"Earth fruit...screams?" Sarah asked.
"Course it does," the Doctor repeated. He wrinkled his nose thoughtfully. "Depending how fresh it is. They're loudest when they've just been picked." He reached up with a long arm and plucked one of the bigger fruits from a high branch, then handed it to Sarah.
"No, thanks," she said, backing away a step.
"Come on," he said gently. "You're starving. Besides, I need you to taste test it."
"But...it doesn't want to be eaten."
He chuckled. "It doesn't care. It's not sentient. Just alive."
Sarah frowned at the fruit. "Well...."
"Go on," he said.
She took it from him and started to rub it across the front of her dress to clean it, then stopped. That worked for polishing apples at home, but with the state her clothes were in, she'd probably just make the fruit dirtier if she tried it. She gave the Doctor one last doubtful glance, then tentatively sank her teeth into the alien fruit.
She jumped when the scream came, then froze, her face screwed up unhappily. But the Doctor was nodding encouragement, so she finished taking a bite and then gingerly chewed the bit of fruit. As it didn't seem to have anything more to say about the process, and it tasted absolutely marvelous, she didn't need any more encouragement.
"Taste like a pear?" the Doctor asked, leaning his head in toward her, his eyebrows furrowed.
Sarah took another bite, ignored the ensuing scream, and chewed thoughtfully. "Not at all," she assured him. "Donna?" She turned to the red-haired woman for confirmation.
Donna had chucked the first fruit away so precipitately when it screamed that she hadn't actually managed a taste, so she picked another one and, with a deep breath and a determined look, bit a chunk out of it. She closed her eyes at the scream but persisted in chewing, and in a moment, her eyes opened, and her eyebrows went up in pleased surprise. "Not a bit like a pear," she said. She chewed some more. "Not like anything I've ever tasted."
"Here, try some," Sarah said, offering the unbitten side of her fruit to the Doctor. He didn't actually take a step back, but he leaned away warily. "Come on then," she said with a grin. "Taste it with me." She took another big bite and, as she chewed, closed her eyes and sent the flavor she was experiencing into his mind. She felt him resist for a second, then his curiosity and hunger overcame his reluctance and he was inside her head, tasting the fruit with her.
Sarah wasn't sure which felt better, putting something besides grass goo in her achingly empty stomach, or renewing the touch of their minds. Between the two, it was the best moment she'd had since they'd been teleported to this world. She opened her eyes and grinned euphorically at him. He grinned back, then took a big bite out of the fruit she held. As he chewed and swallowed,she experienced the flavor of the fruit through Time Lord taste buds as well as her own, felt the juice moistening his dry mouth and throat as it was moistening hers, and, to her surprise, felt his hunger, as deep and aching as her own. She looked at him with wide eyes.
"I do need to eat," he said in response to her unspoken question. "I can manage without food better than a human can, but still... It's been a long time since nibbles at the Regimental Ball."
"Hasn't it just," Donna agreed around a mouthful of fruit.
"Even for a Time Lord," he agreed quietly, picking two more of the alien fruits, biting into one and handing the other to Sarah Jane.
They walked on, eating as they went, feeling stronger than they had in days for having a bit of real food in their stomachs.
"I could still murder a pizza," Donna said, throwing away the core of her third fruit.
Sarah and the Doctor "mmm'd" dreamily in unison at the thought of pizza, then laughed.
"Better not overdo it," the Doctor said as Donna reached for another fruit. "Give your stomach a chance to adjust."
Just then, Sarah stopped in her tracks, her eyes wide, listening for all she was worth. The Doctor stopped a second later and turned to look enquiringly at her. "Do you hear it?" she breathed.
He didn't bother to ask what, just lifted his chin and turned his head slowly from side to side. Then a huge, open-mouthed grin lighted up his face. "Come on!" he cried, and took off at a run.
Donna and Sarah caught up with him quickly. They found him stopped, standing, on a low bank by what looked for all the world like a wide river of cool, clear water.
"Water!" Sarah said, heading at a run toward the bank.
The Doctor threw out an arm in front of her just as she was about to leap off. "Whoa. Easy. Let me check it out first."
"It looks like water, it sounds like water, it sparkles like water... What else could it be?"
He peered at her. "Acid that could dissolve you." Sarah frowned at the river, then at the Time Lord. He went on. "Or it could be full of toxic microbes. Or nasty big beasties that could swallow you at a gulp."
That cooled her ardor for a wash...just about. "Oh." She looked longingly at the smooth, peaceful-seeming surface. "Is it?"
The Doctor had whipped out his sonic and was beaming it at the water, taking readings, changing the settings, aiming it at different parts of the river and taking more readings.
