InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "strike a pose!"

The Doctor (notginger) wrote in mirage_rpg,
@ 2008-07-22 23:51:00

Entry tags:

complete, day 8, katara, the doctor

Who? The Doctor & Katara
Where? The restaurant.
When? Evening.
What? The attempted teaching of science/technology.
Rating G, probably.
Status Complete.

After barely managing to successfully order a room-service brunch through a lot of giggling, the Doctor had decided that he would venture down to the restaurant to collect them something for dinner rather than go through another one-ended conversation with a golem on the phone. It was just easier when they could at least nod a confirmation to him. So, he had dressed in his suit trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, deciding to leave off the tie and suit jacket due to the change in resort. Finally, the planet was making him give up on the full suit, which was something of a miracle, although Rose's relaxing influence might have had something to do with it. He no longer felt the need to use his suit as a protective shield, stopping anyone from getting too close.

He headed into the restaurant, picked up a menu and ordered them some pasta to go - it felt like it was way too hot for chips, but he was sure Rose would disagree, so he ordered a portion of them as well, and headed over to a nearby table to wait for his order to cook. He fished Rose's mobile phone from his pocket; he'd promised to take a look at it and see what he could do about it's inability to call any other planet. He pulled the back off and examined the device he'd inserted into it to give her universal roaming; perhaps if he just tried to increase the signal even further he might get somewhere. He took his sonic screwdriver from his pocket; this was exactly why he needed the suit jacket, carrying everything in his trouser pockets was a little awkward. He pressed the tip against the roaming device inside the phone and turned the screwdriver on. It emitted a blue light, and gave an electronic sound, something like a mixture between TV static and a dial-up internet connection. He moved the blue tip along the edges of device, concentrating hard as the phone started to heat up in his hand. He doubted that the signal was the problem, but it was worth a try nonetheless.

(Post a new comment)

k_waterbender
2008-07-22 10:02 pm UTC (link)

Katara had had a good day with Clark, riding horses and talking to him. He was a really great person, and she was certain she wanted to see him again. With a growling stomach, she decided to order a good meal from the restaurant.

Once she arrived at her destination, she sat at a table and ordered fish and pasta with cold tea to drink. It wasn’t too long before she received her food and drink. The waterbender ate it with fervor, as she hadn’t had a meal for a while.

Soon enough she noticed another person arrive, one she thought she might have seen around before, but to whom she’d never spoken. Katara wondered if she should talk to him. Getting to know every person in the Mirage would be a great idea after all. Her eating became slower as she glanced at him every so often, curious about what he was doing while she debated talking to him. He hadn’t even looked her way, or if he had she hadn’t noticed. Maybe he just wanted to be by himself?

The device in his hand looked somewhat similar to the glowing item she’d seen Rusty look at when she’d shown him to his room. The waterbender hadn’t the slightest idea what the object he prodded it with was, though. Pure curiosity egged forward. She finished her tea and stood to move nearer.

“Hi.” She said when she neared his table. “I’m Katara. I don’t mean to be rude by interrupting whatever it is you’re doing, but I was just curious… What exactly are you doing, and what are those things in your hands?” Technology like this was nonexistent in her world.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

notginger
2008-07-23 05:19 pm UTC (link)

The Doctor was so absorbed in what he was doing that he didn't notice Katara approaching his table until she spoke. He glanced up, raising an eyebrow and continuing to probe the battery of Rose's phone. "Hello!" he grinned, momentarily wondering if the effects of the pheromones had worn off altogether. He really didn't fancy being molested or molesting anyone for the second day running, so he was relieved when she continued to talk like a reasonable person.

"Oh. Well, the planet seems to be blocking off-planet calls, and my friend wants to talk to her mother... so I'm trying to increase the signal in the universal roaming device I put in it a while back," he said quite quickly, not stopping to wonder if the woman knew what exactly a mobile phone was. He assumed the second part of her question was directed at his alien device and not the telephone. "A little invention of mine. Sonic screwdriver, just a sort of multi-purpose tool," he shrugged, figuring it was the simplest way to explain the mechanics behind his screwdriver.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

k_waterbender
2008-07-23 06:00 pm UTC (link)

Katara thought he seemed rather chipper, but he also gave her a bit of strange look that brought an embarrassed, light pink to her cheeks. She suddenly found herself wondering if perhaps he wasn’t all that happy with her interruption. However, her embarrassment subsided when he began talking.

