"Kava's the largest market planet in the Jhitosk System. Has been for ages and ages. The Jhitosk were known for their uncanny business skills before they transformation of their original homeworld into an intergalactic shopping mall, but once this planet started doing business, it never stopped growing. Beings from all over the galaxy come for hard-to-find treasures, fancies, tools, fashion, doodads and thingamajigs. Technical term." The Doctor's face faked seriousness as they walked down the main street of this district.
"And I take it, from the wares on display, that we're in the doodads and thingamajigs district?" She brushed a finger over a scarf that fleetingly displayed images of her home, that little house in the middle of nowhere, where the Doctor had first stumbled upon her.
"Close. Doodads is to the northeast and thingamajigs due north. We're in gadgetry."
"Sounds right up your alley." She thought about asking him for the scarf, or at least asking what sort of currency they use in this system, but knew he'd get there. And she just might pick it up when she came back through.
"It's nice enough. Good to pick up spare parts now and again."
"Can't the TARDIS make everything?"
"Sure, but where's your sense of adventure?" He squeezed her hand tightly before turning down a side street. "See, the Jhitosk are master negotiators, but what makes that even more interesting is the fact that they use words as currency."
"Words? Like, conversations?"
"Like written words. You can go into the market with a doggerel and come out with a new toy, if you've a mind to."
"So if I traded them a sonnet?"
"A new dress, maybe. A space pod for an original novel. Original's are worth more than copies, handwritten more than machine-generated, etc. Even Bleak House wouldn't be worth much if it was a 21st-Century printed copy. Now a Dickens original, that would buy quite a bit here. Rare texts, you see."
"Interesting." Her mind had begun to work - the shopping list from the TARDIS floated into her mind, though she wasn't sure why.
"You wanna take a look around?" He handed her some lines, penned in his own rough approximation of English - at least she thought it was. Hard to tell with the TARDIS' translators always on in her head.
"Sure. Don't get in too much trouble without me, and don't go wandering off." She squeezed his arm before starting back toward the main road.
There were booths for money changers that looked more like scribes - all sorts of creatures were lined up to tell the changers a tale. The changers wrote it down with astonishing speed, writing one copy with each hand - one for the teller and one as the fee for the service. She paused a moment, watching the process, and a slinky purple creature sidled up next to her, it's four legs taking up far more space than its slim body needed. "Need a tale... transcribed?"
"No, I've got some pin money already, thanks."
"Such a lovely accent. Surely you have a tale to tell - a tidbit from back home? You never know what it might be... worth."
"So you don't know how much a written piece is worth until you try it in the marketplace, is that right?"
"That is correct. Although for standardized prints, there are fair exchange levels. Original works must be... tested." The word hissed out from a mouth that Miranda couldn't quite find without being awkward.
"Ok, so then if I have it transcribed, and there are two copies, that likely reduces its worth by half, then?"
"If you must think of it that way, yes. But the speed saves time, of course, and time cannot be gotten back. You must consider... that."
She suppressed a laugh. "Oh, I'll consider it, and keep it in mind if I run low."
"Please come back and see us when you are... ready."
Miranda headed back toward the TARDIS. She rummaged through her room, tearing out pages from books as she went. Pages and pages of her own handwriting, tales she'd told herself. She tucked them into her bra - uncouth, perhaps, but far more unlikely to be stolen, and stole back out of the blue box.
Back on the road, she paused at the market stand that had the scarf she had seen earlier. She ran her fingers over it. It was soft and flowing, like tepid water over her fingers. Images of home flashed before her eyes. She was so drawn in by it that she didn't hear the shopkeeper approach behind her.
"It is a beautiful piece, strangely endearing to those that view it."
She tore her eyes away from the scarf. The shopkeeper was a humanoid with four eyes. Each set blinked patiently while the other remained open. "I can see why. Though I might feel a little self-conscious with everyone staring at me like I was a long-lost memory."
