So I don't want to be one of those people who require a certain number of reviews before each update, but just note that reviews definitely do encourage me to update. :) To be honest I'm kind of sad there was only one review for the last chapter… I was really curious what you guys would think was happening. (Thanks for the constant support, Pro-LifeCatholic. You da bomb. :) I mean, you still could formulate some thoughts before reading this one, if you feel so inclined, but I'll of course completely understand if you don't.
Well enough of that. There's not as much content or explanation in this chapter as I'd hoped, but once again it got longer than I expected (this is the longest one so far, in fact), and as it's been a while, I wanted to give you guys something. It's not what I planned, but I'm happy with it.
We're nearing the end—I'm thinking no more than four more chapters after this one, but definitely at least two. Hope you have enjoyed the ride, and continue to do so.
And since this will likely be the last update of 2015… I wish you all a merry Christmas, and a happy New Year! In any event, regardless of your creed or customs, I hope you enjoy the next few weeks.
Nothing made sense. There was too much happening at once for any of it to connect in a discernably logical manner. She was seeing a million sights, hearing a million sounds, smelling a million smells. Her skin was being pulled and prodded and caressed and rubbed and poked in every possible area, and her mouth was filled with the taste of every food she'd ever eaten, and so many she never had.
Time had lost meaning—this could have been going on for a few seconds or a few hours and she wouldn't know—when it all started to drift apart. It wasn't that any of it was becoming any less vivid; more like it was being… spaced out, giving her the choice to focus on different parts of it while the rest raged in the background. She didn't know how it happened—it certainly wasn't her doing, unless her mind had just adapted to this madness on its own—but she was grateful.
Most of the sights she was seeing were fairly dark, but some hint of brightness in the shadows drew her in its direction—not that anything spatial was really going on, but it was the best description available to her right now. She saw hands stretched out before her, but they were not her own. They were deathly pale, resembling human hands but much smaller, with thick skin and longer fingers in proportion to the entire hands.
The hands came to a rest on a tiny patch of sunlit stone, and she felt its smoothness and its warmth. She hadn't a bloody clue how, but there it was—the sensation was unmistakable. She felt a tingle spread across her skin, a thrill of excitement physically manifesting itself.
Somewhere far off, another sensation practically exploded, successfully winning over her attention. She was there in an instant, and she felt her entire body shake. She tumbled to the floor, but the quaking around her did not stop. Innumerable particles of dust danced in the thin shafts of light that fell into the cave. Sharp pain stabbed through her arm as she was thrown to the side and into something hard, and all around her mighty rumbles reverberated through the earth. Or… the Cirula. An enormous crash split the air, and she unconsciously reached up to her ear to test for blood.
Panic shot through her, but the sensations faded as she pulled away from them. Somewhere after that she caught glimpses of hands pointing this way and that before her, though not the same hands as before… scores of those huge lizards moving about and pushing stones like a well-oiled machine… rocks being cleared out from the higher areas of the cave…
She saw a small form scurry in through the sliver of light far away from her, and she saw a larger, darker form immediately beset it. She felt a rough tongue that was not hers lick chapped lips that were not hers. She watched orange tongues of flame flare up before her, red meat roast on the spit. She felt the savory sweetness of an especially nourishing meal, and she watched the construction of a series of traps just underneath the surface, through which many more such meals were delivered.
She felt another pair of alien hands test the smooth stone before her, measuring it with the naked eye in as many ways as possible. Something jagged broke the tough skin of her palm, and warm liquid oozed out, but, slowly but surely, the small shards she held were gradually formed into the perfect tools. A definable shape began to emerge from the large rock she had chosen as time passed, and she felt a twinge of pride, knowing that what had been nothing special before now held new beauty and new meaning thanks to her labors.
