It was now 6 o'clock and the three Torchwood employees, Martha (who had been called in), and Mel were sitting round the boardroom table eating a casserole that Mel had whipped up in about an hour, which was absolutely gorgeous and a couple of her special coffees that were better than Ianto's - if that was even possible. Sable was having a race with the resident pterodactyl, Myfanawy, around the water tower, then out of the Hub around the bay, and back again in one huge circle. Mel could only chuckle as she watched them whizz by once more.
"Aren't you going to eat any of this Mel? After all you did cook it, so you should have some," Gwen asked around a mouthful of dumpling. Mel had done a simple chicken casserole with dumplings and lots of vegetables, and had served it with coffee and lots of bread.
"No thanks Gwen! I had a very large meal at lunchtime before coming through the Rift, so I'm still pretty full. But I'll have something later if I get hungry!" She looked down into her mug of tea, shook her head and smiled sadly, before lifting her head to hear Martha ask her a question.
"So how does the whole two bodies sharing one soul work? Because I could understand two souls sharing the same body! It would be like a possession; sort of like with Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I just don't understand how it works the other way. And doesn't one get hurt if the other one does?"
Mel smiled and explained, "I know it seems odd, but it is perfectly simple when you think about it. My race are called the Thetans, and each person has their own Soulster. Millenniums ago, we didn't have our Soulsters and we would constantly be in pain as our souls were simply too complex to be held in one body. One day a holy force called Theta appeared and he created the Soulsters so that our soul pressure was eased and we were no longer in constant pain. He explained that we shared the same soul, but we each had our own personalities that would overlap slightly, and because of us sharing the same soul if either was hurt then so would the other."
She broke off, there were papers scattered all across the table. She pulled a sheet toward her, scanned the text and deemed it to be a piece of scrap, so she pulled a pencil out of Ianto's breast pocket and began to sketch. She continued to do so whilst she explained.
"He gave us four laws that would keep our lives stable. The first was that adult Thetans' Soulsters would have a fixed creature; he said that once a person had calmed down, settled and grown up then their Soulster would settle and remain in one form. The second was that depending on what form your Soulster settled into depended what class you were; he said that these classes would act as our star signs or Chinese Zodiac signs. He loved star signs and Chinese Zodiac signs apparently, so gave us them; said he was an Aries and a Dragon. He said that star signs was a human idea that supposedly determined your personality, your success in life and who you could love. So we had our own system – gave us a human touch! The third law is that children's Soulsters can change form – something to do with their free spiritedness, unsettled thoughts and emotions, and their imaginations. And the fourth and most important rule was because we shared the same soul our bodies were connected, which meant that without each other we were incomplete."
She stopped for a short time before holding out her hand to Ianto. He smiled wryly before handing over the red, blue and black biros that had been in his breast pocket with the pencil she had taken. He looked down at what she was drawing and simply nodded when she showed him. After taking the top off each pen she continued to talk, all the while colouring writing and drawing.
"The reason why this rule is so important is that a person's Soulster can only go so far away from them, or else the bond between the bodies will break and the person will become indecisive and would ultimately go mad then wither and die. We need both bodies and the bond to remain strong, so that the soul will be complete and healthy. Depending on what creed of Thetan you are, depends on how far your Soulster can travel from you. There are five creeds; fire, water, wind, earth and light. A light creed Thetan's Soulster can travel the farthest because as long as they are on the same planet as each other then they are connected. Wind and water creed Thetan's Soulsters must be on the same continent, and fire and earth creed Thetan's Soulster must stay within twenty miles of each other."
"So what creed are you? And why can Sable change? When you're an adult, which means that he should have settled into one form, isn't that right?" asked Jack, while helping himself to a second helping of the casserole and a few more slices of bread. He was watching Mel out of the corner of his eye, wondering what she was drawing.
"I'm a Light creed Thetan. And the reason for Sable still being able to change forms is that whilst I was still an early teen, which is normally the time when Soulsters begin to settle, something happened to me that caused me to change slightly. And that change is the reason of how I met Ianto, because Torchwood One got a hold of me and began carrying out tests on me. Ianto served me tea whenever I wasn't being tested" She suddenly went pale and sensing this Ianto, who was sitting next to Mel, picked up her hand that she'd been drawing with and entwined their fingers. He gave a squeeze, which she returned.
After her last sentence, a tense silence fell. Gwen had shifted uncomfortably in her chair, whilst Martha refused to look at either Mel or Ianto. Only the sounds of Sable and Myfanawy racing around inside the hub and Jack eating broke the silence. Whilst eating, Jack picked up the piece of paper that had been forgotten by Mel. He placed it near him while he finished his meal and studied what she had drawn. The paper had three pictures on it. Each had a lot of written information around each picture, which he would read later on. He would also ask Ianto or Gwen to enter in the data, so that they could have the data on the computers, just in case another Thetan should ever turn up. He would also ask Mel to allow Martha to examine her so they could have medical details also.
He turned his attention back to the drawing and what they depicted. The first was a large solid red circle surrounding a figure, along with a second figure surrounded by a much smaller solid blue circle. The blue circle must have been about half the size of the red circle. The figure surrounded by red had writing all around it, but a small underlined title caught his eye. It was in black, and said 'Thetan before Soulster'. The other figure was simply titled 'Normal Soul Bearer' with a small note underneath saying, 'i.e. Human.' He smiled at this, then looked at the second picture.
The Human figure was there again, he figured that she had used that as a sample or comparative. But next to it was a different picture. This time there was the Thetan figure, but this time it was surrounded by a blue circle very much like the Human's. However, the circle overlapped a red circle which had a smaller figure inside it; the caption underneath read 'Soulster'. This explained how their souls where connected. This Theta force had obviously relieved the pressure by using the original Thetan's excess soul force to create the Soulster, meaning that they didn't lose their soul; it was just transferred to another vessel to carry the excess.
The final drawing was of the planet that they lived on, but had four different view on the planet. He could tell that it was very beautiful, as each area had a label saying what colour it was. He thought it looked very much like planet Earth but with some major differences. Firstly, the sea was much paler in colour according to the labels, as it stated, "When sun shines, very light blue almost ice blue. When cloudy, dark blue almost navy.' He thought it odd that the sea would change colour depending on the weather; there were also variations in colour due to the time of year! Also there were only six largish land masses with a few string of islands dotted around.
After a while Jack asked, himself knowing how cruel the Torchwood One team could be whilst testing aliens, "Why were they testing you?" He didn't ask what they had done as he didn't want his team to hear the horrific things that were carried out on aliens – he didn't want to hear them himself, as just the paper documentation for the tests were enough to horrify him.
"They... they..." she broke off to shudder. Jack was surprised when Ianto himself went an odd shade of greenish white – the colour you go before throwing up – and shuddered. She took a steadying breath, looked into Ianto's eyes and spoke quietly. "You shouldn't have done that then Yan! That was something that you shouldn't have seen and I'm sorry!" This was said directly to Ianto in an apologetic yet reprimanding voice. She turned to the group and told them, "They tested me for two reasons. The first being I'm a psychic. I have telepathic and telekinetic abilities."
OK after i read one of my reviews, i altered it slightly. Not by alot but i think it's slightly better! Anyway enjoy!