roleplay for ibringlife and <lj site="livejournal.com" user="the_

[rude_not_ginger]

Stardusting

or

What Happens When a Mun Decides To Use Flavor Text and It Becomes a Plot All on Its Own


Now, it really, really would've been unprofessional for the Doctor to have gotten bored while waiting for Byron. He should've been thinking of all the ways that Byron could've been messing up time, what he could've been doing with Reinette, all those fantastic and wonderful things.

Of course, that would lead to extreme upset and a raging sort of jealousy.

Which, naturally, the Doctor would not have approved of. So, he busied himself with thinking of other things, like how many roundels there were in the console room. To do so, he was, of course, going to have to be comfortable, so he stretched out on the captain's chair.

Counting roundels? Very much like counting sheep.

He might've been snoring just a bit.

Cutely, though.

Comments

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

"...'kay." Rose frowned a little, since he didn't usually worry about that sort of thing, but shrugged and did as she was told.

...

The shriek she emitted after a moment's silent disbelief could perhaps have been mistaken for something less joyful, particularly as she immediately disappeared out the door. However, as she dashed back in a moment later, beaming and fairly bouncing up and down with excitement, there couldn't be any mistaking her delight.

"You! You liar!" She ran over to hug the Doctor, and never quite stopped bouncing even as she did.

[the-corsair.livejournal.com]

Byron blinked and stared at both of them.

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

The Doctor was just about as befuddled as Byron. This was...unexpected, to say the least. Maybe she was very excited about leaving Byron behind, but that wasn't what the Doctor thought she wanted. And if that were true, it was rather impolite of her to show such excitement around Byron, might hurt his feelings a bit.

Wait, he was a liar and she was excited? What?

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

"I should've guessed, but you do the whole annoyed act so well..." Rose released the Doctor and stood shaking her head at him in mock disapproval for a moment, until she remembered her former excitement and ran back to the doorway, staring out in wonder at the scene before her.

She couldn't see much, yet, because it was rather dark, but what she did see held her in rapt wonder. A city, buildings made of dark obsidian glass rising up all around them, and in the gaps where buildings weren't, strange beautiful trees, totally at odds with the idea of city, not to mention all this darkness, and yet somehow fitting in perfect harmony.

It was beautiful, and from here and there she could see a faint glow that she wanted to get out and race toward to find the source of.

She did, however, remember her manners, and turned back around to hold her hand out to Byron, a gleeful invitation offered even as she flashed a brief look of gratitude to the Doctor.

"Come on, you have to see this. It's brilliant."

[the-corsair.livejournal.com]

Byron was confused about exactly what she was so excited about. It was New York. A nice city to be sure, but surely nothing worth all of this?

He took her hand though, with a smile. "What's brilliant?"

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

A little bit of worry, then a flash of realization. Oh. The preprogrammed control switch, that was why the coordinates weren't reading right, they'd gone to the Stardusting Ceremony rather than New York.

Well, damn.

The glee on Rose's face was quite wonderful, though, and if he admitted that she'd just be terribly irritated.

"Oh, uh, well, I, uh..." he scratched the back of his head and followed, "Thought, uh, it would be a nice surprise."

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

"I've never seen anything like it. Just look!"

She pushed the door the rest of the way open and led the way out into the twilight that she imagined would deepen fully into dark before the ceremony was to begin. Or maybe it was always like this, neither the black of night nor the bright day, but always dusky, too dark to be grey but never quite so dark you couldn't find your way through it.

Whatever it was, it was gorgeous. She wondered to herself how the plants stayed so lush without the benefit of the sun. She'd never quite gotten used to how different some of these places could be.

"Isn't it amazing?"

[the-corsair.livejournal.com]

Byron followed her out and froze at the dusk, the glass city, the trees around.

Not New York, then.

Somehow traveling through time had seemed the merest bit of fascination, but this? Nowhere on earth could that quality of light exist. Nowhere had he seen a city built of this glass. Never had he even heard of black flowers created by nautre.

