The girl's slim form disappeared easily between the crowds that had gathered to stare at the damage the creature had done to the town square.
The Doctor followed her as closely as he could, but two streets away from the square, he spun around the next corner only to be faced with nothing but a wide, empty street.
It showed signs of holding a food market during the day, dropped or rotten produce kicked to the gutters, but no sign of the girl he'd been following.
The sun was beginning to set, and the shadows from the nearby abandoned and boarded up buildings were stretching out across the cobblestones, drawing the Doctor's eyes to flicker over the street, looking for somewhere the girl might have hidden or disappeared to.
She couldn't have vanished, he reasoned, he'd not been that far behind her.
Martha appeared at his side mere moments later and took a second to catch her breath before she looked up at him, "Did we lose her?"
"Hmm," the Doctor responded softly, "I think so..."
"Then why aren't you more upset?" she asked, and he shot her a surprised look, before rubbing at the back of his neck awkwardly. Embarrassment flooded through him as he became suddenly aware that he might not have given Martha a wonderful first impression of himself. With his barriers as weakened as they had been, his behaviour had been erratic at best since losing Rose to the parallel world.
He was lucky Martha had stuck around as long as she had, considering.
"Weelll... we might have lost the girl, for the moment, but I think we might have stumbled across something better," he explained, dropping his hand from his neck and pacing forward a few steps before spinning and shooting Martha an encouraging grin.
The grin on this body had always been particularly infectious, and he put it to good use now, despite the concern bubbling up in his mind over Rose's well being as the sun began to dip behind the buildings, drawing inexorably closer to the horizon the sky darkening and the warmth swiftly leaving the evening air. Just as he'd hoped Martha responded to his bright smile by shaking her head, her own amusement barely concealed with the motion and the Doctor relaxed.
"Like what?" she encouraged, impatiently prompting him to fill her in, and he let his grin widen further.
"I think we might have stumbled across the greatest source of information a city can have. Children," he said softly, and if he hadn't been listening for it he would have missed the soft gasp to his left.
His head whipped to the side, and spotted a flash of movements through an upstairs window on one of the abandoned buildings, and let his manic grin soften into a smile.
"Come along, Martha, I think we're expected," he said cheerfully. and bounded over to the front door, knocking loudly before tugging at the handle.
The latch gave way under his hand, the door slowly creaking open on rusty hinges, and the Doctor poked his head around the doorway to scan the inside of the crumbling building.
"Hello there! We come in peace!" he called, shooting Martha a look brimming with playful amusement when she smacked him on the arm, muttering under her breath about 'bloody aliens'.
The house was silent but, when he concentrated, he heard a scuffle of movement above them. It could have been a small animal, but combined with what he'd already spotted it gave him a good idea where the terrified kids were hiding.
"What did you mean?" Martha whispered at his side, "The greatest source of information?"
"No one pays attention to children, Martha," the Doctor explained as they stepped further into the house, and he closed the door behind them gently.
"They get dismissed, or ignored, but they're the greatest observers. They have to be, that's how they learn. It's only when we grow up that we stop paying attention to things around us. When you start thinking you already know it all is the day you stop listening to the universe."
Pointing towards the stairs, the pair of them began moving towards them. Climbing carefully, one step at a time, the Doctor made an effort to let his feet land heavily so that they didn't startle the inhabitants of the dilapidated house, and he climbed just high enough to peer over the edge of the threadbare carpet that lay across the upstairs landing.
Staring back at him from an open doorway was a young boy, all of five years old, and the Doctor's hearts broke at his half-starved state, but he moved up one more step, so the child could see his face, and offered a bright smile.
"Hello," he said softly, but the child gasped as though he'd shouted and scrabbled back into the room, fear plastered over his face.
"I think I need to come up with a new greeting, if 'hello' is going to keep getting reactions like this," he said over his shoulder, catching Martha's eyes and tilting his head for her to follow him.
They moved to the top of the stairs, and the Doctor led the way over to the room that the boy had retreated into, focussing on the whispers he could hear beyond the door.
"—Sorry, Lorna. I didn't think they'd see me..."
"It's too late for that now. Just keep out of sight—"
The Doctor pushed the door open slowly, revealing a large bedroom with scattered and broken furniture. By his count, there were six or seven children who immediately darted into hiding places as he stepped into the room.
One dove beneath the rusted metal bed, and another two shut themselves into a wardrobe, whose doors didn't quite meet in the middle, but the Doctor kept his calm gaze on the brown-haired urchin he'd chased through the streets.
She made no attempt to hide, just stood in the centre of the bedroom, masking her shaking hands by crossing her arms, as she levelled a harsh glare at him.
