OOM: Inside the TARDIS
Oct. 23rd, 2012 03:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janisthornThe console room is dark and empty when Leela steps into it. The Doctor is nowhere to be found, and the only light remaining is the flickering static display of the viewscreen, dimly illuminating a room overgrown with weeds. Even the time rotor is choked with janis thorns, its transparent aluminum casing punctured by the hungry, twisting vines.
Leela takes a tentative step forward. Dead leaves crunch beneath her feet. She knows these plants - they are the flora of her own world. Some of these plants take months to grow this high.
She takes another step - this one makes a different sound, a softer, muffled one. She looks down. On the floor beside her is a dried smear of pale red liquid. Next to it, beneath her foot, is a torn scrap of multicolored cloth.
The Doctor.
The viewscreen emits a blast of static noise. Leela looks up. The static is gone now, replaced by a symbol: a crossed-out circle, crudely drawn in coal black. And then another sound - a deep, resonant chime that echoes throughout the chamber. The Cloister Bell.
Leela dashes across the control room and down the nearest corridor. Its walls are marked by the same symbol shown on the viewscreen, drawn in the same crusty pale red substance she had found beside the piece of the Doctor's scarf. She takes a hard left at a T intersection -
Leela is running through the forest just beyond the limits of her village. She bounds over and between trees, never stopping. Keeping up with the diggers and bark-skippers of the forest had always required speed. This hunt is no different.
As she ducks beneath a low-hanging branch, she emerges to see a face she had not expected to see again. Standing before her is a child - no older than three years - dressed in the rough vestments of the Sevateem, with a tiny scabbard strapped to her hip. Just as she had looked when...
In her left hand, she is holding a tattered piece of multicolored cloth. Her right hand is raised, beckoning to Leela.
"Ennia?"
Leela's dead sister runs off in the other direction.
"Wait!"
Leela takes off after her. Yet as fast as Leela runs, the child always seems faster. It's all Leela can do to keep her in sight. Finally, she follows her into a clearing.
Leela blinks as the full light of day hits her eyes. Would that her eyes had never opened.
The girl is gone. At the center of the clearing is a single chute of razorwood, growing straight through a man's body. Through both hearts.
His body is limp, contorted into obscene angles by wrapping vines whose thorns pierce what little remains of his decaying flesh. The corpse is unidentifiable save for the tattered remains of his scarf and the matted clumps of curly hair that stick to his shredded scalp. A small pack of horda have discovered him, and are ripping through his sticky viscera and sinewy tendons.
Leela backs away, averting her eyes. Yet before she can escape the wretched sight, a vine extends from the razorwood and snaps at her ankle, sending her falling backwards.
More vines emerge from the depths of the earth, wrapping the prone Leela's limbs in an anaconda's grip. She struggles in vain against her bonds - it only makes their hold on her stronger.
There's a figure leaning over her now - tall, thin, faceless. She knows it well. It stares without eyes, peering into Leela's soul as it tightens its grip on her, holding her still as the horda descend upon her, their hungry mouths open wide...
Leela awakens with a scream. She is in her chambers, in the TARDIS. There is no sign of vines, or of...him...anywhere. It is as bright and clean as it always is.
Yet she does not feel safe. This was far more lucid than any dream - this was something more. This was an attack. She didn't merely see it - she felt its presence, in the way it stared at her with its not-eyes. The thing she had seen in the bar was after her - after her mind. And it knows what deaths she fears more than her own.
When the Doctor comes asking to ask what the matter is, she is unable to say.
Leela takes a tentative step forward. Dead leaves crunch beneath her feet. She knows these plants - they are the flora of her own world. Some of these plants take months to grow this high.
She takes another step - this one makes a different sound, a softer, muffled one. She looks down. On the floor beside her is a dried smear of pale red liquid. Next to it, beneath her foot, is a torn scrap of multicolored cloth.
The Doctor.
The viewscreen emits a blast of static noise. Leela looks up. The static is gone now, replaced by a symbol: a crossed-out circle, crudely drawn in coal black. And then another sound - a deep, resonant chime that echoes throughout the chamber. The Cloister Bell.
Leela dashes across the control room and down the nearest corridor. Its walls are marked by the same symbol shown on the viewscreen, drawn in the same crusty pale red substance she had found beside the piece of the Doctor's scarf. She takes a hard left at a T intersection -
Leela is running through the forest just beyond the limits of her village. She bounds over and between trees, never stopping. Keeping up with the diggers and bark-skippers of the forest had always required speed. This hunt is no different.
As she ducks beneath a low-hanging branch, she emerges to see a face she had not expected to see again. Standing before her is a child - no older than three years - dressed in the rough vestments of the Sevateem, with a tiny scabbard strapped to her hip. Just as she had looked when...
In her left hand, she is holding a tattered piece of multicolored cloth. Her right hand is raised, beckoning to Leela.
"Ennia?"
Leela's dead sister runs off in the other direction.
"Wait!"
Leela takes off after her. Yet as fast as Leela runs, the child always seems faster. It's all Leela can do to keep her in sight. Finally, she follows her into a clearing.
Leela blinks as the full light of day hits her eyes. Would that her eyes had never opened.
The girl is gone. At the center of the clearing is a single chute of razorwood, growing straight through a man's body. Through both hearts.
His body is limp, contorted into obscene angles by wrapping vines whose thorns pierce what little remains of his decaying flesh. The corpse is unidentifiable save for the tattered remains of his scarf and the matted clumps of curly hair that stick to his shredded scalp. A small pack of horda have discovered him, and are ripping through his sticky viscera and sinewy tendons.
Leela backs away, averting her eyes. Yet before she can escape the wretched sight, a vine extends from the razorwood and snaps at her ankle, sending her falling backwards.
More vines emerge from the depths of the earth, wrapping the prone Leela's limbs in an anaconda's grip. She struggles in vain against her bonds - it only makes their hold on her stronger.
There's a figure leaning over her now - tall, thin, faceless. She knows it well. It stares without eyes, peering into Leela's soul as it tightens its grip on her, holding her still as the horda descend upon her, their hungry mouths open wide...
Leela awakens with a scream. She is in her chambers, in the TARDIS. There is no sign of vines, or of...him...anywhere. It is as bright and clean as it always is.
Yet she does not feel safe. This was far more lucid than any dream - this was something more. This was an attack. She didn't merely see it - she felt its presence, in the way it stared at her with its not-eyes. The thing she had seen in the bar was after her - after her mind. And it knows what deaths she fears more than her own.
When the Doctor comes asking to ask what the matter is, she is unable to say.