He chuckled. "And a traveler like yourself may not want to attract too much attention." One set of eyes was now watching a passing stranger with suspicion, and the other was regarding her with interest. "In fact, I think I have something much more suited to your needs."
"Oh? And what are my needs exactly?" She was being dismissive in tone, but she was more interested than she should have been. The shopkeeper gave her an indulgent smile.
"Travelers may need to pass many gates, is that not so?" He held open for her a notebook, and a small crackling in the back of her mind sparked and softened as the psychic paper tried to pick up on her ever-stranger mind. "A rare product - an entire novel of such paper as can show others what they need to see."
"Psychic paper," she breathed, as the words on the page arranged themselves into the shopping list with psychic paper crossed off. It was eerie and amusing all at once. "How much?"
He reached his hand out for her currency, and she unfolded a single sheet from her stash. He eyed it, holding it up into the sun to examine it. "This is more than enough."
She looked at the single page. She had only been trying to gauge the worth of something - she'd expected much more. "Alright - how much more than enough."
"You are a traveler like none I have ever met, that is certain." He smiled, gently smoothing out the page from her journal. "And your tales are like none ever told. There is an odd sort of truth to them." He gently wrapped the book of psychic paper. "But if you have another several sheets of the same, there is something that might interest you even more."
"What is it?"
"Show me the payment, first, as is tradition."
"Not my tradition."
"You must understand. It has long protected merchants from theft upon too quickly revealing their rarest and most valuable commodities."
"And hasn't done the same for market-goers revealing their cash."
He chuckled. "I will, then, assume you have more of this value. You have proven yourself in trust and worth, I will offer a similar gesture. Come."
He stepped back behind a curtain, and she hesitated for a moment before following. Another potentially dangerous situation that she just wandered into. The thought brought a flash of memory of the exploding TARDIS, and she grimaced a bit. He must have noticed, because he immediately began to reassure her. "It is where I keep my best items away from prying eyes. This, this I have not found the right person for. But I think you may know how to fix it."
She almost scoffed when she heard he was trying to sell her a broken item, but held it in. Something told her to see it. Her curiosity hadn't been satiated in all her travels with the Doctor, and the awe with which he saw the universe was contagious. Everything was worth seeing. Even the broken parts.
He handed her a small device [insert description of vortex manipulator here]. She could feel it, like a tuning fork resonating to the same tune of the vortex. She flipped it over and over in her hands, her eyes looking for any small indication of what was wrong with it. It reminded her of something, though she couldn't quite place it.
"As I said, with a few more sheets of the same, it is yours. If I have what is needed to fix it, if you can tell these things from so small an interview with it, then I will consider it as well. Will you trade for it?"
She didn't think much of it, instead reaching into her bra and pulling out two more sheets. "That's my offer."
He chuckled. "You learn quickly, traveler. I will accept this offer. But do me an honor: when you have repaired that machine, return and show it to me so that I can see that I have struck a good bargain."
She extended her hand, which he took and kissed. She pulled away, suddenly bashful. "Um, yeah. I'll do that." She paused as she left, again looking at the scarf. Sweeping past her, the shopkeeper took it from its display, wrapping her other purchases in it.
"So as you may conceal such things from eyes who should not see. They are not, as you say, trifles." The accent on this was so thick she could barely understand it, a change from the perfect English he had been speaking before. She suppressed a gasp as she realized that the TARDIS translation circuit had provided the ostensible English. This, this heavily accented language on an alien tongue, was his actual attempt at her language.
She tensed, taking the package from him and scurrying away, feeling his eyes on her as she left. She moved quickly, dodging between tents and buildings, merchants and shoppers, until the strange sense of uncanny went away. She bought a cup of the juice from a fruit that vaguely resembled a pomegranate, sipping it as she calmed herself down, walking leisurely through the stalls.