"What do you want!" the girl snarled, and he lifted his hands, palms up.
"Nothing! To talk. Just to talk. We're not going to hurt any of you. This is my friend, Martha—"
"We're not scared of you!" the girl snapped, and he shook his head, grinning, and lowered his hands slowly.
"No, 'course you're not. Can't be easily scared when you're taking care of this lot, right?" he offered, watching her carefully as her lips pressed together, and she narrowed her eyes in consideration.
"I promise, we're no threat to you," he reiterated softly, "we're not even from this planet, just visiting—"
"Well, go visit somewhere else. We don't want you," the girl growled, and the Doctor pushed his instinctive affection for her aside. She was strong and brave, and any attempt to treat her kindly wasn't going to endear him to her, so he offered a soft nod of understanding instead.
"We can't right now," Martha tried to explain, "the woman who volunteered to go with the scary monster is our friend, and—"
"S'not a monster!" someone shouted from the wardrobe, followed by a shushing sound, and the Doctor struggled not to laugh in delight at their innocence, despite the conditions they were surviving in.
"No! Course it's not, didn't hurt anyone, did it?" the Doctor agreed quickly, shooting Martha a reassuring grin when she flushed at her mistake.
"She was your friend?" the girl they'd followed through the streets asked, drawing the Doctor's eyes away from Martha and back to her and he offered her a gentle smile as he nodded.
"Yup. And while I know the creature didn't hurt her, I do need to get her back," he explained softly, "and something tells me you know more about it than anyone else I could ask around here."
The way she'd been inspecting the scratches in the square, and the children's defence of the creature confirmed his instincts as well, and after a long moment of hesitation, the girl's shoulders slumped in surrender and she nodded.
"Yeah, all right," she sighed, before glancing over her shoulder and letting her crossed arms drop to her sides. "Come on out, it's not like they didn't see yah," she called to the rest of the room, and several embarrassed looking faces appeared from around the room.
"Sorry, Lorna," a couple of them chorused, and a few of the others followed suit.
In a matter of moments, the Doctor and Martha were being stared at by about twelve children of varying ages. All of them were wearing threadbare clothes covered in dirt, their hair and skin clearly unwashed by anything other than the last rainfall, and the Doctor quickly moved to sit on the floor, cross-legged, and grinning around at them all.
Martha was quick to copy him, kneeling beside him as the oldest of the group, Lorna, pulled out a small sack and began handing out pieces of fruit and slices of meat pies that already had bites taken out of them, to the rest of the children.
It was obvious, to the Doctor, that she'd been scavenging leftovers from the tourists, and probably stealing what she couldn't scavenge, so he waited patiently for the girl to finish feeding the children scattered around the room, and tried not to glance out of the windows at the waning daylight.
Only when Lorna had finished handing out the food, did she sit opposite him, her own small portion balanced on her knees.
"What do you want to know?" she asked, biting into her meat pie, eating carefully and catching any crumbs that dropped with her free hand, and once again the Doctor felt his hearts break.
She didn't look much older than fourteen or fifteen, but he had been wrong about humans ages before. He set aside his guesses, and instead tried to organise the list of questions he needed answers to.
"Do you know what it is?" the Doctor started, and Lorna shrugged one shoulder.
"Not for sure, I mean... I've heard some of the tourists who've spotted it call it a 'Vovin', but I don't know if they're right. The locals just scream and run, usually."
"A Vovin!" the Doctor repeated, eyebrows all but vanishing into his hairline with surprise, and Martha nudged at his arm.
"What's a Vovin, Doctor?" she asked softly, and he shook his head as surprise stole his words for a moment.
"They're... well, they used to go to Earth to lay their eggs, but then humans started killing them so they relocated," he told her, "they're exceptionally rare. A fair number of species hunt them for their scales. Extraordinarily tough and often used to make armour. Basically impenetrable, once they've been through a curing process, but I've not seen one in hundreds of years!"
"Okay, but what is it?" Martha asked, and the Doctor flushed, running his hands through his hair and clearing his throat awkwardly.
"Oh, well... uh, they're... they're basically dragons," he admitted, pouting as Martha tried to hide her grin behind her hand, and he continued swiftly in a futile attempt at drawing attention away from the fact that he'd had to retract his earlier declaration that dragons didn't exist.
"They're not like your myths and legends, though, despite all appearances suggesting otherwise. They're usually quite peaceful. The fire breathing was used as a territorial display for other Vovin's, so I'm not sure why this one decided to hold the town hostage," he admitted. It was when Lorna snorted softly that he realised that all the kids had been hanging off his words, their eyes wide in amazement.
"Probably because they tried killing it," the girl told him, and his eyes widened.