The waterbender suddenly found herself very lost, indeed. He must have thought she already knew what those things were. When he finished, she spoke with a nervous smile. “I… I really have no idea what you just said. I don’t know what either of those is. Where I come from we don’t have things like this. This whole place is baffling, but it doesn’t help that I’m one of the few who comes from a time that wasn’t as advanced as this.” She laced her fingers together, twisting her hands a bit as she stood there.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

notginger
2008-07-24 03:50 pm UTC (link)

"Oh! Right, right, sorry... I sort of forget, sometimes," he admitted; he was well aware that there were people from all sorts of times on the planet, but even when he was in the past through choice he did seem to have a habit of either confusing people, accidentally making them think he was using magic, or inventing something a few centuries too early.

"Advanced? Pah!" he exclaimed, quite unable to stop his own outburst. "You haven't seen nothing yet!" he said with a cheesy wink, although his expression quickly changing to what could only be described as his having just swallowed a bug. "Sorry, ah.... double negative," he apologized, as if it were the worst social faux-pas of all.

"Anyway! This is a telephone," he told her, waggling the device in front of her. "Well, there are a wide variety. This one's called a mobile telephone, because you can use it... while mobile. Also known as a cell phone by our American friends... because... well, because they like to complicate things," he didn't fancy explaining the reasoning behind that one. "It's a communication device that allows the user to transmit and receive sound, usually speech, across distances. Usually two-way, so if you had one of these and went back to your room, if I knew what numbers to put in, I could still talk to you from here," he explained, supposing it at least covered the basic idea behind the phone.

"And that wasn't a cheesy pick-up line to get your number," he added, mostly for his own amusement as he was aware there was little chance that she would have any idea what he was talking about.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

k_waterbender
2008-07-24 10:48 pm UTC (link)

“It’s all right. I don’t think I’ve met anyone that was from a time without technology like this yet, so I don’t think people without experience with more advanced tools are exactly abundant. It would be easy to forget.”

Katara was quite confused when he said something about a double negative. She’d never been to school, so she had never had grammar lessons. The waterbender only spoke how her people spoke because that’s what she’d learned. She wouldn’t ever say a sentence like ‘You haven’t seen nothing yet’ because it simply wasn’t how she was taught to speak, but the rules of grammar were lost on her. The Water Tribe femme simply shrugged.

She listened as he explained what a mobile phone was and its uses, then his crack about Americans. “I think I met an American. He told me he was from… um…” Katara thought a moment to remember exactly what Rusty had told her. “The United States of America in North America. He had something that looked like a mobile phone in his hand, but he just looked at it and put it away, but he seemed uneasy. It was probably because it wouldn‘t work. Another person and I looked at a computer. He tried to send a message on there, but it wouldn’t work. It allowed him to see messages he had received from others, though.” The waterbender didn’t ask what his comment about Americans complicating things meant, and instead just examined the objects in his hands.

Katara actually did establish that different mobile phones had different numbers, so a person could call another’s and speak to them that way. It didn’t make sense any other way, and it seemed a lot faster than in her home. “Where I’m from we usually use messenger hawks, or we have special people to travel between places to give messages that way. In one of the larger Earth Kingdom cities- Omashu- they have a special system that relies on gravity and earthbending to get mail and other things to people quite quickly.

“The Fire Nation was probably the most advanced. They have these machines with wheels that that don’t need to be pulled by animals or people. They’re run on coal. My brother and a scientist came up with a lot of interesting inventions, though, like boats that go under water and are powered by waterbending. I don‘t know if they could figure something like this out, though.” She said, motioning to the telephone.