"Have a night to remember that you wish you didn't remember? A secret that needs permanent keeping, even from yourself? Or perhaps a lover witnessed an indiscretion that you need them to forget? Now, that's not authorized of course, these memory capsules are designed for self-administration only..." The merchant continued on, touting impossible attributes in an attempt to draw in customers. She leaned against the wall and watched him. He was human, or eerily close. Young, maybe in his early twenties if she stretched it. Charming, and pleasant, giving flirtatious winks at passing customers now and again. He seemed to be doing a brisk business.
She looked at her purchases. She'd gotten a few more things, and a bag to put them in. Using that as a cover, she flipped through the blank notebook of psychic paper. Memory. The word was scrawled across several sheets. Memory.
The scarf itself was cycling through memories. Images of home. The cabin. Her father. The TARDIS. The Doctor's face. She bit her lip. She was beginning to figure out that the TARDIS was prompting all this, and wanted to know why. Memory... She looked back up at the young salesman. She began to piece it together.
Years before, when she'd first been thrust into the blast of the dying TARDIS, she'd seen things. She had made some sort of decision, but just what exactly she hadn't remembered. Perhaps hadn't wanted to remember. And now there it was: she had to leave.
The Doctor had entire lives to live without her. Lives that needed her to be gone, gone and forgotten. There had to be blonde girls who blushed and bit their lips, healers turned soldiers, and gingers around whom dimensions turned, and Romans who waited and impossible girls. And to have those, there had to be those left behind. Always those left behind.
And those who left. She finished the last of her juice. It was bitter at the end.
"How many kits will this buy me?" She produced another page and held it in front of the stunned young man.
"How... how many do you need?" He was taken aback. Clearly in the stack of handwritten notes and to-do lists, her journal page was worth more than he'd seen in quite some time.
"A lot."
"Then this will buy a lot." He tucked the page away, rat like, in his jacket. The charm was gone. This man needed money, she could tell. "They're small though. You can carry them all." He produced a variety of types of kits, explaining the use of each as he tucked them in her bag. The last one, a small syringe and IV bag, looked wrong compared to the other small ones. "This one, this is special. This one distills the information in small units in the nanochips that are suspended in the fluid. They're programmed to retain the memory they're wiping, so that it can be available for later use. Only in the same subject though. No memory transfers."
She didn't hesitate. "How powerful? How many memories can I take and restore?"
"Entire lifetimes. If you wanted to wake up tomorrow with complete amnesia, you could."
She sighed, but a strangled cry came out with it. "I'll take three."
He considered her page again. "Ok. But they cost a lot more. So..." he began to unload things from her bag again. "That's what it'll leave you with." She looked down, examining what was left.
"It's a deal."
Hours later, her arms were full of bags. Jewelry, art, trinkets... things she would never need. And squirreled away at the bottom were the things she did. The Doctor smirked when he saw her. "Well look who went and got themselves a new wardrobe."
She elbowed him as he held the door open to the TARDIS. She just squeaked through the doors with all her bags. "'There we go." She sat down on the steps, looking up at him as he started poking through things. "It was fun." She batted his hand away from the last bag, the one with her carefully concealed items and few other distractions. "No looking in that one. The things in there you'll just have to wait and see me model." She winked for good measure, and he grinned, but the tone of his eyes changed.
"I can be real patient, me."
"I may have believed that once upon a time, but certainly not anymore. You are hardly a patient man, you." She plucked the bags up and pushed past him, more nervous than she should have been.
"Bet I can prove you wrong. I can be very patient. 'Specially when it comes to you."
Her breath caught in her throat. She knew he was teasing her, thinking about the bedroom, but no matter how hard she tried, she could only think of how long he might have to wait for her. She had been trying to unravel the TARDIS' designs for her shopping list - these things she would need in the not-so-distant future. She was leaving. She would wait for him. But she couldn't make him wait for her. For all his promises, he was not a patient man when it came to Miranda Larsen, and would burn through galaxies if he wanted to get to her.
She put a smile on, a teasing one to match his grin. "Get us out of here, and I'll go change. Gotta show off what I bought after all."