Yowzah Oneshot Collection (1)

35(G)

The swelling fermata as the chord dies;

There once was a time I was sure of the bond
When my hands and my tongue and my thoughts were enough
We are the same but our lives move along
And the third one between replaces what once was love

The sun was shining in the clear blue sky above her, a gentle breeze blowing across the perfectly even, perfectly perfect garden. She sighed in discontent, feeling guilty because honestly it was being a bit of a cow to be resentful of a life given to you by the man who loved you so much he couldn’t contemplate the thought of you being gone.

But...

But. It was a perfect world, run by a little girl. They had every book every written at their disposal, to have adventure in, to explore, to wonder at, but she’d long grown tired of it all. Miss Evangelista, Anita and the Daves loved it – it was a far better thing than being dead, at any rate. But for her, they were just stories. Stories you couldn’t live in, you couldn’t die in – so where was the thrill of adventure? More and more now, she spent her days lost in her own memories, or spent them taking care of the children. Pretend, made-up children she’d never had an opportunity to create for herself in her lifetime.

She felt her eyes grow painfully dry in the sunlight, so she scrubbed at them before picking up her diary from the ground beside her. In here, just as it had been in her life – she carried it everywhere. Charlotte had offered to upload it into the database, but she’d refused repeatedly. Re-living imaginings of her adventures with the Doctor would just torture her. And the memories in between these pages were hers alone. She would only share them with one other, and he wasn’t here to see them.

She’d been contemplating the thought more and more of asking Charlotte to just do for her what the Doctor hadn’t been able to do. Let her go – delete her files. Endless days of endless perfect and endless loneliness were all that she could see stretched before her, and unlike the Doctor, she had no adventures to distract her. No marvellous blue box to take her away from these feelings. No one to run with.

A thump and a muffled sound startled her, and she turned around to see a woman struggling to her feet awkwardly. She was small, with dark hair and a confused expression, in a tattered Victorian ball gown. River stood with a frown – wondering if somehow something had gone wrong with the program. Had one of the book's characters somehow managed to get into the mainframe? “Hello?” She spoke tentatively, causing the woman to jerk around, her face lighting up upon seeing her.

“Water!” She stumbled a bit as she moved towards her, and River held out her hands to catch her. “Wait no – that’s not right. Not water. But water. No – I need water.”

“I can get you water, darling. Are you alright? Where did you come from?” She took her hand, attempting to lead her away but the woman refused to move, a frown on her face as she stared at her.

“Oh from above and below. All around really. I’m everywhere. All at once. River!” She shouted suddenly and River looked at her in shock. “Not water, River, I need River. Names can be difficult sometimes, you know. I’ve no idea why I came down in this body – I only had it for a few hours, but I suppose I needed to talk, so a body I had to have. At least it doesn’t feel as empty and large as it did that last time.”

“What? I’m River.” She stared at the strange woman in shock, and she threw her head back and laughed.

“Of course you are. I know that.” They were standing close together now – Rivers hands on the strange woman’s arms and the woman was clutching her back with equal force.  “It’s why I came. River. River – the only water in the forest. I told him – well tried to tell him, but he’s an idiot sometimes. Most times really. He didn’t listen. Well he listened, but he didn’t pay attention.”