An almost constant presence was the lizards they'd seen coating the cave walls—the guards. It made sense. They were ever vigilant, at least one or two of them somewhere within speaking distance at all times. She learned that they blinked once a minute on average, their skin was far smoother than it appeared, and they were probably only a little smarter than the average dog, but far stronger. Initially, they had had nowhere comfortable to sleep, no reliable way to make sure they had enough food for themselves, especially in the harsher seasons. Building shelters for them out of stone and smoothing out the floor was backbreaking work on its own, not to mention setting up ways to traverse the caves more safely and quickly so as to collect more food—the invention of the wheel had been a great help there—but their loyal guards and companions deserved to live more comfortably.
At one time, she watched from the shadows as an Upper Cirulian stumbled into the cavern—not the one to which the Doctor had led them; this was somewhere else. She recognized the species, of course, but at the same time felt her eyebrows knit together in an indication that she'd never seen its kind before. All guards in the vicinity were stationed in plain view, ready and watching. The figure veered far to the side, and finally crashed into the ground.
She felt her feet beat against the stone, carrying her forward to the fallen creature. Immediately three lizards were upon her, urging her back, but she saw the still body—not lifeless, but helpless. She saw the rise and fall of its chest, the panic in its sightless eyes, and she saw the creature she felt some connection to but that she, as Donna, did not understand… suckling at the still form's ankle.
Hot tears rolled down her cheeks.
It was all happening at the same time; all these little scenes she managed to glimpse were spread over a period of who knew how many years. She couldn't keep track of all of it, or she knew she'd go mad, but somehow, its bits and pieces remained clear, standing comprehensibly on their own. She saw throngs of her brethren and the glint of bared teeth and—very rarely—the white light of the Cirulian sun. She smelled fresh dirt, smoke and ash, scores of plant species, fear, petrichor, decay—some things intoxicating and undefinable and some things she could have gone without. She tasted mushrooms and spicy meat and fresh water and salty tears and blood on her tongue. She felt her bones crack and water drip on her head and the warmth of a thousand separate embraces. At times she even felt some physical manifestation of the utter frustration of needing something, but being unable to get at it, or even pinpoint where it might be.
She witnessed lives, hundreds or maybe even thousands of very real lives playing out before her—and as she came to this realization, it became almost overwhelming. She was certain that she was currently experiencing the worst agony, the greatest comfort, and everything in between of every single craftsman that had ever graced the caves of Cirula.
And then, all at once, it stopped.
At first she floated in nothing but blackness. She saw nothing, she heard nothing. Everything she had just experienced echoed in her every sense, but there was no longer any real input. It was all just… echoes. And then it was oblivion.
But not oblivion.
Donna couldn't explain it. A thousand whispers she couldn't hear tugged at the edges of her mind, decidedly there but indiscernible, overlapping and growing and changing and all coming out to white noise. She didn't know through what lens she was perceiving them; she just knew they were there. It was the only thing she could say definitively about them, and as time passed, her frustration at that grew.
As if in a direct response to her lack of comprehension, the near-oblivion ended as sensation returned—but this time, it wasn't borrowed. The soundless whispers faded as actual voices came to her, the low murmurings of many dozens of Cirulians all around her. Feet slid across stone, small thumps sounded when some of them tripped.
She sat up as quickly as she could manage—not very, given the fact that the nerve endings all across her body were still in the process of returning from vacation. Slowly the voices around her faded into intelligible words. One voice was particularly close, and she turned around to see the young face of the Cirulian with whom she had briefly spoken on the way down here. Her thin lips were moving. Donna stared blankly for a moment, and suddenly the words snapped through the processing center of her brain: "Are you all right?"
"Yes," Donna said, in the unthinking way one responds to a question when that question is the first thing they hear on beginning to struggle to consciousness in the morning. She continued glancing around the cavern, trying to remember what she was forgetting. Her eyes fell on Ilseg. He was sitting with his legs crossed and his head in his hands, but he seemed to have regained composure. He was no longer moaning, and his movements were small. But he appeared decidedly… bothered. She was currently a little too mentally distracted to find an appropriately strong synonym.
She tried to rub her arms in the cold air of the caverns, and the motion was awkward at first as she had to remind herself how to move. "You felt it too?" the young Cirulian asked quietly.
