bigapplesauce | with fronds like these, who needs anemones [closed]

Today, Calliope has a hankering for company. She's been consumed by various projects for a handful of days now, perhaps three or four, hiding away in her increasingly spacious nook in the library on her quest to read every book, and illustrating her pirate Doctor fanfictions in a special secret room she's found where the walls are hung with otherworldly maps and beautiful sketches. There is so much to do that she sometimes forgets the time, no longer needing to worry about scheduled naps to afford her brother equal awakeness, and there is something so reassuring and companionable about knowing she can be on her own as much as she likes, while her friends are just around the next corner. Ianto seems to worry a wee bit, when she's disappeared for a while, texting her occasionally to ask if she needs anything or wants dinner, the sweet dear. The Doctor leaves her be for the most part, unless he's found something especially exciting, like a spatial anomaly or a new type of candy. It's all wonderfully domestic and she couldn't be happier.

So when she's had enough of hermitting away, she gets hold of a kitchen and rustles up some muffins (replacing the cherries in the recipe with chopped steak and adding a generous helping of chocolate chips). She arranges a few on a plate and leaves the rest on the table for peckish passersby, setting out to find a friend. And it isn't long at all until she does, a helpfully red door pointing the way to a truly impressive workshop, walls lined with contraptions and desks filled with gadgets, and a few stairs leading down to another level. There the Doctor sits hunched over a workbench, tinkering away. He's so adorably engrossed in his work that he hasn't even noticed her entering, so she flops down on her belly and peeks through the railing at his desk below, watching him for a minute before deciding he quite clearly needs a break. She nudges a muffin between the bars until it drops straight down on his work, quickly scooting back to hide her head and muffle a giggle with her sleeve.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Doctor cranes around at an improbable angle to give a mock-severe look. Callie plays a lot of tricks for someone so firmly opposed to stealing lobsters from the supermarket. He samples one of the larger muffin fragments; she's definitely committed worse atrocities against the science of baking, though bacon would have made a better counterpoint than steak, flavour-wise. Perhaps he should warn Ianto, though. Eh. He'll survive. And Earth will survive without a cheese-toast toaster (also does cinnamon toast!) for another day, too. "That's a violation of the treaty! The TARDIS said no throwing, lobbing, pelting, or otherwise weaponising food using gravity. We both signed it." Time-honoured human ritual or not. "Not a bad snack though. Very...filling." So filling he is going to have to save the rest for another time.

Oh shoot, she's been found out! He is awfully clever, that Doctor. Bit by bit, a pair of orange horns appears at the edge of the railing, then a shock of curly white hair, and finally a still giggling troll child. "Objection!" she declares triumphantly, "This isn't a weapon. It is a gift!" So there's no breaking of any begrudgingly signed treaties here at all. That's a very important distinction. Doesn't he know a gift when it's just about dropped on his head? She snorts at her own thought and chirps, "And you are welcome, love!"

Regardless of the entertainment value in sneaking up on the Doctor and gifting him muffins, she is pleased to hear he approves of her culinary creation. "By the by, there are more up here, if you'd like them." Not that she's angling for him to abandon his work and join her in something more exciting.

Beware of grey children bearing gifts. And yelling nouns. "More? Very industrious of you. Not to make a single lone muffin." Maybe this toaster ought to be bigger. "Are you out of Saturday morning cartoons? Is it Saturday?" Do they even show cartoons on Saturday. It probably doesn't matter what day it is. But as rituals go, that's an important one. He leans back from the work table, rubs at his face as he suffers a sudden fit of responsibility. "I've been neglecting your education, haven't I." But Callie's a smart troll, leaving her to her own devices is probably just as much use as explaining the names and properties of fruits and animals using gummy candy. Still, maybe he ought to try something more edifying than edible. Less free-form. A museum or something. Something they'd have a hard time getting banned from.

"I have not been feeling neglected, darling," she's quick to assure him, resting her chin on her hand and nibbling on the crumbs of another muffin. In fact, she's quite happy to entertain herself and find wells of knowledge in the TARDIS library he might not have thought to share with her. "I read a book on birds yesterday! Did you know the female knot-tying weaverbird will refuse to mate with a male who has built a shoddy nest?" She snickers, charmed all over again by the surprising idiosyncrasies of avian romance. "Quite right, too, if you ask me. Oh, and an ostrich egg can make eleven and a half omelets!" She says this sounding both scandalized and morbidly fascinated - of course predators may eat the young of others, and she herself doesn't mind cooking with chicken eggs, but after seeing a great big ostrich egg in the book she was certain something more familiar ought to hatch from it. So it is rather chilling to consider eleven humans feasting on one.