A smile lit Katara’s features, and a chuckle left her lips at his joke. She knew he knew she didn’t have a mobile phone. “So, what’s a ‘signal’ or a ‘roaming device’?” The waterbender asked.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

notginger
2008-07-25 06:33 pm UTC (link)

"Oh, really? There's a woman here called Ayla, she's a sort of..." he bobbed his head from side to side, trying to think what the most politically correct term would be for her. "I want to say cavewoman, but that's not quite accurate," he shrugged, figuring it was enough to give the general idea at least.

He nodded along as she described the American she had already met. "He could see the messages people had sent him?" he asked; although the Doctor was unlikely to have received any emails, he couldn't help but wonder about Rose. He was sure Mickey still tried keeping in touch through email, but then he wasn't sure if reading something and being unable to reply would actually be a good thing. "That... might be rather distressing, not being able to reply," he commented eventually, deciding not to mention it to Rose for the time being. He'd focus on getting the phone to work instead.

The Doctor was curious to hear about the methods of communication used by Katara's people; although they were less advanced, all human progress was interesting to the Doctor. He was quite sure he would be familiar with everything she would tell him, but he couldn't have been more wrong. He frowned deeply, pulling his eyebrows together in complete confusion. "Sorry, Earthbending? Waterbending? Now you've lost me!" he grinned. It was funny; the Doctor never lost his ability to be surprised, and that was especially apparent at times like this. The student had suddenly become the teacher.

He leaned forward, keen to explain further. "Right, so on a normal telephone, the information would be carried along wires, known as a telephone line, which is why you'll hear people saying things like stay on the line. It would come out here," he pointed to the base of the telephone, "and when it's invented on Earth, it'll go underground, and the lines will run overhead attached to big logs and stuff, joining every telephone together. But the mobile telephone is different. It uses what we call a signal. I mean, did you ever use smoke signals?" he asked, wondering if she had ever even heard the word before. "It's a signal like that, I suppose, but it's a radio signal. Which is... invisible, it's in the air, and it can be detected and turned into sound or... other information..." he frowned, not quite certain if he was making any sense.

"So, these phones send and receive these radio signals, and we have these... big poles detecting the signals and turning them into sound. But... you need to be near one of these big poles in order to make the phone work, otherwise it's like trying to send a smoke signal without any wind. But this--" he tapped the back of the phone where the battery would normally be, "-- is a little gadget of mine. It makes the signal stronger, so it can travel without the... the wind, as it were. But, apparently it's not strong enough to get off of this planet."

(Reply to this) (Parent)

k_waterbender
2008-07-26 12:25 pm UTC (link)

“I heard people used to live in caves a long time ago, before they could build houses or bend elements. It would be interesting to meet her.” Katara thought aloud.

“Yes, it wasn’t very good. I could see in his face that he became really unhappy when he realized he couldn’t respond to his friend. It’s like, the Planet is toying with us, giving us a little hope here, only to shatter it there. It’s terrible.” The waterbender spoke with annoyance over the Planet’s horrid whims.

A blush tinted her cheeks. “Oh! I’m sorry. Everyone in my world knows about this, but no one here ever seems to. Still, I forget that sometimes… quite often actually… Bending is what we call controlling one of the four elements- water, earth, fire, and air- by moving in specific ways and allowing the chi in our arms to flow. Some benders can also use their feet to bend. I wish I could show you them all, but I’m not the Avatar. I only know how to waterbend.” With that said, she removed the stopper from the neck of her water skin and moved her arm in such a way that a stream flowed out into the air. “I use my waterbending for fighting and healing, but I’ve seen others use it for ice architecture. Earthbenders can do a lot of great architecture with their bending, too.”

Katara tried her best to follow what the man said, but sometimes she got lost. She’d never heard anyone use the phrase “stay on the line” before. “If it’s underground, how is it overhead at the same time?” The waterbender asked, supremely confused. “Yes. I know what I smoke signal is, I figured you meant a different sort of signal, but the way you put it, it makes a bit of sense.” At least as much sense as she could connect.

