Vairë, Koschei, and Lucy set out almost immediately in the TARDIS once he returned to the house. The mansion itself would be sold and most of the proceeds would go to various charities. Some, however, Koschei was planning to give Vairë so that if she needed to return to Earth – even for just a brief trip – she wouldn’t have to dip into her own savings. He knew about her accounts and was proud of her way of thinking. Still, he was determined to make her his sister officially, as best he could, and have her be a member of the Oakdown House. Since he would, by default, be the head of the House, he was responsible for the rest of his family until they were independent. He supposed Vairë could be considered independent but it had been so long since he’d had siblings, he planned to do the best he could to indulge himself in his new-found fraternal instincts.
“So, there’s a planetary disc forming up nicely over in NGC 4321. Bit of a trip to it though. Binary system – just like Gallifrey. Blue sub giant is the primary – bit different, there. Yellow dwarf is the secondary, like Earth. Roughly the same orbital structure and rotation period in the Goldilocks’ Zone. So, check it out?” Vairë asked.
“Sounds promising,” Koschei said with a nod. “Bit far from the Local Group but still within the Virgo Super cluster.”
“I’ll try to calculate the rate of expected planetary formation from the disc and see if we can’t…help things along a bit,” Vairë grinned. “Another thing that makes this system perfect is that intelligent life never evolves there naturally. Not sure why. Could be something missing in the proto-planetary disc. Besides, what’s the point of a time machine if you’re not going to cheat a little bit every once in a while?” she laughed.
“As long as you don’t bring the Reapers down on us, I’m not going to argue,” Koschei chuckled.
“I think I learned my lesson the first time when I had to watch the Doctor get eaten,” Vairë said dryly. “I wonder what he’ll think of all this. Of Galliterra.”
“I think…he’ll be impressed, to say the least,” Koschei grinned. “And once the Galliterrans have awoken, he’ll feel almost as if he’s at home once you get him back from France.”
“Yeah. Provided I can actually get to him,” Vairë grimaced. “Every single time I’ve tried, I’ve wound up fairly far off course.”
“Ah, well, maybe we could drop Lucy off on New Earth, build Galliterra, get the people started, and then pick her up a week later her time? That would give me a chance to show you how to pilot the TARDIS properly.” The lights flashed a bit and Koschei backed off. “Or you can keep doing as you’ve been doing. She seems happier with your more ‘natural’ style of piloting her.”
“She likes that I don’t hit her with a mallet,” Vairë quipped, smiling her old tongue-touched smile before she realized what she was doing. “Where is Lucy, anyway?”
“Oh, she saw the swimming pool.”
“Ah. Well, let’s let her have a bit of a swim while we act like complete and utter geeks up here.”
Setting to work, the two disparate siblings began calculating gravitational fields, orbital mechanics, perturbations, and everything else they would need to get the planetary system to form up for Galliterra to be habitable. Once that was done, Koschei set the coordinates into the TARDIS and sent them off into the past to begin their greatest work ever.
~*~*~*~
“How is it only going to take you a week to build and populate an entire planet?” Lucy asked as they sat in the galley eating dinner that night. Vairë and Koschei were both starving, having skipped lunch and tea.
“Well, it’s going to take us a good deal longer than a week, sweetheart,” Koschei said, giving his wife his most disarming smile. “But for you, only a week will pass. For us, it could be…much longer.”
“Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey,” Vairë laughed with delight. “I love time travel!”
“You won’t forget me, will you?” Lucy said, sounding uncertain about leaving them.
“Lucy,” Vairë replied before her brother could put his foot in his mouth, “we’re not going to forget you. It’s just that this will take a while. Like…several years, at least, even if we are jumping to different points in time. For you, only a week will pass. For us, much longer, probably. But we would never forget you. We’re all family, here, now that your husband has decided to formally adopt me as his little sister. And I used to wish I could have a sister or a brother when I was younger. Now I have both! No way I’m going to leave you behind.”