"What?! But— But Vovin hunting was outlawed!" he exclaimed, "They were recognised as a sentient species by the Shadow Proclamation in—"
"Someone died," Lora cut him off, shrugging, but she would no longer meet his eyes as she picked at a stem of grapes. The atmosphere in the room changed at her words, and the Doctor let his gaze wander across the kids, most of whom had already finished their meagre meal.
None of them were watching Lorna anymore, most of them kept their eyes down or focussed somewhere else in the room, and the Doctor felt his shoulders tense. He needed to speak to the girl without an audience, and he quickly dug through his coat pockets before pulling out a large first aid kit and handing it to Martha.
"Martha, you're a doctor, why don't you check these guys over. See if there're any injuries we can help with while we're here," he suggested, shooting her a pleading look and the woman nodded.
"Sure, sounds like a good idea. Basic check-ups are important," she said quickly, but most of the kids were wrinkling their noses and the Doctor wondered what their experiences were with medical professionals.
Before he could convince them that Martha wouldn't hurt them, or they could voice their complaints, Lorna cleared her throat and told them all to behave.
With only minimal complaints, the group followed Martha out of the bedroom, the medical student telling them all that she needed a table and a couple of chairs as they went, and the Doctor smiled.
He waited until the door closed behind them, leaving Lorna and himself in the bedroom, before he finally turned his full attention on the girl and sighed softly, knowing that he was going to have to ask her to share something that she clearly found upsetting.
"Who died, Lorna?" he asked softly, and she stood slowly, only to sit on the edge of the bed that had been left in the room whenever the building had been abandoned.
"The first time I saw it, I thought it was a lizard," she started softly, "but it didn't run away, like other lizards, and we played together for weeks. I'd catch mice and feed them to it.
"Eventually it started talking to me. It would mimic me, at first, so I started reading my books to it. I'd catch a mouse or two, feed it, and then lay in the fields reading while it curled up on my stomach. It was my friend."
Her arms were curled around her waist, hugging herself as the evening shadows crept in, and while the Doctor wanted to urge her story forward, to find the answers he needed to get Rose back, he let the young woman speak in her own time.
"My brother, Jacob, he followed me out to the fields one day. He was older than me by about four years... I think he was ten, so I must have been six, but I'm not really sure," she admitted, before shaking her head.
"Anyway, he found us reading, and he was worried about me... right up until it spoke. Then he was just fascinated. He'd come out to the fields with me after that. Helped me to catch things for it to eat as it grew larger, and when I got old enough for chores, we'd take it in turns to go and keep it company.
"When I went to school, I made friends and I introduced the Vovin to my friends, so did Jacob, and there was a group of us who would go and play out in the fields after school. The creature grew up alongside us, and Jacob taught it how to fly by watching birds. It studied our school books and our homework, and kept getting larger until it could glide along the tops of the wheat fields while carrying one of us on its back..."
As the memories swirled in her eyes, a beautiful smile bloomed across the girl's features. Joy and happiness radiated out from her, but the Doctor already knew that someone had died, so when the happiness evaporated he managed to resist flinching at the darkness that overtook her bright blue gaze.
"It was just a normal day. We were all playing, and Jacob jumped on its back. His foot slipped and he scratched his hand on one of its claws. The cut didn't bleed much, and the Vovin was so upset... It was the only time any of us ever saw it cry. It insisted we go home and get healed, but by the next morning Jacob had a fever and a doctor was called out to the house."
Lorna's eyes fell closed, two singular tears fell from her eyes and silently tracked their way down her face as she continued, her voice still unwavering.
"They said he'd been poisoned, but they couldn't treat it unless they knew what he'd been poisoned with."
She took a slow breath in, and released it, shaking her head, "Jacob wouldn't tell them. When our parents were out of the room, begging the doctor to give them some kind of hope, I pleaded with him to tell them about our lizard friend... but he refused. He said he wouldn't put the creature at risk, so I... I told the doctors about the Vovin," she admitted quietly.
"I was eleven, but I understood that they wanted to kill it. I explained that it was our friend. That the injury had been an accident, and that we could just ask it for anything we needed. A sample of the poison, they said and agreed to let me speak with it... but they followed me. Ambushed it, and the Vovin flew away to escape."
"I went back to the field every day for a week, but it never came back and Jacob died," she finished shortly, swallowing hard against the emotions in her throat, and the Doctor could taste the anger, frustration, and grief in the air of the room.
"Jacob knew I told them. I don't know if the doctors said, or our parents or if he just overheard something... but he never forgave me. He died hating me," she admitted, her voice finally cracking and the Doctor could no longer resist her tear-stained face, rising up on his knees to pull the girl into a gentle hug.