“Oh. You just said you need to be near a pole for the signal to work, so I bet the Planet just doesn’t have a pole on it so you can call others. I don't mean to be a wet blanket, but I don‘t think trying to make the signal go farther is going to help.” It was a simple thought, from what she had learned about mobile phones.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

notginger
2008-07-29 05:48 pm UTC (link)

The Doctor remained confused, opening his mouth slightly as if to comment, but deciding just to nod along when she mentioned bending the elements in the same sentence as house-building.

"Uh huh... I don't think I'll tell her about that just yet," he agreed; if Mickey had emailed Rose, he really didn't want her to go through the hell of being unable to reply to his words of concern. He'd figure out a way to contact home; he'd have to.

And then she was talking about bending again, and the Doctor could only listen in amazement. He had never heard anything like it, and that was quite unusual, especially considering she was talking as if it were a perfectly normal part of Earth's history. His eyes grew wide as the water flowed into the air, and unintentionally pulled back, his chair screeching against the ground as he did so. His instant reaction was witchcraft, and as a childe he'd been taught to be wary of such unnatural magic, embracing the rules of science as an alternative. His view had changed somewhat with age, but it didn't stop him from recoiling slightly at something that seemed to deny all of his scientific beliefs.

"Is it... magic?" he asked, barely above a whisper. He felt like a stupid kid asking, because he was quite certain the answer was a negative, but... he needed to know for sure. He paused for a moment, tilting his head to one side. "Sorry, I never did ask. Are you human?"

He was distracted when she questioned his terminology. "It's... oh, I see what you mean. It... it got away from me a bit there. It's overhead most of the time, but they can also go underground. Clearly not at the same time, that would be... a bit ridiculous," he laughed.

"Right! Exactly. But this roaming device acts like one of the poles, and it's meant do the detecting. My friend, the one that owns the phone, she was able to call her mother from 5 billion years in the future, when the Earth was no more, so the poles were... gone," he tried to explain; his terminology always did seem to get a little contradictory, which he put down to having too many thoughts in his head all at once.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

k_waterbender
2008-07-29 08:02 pm UTC (link)

“That might be best.” Katara said, when the man mentioned not telling her about the email abilities. It would be cruel to let another person know you could read your messages, but you couldn’t ever reply to them, to let others know you’re safe and sound and trying to find a way back.

The calm smile on the waterbender’s face faltered when she noted his reaction to her bending, as if it were something terrible. Maybe he was just thoroughly surprised, and it wasn’t that he thought what she did was so bad.

A chuckle left her lips at the mention of magick. “No. It’s not magick, it’s waterbending. The only magick I’ve seen comes from magicians who perform in front of others on stage. I suppose that’s not quite real magick. Look at what I’m doing, though. The water doesn’t move unless I move with it.” Katara moved her hand circularly around the stream of water, so it began to form into a sphere of sorts. “If I don’t move, it stays as it is, but if I do move, it moves with me. I think only the spirits are capable of true magick.” She allowed the water to stream back into her water skin, and she replaced the stopper. “I can bend the water in anything I want now. When I began I could only do simple moves. I found a couple masters who taught me their ways, though.”

Katara tried hard to keep herself from bursting into true laughter. All that left her was a small snicker. “I’m very human. I just don’t know that I’m from the same world as everyone else here. Most people seem to be from Earth, but my world never really had a name. We simply named the four nations and the cities and villages within them.”

Her mind spun for a moment as he tried explaining how it could work, how it had worked back on Earth, but she thought she understood to some small extent. “Wow. That’s… amazing…” Then a thought occurred to her. “You’ve lived for five billion years?” The idea of it was absolutely crazy, but obviously anything was possible beyond what one mind knew and understood.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

notginger
2008-07-30 01:56 pm UTC (link)

The Doctor tried to pull himself together, rather embarrassed at his slight over-reaction. He really wouldn't have minded if she had laughed at him - he often wanted to laugh at people's accusations regarding his ship bing bigger on the inside than the outside. It was perfectly logical to him, just as waterbending was completely logical to Katara. He wasn't used to being on the receiving end of such unusual information. He simply observed, captivated by the water following her hand.

