to his feet, 'I was just...' it was hard to fight for words when she was realizing that what had brought her back to herself was pure old shame and guilt – her mother would be so proud. She brushed the thought aside and helped Nyssa steady him on the uneven ground of dirt and pulled grass. 'I am sorry, I wasn't thinking.' She hadn't even noticed that rain had opened up from the sky and was scattering upon the vegetation around them. The man seemed to be ignoring her, his face turned upwards towards the opening sky.

'Tegan...' Nyssa caught her arm. 'The rain...'

'What about it?' Tegan bent to pull out the needles and sticks that had wedged inside her shoes, more concerned about this silent man who lounged around in damp forests crying and how on earth she was ever going to get tree sap out of her stockings.

'Tegan- the rain, it's changing.'

It was then that Tegan saw it for herself, saw the rain patter and pelt the air around them, making everything gray and blurry... and change. The world around them was being washed away, wiped away into nothing but grey empty space.

And then they were gone. Again.