Breaking Point

Welcome to Trilaxia Three

Rose helped to fly the time ship again. She manned a section of the console at their direction while the Doctors both moved around the rest of it, in sync with one another. The ride was rougher than the last few trips had been, but they did need a couple of parts after all.

When materialization was complete, Rose was thrown back on the grating. The twin Time Lords had managed to stay upright, and both had automatically went to Rose's aid as soon as she fell. She remembered several other times where she had been thrown to the grating in the past, and did the same thing she did all of those other times; she laughed. This had the Doctor in the blue suit chuckling while he pulled her up, and his counterpart had cracked a small smile.

The Doctor in brown then walked over to the door, opened it, and stepped outside. The other one nodded to Rose with a smile, then nodded towards the door, indicating she should go out. Rose was more than ready to step out onto an alien world with the Doctor for the first time in a very, very long time.

She stepped out of the doors of the TARDIS with her eyes closed, taking a deep breath. She smelled an earthy smell, heard a bird-like creature twittering. The air was cool on her skin, but not cold, and the ground was springy. Speaking of the ground, the planet felt like it had a much lower gravity than Earth.

Rose opened her eyes and was met with a very beautiful sight. She was standing at the edge of a forest, surrounded on 3 sides by very beautiful- and very colorful- trees. The TARDIS sat next to a road that ran along the edge of the forest. She walked up to a tree and placed her hand on it. It had red, yellow, green, and orange just under the peeling bark and its leaves were several shades of red.

"Beautiful," she breathed. "This is the eucalinictus tree?" she asked, fairly sure that it was. "It's just like you described, like people put paint all over it!"

She looked back towards the Doctors, the brown one standing next to a tree nearby, while his counterpart leaned against the TARDIS. Both were taking in her reaction, smiling at her enthusiasm. The blue suited Doctor replied, "Yep!"

The other then pointed down the road and stated, "The markets are this way." He then started down the road leisurely, the other two catching up quickly. "So, Trilaxia Three. This planet is the center of trade for this system. Ships from all over, including other systems come here. Can find many bits that can be used in the TARDIS and in my creations here. As long as it isn't rare, you can get it here. And even some rare things."

The New Doctor took up the talk from there. "We're on the other side of the Milky Way in the 68th century, they're on the credits system with the rest of the galaxy by now." He stopped talking for a second, looked over to Rose, who had her hair tied up in a loose ponytail, and told her, "Rose, you might want to let your hair down to cover your ears."

Rose immediately complied while she asked, "Why's that then?"

"Welll," the Doctor replied, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck. "The ears are a sensual organ for these people, and it's an offense for a woman to show off her ears to someone who isn't her mate, and never in public." He rushed through his explanation.

"So, it's like flashin' then?" Rose asked. "Good to know. Hidden away then?" She pointed at her ears.

The Time Lord Doctor glanced over at her. "Yeah, all covered up."

They made it to the marketplace after a ten minute walk. Ten minutes of meaningless chitchat, where Rose wanted nothing more than to hold hands with someone, but was unsure if she should. At the market, there were stalls selling all kinds of wares, clothing, accessories, jewelry, house goods, food, parts, and on and on, jumbled in a mish mash with no reason to them, except for the fact that the various farmer's stands were grouped in clumps. Most of the people looked like them, but Rose knew they weren't human, if the comment about their ears was any sort of indication.