« Back
Generated:
Post last updated:
To answer a question of my own
Clara picks up a Fray.
Permalink Mark Unread

The time between adventures helps with cooling off. She never wants to be fatally reckless again- she's already gotten so many chances, and she's not sure what it would take to break her out of stasis. So she's enjoying herself in one of her TARDIS' more entertaining diversions: a forest, rather similar to one she remembers from an early adventure on Earth. The familiar ache that accompanies those memories is easy to distract herself from with just how alien this one is underneath the surface. Her TARDIS gives her the best presents.

Permalink Mark Unread

Her latest traveling companion is sitting on the floor of the engine room. His mind is swimming as he tries to understand the schematics he's reading; engineering, science, and math had never interested him before now, but the promise of travel through space and time is enticing enough to draw him in. Like a moth to a flame, or Sisyphus up the hill, he begins.

That's why, he will later insist, that he didn't notice the ship had already landed.

Permalink Mark Unread

She's busy running for her life. She can't even travel out of this shithole of a world - Fillory, really?? - so she's stuck using her mediocre cardio abilities and she keeps tripping like some sort of B horror movie damsel -

When she spots the diner she kind of - stops and stares at it for a whole three seconds before she runs towards it. It has to be magic, it's in the middle of a random forest in Fillory. Or it's a trap. Whatever. She doesn't have much choice at the moment.

She swings open the door and runs inside.

Permalink Mark Unread

There is a diner. There are booths and tables, but despite the lights being on, it appears to be closed. The chairs are stacked up on the counter. There is a door leading to the back- probably the ktichen.

Permalink Mark Unread

Into the back she goes then. Getting out of the open won't help a lot, but it's something.

Permalink Mark Unread

Instead of a kitchen, she sees a spacious white room with a large mechanical something in the center with a glass pillar rising from the top. There are levers, buttons, and switches galore.

Permalink Mark Unread

There is also a man, roughly her age, standing up from the floor.

"What are you doing here?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Running for my life. What about you?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Until now, reading. Do you need to leave here now?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Needed to leave here weeks ago. And if you have that power, we should really go immediately because the thing chasing me would really really really love that ability and will murder us all to get it."

Permalink Mark Unread

He knows more than enough to turn the damn thing on. He flips some number of switches, presses a few buttons, and pulls a lever; the engine makes an odd sound as it powers up, but it's clear that it has- and clearer, through the viewscreen, that the diner is de-materializing as they take off.

Permalink Mark Unread

Jocelyn takes in the viewscreen to keep a watch out for the thing chasing her.

"That's some magic you have here. Don't know why the hell you would have it out in the open in Fillory. That's just asking to be murdered."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Magic is an old story people told themselves to explain a reality that terrified them in its breadth and complexity. Unless you know something we don't."

Permalink Mark Unread

As they leave, the viewscreen turns off automatically.

Permalink Mark Unread

She spins around and steps back towards the door.

"We?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Me and the mistress of the house. 'Clara', as she calls herself. You're inside a TARDIS, a ship that can fly through space and time. It's a convenient invention for avoiding certain problems."

Permalink Mark Unread

Jocelyn takes a look around, seemingly unimpressed.

"This is your solution for space/time travel? Bit much, isn't it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"She says it's an engineering marvel from another planet- to me, it looks like the last gap of a dying civilization which reached greater heights than ours. You are human, right?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Very human." Not quite a lie, really. "Where is your friend then?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"She'll be in the back. Just a moment."

He pushes a button on the console, then flips a switch, and pushes another button twice.

"Two minutes at the most, I've timed her."

Permalink Mark Unread

She nods and circles the console. "How far away are you taking us? Very far away from Fillory, I hope?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is Fillory where you're running from? We can go quite far, yes. This ship travels through space and time. It can go anywhere we like. Let's see..."

He starts fiddling with the switches.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yup. Fillory is this stupid backwards dimension filled with psychopaths and air that's made up of bullshit and opium." She examines the switches. "I've never seen a machine that could do all that stuff. I guess magicians can come up with some crazy stuff."

Permalink Mark Unread

"This machine has very little to do with 'magicians'. Whatever dimension you're from, those rules no longer apply. Prepare yourself for something so far beyond your paradigms that it will challenge the underpinnings of your reality- on some days. Other days, you meet aliens who seem exactly like humans."

Permalink Mark Unread

"....seems pretty typical for Fillory, actually. And Earth. My Earth, at least. We have creatures, maybe not aliens, that seem human and then can be very not. Gods and monsters. Vampires, werewolves, faeries... weird goat people."

Permalink Mark Unread

A part of the wall slides aside, revealing a woman in a fur coat, a beaded skirt, and apparently fighting with some kind of nest that's taken up habitation in her hair.

"Sorry, just a moment, I'll be right with you!"

She tromps about the console room, giving the guests a wide berth. The glittering insects bite at her flesh, leaving dark red marks as they go.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds very pagan. How exactly does one get to Fillory from Earth? Planetary travel required, or some kind of 'magic', then? Dimensions are a bit tricky to categorize."

Permalink Mark Unread

- "I'm not ignoring whatever this is," she gestures at the newcomer. "But, either you need a Traveller, someone that has the native ability to travel between worlds or some sort of magical device. Not many of those around these days."

Permalink Mark Unread

"See, this is exactly what we need around here. Someone with their own rules. I keep telling Clara that we need new perspectives around here. Let me guess, your preferred time and place to visit isn't ancient Greece, on Earth?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You know, we can go anywhere in time or space, no one is limiting your simple, shallow taste but yourself."

She taps one of the many semispheres on the walls; it glows a fluorescent white for a moment before a small perfume bottle falls out of it into her waiting hands. She sprays the bugs in her hair and they begin to congregate in one spot. She continues spraying.

"Welcome to my T.A.R.D.I.S! Sorry about the mess."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Earth isn't really my cup of tea. The stranger and further from where I began the better." She looks around the - T.A.R.D.I.S again. "I'm Joss, recently rescued from painful torture and unending cardio."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Jocelyn, pleasure to meet you. Do you want tea? We have tea, somewhere. Henry, could you-"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Explore the depths of your labyrinthine alien ship? It's my favorite pastime, actually. Nice meeting you...?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, this again. He wants your full name, he's some kind of formality enthusiast, I swear. Clara Oswald, at your service. Very formerly of Earth, the United Kingdom, the 2010s, or something thereabouts. I've lost track. Do you have somewhere or somewhen on Earth you've always wanted to go? I like to start there before we move on to bigger and weirder things."

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you want my full name, you can have Joss Fray. It's as good as any. I suppose if I could have anywhen... Cleopatra always seemed cool."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Besides Cleopatra! Any time and place besides Cleopatra, I've burned that bridge already."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How do you burn a bridge with the queen of Egypt?" But she shrugs. "Also thought Woodstock would have been a sight to see."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I've never been! Woodstock it is."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nice to meet you, Joss Fray. Why Woodstock?"