"It's..." The hurt from before still lingered, but he was a poet, and this was beauty and hurt mattered nothing compared to this. "I've never seen anything so breathtaking."

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

Despite how much the Doctor didn't want to like Byron, he couldn't help the internal thrill at his awe. He traveled to share the universe, and, really, Byron wasn't that bad. Well, sometimes he was.

"They call it moonblast glass," he said, closing the TARDIS door behind them, "It keeps them warm when the sun's around the other side of the planet, and it is strong enough to withstand the winds during their winter time."

"The plants survive on radiation, the atmosphere is stable but soaked in it--- speaking of which," he handed a pill to Rose and Byron before popping one of his own, "Don't need anyone getting sick before the show."

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

"... can you ever tell us these things before we go dashing out into it?" Rose rolled her eyes before swallowing the pill, and shook her head with a wry look at Byron.

"Honestly, it's always look at the pretty colors, and oh, by the way, wear sunglasses or you'll burn your eyes out. Everywhere we go, something like that. Radiation, places I can look at out the window but can't actually step out into because the air's poison -- at least those he manages to warn me about before I open the door."

[the-corsair.livejournal.com]

Byron smiled a little at her tone, and swallowed the pill. The radiation wouldn't kill him, but really? Who wanted to have to deal with healing from radiation sickness?

"Does the temperature drop so quickly at night, or does their planet rotate differently than Earth?"

He felt proud about being able to ask what seemed a sensible question when really he sort of wanted to just stare in absolute awe at being on another planet. Awe and a momentary sense of panic. Of being completely away from anything he had ever known. Completely separated from it, from the world he knew. There was an immensity there that he had felt the first time he traveled to the continent from England and realized that he was in a place completely different. Like that, but on a much larger scale.

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"It's not night, actually, it's half a year, that's how long it takes for the planet to rotate," the Doctor replied, lips twitching in an impressed-sort of smile at Byron's openness, "They call it 'Sweat Time' during the time when the planet faces the sun, and 'Wind Time', for the gale-like winds and ice storms. We're a good eight months off of a Wind Time, though."

He led the way down the slope towards the city, still chatting about the planet like some sort of overly friendly tour guide, "There was a study by humans in 5245 about the reasons why the sun out there gave off no light, but the results were fairly inconclusive until the topic of pin galaxies came into play, the idea that hundreds of millions of nanosecond galaxies exist outside of the sun's core, soaking up the light, but the combustive nature of the galaxies keeps the heat going."

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

"You're taking all the fun out of it," Rose teased the Doctor, too entirely gleeful to let anything really take the fun out of the experience.

"I don't care how it works. I've just about learned to stop asking and just ... look, and listen, and accept that somehow it does. I could think up a dozen questions that I'd like to ask but the answers to all of them wouldn't compare to just... just being here, like we are."

Though really, right now most of her attention was focused on Byron and his reaction to their surroundings. She'd brought people along before, and they were always impressed, but she never quite got tired of seeing the look on someone's face when they saw the impossible for the first time. And as impossible as time travel itself had been, this was just a whole different realm of strange and beautiful and she thought there was nobody quite better to show it to than someone with a poet's imagination.

[the-corsair.livejournal.com]

The idea of nanosecond galaxies had captured the poet's imagination as much as the amazing beauty around them. There were words to describe it, he was sure. Words that would make meaning out of emotion and paint pictures that the imagination had never contemplated. Words that could carry this across the universe to share this magical moment, this sense of place, of real in the unreal.

But he wasn't sure what the words were right now. They hovered there, teasing at his brain, half-forming themselves then flitting away, because the sensory impressions were too strong to resolve into something two dimensional when they were all around. Later then, words to recreate, to evoke and bring it alive once more. For now he set the thought in the back of his mind to catalogue and just...felt.

"Galaxies within the sun itself?"