"He might have been disappointed, Lorna, but it sounds like the two of you were very close," the Doctor told her as she cried, hands fished in the lapels of his jacket and her face hidden against his shoulder, "I doubt very much that he hated you."
It took a long time for the tears to stop, but he let her cry, gently running a soothing hand across her shaking shoulders and the Doctor had to wonder if she'd ever told this story in its completion before, and that brought to mind another question.
How had she ended up here, on the streets, looking after her fellow homeless children when she'd had two parents at the end of her tale? The question was on the tip of his tongue, but it wasn't important for finding Rose, and he wouldn't put the girl through any more traumatic memories just for the sake of his curiosity.
Eventually, her sobs subsided, and Lorna slowly pulled back from him, cheeks flushed from tears and embarrassment, but the Doctor just offered her a smile as he sank back to the floor.
"Still, that doesn't explain why it demanded one person go with it," he muttered, frowning into the darkness that now coated the room and pointedly not watching Lorna dry her face, giving her a moment to gather her composure.
"Why did you say 'it'?" Martha asked from the doorway, and the Doctor turned his head to smile at the woman standing with a small candle in a holder and stepping into the room slowly, bringing the light with her and setting it on a wobbly bedside table.
"I don't know if it's a boy or a girl," Lorna answered, sniffing lightly. "It didn't know either," she added and the Doctor's frown deepened.
"Is this the only Vovin you've ever seen?" he asked, and the girl nodded.
"That's not right," the Doctor muttered, "there should be an adult around to teach it how to fly, how to hunt—"
"We taught it how to hunt, Jacob taught it how to fly," Lorna reminded him, and the Doctor pressed his lips together, a picture beginning to build in his mind.
"Any idea how I can find it?" he asked, not expecting the dark glare that suddenly overtook Lorna's features as she crossed her arms stubbornly.
"Why?" she demanded, and the Doctor blinked at her, surprised by the venom she'd managed to inject into her single word demand.
"We don't want to hurt it," Martha explained quickly, and the Doctor drew a sharp breath. Surely that's not what the girl had thought? But as he watched her slowly relax in response to Martha's reassurances, he realised that had been exactly what Lorna had believed.
"We just need to find our friend," Martha continued, "and I imagine the Doctor wants to talk to it. He does a lot of that, you know. Talks," Martha teased, and Lorna giggled softly, the gentle sound wiping away the pout he'd been shooting at his companion.
"Well... I don't know where it is, but it used to like caves. There's a few cave systems nearby it could be using, but I know the town guard have been trying to track it too. Every time they get too close, it moves on... There are only a couple of places left that the Vovin could be using. Soon, they'll catch up with it," she explained sadly.
"We'll see if we can help it," the Doctor reassured her gently, "don't worry." In a worst-case scenario, he could always offer to take the Vovin to another planet, but he hoped it wouldn't come to that. It had made Scobee its home, and relocating it would be difficult.
"Lorna?" A soft voice came from the doorway, and one of the children from earlier, a young boy with a fresh bandage around his wrist, was standing there looking anxious.
"What's wrong?" Lorna asked, and the boy shifted nervously.
"I know you told us not to follow the creature... but... uh... I did..." the child admitted, and the Doctor glanced at Lorna in time to see her features morph quickly between concern, fear and worry, before settling on resignation.
"I mean... s'not like I could keep up with it, but... I could see which direction it went in. It's in the caves to the North right now," the boy explained, scuffing his feet across the dusty wooden floorboards.
"You shouldn't have done that. You could have been hurt," Lorna scolded "you could have been followed."
She paused, and shook her head, sighing, "but... you've helped these people. Thank you for telling me. For being honest," she admitted gently, and the boy smiled shyly, running across the room and launching himself at her so that she was forced to catch him in a hug or let him fall, face first, across the bed.
Something told the Doctor she wouldn't even let the children under her care fall.
"Right then," he announced, climbing to his feet once the pair separated, "think you can point us in the right direction so we can head out first thing in the morning?" he asked, rubbing his hands together eagerly, and Martha was instantly hovering at his elbow.
Lorna glanced at him in open surprise, but a look of determination quickly plastered itself across her features and he swallowed back genuine trepidation at the obvious signs of human stubbornness.
"No," Lorna said simply, "once the sun comes up the town guard will be on the hunt. I'll take you now," she said simply.
"Map? Directions?" the Doctor begged, but she just glared at him until his shoulders slumped in defeat and Martha stepped towards the girl, tugging her into a one-armed hug and thanking her quietly as the Doctor sighed.
"Okay, fine," he conceded reluctantly, his voice quiet, "we go now."