A/N Major, major apologies for taking so long to update! Life and lack of focus got in the way. I promise the next chapter will be posted much much sooner! Thanks for sticking with me for this long process, and most especial thanks to Emma! Please do leave a review, it helps motivate me ;)
Her hand momentarily forgotten, Clara stared at the crumpled paper, dimly aware of the Doctor puttering about her attic room in the background. The more she stared at it, the writing on the paper went in and out of focus, seeming to change from the distinctive circles of Gallifreyan writing to English characters and back again. It was making her dizzy.
A particularly ominous sounding thump finally brought Clara's attention back to the Doctor, and more specifically, the disaster the Doctor was making of her room. The quilt from her bed was spread out on the floor, and the contents of several dresser drawers were already dumped in its centre.
"What are you doing?"
"Packing," he said shortly.
"This is your idea of- wait! Who said I'm going anywhere?"
The Doctor didn't answer, but kept puttering around the room.
"Doctor. Doctor. Stop. Stop it. I'm not going anywhere. Hey!" She grabbed his hand on the handle of the bottom drawer before he could open it. The Doctor might know the contents of her skull and her DNA but he did NOT need to know the contents of her knicker drawer. He stilled at the contact.
"Doctor."
"You're not safe here," he said flatly.
"According to you I'm not safe anywhere."
"You're not."
"Then where do you think I'm going?" He still hadn't let go of the drawer handle.
"The TARDIS. You are moving onto the TARDIS. Now. I...don't argue. Please." There was a wildness in his eyes that she didn't recognize.
Clara sighed. After wrestling with herself for a moment, she grabbed his other hand and pulled him toward the door. Or tried to, rather. It was like trying to move a particularly stubborn iceberg. After a moment she gave up and headed for the door.
"Where are you going?"
"I can't deal with you on an empty stomach." What she really wanted right now was a drink, but she didn't think she should go out with pandas on her pyjama bottoms. She was halfway down the stairs before she remembered her knicker drawer. She decided to keep walking, her head held high.
Sephesi III was a water world. Its residents lived almost exclusively on huge floating cities, barge-like feats of engineering thousands of miles wide. Deep saline oceans covered all but the smallest landmasses, which were scattered at the highest elevations of the underwater mountains. At some point in its distant past, however, it had been somewhat less saturated. At that time, of course, is when the bipedal residents became industrial.
Back then, the Esephesians called their world Bnt'itek, and called themselves the B'teka. There were landmasses then, and deep deposits of metal ores not commonly found in other parts of the galaxy. Their engineers grew skilled, and considered impossible tasks a challenge.
"Why must we sail across the oceans like our ancestors?" they asked. "Why must we be subject to the whims of the weather gods, who don't like us very much anyway?" Why indeed, the engineers replied, and thus sub-aquatic tunnels were built. Not from such week materials as steel or concrete, these passages were built to withstand earthquakes, explosions, and the general wear and tear of a thousand generations.
Long after the icecaps began to melt, and the B'teka, now the Esephesians, had taken to the seas, the tunnels waited, waiting to be used once more. Long after the Esephesians had forgotten the working of such impermeable metals, they waited, all but forgotten.
And long, long after they had passed from memory to mythology, the oceans once again reminded the world that time was, indeed, implacable.
And with the softest of drip, drip, drips, one tunnel, a smallish maintenance passage hardly worth considering, sealed off from the rest of the network by a long sealed bulkhead, began to leak.
Vastra awakened with a start. Sniffing the air, she would swear she wasn't alone, but no one was there. How very strange.
Upon occasion, Vastra had, of course, been known to indulge herself in a little bask in the late afternoon sun, warming her bones to near somnolence. Or, as Jenny so eloquently put it, "bakin' 'erself like a snake on a rock." It was, however, quite unusual for Vastra to fall asleep in the middle of her workroom, in the middle of the day and in full morning dress?
"Jenny, my dear, where are you?" Vastra was not surprised when there was no answer, as Vastra's basement work area was generally out of the girl's range of hearing. Although it was a little disconcerting that even her own keen ears could not distinguish any of the minor thuds and random explosions that usually accompanied laundry day. Perhaps Strax had run out of soap again.
Oh, how her mind did wander! Straightening her gown, Vastra reminded herself that she had come down to her workroom for a reason. It wasn't like her to be so absent-minded. Perhaps some air would stir her motivation and freshen her purpose.
Ascending the stairs, she had the oddest feeling she was forgetting something...