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"Pin galaxies," the Doctor nodded, "They only exist for a quintillienth of a second, then combust, very like the big-bang theory, only in extreme miniature. The heat from the sun is very normal to them, some of the worlds contained don't even notice it because they exist so quickly that they can feel only a cool spot their entire existence. There's a research station on the other end of the sun headed up by a friend of mine, DaStari. Been studying the galaxies his entire life."

They began to pass the native people, who appeared to be clad in dark clothes (the Doctor was fairly sure they were bright colors that only showed during natural light), all of whom seemed to carry bags that glowed faintly. They were the 'stars' for the stardusting.

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

"That's so sad," Rose noted of the tiny galaxies.

"Whole galaxies, whole worlds, with things living in them, and their whole life in a fraction of a second and then gone before anyone has time to notice. And we never knew, and we can't know, because they're gone before anyone could tell they ever existed."

[the-corsair.livejournal.com]

There was a poem there, a story, in her words and her sadness and the words in his brain slid a little closer to the surface, images intertwining in a passionate embrace with text and he almost trembled with the feel of the rebirth.

"Terribly sad," he murmured softly.

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"Not sad," the Doctor disagreed, "Our lifetimes, our galaxies, they're small in comparison to other beings. Like the Eternals, they exist in eternity and believe universes only last moments, minutes. You wouldn't call our lives sad, would you?"

The Doctor took in the irony of Rose's words, though. A human's lifetime was a drop of water to him, to Byron. He wondered if she realized that as she spoke. He hoped not.

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

"Not our lives. Not mine. I love this, all of this."

She beamed at them both brightly, radiating enough joy of her own to compete with the hidden sun.

"This is what my life is, places like this all the time." That was to Byron, whose hand she held onto a little tighter as though doing so would make all that joy wear off onto him a little.

"This is what it's like, and I love it, and I'm so happy I got to show it to someone who can appreciate it."

[the-corsair.livejournal.com]

"Thank you," he said quietly, squeezing her hand, then looking to the Doctor as well. "Thank you for giving me this chance."

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"Well, we were heading in this direction anyway," the Doctor said, scratching his head again. He hadn't really wanted to share it with Byron, but the man's appreciative nature and inquisitiveness made it impossible for the Doctor to truly hate the experience.

"Think there's a viewing area right over here," he said, leading them onto an open glen.

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

"How long before the whole place lights up?" she asked the Doctor, faintly impatient to get to the real spectacle, to be able to see more of this place, to see what impressed the locals of such an impressive place, to see what was memorable enough that a Time Lord who'd seen it all before would come back to see it again.

[the-corsair.livejournal.com]

Byron smiled a little at her impatience, soaking in the place, the substance of it. He could feel the way it vibrated around the glade, so different than anything he'd ever known.

There was a sense of anticipation that crawled over his skin, making him feel a bit breathless. That wanting, longing, to see what happened next, mixing with the feeling of not wanting this to end. The point where you hovered on the edge, cresting the hill, and you knew that there would be a magnificent fall on the other side, a rush of sensation washing through and over you, but you wanted to hold on to that clenching as you waited for just a moment longer until you couldn't bear it.

He squeezed Rose's hand again as they found a place to stand in the glade.

[rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com]

"Oooooh, not too much longer now," the Doctor promised. One of the natives stepped forward, asking where they were involved in the ceremony.

"Oh, uh, we're Dusters," the Doctor said, pulling out his psychic paper and flashing it, "Sorry we're a bit late."

"Bit late..." the native grumbled, handing them all glowing bags, "Five nots 'til it's time."

"That's around a minute," the Doctor murmured to Byron and Rose as the man walked off.

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

Rose held her bag of crystals carefully in both hands (though, regretfully, it meant letting go of Byron's, she supposed she'd best do that before the Doctor got jealous anyway) as though it were something precious. It reminded her of jars full of fireflies, all the little crystals sort of hovering together, producing a soft glow that made it look as though she were holding a ball of light if she didn't look right at it.

She looked around her at the others gathered around, felt the collective anticipation tingle through the air, and fairly trembled with it, herself.