The Doctor, Constance, and Flip walked on towards the Dry Lands. They came to the valley between the sheer hilltops. It was a sunny day and the Doctor had pointed out to them the makeshift shelters, however, neither Constance nor Flip could see them. He gave a brief lecture on the difference between these shelters and what the alter archaeologists and anthropologists would consider homes. Both companions listened with mild interest.
Just before they entered the valley and lost sight of the shelters, the Doctor stopped them, holding his hands out. 'Shush,' he hissed, despite him being the only one talking for the last ten minutes. He cocked his head to listen.
He turned back and tried to make out something in the forest behind them, then whipped around to the hilltops.
'Breathing,' whispered Constance. 'Controlled breathing.' She had not much experience with field work but had experience enough with people trying not to be found.
The Doctor nodded.
'Are we surrounded?' asked Flip.
The Doctor put his hands to his lips and slowly crept to the sheer face of the hill. He gestured for his human friends to follow his lead when suddenly ghostly trees in the shape of humans stuttered out of the forest and from the hilltops fell squat, furry squeaking creatures.
Constance, quick to action, pulled Flip with her as she ran for the Doctor, who was edging away from the fight.
The ghostly tree-people had spears that they did not throw. These were short spears for close combat. As they swung it was a matter of timing whether they would stabilise in reality enough to make the cracking contact of stone on flesh.
Equally too, the Early Dorom beassi who leapt and scratched and bit didn't always manage to take chunks of flesh with them. Two of the furry creatures felled one ghost tree, but as soon as they touched the ground, the tree person vanished, the furry people rolled away and the tree person reappeared.
There was one casualty and one fatality. An Early Dorom beassi struggling with a ghost person held on as they flickered out of existence. They fell forward but stopped themselves from hitting the ground, and suddenly the ghost person was back, their abdomens locked into one another.
The Early Dorom beassi shrieked and the glowing white glitch burned it from the inside out. They stumbled forward, reaching out, searching for someone from their family/tribe to save them when they blinked out of reality for good.
The ghost person fell forward, their body spasmed with pain, crying out. Their language was able to be translated by the TARDIS: 'Help me, someone, that little creature has ruined me.'
The Doctor stepped forward from the cliff but was thrown back against it by Constance. Constance was winded and the Doctor became disorientated by his head hitting against the stone. Constance had been thrown aside by a furry creature as it made its aggressive lunge for a ghost-tree person. Flip too was caught by this parting blow, but she fell away from the Doctor and scrambled away from the frenzy where she was caught a surprise blow by one of the ghost-like people. She buckled and fell out of the main fray.
A bush uncurled and became a ghost-tree person, its spindly hands reached out for her, but the romantic masochist furry creature leapt for it and tackled it to the ground. Neither were fighters, but the ghost-tree person had the brain to trip the furry creature, but the furry creature fell on them.
Spindly and quick, the ghost-tree people had little strength. It continued to breathe and do its best to hold on to reality. It grabbed Flip's coat in hopes of dragging itself out from under the furry creature, in hopes of not being caught inside the furry creature when it glitched back into reality.
The skirmish ended and, of course, Flip was taken off by the ghost-tree people with the romantic masochist furry creature as they helped their fellow after making fun of them for being stuck. While the Doctor and Constance were taken by the Early Dorom beassi.
The Doctor and Constance were dizzy and winded and were carried off, while Flip and the masochistic romantic one were conscious enough to be taken. The ghost-tree people couldn't touch them for fear of the glitching out. They were made to walk with their wrists bound in a circle of flickering tree people.
While Philippa was recovering from her blow she tried to focus on the glitching people. As she watched them, even as they flickered, she became aware that they weren't exactly trees but almost chameleon-like in that they had developed a patterning of skin colour to match the trees. The further they walked, the more she understood by watching.
Some of them were either not as well trained in the changing as others, or they had been disorientated like her and struggling with it. Either way, from these, she could see that the ridges and skin texture that resembled the rough bark of wood was actually just more of the advanced chameleon skin. They were smooth-skinned (well, at least as smooth-skinned as humans) and used illusions of colour and light to give the impression of texture.
When they moved out of the density of trees into a patch of land thick with foliage, their skin had the illusion of a scaly-fur to resemble leaves. It was hard to see from the glitching in and out, and so Flip didn't see it, but some of the more advanced ones were able to mimic blotches of berries. They did not all always have the berries, but they could.
For a moment the circle of glitching broke as three of them flickered out of reality all at once. There was a definite pause and then they returned. Flip thought that if they did it again she could make a run for it. They wouldn't want to touch her, but she thought she could hide from whatever projectiles they threw.
From behind her, the spear-wielding leader whispered to a subordinate (they didn't really have ranks, just whoever the leader trusted to be smart when the time came to hand over the spear). 'That one is observant.'
Flip did not turn around, she knew you didn't challenge captors or stalkers unless you were sure someone who shouldn't see it did. And maybe she was maturing a little, less cockiness… we'll see.
'She could be from the Dry Lands. Shaved off the fur in the heat, but clearly clothed. That looks like cotton, maybe even linen. I didn't think they were there advanced.'
'No, look at the other thing we caught,' interjected another, 'they are completely different creatures. This one with the copper fur, it's different to the other.'
'Who's it? I'm a she,' snapped Flip.
Oh, well, I guess not shoving and running immediately was a start.
The circle stopped and turned to her, their weapons pointing at her.
'It speaks.'
'She speaks,' corrected Flip.
Even the masochistic romantic Early Dorom beassi who was taken with her looked at her in surprise.
