Yowzah Oneshot Collection (3)

52(M)

And these few precious days I'll spend with you

                      savvyliterate

There was no concept of seasons on the planet that Stormcage was literally carved from. Rain beat incessantly, day and night. River wondered how they managed not to float away, and she spent a couple of precious hours in the maintenance supervisor's office studying the blueprints for the planet. She enjoyed scones and hot tea while guards rushed past in a panic, scouring the corridors for her. It was all very impressive, and she discovered approximately 1,320 security holes just within her ward alone. As for the water, it turned out that Stormcage's one major export was water. What rainwater wasn't used by the system was collected, purified by minimum-security prisoners, then exported to planets that lacked a decent water source.

River thanked the fates that her security levels meant that she wasn't sentenced to labor about in a water-purifying plant. Or, worse, she’d have to do something utterly mundane such as the prison laundry or kitchen duty. Really, she did have standards.

But, she found herself missing the ordinary turn of the seasons. Oh, it made life tediously slow in Leadworth -- a place that was backwards enough as is. Yet, there were four seasons, and there was something to like about each of them. Winter enabled her to use snowballs as very effective missiles. Spring was good from stripping the seeds from people's flower gardens and replacing them with potatoes. Summer meant there was no school, and that was always the best holiday. Autumn meant collecting leaves in garbage bags, suspending them in trees and rigging invisible snares so some unsuspecting person walking down the pavement would trip it and have a leaf-bag bomb land on them.

She traveled extensively, on her own and with the Doctor. She led an expedition in the purple snows of Trexla and discovered that monsoon season on Jupiter Neo consisted of a slushy precipitation that tasted a bit like pineapples. She visited planets where it was always winter and planets where it was always summer. After a time, her curiosity was piqued, and she began researching planets that were either all spring or all autumn. She could never find any, which perplexed her. She understood logically why it wouldn't happen, but she couldn't help but think people were missing out when they never got the chance to jump into a big leaf pile.

In this incarnation, River loved studying under the trees at Luna University during the artificially created fall that the moon government implemented for the humans that lived there. In a bout of nostalgia, she found herself packing her tablet, a couple of hardcovers and a small knapsack of snacks to pop out of her cell for the afternoon. She’d just disabled the alarms and strapped on her vortex manipulator when she heard the familiar wheeze and groan of the TARDIS brakes. With a hum of anticipation, she spun as the ship faded into view.

The door didn’t open, so she took it as an invitation to board on her own. She eased the door open and stopped short at the sight of her husband furiously trying to fix his fringe in one of the reflective surfaces on the console. He pinched the locks of hair between two fingers and pushed them to one side, then the other, then back to the first side before deciding he liked it better that. With a frown, he ran a hand over his bow tie and flicked the ends, angling his eyebrows at the same time. He pushed back his jacket to check his braces and flashed a practice smile at his reflection. “How do I look?” he asked himself.

“Amazing,” River replied with a smile.

The Doctor spun and promptly tripped, falling back onto the console. He hastily patted himself down as he regained his balance. “River! What are you doing? No, no, go back outside so I can do this properly.”

“Do what?” She pulled off the knapsack and dropped it on the captain’s chair. “Strut out the door looking like a peacock?”

He scowled. “I was not looking like a peacock.”