The conversation wandered as they did, climbing what felt like a small hill. The Doctor learned many things about the seemingly magical girl; that she had never had any real friends "does being asked to join in hide and seek once count?", that the schooling here was not exactly top class "I can read, write and add and subtract, apparently that was good enough" and that she had been living like this since she was nine "I'm about eighteen now, so that's at least nine years stuck in a clearing in the woods".
After this last revelation the Doctor was too angry to continue, so they sat in companionable silence, on a small hillock in the middle of the woods. Gazing back towards the town, the first thing Andy saw was the mountain. It was inescapable, present in the distance for miles around the town. The town itself was signposted only by some wisps of smoke coming from the chimneys. Gazing away from it, all that was on the horizon was the rest of the forest and then endless fields, sometimes intersected with a single dirt track, that supposedly lead to another town. She didn't know. She'd never left the town. But how she wished she could. Leave the responsibility, the hatred, the ostracism behind and take off into the world. She'd go to the space port and get a ship off this shitty mud ball of a planet as soon as she could. And she'd never come back. Once she got rid of this odd, rather irritating man, of course.
Andy sighed. That was the dream anyway, and the hope of that dream meant that she had a small, but growing pile of coins from the 'work' she did that would eventually add up to enough to get her off this rock. She couldn't wait.
The Doctor appeared to have calmed down now, enough to continue his interrogation,
"So you said that throwing rocks was a party trick. But how does the trick work, exactly? Is it levitation?" Andy thought about it, really thought about it, for the first time. It had always come as naturally as breathing to her, and she'd never really thought about what she was doing.
"I just…sort of ask them to stop. I…I pull power up from the earth and sort of direct it at the rocks and ask them to stop, or slow down, or whatever, and they do. They always do. And then I…push up with my power and make them go backwards, back the way they came. I'm sorry, but that's about the best way I can describe…you're looking at me funny." And indeed he was. The Doctor's mouth had fallen open as his mind worked double time, trying to figure out what on earth he had just heard.
"You just asked about three tonnes of plummeting stone to kindly stop falling and they did! How…how…wait, you say you pull power, how do you do that?" In response she waggled her feet,
"I told you, I feel the power in the earth. And when I need a little bit of it I just sort of...pull it up through myself, to where it's needed." Now the Doctor was staring at her feet, almost warily, as if they might suddenly attack him.
"To where it's needed?" his voice was hoarse, as his Time Lord brain tried to take in the enormity of what was in front of him.
"Well, sometimes it's just little things; like Farmer Jareth, his barn roof fell down five years ago and he…well, ordered me to fix it. So I lifted a few beams out of the way, they were really heavy but the earth helped, and managed to sort it all out."
"How heavy were the beams?" the Doctor asked, dreading the answer slightly.
"About eighty to ninety kilograms, I think." This new information caused the Doctor's eyes to bug out,
"You lifted ninety kilograms when you were just thirteen years old!"
"With the earth's help," Andy protested, not really seeing the problem. She'd had this…ability all her life and these tasks were perfectly natural to her.
"But that's…you couldn't…how were you not…how is this possible? You shouldn't be able to do something like that, it's impossible!" Andy was now incredibly fed up. This strange man had followed her, demanding answers, and now apparently he wasn't happy with those answers. Well, she didn't need to sit here listening to his incredulous tone a minute longer.
"Yes…for you," she snapped, "But apparently for me, it is perfectly possible, since I've been doing this nearly every day of my life." And she stood up, intending to walk off and leave this weird infuriating man to his moaning. And would have done, had he not grabbed her hand.
"Wait, wait, I'm not insulting you, or at least I'm not meaning to…but please understand, I've been to so many places, met millions of people, millions of species, seen the beginning of planets and the end of the universe, but in all my life I have never met anyone who can do what you can."
There was a moment of silence as his words settled over her. Two emotions ranked high; interest, as this man was clearly some kind of time traveller, who must have seen things that she could only dream of; and loneliness, true loneliness, for he had never met anyone who was the same as her, she was still completely alone, not just on this planet, but apparently in the entire universe. It was an exhilarating and depressing moment for Andy, although she quickly pushed the negative out of her mind and focused on her wonder,
"You're a time traveller!" The Doctor suddenly seemed to realise what he had said, and immediately began to ramble,
"What! No, I never said that, I was just exaggerating, no one could possibly see the end of the universe, would be all dark, erm…so this power…"
"Oh no, don't you bring this back to me. It makes sense, a time traveller with a ship that can miraculously appear in the middle of the eastern fields." She looked at him pointedly, daring him to argue. He smirked, he always loved to boast that he could travel almost anywhere and anywhen, and never missed a chance to talk about the TARDIS,
"She is a beauty, Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, the TARDIS…"
"Best ship ever to fly," Andy quoted him from earlier with a giggle. He smiled at her expression, laughter made her look closer to her eighteen years. Then she sighed wistfully,
"What must it be like, to travel so far, to get away from anywhere that doesn't suit, to never be tied down? Bet it's the best." She stared at the sky, imagining the galaxies beyond it. The Doctor realised that was a bit of a naïve stand point, but encouraged her nonetheless,
"Oh yes, travelling the ages, meeting past kings, future emperors, battling monsters, saving princesses, getting into rather a lot of trouble while doing it too, there was this one planet where apparently even asking to shake the princess's hand was proposing marriage! Believe me, barely got out of that one by the skin of my teeth…" He looked to see Andy's reaction and was pleased to see her staring enviously at him. But his mind wouldn't let him rest and he had to bring it up again,
"So…your power. You said that was the party trick. What else can you do?" Andy gave it some more thought, seeing to the heart of what she considered the everyday,
"Hmm, I can tell you the percentages of this planet," seeing his look of confusion she stated, "sixty percent water, mostly salt, although there is a huge fresh water lake in the centre of the continent which amounts to about fifteen percent, forty percent land mass, one giant continent, on which are four cities, the smallest no bigger than a handful of houses, and the largest covers an area of about a hundred square miles. Most of the land is arable, although about nine percent of it is woodland, about four percent of which is represented by the woods we are currently standing in. No mountain ranges, only three others besides the one in front of us, none of which have ever been scaled successfully. The soil content of the earth…"
"Right, right I understand, you can tell literally everything about the planet simply by placing a toe on it, is that about right?" the Doctor was amazed that she could reel all of this off for him, consulting only the ground beneath her feet. He would have to check on the TARDIS matrix to see if she was correct.
"I don't know, I've never been to other planets," another wistful look at the sky, "Um…what else? Err, I can make the trees dance."
"What?" He hadn't expected that. Sighing she stood up and gracefully held her arms above her head, like a conductor at the orchestra, and then began to twirl. And everything responded. The Doctor could feel it, not as sharply as she could obviously, but his Time Lord brain was picking up the energy of…everything flowing towards Andy. Leaves and pine needles came away from the trees and began to spin around her, creating a green hurricane that nearly obscured her body. The small patch of earth where she spun seemed to glow iridescent green. The closest trees bowed their heads towards her, following her movements. The wind seemed to have intensified in the short moments she had been dancing. And all the while she spun slowly with a small smile on her face, as though the entire world was whispering secrets that only she could hear.
A/N Hey guys, thanks to everyone who has favourited this, which is rather a few of you. Hope you enjoy this chapter. Again, constructive criticism is welcome, being mean not so much. Please review and let me know what you think. Are Andy's powers still believable?