“The only reason I’m considering this trip for you at all, Lucy, is because Vairë’s correct in that it could take us several years to get everything built and set up. I want our child to be born on Galliterra. If you stayed on the TARDIS with us, then you’d be giving birth on the TARDIS. And that’s not a problem,” he added, “but it would be a shame for our child to go the first several years of his or her life living on a space ship. Besides, I’ll give you an unlimited credit chip and I will not complain at all about however much baggage you make me carry for you when we come to pick you up to take you to our new home.”
“New home,” Lucy said wonderingly. “Will we have a big house like we did on Earth?”
“Time Lord engineering,” her husband grinned. “It will be bigger on the inside, definitely. Or we can restrict it if you want. If you can find the blueprints for your dream house, you can email them to us using your new upgraded phone. We’ll get them and make certain that the house is built to your specifications or as closely as we can.”
“That means I can buy furniture for us. Get things that the baby will need. Vairë, will you be staying with us?”
“For a while, yes,” the younger woman nodded. “However, Koschei and I will need to have a long talk about how we’re going to build this new society so that it will flourish and avoid the pitfalls that the Time Lords fell headlong into. I may also want a home of my own. Some place quiet and remote where I can think. I’ve gotten used to being alone and on my own and just want to have a sanctum to run to for times when I need to be alone.”
“Well, I just hope you’ll stay until the baby is born. I’d like to have another woman with me. Men always faint.”
“You do realize that my knowledge of human childbirth is more theoretical than it is practical, right? As in, I know that if everything goes perfectly – which rarely happens – all I’d have to do is catch.”
“We will have doctors there,” Koschei said firmly. “But I have no problem with you sharing hand-holding duties with me, my sweet sister.”
“I’ve got no problem with that myself though if Lucy breaks my hand, I’m not going to be able to help out with dirty nappy duties for a few days.”
“Oh, good point. Lucy, don’t break her hand, please.”
“Typical bloke!” Varië laughed. “Afraid of dirty nappies!”
“I’m not afraid of them, per se. More like…”
“Terrified of them,” Lucy cut in, giggling. Soon all three of them were laughing. Vairë thought she had never been so happy since Martha left.
“Back to Galliterra,” she said, once they had all wound down. “Do you mind if I bring some of my human friends to visit it?”
“I have no problem with it, provided that they’re exceptional people. We might even discuss how we could allow non-Galliterrans to immigrate and live there. I saw your thoughts about how you wanted the world to be a hub for trade, arts, the sciences, and to welcome anyone who was of good character. I like that. It would keep things fresh.”
“Well, I’d like to bring Martha Jones for a visit. If only we could get to that parallel universe, I’d see if my mum, Mickey, and Pete wanted to visit as well.”
“Once we have the big things taken care of,” Koschei said thoughtfully, “we could look into building another Eye of Harmony. With that and a few other things, we might be able to create a nexus that would permit travel between parallel and alternate dimensions. We’d need to monitor it carefully, though, and close off realities that were too dangerous. Back before the Time War, travel between the parallels was possible.”
“That would be…wonderful,” Vairë said. “But, as you said, it’ll need to wait a while. So, Lucy, we’ll get some sleep and then drop you off on New Earth. When we pick you up again in a week, we’ll have a brand new planet and a brand new house for you. Sound good?”
“Sounds wonderful,” the human smiled. “Absolutely wonderful.”
~*~*~*~
Vairë and Koschei wasted no time once they had dropped Lucy off for her shopping trip. Vairë let Koschei input the coordinates and fly the TARDIS as he was accustomed to doing as it was more precise than her methods. The TARDIS was still reluctant to accept any other pilot, especially Koschei. However, she could see, through her sister, how much the man had changed and was willing to permit him to pilot her so long as Vairë was there with her. The three traveled to the distant past and, using their knowledge of physics and planetary formation, were able to speed up the formation of the planetary system. A few times, they had to make detours to pull up elements that the planets lacked but were necessary for life to flourish. Even with them skipping through time, it took several months of painstaking work for the planets to form up and for them to seed Galliterra with the necessities of life.