Well that's all perfectly educational, he supposes. Though he's reasonably certain there's no such thing as a knot-tying weaverbird, that has to be just a plausible sounding word omelet. And omelets are far too variable to be used as standards of measurement. "That's nothing. There's eggs big enough to be mistaken for planets." Ask him how he knows. "And wait 'til you get to the section on brood parasites. There's your afternoon gone forever." Perhaps he should queue up some David Attenborough for her some time, though if her charmingly non-specific accent starts to take after him he'll never be able to keep a straight face again. She's already prone to very informative lectures about the behaviours of various species. But he's pretty sure David Attenborough doesn't spend his days reading books, no, field work is probably what Callie needs to flourish. "Birds are rubbish though. All just variations on a theme. The ocean is the real deal. All the most unimaginable, improbable...things. The majority of this planet's surface is water, and it's been terrifying humans for thousands of years. Training wheels for space, really, with all its pressure and temperature concerns, and all the bioluminescence and googly eyes." He's really warming to this hypothesis, the ocean as a stepping stone for space exploration. Shame it's just as out of reach as the stars, at the moment.

And here is one of the things she loves most about the Doctor - no matter what splendid thing she learns about, he always knows something even more extraordinary to tell her of. She used to fancy herself as having a rather good idea of the absolute grandness and complexity of Paradox Space, especially once she'd run out of instructional material to discover and had to resort to over-analyzing what little she did have. But he's quite cured her of that foolish notion, instead opening her eyes and imagination to the fact that there's a cornucopia of wondrous, wild, astonishing details to the larger story she had been reading about all her life.

For that, she'll even forgive him for calling birds rubbish. She perks up eagerly at his description of the ocean, leaning over the edge with bright big eyes and giggling as he mimics some googly oceanic creature. "That sounds marvelous! Is the ocean really so different from the Earth's surface?" It had seemed quite calm and empty, in their dream. More importantly, "D'you fancy we could go and see?"

The Doctor regrets everything. "The ocean's a little out of reach at the moment. Sorry, Callie." He smiles, a woeful compression. If only. With a fully functional TARDIS, they could see any part of any ocean. Fish, who are also people. Big weird gooey creatures. Something about whales that communicate through leaving dental impressions on sticks? But that's not an option in their current state, just living (more or less) like humans. Which, sure, is still quite exciting for Callie, but playing human isn't nearly so wondrous an exercise for him. He's terrible at it, and he's terrible at being terrible at things. What do regular humans even do? Mostly nothing interesting, without his interference. How do they see the ocean? "But we could go to the aquarium." Is there an aquarium? There has to be. It's an institution. He latches on to the idea properly, fans the flame into a roaring 'it's the best we can do' inferno. "Course, it would only be things from Earth's ocean." He says this with utmost pity. But ultimately they must forgive the aquarium for its inadequacy. "Not even all the things. But probably a few. Probably some of the really good stuff."

The infinity of the TARDIS, both in space and in the number of stories contained within, as well as the whole human city right beyond the doors, often have Calliope entirely forgetting that there are limits to what they can see and do. And while she does feel a pang of disappointment at hearing she won't get to meet all manner of googly-eyed glowing thrilling creatures, she knows it must be all the worse for him, to have had free run of his universe before coming here. There may as well be a shackle on his ankle, and those are awfully difficult to forget about even just for a moment.

Her excited grin falters too, though he does an admirable job of thinking up an alternative that really doesn't sound so pitiful at all, and she smiles a smile to match his in softness. "I'm quite sure a few things from Earth's ocean will do just splendidly for now," she says kindly. There isn't anything she can do about his shackle, but at the very least she won't have him apologizing for it to her. And perhaps some of her enthusiasm will rub off on him. Her cheery grin returns and she stands up, reaching an arm over the railing to wiggle her fingers at him encouragingly. "Shell we go and sea?"

with fronds like these, who needs anemones [closed]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject