Second Time Around
just a bunch of stories
?Oi! You there! Girl!?
Ariarisha turned to where the voice came from, a deep voice. Almost predatory. When she saw it, it amazed her. A police box, a rackety old police box, was standing before her! A snow leopard was standing next to it. They should have looked out of place in this day and age. Yet, it didn?t. It looked perfectly normal standing in the middle of the street. People just walked past it and went around it as though it had always been there. This definitely intrigued Ariarisha, but she stayed where she was, not wanting to give the mysterious woman the satisfaction
The woman herself wore nothing more than a sports bra under braces. A pair of women?s pants and nothing more. She was leaning against the police box and twirling around her pocket watch. The look on her face was one of pure smug satisfaction, as though she had actually swallowed the canary.
?Yeah? What do you want??
Ariarisha looked herself smug. She had to be. The poor girl was a genetic mutation. She was a panther, pure not a melanistic leopard or jaguar, except her hands and feet looked like they had pure white socks on them. Risha, to her friends, wasn?t ashamed by this but it still attracted some unwanted attention from time to time. Mostly by people who valued pure looks and identity than anything.
?To offer you the trip of a lifetime, Ariarisha Lionheart. Anywhere in time and space, anywhere and anywhen. Just like I promised you all those years ago, Saint Melody.?
Again, the snow leopardess stood there in smug serenity, letting the poor girl figure it out. Poor Ariarisha was five when the Doctor had met her, in a previous incarnation of course, but one never forgets a face or the dreams of a little girl.
?No...it can?t be. You?re...you?re...?
?Yes??
?The Doctor! There?s no way, Matthew said you were real and that he had traveled with you but I...?
?Tsk, tsk Aria. It?s alright. Sometimes the minds of little girls get lost too easily. The fact that?oof!?
The Doctor was cut off by a hug. One that she gracefully accepted and returned. Ariarisha had been adopted by one of her previous companions in another life, and she had promised the girl a lifetime worth of travels. This was after the child had seen the inside of her TARDIS, and accepted it at face value?as most children did. It was only now that she was getting around to the trip.
?Doctor, are you alright??
?Hm? Yes, perfectly content. Why??
?You were saying ?no more? under your breathe.?
?Was I? Well, never mind that! As a past life would say, ?There are worlds out there where the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream...etc etc...Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice. Somewhere the coffee's getting cold. Come along, Aria, we?ve got work to do.?