"Clara, how would you like to see the triple sunset of Kanhyr?"
"How exactly do you have a triple sunset? What, are the stars just sitting in a line and the planet's going around it?" asked Clara, approaching the TARDIS's console. Even now, after so very many trips, the enormous interior of this impossible ship still set off a primal fear in her brain. Just stepping into it reminded her of the feeling of standing at the edge of a cliff: the delighted wonder at the incredible view, the prudent fear of losing her balance and falling off, and stark terror of the possibility that she might fling herself over the precipice in that sudden, inexplicably human urge to jump.
"Well, there's a sort of counter-orbiting thing where the stars are sort of . . . chasing each other and the planet is being passed off from one to the next and . . . actually, I'm not 100% sure exactly how it works either," the Doctor finally admitted. "The star charts give me a headache. But I have it on very good authority that the sunset's beautiful."
"And whose authority would that be?" asked Clara, circling the TARDIS's console, checking the readings to make sure nothing went wrong. It never did, of course, but in the back of her mind, some part of her still vaguely held onto the fantasy that one day, she would be flying this ship, as the Doctor's previous incarnation had tried to teach her to do.
"Mine," replied the Doctor, flipping the console's largest lever. The time rotor began to turn, as the TARDIS wheezed and groaned into action. "I came here lifetimes ago, figured I'd give you a look too, especially since a lot of the in-between lifetimes seem to have been generally unimpressed." He frowned down at the console for a moment before looking up and staring directly into Clara's eyes.
"I'm an old man, Clara," the Doctor said, stating the obvious. "I've pretended to be young for far too long. The last time I came here, I acted as old as I was, and I'm much, much older now."
Clara wondered why he was telling her this. Of course she knew the Doctor was old, and of course she knew how old he was: he had told her, over and over again. What did this have to do with anything?
"Sunsets are for old people," the Doctor said, before finally turning his eyes back to the console.
Clara supposed that was true. There was generally too much going on in any part of the universe to sit down and just enjoy a sunset more than once in a while. Except – wait a second . . .
"Hang on, you asked if I wanted to see a sunset. Are you saying I'm –"
"We're here!" interrupted the Doctor as the TARDIS came to a stop with its characteristic THUD. Before Clara could protest further, the Doctor strode off – not towards the door, but to the TARDIS wardrobe.
"You'll want to bundle up," the Doctor shouted back down the hall as he stepped into the massive walk-in closet that was the TARDIS's clothing fabrication chamber. "Kanhyr is absolutely freezing: -2 degrees Celsius at the peak of its hottest day in the last five millennia. The few settlements on the planet were established by human offshoots who use the planet's vast plasma reserves to keep their cities at a cozy 7 degrees."
"7 degrees is cozy?!"
"Like I said: you'll want to bundle up," the Doctor replied, putting his hands on either side of her head. "By the way, you'll want to be mentally ready for this. The dominant human offshoot is Homo sapiens trioculus: three-eyed humans."
Clara was about to say she'd seen much weirder things than three-eyed humans in her time on the TARDIS, but the Doctor's fingers found the side of her temples and she felt his mind reaching into hers.
"It's amazing how readily the human mind will accept things that are clearly human or clearly not human when it instantly reviles things that only slightly deviate from the basic idea. I'm feeding images of them into your head now, so you can get accustomed to them. Wouldn't want to cause a scene, now would we?"
Clara's mind was flooded with images of three-eyed people of all shapes and sizes, and when she opened her eyes the Doctor's own two-eyed face almost looked a little strange to her. Was this really necessary? Was this really so crucial an adjustment that the Doctor had to just jump into her head like that without asking? She supposed she would never know, now that she was perfectly pre-adjusted to Homo sapiens trioculus.
The Doctor was already off, back toward the console room in a thick overcoat, an incredibly long multicolored scarf, and a brown knit cap, leaving Clara to choose her own outfit for this little expedition.
XXX
The city was surprisingly warm, once you got used to it. At least, Clara hoped that would eventually be the case, because right now she was colder than she'd ever been despite the parka and thick ski trousers she'd picked out. The Doctor, on the other hand, didn't seem cold at all, but he did certainly seem worried about something. He approached the nearest thermal-armor-clad constable with that same annoyed look Clara had seen countless times before.
"Oh, no, don't tell me we've missed it," the Doctor cried plaintively. "Please, don't tell me we've missed it."
"What, the sunset?" said the constable. "'Fraid so. You'll have to come back next month."
The Doctor turned, stamping his foot into the snow, and bit his lip, gazing off away from Clara.
"So, we missed it," Clara said, trying to be comforting as she closed in and adjusted his scarf. "Who cares? We've got a time machine, and it's quite a bit warmer than the rest of this place."
"Yes, but I really thought I had it timed just right. In fact," the Doctor said, donning his sunglasses and looking back at the TARDIS, "so did the TARDIS. The TARDIS's timing can't be wrong – literally cannot be wrong, ever. She exists in all of time and space. I know she's gotten the space bits a little off sometimes, but what do you expect? It's space, you try moving around in it and always getting where you wanted to go."
He pulled the shades off and put them back in his coat. He stared back at the TARDIS with the familiar worried expression Clara had seen so many times before. He started walking away down the street.
"One month isn't so bad, we'll just wait it out."
"We're going to wait a month?!" Clara asked.
"Sure we will; the hotels are lovely around here, and if you don't like that we can just sleep in the TARDIS!"
"Doctor, what's really going on?"
The Doctor pulled Clara aside into an alley. Abrupt though it was, she was grateful: the alley shielded her from the slight breeze that had been wafting through the city's streets and made her that little extra bit warmer.
"Clara, the TARDIS doesn't make mistakes about time. If she's brought us here, we're supposed to be here. There's something we're supposed to do, I can feel it."
"Okay," said Clara, hesitatingly. "So, we find this . . . whatever it is, take care of it, then get back in the TARDIS and get to see that sunset, yeah?"
"Something like that."
"Okay, so how do we find it?"
The Doctor was no longer listening to her. He was peeking around the corner of the alley, back at the constable. Clara looked around the corner too, and saw that the constable had fallen to his knees, visibly shivering under the heated plates of his thermal armor. A few more moments of watching saw the constable fall face-first into the snow, frozen with his bottom sticking up in the air, a grotesque and slightly comical figure of icy demise.
"I think we just did."