“I wonder if any other people have ever done something like this,” Vairë said aloud during one of their trips to gather heavy metals to seed in the still-molten crust.
“The Time Lords did make several decoy Gallifreys,” Koschei replied. “But I don’t know that they went to quite the lengths we’re going to for our world.”
“Yeah. I hope that the moons achieve a stable orbit.”
“My calculations were flawless. They’ll both be stable. And, that will help keep the atmosphere from getting too thick as well as keeping the planet warm and renewing the atmosphere constantly.”
“I know how tidal forces work, big bro,” Vairë grinned.
“I know you do. You have a mind like a sponge.”
“Because I’m part TARDIS,” she said, patting the wall fondly.
You were quick to learn and to understand even before you became part-TARDIS, Maggie replied. That’s part of why the Doctor was drawn to you. After all, who else would have figured out how to save him from the Nestene Consciousness?
“Maybe,” Vairë shrugged. “So, how much left? We’ve been at this for almost nine months now.”
“I’d say another eighteen months to make certain that everything is ready. Once we’ve finished seeding the crust, we can skip ahead and start watching how the landmasses and oceans form. Once the oceans are in place, we can seed them with that algae from the garden. That will kickstart the photosynthetic reactions necessary to create a breathable atmosphere. A few million years later, the plant life should have evolved enough that animals could live. We’ll seed some of the animals then – they’ll help with the nitrogen cycle – and we’ll seed most of the land-based plant life as well. Skip another few million years and, if everything is going smoothly, we can build the cities and let the Galliterrans be born.”
“Well, not born exactly,” Vairë grimaced. “We’re going to Loom the first generation.”
“Looming is rather efficient. I don’t understand your extreme distaste for the practice.”
“It’s not right. Magnolia made that point quite well and the more I think on it, the more she was right about it.”
“Are we talking about the TARDIS Maggie or the original Maggie?”
“The original. See, when I went to visit her before she died, I told her a lot about Time Lords. And when I told her about how you lot were reproducing because of the whole Curse of Pythia thing and how you kept at it that way even after the Curse was removed, she got het-up about it. Said it was no wonder that your whole race stagnated and then died out the way it did. Said that you had cut yourselves off from the flow and pulse of life. After all, if you could just extract some tissue samples, toss them in a machine, and bam – a few days later you have a fully-grown Gallifreyan – then it was only natural that life wasn’t as highly valued by the Time Lords as it is by humans. She said that having to suffer through a pregnancy, both for men and for women, makes that life much more valuable. You’re more invested in it. Then raising the child from infancy to adulthood – that adds even more to the investment. It means that you’re more likely to look to the future, to think ahead, to try to ensure that your children have opportunities that you didn’t have. And that even if you can regenerate, you wouldn’t want to throw your children’s lives away just because they could regenerate.”
“I will admit that there is a lot of validity to that point of view. Some argued those very points once the Curse was lifted. And, of course, the Gallifreyans themselves were never impacted by the Curse. Just the Time Lords.”
“Yeah. She also said that having children makes you look forward to having grandchildren so that you can spoil your grandchildren rotten and then send them home to their parents. Oh, and the whole bit about watching your own kids deal with their kids acting the way they did when they were young. Revenge is a dish best served cold and all that,” Vairë quipped.
“I suppose there is something to that as well.”
“Besides, the knowledge of how to make and operate the Looms will remain with us and with Maggie. If something were to happen and we needed to Loom new children, we could. Or rather, if there were a couple who were unable to have children and desperately wanted them, then we could use a Loom-like technology to allow them to have children of their own.”
“You do realize that you’re probably going to be one of the most sought-after women in our new society, don’t you?”
Vairë’s face twisted with distaste. “God, I hope not. It’s been so long since I even snogged a man, I don’t know that I remember what to do. Not sure I’m cut out for the domestic life anymore. Spent too much time traveling, living on my own, making my own decisions. There aren’t too many men who’d be happy with their wife gallivanting off among the stars and leaving them at home to mind the children.”