"Yeah," Donna said, her own voice barely any louder. "And, ya know, saw it, heard it… et cetera."
"What was it?"
Donna just stared at the inquisitive and confused face before her, trying to formulate a reasonable response. And suddenly, across the cavern, the tiny whimpers that really mattered finally registered with her, and the conversation became inconsequential.
She started out crawling, and very nearly came right on top of a lizard weaving among the crowd. It hissed, eyes blinking one after the other, and Donna yelped and fell backwards. After regarding her for a moment, it continued on its way, and after glancing around and very hurriedly noting that it was not the only one of its kind patrolling the cavern among the scores of Upper Cirulians fumbling around the darkness, she continued on hers.
Almost immediately she very nearly cut her palm open on a discarded weapon lying on the cave floor. She picked it up by its hilt and jammed the tip of the blade downward, using it as a crutch to push herself to her feet. Once she was up, and reasonably sure she could stand on her own, she slid it across the floor in the direction of a dark spot near the cave wall. With luck, it would find an ancient sinkhole and fall several stories down.
From her new vantage point, the job of locating the single different member of the crowd was made a hundred times easier. She tripped twice on her way over to him, once almost falling flat on her face, but movement was imperative; she had to get reaccustomed to it as quickly as the situation allowed.
He was curled on the cave floor, knees tucked into his chest, one hand covering the back of his head, the other grasping at nothing on the stony floor. His muscles were taut, his arms still sporting seven dark spots, and— as she could see due to the state of his trousers after all the recent movement he'd done—the original on his ankle was still hanging on as well. She could not see his face, and he'd gone quiet since she'd first heard him, but his shoulders were shaking.
"Doctor," she said without thinking, and took a seat next to him, taking hold under his arms—being careful, of course, not to brush against any of those things—best to be on the safe side—and lifting his upper body off the ground. He was slightly stiff, but he didn't resist. Though she'd half-expected to see tears based on the sounds he'd been making, there were none—thank heavens. What she did see was a great knot between his eyebrows, and his lips forming words she couldn't understand.
She stared at him, one hundred percent clueless as to how to proceed. All she really needed to do was make sure he'd be all right, but… how? She couldn't even be sure what was happening to him. Had those things gone back on their word? Were they doing this to him? Were they…
Her thought process slowed. The same phenomenon had been forced onto every Upper Cirulian and the only human in the cavern. Why should the only Time Lord be exempt?
Donna took one arm out from under his to reach for his trench coat, which lay nearby. She had to drag him a couple of inches and strain quite a lot, and once she actually got to it, it took about three tries before she found the right pocket, but in less than a minute she managed to get hold of his screwdriver.
She clutched it tightly, looking down at him. On reflection, she elected to pull the entire coat nearer to them and lay his body down flat, resting his head on the bundle of fabric. She crouched over him, taking a deep breath.
All at the same time, she began shaking his shoulder with one hand, waving the light of the screwdriver less than an inch away from his closed eyelids, and shouting his name on repeat.
The result was almost instantaneous. With a shout that rivaled her own, only his didn't form any word in particular, he sat bolt upright, and would have clocked her in the head if she hadn't been prepared enough to fall backwards at the first sign of movement. His eyes were wide, but it wasn't just that—his pupils were dilated so much the black in his eyes nearly overtook the brown. He drew in quick, gasping breaths, and one of his hands slipped almost immediately, resulting in him banging an elbow against the stone.
Donna had her hands out the whole time, feeling like she ought to be ready to… contain him, somehow, because he looked like he was about to explode. "Doctor," she said sharply, and that seemed to do the trick; he turned towards her, and, after four or five slow blinks and the obvious, deliberate process of slowing down his breathing, he said, both in response and recognition, "Donna."
She almost felt the urge to hug him again. Instead, she punched him solidly in the shoulder and said sternly, "Last time. That is the last time you get to do that to me today, you understand me?"
His breathing was still a little shallow, but as he clutched his arm, a smile curved the corner of his mouth, and he nodded.