'And she has a name. I'm Flip Ramon.'
'How can you speak our language with…' The leader pointed with the spear to her mouth, then gestured with its other hand to its own face. It was similarly humanoid with eyes, although they were smaller, they had no nose, that function was taken up with the taste senses in the mouth. They had no teeth, but a lot of sphincters that compressed food. Their speech, like the rustling of trees, was the result of the air escaping and entering holes around the mouth.
'Translation circuit. Part of my ship. You can understand me and I can understand you.' She did not want to say telepathic. That always seemed to bother people.
'So can you understand me?' asked the masochistic romantic Early Dorom beassi beside her.
'I can, but I don't think they can,' said Flip.
'You can understand that thing?' asked the leader.
'Yes.'
'But they don't have a language. Not translatable.'
'They do have a language, but it's… different. I understand what the gestures and grunts mean,' said Flip, also leaving out the perception filter that allows humans to see the mouth move in an approximation of English (or whatever language they speak, but let's be real, with the Doctor it's usually English).
'What are they saying?' asked the Early Dorom beassi.
'What—are they saying?' asked a glitching person, who glitched out while speaking.
'You boff asked what the other said.'
'Let's keep walking. I shall need time to meditate on these developments,' said the leader and pointed on with the spear. They kept quiet throughout the journey.
Meanwhile, the Doctor was not unconscious and nor was Constance, but neither were quite in a position to fight back when they were dragged away. Constance was the first one to come back into the world. As she looked around her, seeing the bridges between clear hilltops all around she reasoned they were still very close to the skirmish. She felt the deep pain of where she had been hit and where the furry creatures had dragged her. She was not surprised to find her clothes were a little torn, but a little disappointed too. For once she was glad she had given up on stockings, she couldn't imagine how many times she would need them replaced adventuring with the Doctor.
Beside her, looking pale and breathing deeply through his nose was the Doctor, and in a make-shift cage, the glitching tree-people. Immediately Constance noticed some ingenuity of the furry creatures. The prison did cover a matter of height, but it also went wide, meaning if the prisoner attempted, while fading out and glitching, was able to move through physical objects, they might not make it all the way through and be caught in a tangle of sticks and brambles.
Constance's arms were not bound, nor were the Doctor's, but they were being watched by two furry creatures. One squatting on a rock, peering at them, the other a little more casually lying, or perhaps crouching, beside them.
The one peering at them made a noise that alerted the others to look. It was not a word, therefore not translatable, like saying 'Oi' or a whistle. A noise to grab attention. But then, as the other furry creatures began paying attention a combination of gestures and noises became words:
'The homemaker wakes.'
'Don't personalise it, Determined, they're things… naked almost. I don't like the skins they wear. Like the ghosts,' said one of the older gatherers, one of two genetic contributors to Determined, they were not the leader, nor had any authority beyond being a gatherer. They were called Poison Nose (because they are good at recognising such things) and those other elders, the pack leaders, the hunters, significantly bigger and with darker fur, were Dark Hide and Savage (the verb, not the noun.)
'They don't smell like the ghosts,' said Dark Hide, the second genetic contributor to Determined.
'I know, but they look like them, all tall and thin…' Poison Nose, svelte and small, but no less authoritative for when any of the elders spoke there was a silence and respect from the other Early Dorom beassi to watch and listen.
'This one speaks our language,' interjected Determined, gesturing to Constance who was also paying attention. 'She's listening, she knows what we're saying.'
Savage gave Poison Nose a look, which they chose to ignore, then looked to Dark Hide who shrugged. Familial/tribal relations. The child bearer of Determined, Detailed, was a homemaker from another tribe/family and ever since their death, neither remaining genetic contributors could much make Determined respect the family roles.
Poison Nose stepped forward. 'And do you speak our language?'
'I can understand you, I don't know how well my language will translate.'
The Early Dorom beassi (by the stars it would be so much easier if they had family/tribe names) looked around at one another. Constance's speaking had been broken, the syntax was all wrong, mixed tenses and missing words, if they thought really hard they would understand it.
A gatherer assigned homemaker at birth, Wiggle (the verb), understood and asked if Savage would grant them permission to speak to Constance. Savage nodded and Wiggle skipped in front of Constance and repeated the gesture of open palm tapping the centre of the chest, then a splayed paw-hand at the forehead, palm facing outwards.
'Do this when you mean your own perspective and present tense,' said Wiggle. The telepathic translator was doing a bit of work there, Early Dorom beassi didn't have a word for present tense that was separate from the first-person perspective.
Constance said again, copying the gesture, 'I can understand you. I don't know if I—oh,' she forgot the gesture and started again. 'I can understand you. I don't know if I can speak the language. I don't know these gestures.'
'She speaks like Wiggle,' said Determined.
'Constance, Constance,' called the Doctor, he was slumped, breathing heavily. 'The glitch… I can't…'
'Can't what Doctor?'
'They are speaking again,' said Determined.
'They should have called you Announces,' said Wiggle.
'And they should have let you be taken by the night,' snapped Determined, which earned a harsh scolding from Poison Nose.
'I'm going to be sick. The fading out… nausea.'
'Oh my!' Constance sat up and felt the Doctor's temperature, remembering that he should be slightly hotter than a human with a binary vascular system, but he was burning up badly. She turned to the furry creatures. 'Please, can I move my friend. He's ill. He needs water and a cold rag.'
They did not understand her. She could see it, as they tried to work it out, even Wiggle was struggling. They understood, by the way she was holding the Doctor that he was needing something, but exactly what they didn't know.
Even the caged, fading creature turned to watch, curious.