Everlasting England
Prompt: "death, angst, thanage, gosling, voracious, thaumaturge"
From: Random word generator
Words: 456
"You took us to a cucumber farm," Donna raised an eyebrow and examined a leaf, turning it over in her hands.
"Technically, it wasn't me," he replied as their tour guide droned on about ideal growing conditions and how to properly care for mini-maxi-cucumbers. "The TARDIS took us here, I had nothing to do with it."
"You took us to a cucumber farm," she stood her ground and walked past an information plaque about New African Cucumbers.
"I did, didn't I?" he groaned when the guide walked up to them and steered them toward a greenhouse with the rest of the group.
"And here," the tour guide said with a flourish, pointing at a cucumber bush, "Is from where this farm was formed. Tired of all the angsting over the deaths of the cucumbers on the old plantations, the man who built this cucumber farm did it with a firm motto—'We Will Survive Without This Voracious Hunger, But With Bucketloads of Cucumbers, Fresh and Sweet!'"
"What's he trying to sell?" Donna whispered.
"Shares," the Doctor whispered back.
"He built this farm on his ancestors' thanage . . ."
"What's a thanage?" Donna wondered into the Doctor's ear.
"It's land belonging to a thane," he replied, absently looking at the brochure they had been given.
"What's a thane?"
"It's a Scottish landowner," he grinned. "I'm a thane, actually. Henry II gave me a thanage once. I did lose a game of cards to him . . . introduced poker a few years early . . ."
". . . and here is where the goslings graze," the guide swept an arm at a small field, where, just as he said, families of geese were running. "We raise them and then let them out into the world, allowing them to free their wings and spread the news of this farm upon their wings, like the thaumaturge that had built this farm had done . . ."
"What's a thaumaturge?" Donna asked again.
"Performer of magical feats," the Doctor replied. "Like Merlin, or David Copperfield, or me."
"Of course," Donna groaned as the group followed the guide. "And we can't leave, right?"
"Nope," the Doctor grinned. "We're here for a reason!"
"What reason?"
"I don't know," he shrugged. "But the TARDIS brought us here, so let's go through with it."
"Okay," they kept following the group. Donna frowned. "You said a thanage is Scottish, right?"
"Yes," he nodded.
"Have you noticed that we spend a lot of time in the UK?"
"Not really," he shrugged again, and looked like he was deep in thought. "A lot of places sound British, though."
"Weird," it was Donna's turn to shrug. "Oh, well. It's the universe. Who knows what's out there?"