The Children of Time.... In The End.

With her hearts both pounding hard in her chest, and their beats echoing in her ears, Hailey Andrews raced onto her ship. She slammed the door behind her and as quickly as she could, she locked it. She rushed to the control console and struggling to catch her breath, she plotted the ship into the time vortex. Gasping, and laughing, and shaking her head in disbelief at her narrow escape, she finally fell into her chair in the control room as her knees gave way, shaking with shocked relief.

It was not typical of Tessilons to attack out of nowhere, like the ones she had just managed to escape from had done. Small and lightweight and only semi-intelligent as far as the intelligence of species went, the creatures could use simple tools well enough, but were generally timid and used those tools mainly for hunting and survival.

She wondered why she had so suddenly found herself surrounded by two dozen small furry pink creatures, their heads barely reaching past her waist, but nearly all of them waving sharp pointed wooden spears toward her. Her tried and trusted trick of escaping up a tree and from there jumping down across to the far side of the clearing from one of it's long overhanging branches had gaining her enough of a head start, that though she was chased immediately, she made it back ahead of the little primitive aliens. Something must have frightened the small tribe, she knew, but what? Had a female perhaps felt that her newly born young one was threatened, and in her panic instigated the sudden frenzy? No, that made no sense, Hailey realized as sitting down and slowly feeling herself grow calmer, she mentally reviewed all she knew about the Tessilons, of Matraxian Jarvo. It was winter on that planet at the time she'd landed, and all Tessilon young were born in the spring. There would be no newborns among them, only older babies and that would not have caused quite that reaction over a visitor who showed no harmful intent. In any case, she was not sure that even had their been tiny babies among them, anyone would normally have attacked. It was just not their way.

Hailey's TARDIS tumbled through the vortex aimlessly, and she let it drift peacefully for a long while, as she sipped a cup of tea and though back over the last few hours again. As the last of her panic over the incident with the Tessilons wore off, she smiled to herself and let her ship drift as it would. Slowly she got up from her chair and made her way to the main bathroom down the lower floor hallway.

She started the water in the large bathtub running on a low setting, and turned the taps so that the temperature was the warmest she liked it. Looking forward to a good warm soak in her tub, she hurried across the hall to her bedroom to fetch her things. She found herself sitting for a brief moment on her bed, on top of pink and red checkered quilt looking at the photograph she picked up from on the top of the little wooden nightstand. Her mother and herself both smiled from inside the frame decorated with white flowers.

In the photograph, both of them stood in front of a stack of yellowish hay bales on a farm belonging to the friend and neighbor. They looked so typical, just like any mother and daughter might be expected to look in some random photograph taken that the spur of a moment. George had taken that photo during a small outdoor get together at their neighbor's place, and of course looking at it no one would guess at the the trouble and confusion the family had faced over the years. Hailey reached over to slowly set the framed picture back down on her night stand. She smiled for a moment, before she shook her head, her own emotions confusing her.

"Mum, if only you could see me now," she said out loud to no one. "You wouldn't have known what to make of those Tessilons today. Of course Kathie and Jake would probably have just laughed at first."

With another shake of her head, she crossed the hall again to her bathroom. Throwing her clothes into a messy pile of bright colors and striped fabric, she climbed into the tub and let herself fall gratefully back into the nearly hot water and sweetly scented bubble bath.