Wanderer of Time: Silence Begins (doctor who)

Chapter 36: The Fob Watches

Alice sat in her bed, already within her night gown for sleeping. Settled in for the night, now she simply delayed sleep in fears for being overcome with nightmares again. Something of which has become sort of a routine for her. The main reason why she never had much sleep in the first place was because of these constant visions she had been having over the past two months. Oh, how she dearly wished to discuss this with someone. To relieve some of this torment, and perhaps gain some comfort. But she knew it might make Martha, Joan, or even John, wary of her if she dared tell them of such visions. Best let things be as they were, and stay the supportive friend for each of them.

Alice leaned against the window beside her bed, gazing longingly at the stars. She never understood why, but she always held this strange fascination with the twinkling lights of the night sky. It boggled her mind when she never held any such desire to ever leave her quaint life that she held. She loved the simple and ordinary existence she had. Nothing more had ever called to her. No grand scale of any sorts. Yet she still finds herself gazing to those stars . . . wondering what majesty they might hold, wishing to dance amongst.

She stiffened as she saw a green light shine far off in the night sky. It was quick and very brief. She might have thought her eyes were playing tricks on her if she did not know better. Then another green light followed shortly after the first, leaving a trail behind it as it fizzled out in the sky. This time resembling much like a meteor falling through the sky. Alice sat stiff on her bed, gazing anxiously out as the sky grew dark once more.

They were the same signs from her nightmares. Always the same. A green light, followed by a wicked family who could take a person's body for their own. This family would lay waste, killing off many. All of it ending with John, Joan, and Martha dying. Her friends, perishing to the wicked family's cruel nature as Alice was forced to watch, unable to do anything to stop her friends' deaths. She would often wake up with startled cries from these visions. Crying in the morning and trying to wipe them from her memory before Martha would come and bring her breakfast.

Alice looked over to her dresser with the fob watch. The silver watch lay there, quietly, with only a tone of mystery echoing from it. Standing up from the bed, she swiftly walked over and picked up the watch. She held it tightly in her hands, gripping it to hear the voice within.

Not yet.

"But when? When will it be time?" Alice asked the watch. Always hoping she would receive an answer when she spoke to the inanimate object.

Not yet.

Alice sighed in frustration. She set the useless thing back upon the dresser, going back to her bed. It was always the same with the watch. Always giving those two words, never saying anything more. She had always wondered where she had gotten the watch. From what she could recall, it had simply appeared into her life one day. Just sitting there, waiting to be opened. She knew it could be opened, but at the same time, knew she must never open it. At least, not until a certain point in time. Just as she always knew these things.

She never understood how things seemed to just jump into her head and tell her brief warnings to when danger was to come. It had happened for as long as she could remember. These visions constantly came in handy during many occasions. Even around the school itself. There had been one or two times when a boy was about to be hurt or something bad would happen in the village. She would always be there, helping out the people and stopping the situations from becoming any worse than from what she had seen in advance.

In many of the same sense, it was similar to how she knew what John felt and of his dreams . . . they were not as impossible as they seemed. Just as she felt as if . . . she were not meant to be her. She was meant to be someone else. As though she still was that someone else, and the names and memories had simply been switched. And she was merely waiting now until the name and memories came back to her, until the day came when she would become that someone else. But would she still be her? Or would she disappear to the world as if she never existed in the first?