“Well, whoever wants to marry you will have to get my approval and he’d have to be an absolutely outstanding fellow before I’d permit him entry into our House,” Koschei sighed. “Still, I do hope you’ll settle down sometime. Doesn’t have to be forever and you don’t even have to marry. Just, give the domestic a try now and again. See if you can learn to stay in one place. It’s not like your sister here is ever going to abandon you,” he added, patting the wall like Vairë did. He could almost feel the ship’s agreement.
“I’ll think about it,” Vairë said, gusting a heavy sigh out of her mouth. “No promises that I’ll actually do it. After all, at some point, I’ve got to go get the Doctor out of France.”
“I’d like to come with you on that trip, if you don’t mind,” Koschei asked. “I’d like to apologize to him for a lot of things I did. He probably won’t forgive me – I wouldn’t, in his place – but I’d like to make the gesture all the same.”
“I’ve got no problem with it. Who knows? Maybe you’ll actually be able to get us there.”
“How many times have you attempted to go there?”
“Let me think,” Vairë sighed, closing her eyes and counting on her fingers. “At least twenty. Every single time, I wound up somewhere other than France in the latter 1700s. Could just be Maggie still being pissed off about her pilot abandoning her. We were going to go just before we met you at the end of the universe but then Jack Harkness knocked us off-course. He was the fellow who couldn’t stay dead.”
“Yeah, a fixed point in space and time would do that to a TARDIS if he caught it unawares.”
“She was really embarrassed about how she reacted. I mean, Jack was our friend. I don’t think she’d do the same if we ran into him again. Now, let’s go seed the crust and then get working on the next phase of this little project of ours. The sooner we finish, the sooner we can pick up Lucy and I can try my hand at domestics.”
~*~*~*~
“And photosynthesis is…photosynthesizing,” Vairë quipped. They’d seeded the newly-formed oceans with algae and then skipped ahead about a million years. The atmosphere was breathable. Their measurements indicated that the atmosphere matched Gallifrey’s almost exactly: 77% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% “other.” The surface temperature at the equator at sea level averaged around 40° C and around -5° C at the poles. The algae had already migrated onto the land and had evolved there into red grass. The mountains were different than Gallifrey’s, the ranges still fairly young and still being shaped by plate tectonics. Galliterra had only recently split its supercontinent into four smaller continents which were being carried about and re-shaped by continental drift. The largest of these continents was where Vairë and Koschei decided to seed animal life. It had two large river systems with many tributaries so that fresh water was plentiful. They had already seeded flowering plants and trees. Once they were done with their work, they skipped ahead again and marveled at the changes time and evolution had wrought. The atmosphere was holding stable. Radiation levels were within acceptable parameters for humans. Plant and animal life were both flourishing. The three continents had drifted further apart and split again, bringing the total number of continents to five with one subcontinent.
“Think we’re ready for the next phase?” Vairë asked.
“I think we should probably build a city for them to live in,” Koschei muttered.
“No. The more I think about it, the more I think that they should build their own homes. Yes, they’ll have all the knowledge of the Time Lords. But, they’ll be stronger as a people and as a society if they are forced to start over again and forced to adapt to the environment before mastering it. I’d also like to find some place rather remote to start seeding the TARDISes. Let’s make them work for it. Humanity always did worst when someone else was providing everything for them.”
“Let’s seed the TARDISes first, then. They’ll create the Untempered Schism. Once it’s in place, we can seed the Galliterrans and they’ll evolve to be sensitive to it as Gallifreyans did.”
“All right,” Vairë agreed. “Let’s explore a bit, though. We’ll leave Maggie here and walk. We can live the way we’re expecting them to live so that we know what we’re putting them through. Seems only fair, don’t you think?”
“I never did like roughing it but I suppose if it’s for a good cause…” Koschei sighed.
“Well, when we find the perfect place, I can always ask my sister to meet us there so we don’t have to walk back. Just think of it as an adventure!”
“Haven’t gone on an adventure since I was a kid. Back when Theta and I used to run through the fields of my father’s estate.”