"Doesn't seem to be," he muttered after a bit. "Just a few life forms above the size of plankton and they're not very big. Not big enough to swallow you at a gulp, at any rate."
"And the pH?"
He consulted the sonic again. "Seven. Near enough anyway. Tad alkaline."
"Alright then," Sarah said, taking a step closer to the bank.
The Doctor held her back again and gave her a stern look. "Piranha are not very big, as fish go," he said pointedly. "But you don't want to go swimming with them."
Sarah's shoulders sagged. She blew out of a puff of air and reluctantly stepped back from the edge of the bank. "Are they alien piranha, then?" she asked wistfully.
The Doctor twisted the sonic and beamed it here and there at the surface of the water. "Don't seem to be," he muttered.
Sarah perked up again. "So." He looked up from the sonic and into her eyes. "It is water?"
He nodded. "Yes."
"Safe for bathing?"
He paused a moment before answering. "As far as I can tell."
She fixed him with a wild stare and a devilish grin. "Then come on." She held out a hand to him.
He looked at her hand as if it had suddenly grown scales. "Sarah..."
"Come on," she insisted, kicking off the battered remnants of her shoes.
The Doctor looked at Donna for support, but she just folded her arms and shrugged her shoulders. "I'm waiting to see if you two get eaten," she said helpfully. The Time Lord gave her a quick glower, then turned back to Sarah.
"You were never this cautious in the old days," Sarah said. "You'd just jump right in."
"And that didn't always work out very well, did it? I'm older and wiser now," he said with a frown. Then his expression softened, the old glint came into his eyes, and one corner of his mouth curled up. "Oh, what the hell," he said, pulling off his trainers, dropping his jacket on the ground and taking her hand. Together, they backed up a few steps from the edge of the bank. "Ready?" he asked.
She grinned. "Always."
"One...two...three!" On three, they took off running at top speed toward the river. When they reached the drop-off, they leaped as high and as far as they could, screaming at the top of their lungs, arms and legs flailing wildly.
Sarah felt herself pulled through the air as his long legs catapulted them both much farther out over the water than she ever could have managed on her own. For one glorious moment they soared together, then...
Splash! They landed in the river.
"Bloody hell!" Sarah sputtered as her mouth fell open and she wrapped her arms around herself. "You didn't warn me it was f-f-f-freezing!"
"Is it?" the Doctor said mildly as he lay back on the surface of the water, waving his arms gently and flutter kicking to keep himself afloat. "I s'pose it is a bit bracing."
"B-b-b-bracing!" Sarah gasped incredulously as a series of full-body shivers shook her.
"You humans have such a narrow range of temperatures you find comfortable," the Doctor mused, back-stroking his way in a circle around her, keeping his head turned in her direction all the while. "Amazing you ever manage to conquer the universe the way you do."
"Th-tha-that's because we..." Sarah blew out of puff of air. "W-w-we're adaptable."
The Doctor stopped paddling around and stood up. The water only came to the level of his waist. "You need some help?" he asked, mostly kindly, but with a bit of a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
"N-n-no, I'm..." She moaned, blew out another big breath, and bit her lower lip. "...getting used to it." She inhaled and exhaled deeply a few times, then took in a breath, held it, and ducked under the water.
Her skin had gone numb by this point, but numb or not, she still felt filthy and utterly sick of it. She scrubbed at her hair underwater, digging at her scalp with her fingernails. Oh, God, glorious water, cold though it was. She didn't let herself think about a tub of it, warm and full of bubbles, just relished the icy touch of the river, washing away the dust and dirt of...how long had it been? Longer than she could remember ever going without a wash before, that's for sure.
She came up for air and rubbed her hands over her arms, scrubbing away at the accumulated dirt. She glanced back toward the riverbank and saw that Donna was doing the same, although more cautiously, wading in up to her ankles and bending down to splash water on her arms and face. Sarah sank back down until just her head and shoulders were above the water, then shimmied out of her wet ball gown. Pulling it off over her head, she waved it around in the water, then pulled it up, gathering it in her two hands and wringing out the water, sweat, and dirt. She started to repeat the process when she suddenly felt something touch her leg underwater.
She shrieked, dropped her dress and leaped as far away from that spot as she could. She was about to make a run for the bank when a head emerged from the water, wet brown hair plastered to its forehead, mouth open in a big cheeky grin.
Sarah rolled her eyes at him. "Not funny," she said dryly. He just grinned wider, dove after her dress, snagged it and brought it back to her. "Thank you," she said primly, taking it from him and reluctantly putting it back on. At least it was a little cleaner now, she thought as she walked out of the river and up on the bank, running her hands down her front and sides to try to squeegee as much water out of her clothes as she could.