"Mmm, that's... yeah," he frowned, pulling his eyebrows together in confusion. He supposed she could have been from the future, born in a human colony, somewhere they went back to basics without technology like mobile phones and embraced some strange arts instead... but it didn't seem too likely. He knew that he was just trying to make the information fit into his Time Lord view of the universe. "Perhaps some sort of parallel world, although how the planet would have pulled you through the void without splitting you into atoms, I'll never know," he muttered, more for his own purposes of cataloging the information than her benefit.

The Doctor's eyes grew wide as she suggested that he was five billion years old. "Oh, god, no! Five billion's a bit excessive!" he exclaimed, raising a hand to his cheek as if to ask do I really look five billion? "No, I'm... around 900, I lost count. But I'm a Time Lord. I have a time machine, I don't exactly have a linear life. I was in the 21st Century, and then after about thirty seconds, I was 5 billion years into the future."

(Reply to this) (Parent)

k_waterbender
2008-07-31 12:46 am UTC (link)

“A parallel universe of sorts might fit, I guess. It’s too bad someone isn’t around who can say for sure, though.” Katara said with a small sigh. Her head perked up at the strange terminology again, though. “Split into atoms? What are atoms?” Sometimes she felt as if life could be a lot easier if she’d been from the same time with the same technology as everyone else here seemed to have.

“Nine hundred years old? Wow… That’s about five hundred years older than the oldest person who ever lived in my world. Avatars have a tendency to live long lives, though. Were you frozen for a centuries or something?” That’s the only way she could think of that a man could be so old yet look so young. “You certainly only look like you’re in your thirties. I know someone who’s one hundred and seventeen who only looks seventeen, but he was frozen in an ice berg for one hundred years. All of the old people in my world usually look their age.”

Katara thought a little bit more on his Time Lord title and about his time machine. “Do you make clocks and time keepers?” That’s what she put together from what he said. She couldn’t fathom people traveling into the past and future.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

notginger
2008-07-31 11:06 am UTC (link)

"It's possible.It's a logical absurdity, but possible nonetheless," he mused, giving up on the phone and letting the objects lie, neglected on the tabletop. "Ah, atoms..." he nodded slowly, not exactly sure where he was going to start with that one. "They're... sort of the tiny little bits that make up the universe and everything in it. You must manipulate them in some way to do this..." he waved a hand, trying to figure out what to call it if not 'magick'. What had she said? "This bending stuff. You said bending elements, right? Well, an atom is the smallest unit of an element that retains the same chemical properties as the element," he tried, hoping that relating it to terms she was already familiar with would make it a bit clearer.

"Ah, well I use a good moisturiser," he joked, giving her a cheesy wink. "Nah, I'm... I'm not human. When I said Time Lord, that's more a species than a job title," he grinned. "And... we have thirteen lives. I'm on my tenth. So, this particular body is quite young, but my... self, or... soul if you want to call it that, is a lot older." Regeneration was difficult to explain even to more scientifically aware humans, but then sometimes it was their science that made them refuse to believe it. At times, it was those with a more spiritual understanding that could understand the idea of a remembered reincarnation as such.

"No... no, I wouldn't have the patience to make clocks. very fiddly business, clocks. When I say time machine, I mean a machine that moves me in time as well as in space. Time... people don't understand time. It's not a straight line, it's more like..." he trailed off before he descended into talking about timey-wimey balls; this was were it always got complicated for him.

"Uh, it's like H.G Wells wrote, actually. Mostly because he just copied down what I told him, the cheeky bugger. It's difficult to understand, because if left to natural devices, you will move steadily into the future in one direction and at the same speed all your life... but you can move just as freely in time as you can in space, with the right equipment. How else do you suppose there are so many people here, not only from different places, but from different times as well?"

(Reply to this) (Parent)

k_waterbender
2008-08-03 09:54 pm UTC (link)

“This entire place is a ‘logical absurdity’ as you put it.” Katara said, motioning around the room though indicating the entire Planet. “Anything is possible.”

