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'Who are you?' asked the man, sweating and involuntarily shaking.
'Don't play games with me,' the figure snapped, his hand shooting from his pocket to point a sharp finger towards the man. 'You know me. I am your soul,. I am your conscience. I am the ocean in your eyes...' The voice trailed into a whisper as the man in black shut his eyes and listened to the sound of the waves on the beach many miles away. 'I am the lighthouse,' he added, impaling the clammy figure opposite him with a bayonet stare. 'Oh yes, you know me, and you know what I want.'
The man slid down the surface of the wall to the floor, hands tightly griping his head, whimpering gently in the vicinity of skirting board and the figure in black squatted silently down in front of him, the dark smile flickering like yellow lightening. 'Time has walked on. I need paying.'
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
 he immense wall of sound created by a dark beach is frighteningly vast. A complicated sequence, built up of a hundred thousand well-sequenced cogs that have run the dark machine of midnight for countless years. The hiss of the with-drawing tide on the shingle, fusing with the heavy breath of the incoming tide.
The shuddering breath of the TARDIS materialising was carried along the windswept shoreline, thrown and taken by the warm, damp wind to far-off shores. The blue left-hand door swung inwards, towards the infinite passages of the craft, and towards the young girl who moved out and onto the moon sprayed beach. She pulled back her black bomber jacket tight upon her body, the warm breeze no protection from the cold knife of the night, slicing into everything with a cold bite. She started to walk along the beach, the low delicate crunch of small stones under her boots, the only noise in competition with the lapping beat of the oceanic acre to her left.
She felt the isolation of the distant Moon, a feeling she couldn't remember ever feeling before. She involuntarily shivered, and turned to walk back to the comforting shadow of the TARDIS, just as the Doctor was locking the door.
The key dropped into his pocket, another penny in a deep well. He took his watch from the top pocket of his jacket and flicked the cover open in one oiled, practised movement.
'So, where's your friend then, Professor?' Ace asked, turning 360-degrees, but catching nothing in her circle of vision.
'I don't know...' mumbled the Doctor, tapping the back of his watch with his umbrella handle. 'I told him to meet us here at 11 0'clock...but my watch seems to have stopped...' He looked suddenly at the high white orb of the Moon. It silently looked back.
'When did you arrange to meet him here?' Ace questioned, not remembering any encounter with a strange man, with a set time and place.
'Oh years ago...' came a muttered reply, the back of the watch was removed and the innards carefully examined. 'Or, it might be in a few years time, who knows?' The watch remained dead.
'A Time Lord who doesn't know the time,' said Ace with a wide smile. 'There's a neat little paradox for you...' Her eyes wandered in and out with each new wave that broke on the wet sand.
'Well, we'll just have to go to is flat, won't we?' said the Doctor, pushing the watch that had defeated him back into his pocket 'This way..' he added, pointing up a sharp sandy incline with his umbrella to where the dunes held the tangled weeds, each blown in different directions, captured and held down, left to watch their arms thrown around by the harsh wind.
Cars swung into the night, headlights flaying wild beams in all directions, red tail-lights blurring and receding, swaying light patterns weaving in and out of trees and hills into the distance, gone.
Sand had been blown by the breezes to the edge of the roadside, the point that Nature reluctantly fuses with man-made reality. It had heard the angry sirens of midnight and cool sirens from the sea, caught in the swinging glance of the lighthouse beam.
'How far now, Professor?' Ace felt they had walked an interminably long way, and she felt sure her rucksack was gaining weight with every leaden step.
'Not that far. I think. Darkness can be so disorientating...' He stopped and turned, catching the distant pin-prick of the lighthouse glare as it moved in the dark. So far away. He tapped his lips thoughtfully with the umbrella and walked on, Ace in tow.
Far ahead, the Doctor could see the sparkling glowing lights seemingly held before him at arms length, small dots burning white in the night. The empty streets, not cold, yet not warm, alone and so lonely, just a thin yellow line that were the burning leads of streetlamps. Another car swished by, oblivious and confident, away into the distant grey and dark hillsides and beyond. The Doctor allowed his eyes to be mesmerised and followed the pathway of the vehicle, a buzzing red light becoming the recurring image on his eye as he crossed the road, the weary Ace behind him, until they finally faced a set of steps running up the outside of a house, cold and solid in the bleak night.
 
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the homeland page2
