Author's Note: Gah I'm sorry, yes I still exist, and yes I usually try to post in the morning. I'm traveling and things are crazy haha.
Chapter 6
The first thing she heard was tinkling water. Voices pushed their way into her mind, blurred and twisted. She gasped for breath and pushed herself to a sitting position—
And then she was coughing wildly, water spewing across her lap and onto the ground in front of her. Hands planted themselves on her shoulders and two blurry faces appeared. She blinked, shook her head, and coughed again, drawing in a deep, gasping breath.
The faces came into focus and she saw that the Doctor was crouched in front of her, Alexa just a bit behind him. Steadying herself against the Doctor, she pushed herself to her feet. "I'm f—f—fine." She drew in another deep breath, and another hacking cough pushed its way out.
She reached out a hand, groping for the nearest thing she could find, and her fingers found some kind of shelf. She gripped it as hard as she could, shivering.
"I'm fine," she said again.
It was almost as if she were convincing herself.
She shivered again, leaning against the shelf to keep from sliding to the floor—questioning her decision to stand. Something soft and a bit heavy was draped around her shoulders and she looked up to see the Doctor—and he wasn't wearing his long tan coat.
"It's sopping wet too but it's the best thing we've got." He gripped her arm as she swayed. He nearly caught her. She stiffened, forcing herself to stand on her own. Every muscle in her body felt weak and shaky and she was just beginning to realize she had a raging headache.
A hand gripped her arm and she had only just realized that Alexa was tugging her forward when she stopped in the corner of—wherever they were—and gently guided her to the ground.
"Sit," she ordered. "And put on that coat."
Rey sat, slipping her arms through the arms of the coat. The sleeves were too long and the entire thing felt more like a too-big robe than a coat. She pulled it closer about her and shivered—it was wet.
Alexa plopped down beside her and slipped her arm around her shoulders. "Sorry about the general wet-ness of everything, but, well…" She gestured towards the fountain and shrugged. "You know. Also. Never do that again. I thought you were dead."
"Wait." Another hacking cough. She rested her head in her hands, pushing back a wave of dizziness and drawing in a deep breath. The last thing she remembered…. "How did we get out of that?"
Alexa stifled a giggle. "The fountain," she said.
"Yep!" The Doctor grinned. "Just came bursting out of the fountain like a trio of mermaids."
"So…" She eyed the fountain. "So they—let us go?"
"Oh—sorry. Sonic screwdriver. It does everything." He shook the device and water drops flew in all directions. "Found an underwater setting—which was a bit hard to do if you're actually underwater, so good luck to me if I ever try to do that again—and it found the fountain. I think we startled the water things, they're not used to resistance—or sonic screwdrivers. And now—seems we're in some kind of storeroom. Full of…." His voice trailed off and he looked around. "Bottles of water?"
Rey looked up, seeing her surroundings for the first time. The room was a half-circle and she sat in the corner, the walls curving away from her. Shelves stretched upward until they were almost out of sight, filled with bottle after bottle of aquamarine swirls.
She caught her breath.
"Where is this place?" she said softy.
"Now that is strange." The Doctor pulled a bottle from the nearest shelf and turned it over in his fingers, staring hard at it. "Who keeps a room full of bottles of water? Water samples? Some kind of—oh. Oooh. Look at that."
Alexa's eyes widened and she jumped to her feet, tripping over to the Doctor and standing on tiptoe to peer over his shoulder. After a long moment, she shook her head.
"I'm….going to assume you saw something in there," she said.
"It's a document! Made of water!" He whirled and shoved the bottle in her face, and she jumped backwards. "See those swirls and bubbles? They were placed there very precisely. This is how the water things read!" He slipped his glasses on and a grin spread across his face. "A library. We're standing in an alien library!"
Carefully, Rey lifted a bottle from the ground-level shelf at her side. She turned it over in her fingers, staring at it. Swirls and bubbles were trapped inside like a single wave captured in a moment of time. She let out a little gasp as, suddenly, she realized that she could read it, the words and images and ideas as clear as if she were reading them from a holo-screen.
The language of water.