The more this man said about atoms, the more she wondered if this was how Toph had gained the ability to bend metal. As of yet, she remained the only earthbender who could do it, and Katara thought maybe Toph could feel the earthen atoms within the metal so she could bend them, thus bending the metal. “I wouldn’t be surprised. This actually makes sense to me. Maybe that’s how all benders have the ability to do this. They aren’t bending the element itself, but the atoms that compose it in order to move the object. In essence, the atom is the element, just in a minute form. I don’t know. Maybe I’m still confused. I feel like I have a small grasp on it at least.” She shrugged her shoulders.

Everything he said about Time Lord being a species and his body being young while his soul was old made perfect sense to Katara. A smile lit her sapphire eyes. “That reminds me of the Avatar in my world. Every time one dies, another Avatar is born to take her or his place. The Avatar is the only person who can bend all four elements, and he or she is meant to keep balance in my world, and he or she can call on his past lives to aid him. I believe everyone is reincarnated, but the Avatar has a specific purpose in the way of the world. He or she doesn’t have a limit to existance, though. There will always be an Avatar as long as there is a world to have one. Is that similar to the way a Time Lord works at all?”

Katara thought about his words. It was interesting that people from different worlds and times and everything could still make sense of things like this. “A wise man I met in a swamp once informed us that time is an illusion. I’ve never traveled at any pace other than the steady pace of my own life, taking me steadily into the future, minute by minute, but if time really is an illusion there’s no reason why a person couldn’t travel into the past, or quickly into a future where they could never access unless they lived that long. The fact that there are people here from different times and places sort of proves that.”

(Reply to this) (Thread)

notginger
2008-08-06 04:12 pm UTC (link)

"It's not particularly out of the ordinary by my track record, actually. Kidnapped by a planet is fairly average for me," he grinned, as if he were quite proud of the fact. As it happened, the whole situation was more irritating than amazing in any way.

The Doctor nodded in agreement; that suggestion made the idea of bending elements a lot more satisfactory to him, gave it a sense of... not logic exactly, but enough of an explanation for him to accept it. "It seems likely. Sounds like you have a good enough grasp of the idea, yeah," he agreed, with an encouraging smile. "Still not got a bloody clue how exactly you manage it, but it seems likely!" he added with a laugh.

The Doctor's eyes grew wide as she started to explain about the Avatar - well, that seemed to settle it in his mind. She was definitely from a parallel universe: no humans in his universe ever mastered reincarnation, not through all of time, sadly. Not until they mingled, anyway... maybe she wasn't a pure human. He couldn't be certain, but it didn't really bother him either way.

"It is, sort of. Not exactly. Erm..." he scrunched up his face as he tried to figure out the best way to explain it in comparison to the understanding she already had. "I'm not exactly born all over again. I mean, this particular body is less than a year old, and looked exactly like this when I changed... which is handy. It'd be a bloody nightmare having to wait to grow up all over again!" he grinned.

"I'm not meant to be unique. My whole race did exactly the same thing, but... I'm the only one left now. And yes, we're meant to... maintain the order of the universe. No pressure at all, being the only one left," he grinned, with an enthusiasm that seemed genuine, but was truly just his way of covering over the true horror of his situation. "I can call on my past selves, too. In extreme circumstances only, mind you, it really messes with the space-time continuum. And gives you one hell of a headache as you suddenly remember when it happened for you the first time. If that makes any sense!" He had trouble understanding it himself, sometimes.

He nodded thoughtfully as she spoke of her own understanding of time. "It's not an illusion exactly, it's just misunderstood. Time as you know it is an illusion, I mean... as a straight sequence of events, but it's not an illusion as a whole. At least, I bloody hope it's not or I have absolutely no reason for my existence!" he smiled, as if that idea were actually quite amusing.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

k_waterbender
2008-08-07 09:36 pm UTC (link)

“I’ve lived in my world my entire life. The closest a person ever got to leaving it was traveling to the Spirit World, but that’s still connected to the living world, and the body is left behind as the gateway back. I’ve never been there before, so taking this huge leap into another Planet that I supposedly can never leave is… a lot for me.” Katara admitted.