The Doctor emerged from the river behind her, pulled off his wet shirt, rolled it up, gave it a good wring, then shook it out and hung it over a nearby shrub. He retrieved his dinner jacket from the bank, pulled the sonic out of a pocket, and gave the wet shirt a quick going-over with a wide-angle blue beam. As he pulled it back on, he glanced at Sarah.
"Ooh," he said, frowning. He reached out with a long finger and gently touched her lips. "Interesting shade of blue. Not sure I've ever seen that on a human before."
"It was w-w-worth it," Sarah said through chattering teeth. "I feel a h-h-hundred percent better."
"Except for freezing," Donna observed. She had found a good-sized boulder and was half-sitting, half-leaning on it, shaking the front of her skirt in the air to encourage it to dry.
"Right. Exc-c-cept for that," Sarah agreed.
The Doctor shook his head, chuckling softly. "Give me your dress."
Sarah pulled the wet garment off over her head and handed it to him, then wrapped her arms around herself. She hadn't thought she could get any colder, but standing there in just her wet skimpies, she found out she'd been wrong.
"Donna, stand up," the Doctor said as he wrung the worst of the water out of Sarah's dress and then shook it and hung it on the shrub, as he had done with his shirt.
Donna gave him a perplexed look, but obliged.
"Step away from the rock," the Doctor added, when she didn't do anything but stand up.
She jumped away from the boulder and looked at it suspiciously. "Why? Is it going to bite me?"
He grinned and aimed the sonic at her recent seat. "No, I just need to get Sarah warmed up." An intense blue beam shot out of the screwdriver and played over the rock. Nothing seemed to happen at first, but as the seconds ticked by, Sarah began to feel warmth emanating from its surface. She stepped closer, holding her hands out to it as if it were a roaring fire.
"Careful," the Doctor said softly. She glanced over at him. "Don't get in the beam."
Donna was also holding her hands out toward the rock, enjoying the heat. "Why not? Wouldn't it warm her up?"
"Mmm-hmm," the Doctor agreed. "Just like a microwave warms up your dinner."
Sarah and Donna exchanged wide-eyed looks and stepped back a pace in unison. The Doctor threw them a crooked grin, then changed the settings on the sonic and started drying Sarah's dress.
"Oh, I want to hug this rock," Sarah said, hovering over it and letting the heat it was now radiating start to thaw her out.
"Kinky," Donna said.
Sarah laughed. Before she could respond, though, Donna straightened to her full height and stared intently into the trees. "What was that?" she asked, all humor gone from her voice.
The Doctor was instantly alert. "What was what?" he asked, handing Sarah her nearly-dry dress.
"Something moved. Back there," Donna said, nodding toward the trees.
Sarah quickly threw the dress on, then scanned the woods behind them. "There. I saw it too." she said as a flash of movement caught her eye.
The Doctor started moving, quickly but cautiously, in that direction. Sarah and Donna followed.
A head popped up out of the bushes twenty feet in front of them. A shaggy, pale-green head with mossy fur and luminous dark eyes.
"It's the New!" Sarah breathed.
"Oi! You!" Donna had come to the same conclusion and was hollering at the creature.
"Shhh." The Doctor shushed her. "Don't scare it away. We need it." He glanced around, assessing the terrain. "Spread out," he said quietly, heading off to the left.
Sarah and Donna exchanged a quick look, then the red-head started easing off to the right while Sarah proceeded slowly up the middle toward the creature that held the power to send them home. Oh, home! Sarah thought longingly, her pulse pounding in her ears, her eyes fixed on the shrubbery ahead. I never appreciated you properly before!
The creature turned its enormous eyes on her as she slowly approached. It had communicated telepathically with them before, so she did her best to send out calming, non-threatening thoughts, letting it know how much they wanted to talk to it, how very happy they were to see it again, and that they held no grudges against it for what it had done. "Easy," she said softly when it startled as a branch snapped under her foot. "Everything's all right."
The creature jumped at the sound of her voice and started to leap away. The Doctor and Donna had circled around behind it, though, and were ready. As it tried to bolt between them, the Doctor caught it in his long arms and held it firmly, one arm around its body, the other in front of its chest.
Sarah and Donna hurried up to help him contain the agitated creature.
"OK, you," Donna said, grabbing it by its cheeks and turning its face so it looked directly into hers. "What is your story? Why did you bring us here and then abandon us in the middle of nowhere?"
The creature, unable to turn away, stared into Donna's blazing green eyes with a look of sheer terror. It bucked and struggled but Sarah and the Doctor held it tightly. Finally, it opened its mouth.
"Ma-a-a-a-a!" it bleated, sounding for all the world like a little lost lamb.