She narrowed her eyes and stared at it. She shouldn't be able to read it. She had taught herself a few different alien languages, but certainly not a language made of water. It would have been totally useless on Jakku. She looked up.
"Doctor—how can I read this?" She held up the bottle. "I shouldn't…"
"Oh! TARDIS translation circuit. Gets inside your head, translates everything for you. Which, I suppose," he added, turning to Alexa, "would explain why you couldn't read it."
Alexa just stared at him.
"I'm just….not going to question things anymore," she said, a little weakly.
"Wait….the TARDIS is inside my head? Like some kind of telepathic…" She shook her head, staring at the bottle. She remembered the nanotransmitters with their eerie signals and the way they seemed to probe around in her thoughts. Wouldn't she know?
She reached for another bottle, turning it absently over in her fingers. Could she read all of them, then? Anything she picked up? She shook the bottle and watched as it settled back into position, and—wait. Was there paper floating inside of it?
She stared harder into the aquamarine depths of the bottle, which glimmered like sunlight on the surface of the sea. Yes, bits of paper floated inside it, caught in the sea foam, as if it had once been some kind of physical document.
On the twenty-third day of August. The words seemed to come from the bottle itself, forming in her mind and leaving no doubt that they had come from the swirling water-language inside.
Her eyes widened. A journal?
The image of an island floated in her mind, seen as if from above. A half-built tower of white stone rose from the center of it, and it seemed barely large enough for a house. The island is expanding like a roaring wildfire. The words were as clear in her mind as if they had been written on paper. She saw the island again, larger now, the tower finished, new and shiny-white. A man walked along the seashore, a boy at his side. Someday, Alastor, this will be all yours. Rule it well.
The king? No—the man she saw was not the king, but he certainly bore a great resemblance to him, with his dark grey eyes that hid secrets in their depths and his confident gait, like a man destined to rule nations. Someday this will all be yours…
Alastor?
Was it—the king? The boy who walked along the beach beside his father, was he the haughty king they had just met?
She caught her breath. A journal, hidden in a corner, converted, perhaps, by the watery spirits…
The journal of the former king?
She turned the bottle over in her fingers. Images and words and ideas flashed by and she stopped quickly, trying to catch a hold of them. A man walking along a shore—but somehow she knew it wasn't the island. It was the same man, the former king, but he was younger now, his dark hair without a trace of grey and no crown resting on his head. The waves lapped at his feet as he stared out over the waters—
And then there were words again, floating through her mind as if carried on the waves. As I stood there, I thought that I saw a strange sort of ship, or some sort of device, floating in the waves approaching me. Images now—a shiny metal cylinder, polished by the waves, nearly as tall as the man himself, washed up onto the shore. Words—time had passed, somehow she knew that, many days—I have discovered that the strange object I discovered can grow what could be land—I have been blessed mightily.
Years of experiments played through her mind like a hologram played in fast motion, and then—
She looked up with a start to see the Doctor standing over her, one eyebrow raised. She jumped to her feet and shoved the bottle into his hands, grinning suddenly.
"Look at this!" she cried. "It's a journal—it's the former king's journal!"
"Oooh." He took the bottle and stared at it for a long moment, a slow grin spreading over his face. "Oooh—Rey, you genius. This island's being grown!" He whirled, nearly knocking her over as he began to pace. "There is currently a core somewhere in this tower, pumping out island. And—look at that! He's had contact with these water things—they whispered to me the secrets of the device with which they had blessed me—they taught him! Now, the question is, why?" He skidded to a stop, looking between Rey and Alexa.
"It's best to just let him babble," Rey whispered in Alexa's ear with a slight smile.
"Why? Why would they come to earth, dump their tech here, and teach someone to grow it into an extremely prosperous island? I'd like to think it's because they're benevolent beings who wanted to expand human flourishing, but we've seen evidence that that's not the case." He narrowed his eyes. "Considering they just tried to kill us. So the fertility of the soil—or rather, not-soil—must be some kind of side effect. They need this island—they're growing it for them. So they can use it for—something. Some kind of…"
Something tickled at the back of Rey's mind and she reached for her staff before she could stop herself. The door. She turned, her heart pounding in her chest, and—
"Doctor," she hissed. "We've got company."