“I wish I could better explain how I do it. All I can say is what I said before. There’s life energy that flows through every person called qi. Benders harness this energy and flow it out of them to control an element. I have a natural affinity with water, being from the Southern Water Tribe and having a blood line that runs solely through the Water Tribes. It’s hard to explain, but I can feel the power I have in bending. For waterbenders, the moon cycles control how powerful our bending is because the moon spirit is from who the first benders learned. When the moon is full my bending is at it’s peak, but when there’s a lunar eclipse I can’t bend at all. Not all benders are affected this way. The firebenders are more powerful when the sun is out, but they lose that power during solar eclipses. Airbenders and earthbenders aren’t affected at all by the solar system, though. We all have to be able to move our limbs to bend. If our qi is cut off from someone who knows the pressure points to hit, or if our arms and feet are secured, we cannot use our abilities.” She hoped she explained it thoroughly enough his time, but she couldn’t be sure. If the Water Tribe femme hadn’t grown up knowing all about these things, she might have been confused, too. Little kids were rocked to sleep with stories of benders and things like that, though.

In a way, the things the man told her did make sense. For instance, she had no clue what a space-time continuum happened to be, so she couldn’t understand what messing it up would cause. When he spoke of being the only one of his kind left, she frowned a bit as she looked at him. Katara didn’t believe anyone could possibly be comfortable being the last of their kind left, as she’d experienced Aang’s anguish at being the last air bender. “It must be hard,” was all she offered to this man, knowing he probably didn’t want to delve into it, yet needing to show that she felt compassion for his experience.

“Oh. That’s actually what I meant. I didn’t mean time didn’t even exist. That would mean no one really had a purpose. I meant time ‘as we know it’ is an illusion.” She smiled at him, though it was a bit strained. In this place, neither of them had a purpose. Her purpose had been helping people recover their lives in her world, as his had been to try to maintain balance within the universe. They could do neither one here. Katara said nothing about this pessimistic thought, though, as she didn’t wish to upset him with it.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

notginger
2008-08-09 09:03 am UTC (link)

"Must be a bit of a culture shock. Happens to the best of us, but for what it's worth you seem to be doing just splendidly," he told her quite sincerely. He'd seen a whole variety of reactions from his human companions, and the adaptability of human beings never ceased to amaze him.

The Doctor rested his chin in his hand, his eyebrows pulled together as he listened to Katara's explanation of the waterbending. He could understand it to some extent; much of it sounded rather like his own people's use of psionics at times. "I see. So, it's sort of in tune with nature. I suppose that makes sense; if the moon can manipulate the movement of the ocean, I don't really suppose it's much of a leap to suppose a human could harness that sort of energy in themselves."

He gave her a sort of sad smile as she offered a little comfort to him. "Yeah. It's got easier though, with time," he shrugged. He was a different man (both figuratively and literally) since the Time War. Rose had helped him heal so many wounds, and grow into a more stable man once again. It still hurt when he let himself dwell on it, but it was more of a dull ache now than a blinding agony like before.

"Oh, good!" he said chirpily. "I suppose I've always known it to be... something fluid, something that can be manipulated... I suppose it's just what you're brought up with," he suggested. His people had often looked down upon humans as lesser species, but it was hardly their fault that they didn't fully understand time. They'd never had anyone to explain it, they'd never be given a reason to believe it was an illusion.

As he finished speaking, a golem approached the table and placed his order down in a paper bag. "Oh, thanks! Lovely," he grinned before turning back to Katara. "Well, I suppose I better take my friend her dinner. It's been lovely chatting to you... and if you ever find yourself bamboozled by this world, I'd be happy to try and explain anything I can," he told her, moving from his seat when he suddenly realised he'd missed out a vital piece of information. "Oh! I'm the Doctor, by the way. Nice to meet you!"

(Reply to this) (Parent)