INTERLUDE
The music was the only thing that made it bearable. Lots of the higher ups didn't believe it was necessary to communicate through something like song. It was hard to put Gallifreyan into a song, because their words were not always the right ones. The songs became too complex and big to be beautiful. It was the song of the Ood that first made her fall in love with music. Papa had taken her there once. She remembered it. He had been too busy to hear the music, but she had. Their music made you stop and listen, made you cry because of the beauty, and no Time Lord had time for that. Which confused the girl because they kept saying they had all the time in the world.
"Please, Papa, I want some music."
"Whatever for?"
"I don't want to hear the drums of war."
"The what?"
"Master said the sounds we hear are the drums of war. I don't want to hear them. I want to hear music." And then he had sat down on the end of her bed.
"Hmm. Maybe we can make some music. What music?"
"A song, like your stories! But sing it."
"Who shall it be about?"
"Who it is always about, Papa. About the Traveling Man!" Her father smiled and started to make up some verses. The old soldier, so revered, singing a childish song to his daughter.
Children care very little for fame and status.
And the child giggled and clapped her hands and with a kiss on the forehead, he tucked the covers around her.
"Papa, are you leaving again?"
"The Traveling Man has work to do, darling. To keep you safe, just like I said."
"Come back, then."
"Of course. Don't listen to those drums, sing our song instead."
THE BOY TIME FORGOT
Ashton Karlsson sat at the skatepark like he did every Wednesday, mostly because he had nothing better to do. He lived in a section of town where the inhabitants were either ancient or too young to play outside unsupervised. Somehow he was the only teenager in the area or at least the only one he'd seen. No one came to the skate park anymore. Grass grew between the cracks of the concrete and even the graffiti was faded. He sat on the edge of a ramp and ran his skateboard up and down it with his foot, waiting. Though for what he had no idea.
The entrance to the park was a low chain link fence overgrown with weeds because no one actually used that entrance. Adelè had always hopped the fence or invented some ridiculously complicated way to climb a tree and drop down or toss her board over and try to land on it before it rolled away. Ashton tried to form her picture in his mind: leggings, a tank-top usually emblazoned with a superhero logo or a skate brand, neon green converse, all manner of rubber band bracelets for bands and political causes, different colored beanie over her two black braids, and a tattoo of crown above the crook of her elbow. He smirked at that, he remembered how their mother had thrown a fit over it.
Adelè had always skated since finding an old penny board in a second hand store. And when she saved up for a new one, she'd given him the old one and so for as long as he could remember after that, he'd trailed behind her in second-hand sneakers and Vans t-shirt. The image faded from his mind and he opened the paperback sci-fi novel he was trying to read. His thoughts kept wandering away. In his book they were speculating time travel and quantum nonsense that wasn't exactly real science; he didn't mind. But he kept thinking, was time moving past him or was he moving through time? Was time ever really moving? Or was it just how people measured the rate of decay? Did time really exist? Or maybe he was the one standing still, being washed over in waves of time. But nothing ever seemed to really move around him. Things just stayed. And stayed. And stayed.
"Hey!"
He looked up. Standing in the gap between the chain link fence was a box made up of more colors than he had seen in a long time and it spread tiny rainbows everywhere as it caught the light. Standing in a sort of doorway was a girl about his age with dirty blonde hair and a blue flannel shirt too big for her. She stumbled out and waved again, but not a wave of greeting. She seemed panicked. Behind her came an old man holding something in his arms.
"Please," the blonde girl cried, "Helps us!"