“Then this will make you feel like a kid again!” Vairë laughed as she skipped ahead, singing to herself.
“It’s not the only thing making me feel young again,” the man who had once been the Master said quietly. Between his wife and his sister, he was feeling a zest for life that he’d almost forgotten existed. Jogging to catch up to Vairë, he found himself looking forward to testing his skills and knowledge against the environment just to see if he was worthy of this new life on this new world.
~*~*~*~
“Okay, see, that was completely not my fault!” Koschei shouted as Vairë clutched her sides, laughing so hard she could barely breathe. “And I meant to do it anyway!”
“You mean you meant to get caught in your own trap?” she said, her lips twitching.
“I was testing it! And it works quite well! Now could you please cut me down?”
“I dunno. I mean, you could be a nasty bog monster in disguise.”
“I’ll throw you in a bog if you don’t cut me down from here!”
“Then brace yourself, big bro. I’d hate for you to crack your skull,” Vairë snorted as she climbed up the tree to cut her brother loose from his own trap. He was swinging, hanging upside down, his ankle securely held in a bundle of vine-rope. The trap was supposed to stop the bear-like creature that was following them. And, it would work quite well…once Koschei was freed from it. “And next time, listen to me when I warn you,” she added as she pulled out a flint knife she’d knapped herself.
The pair had been living off the land and traveling by foot for nearly four months now. Summer was coming to an end and they knew they needed to lay in stores of meat as well as get more fur for warmer clothing. The clothes they’d had when they left the TARDIS were long gone. Vairë was glad she’d decided to leave her leather trench coat behind. Instead, the two of them were wearing tunics they’d woven from flax-like plants belted at their waists with braided cords of various other plants. Each of their belts sported several pouches made from the fur of smaller animals – animals that they had trapped and hunted. Vairë had shown quite a talent for using a sling, spears, and the small bow and arrows they’d made. Koschei was better with the spear than his sister and could wield a club and the bola quite well. Through painstaking trial and error – aided by Koschei’s knowledge of plants and chemistry and Vairë’s lessons from Magnolia on hunting and tracking game – they were doing quite well for themselves. Neither had been out-of-shape before but now both were well-muscled, toned, and toughened by the environment and their constant walking. They still had not found the perfect place for the TARDISes to grow, though.
Once Koschei repaired the trap, the two moved off to wait. The bear-like creature could be heard lumbering through the forest, searching for them using its nose. The small eyes did not see well so it tracked primarily using its ears and nose. Once they’d figured that out, the two had laid several false trails and doubled-back along them to buy themselves time to set their trap in the perfect location. Soon enough, the bear lumbered in and was caught by one of its legs as it tripped the trap. Hanging helpless, the two Galliterrans moved in and made short work of it. They then carried the bear to the river and set about skinning it, cutting the meat up and setting it over smoky fires, and harvesting every bit of the bear that they could. The beast was large enough to make both of them a good outer covering that could double as a blanket. They would still need more furs to make into leather for leggings and to add sleeves to their tunics. Not to mention boots.
“Maybe we’ll find the spot soon,” Koschei muttered to himself. “And we won’t have to rough it through the winter.”
“I think we should stick it out through the winter regardless,” Vairë replied. “After all, isn’t this the kind of life we’re expecting the new Galliterrans to live?”
“I’ll agree to that if and only if you promise me that we will call the TARDIS to us if something happens or if either one of us gets terribly sick. After all, there’s only two of us now. The Galliterrans will have more numbers and thus will be able to afford to have a certain percentage of them unable to hunt due to illness, pregnancy, recent child-birth, or injury.”
“I can agree to those terms.”
“You know, this reminds me of a book Lucy had that I got bored and read one day,” Koschei said much later that evening. “Clan of the Cave Bear.”
“Oh, I read that whole series. Magnolia liked it. I can see the parallels. We’re like Jondalar and Ayla only without the constant shagging.”
“Ha! Good point. Still, at least we do keep each other company. Imagine trying to do this in complete isolation. It’d drive anyone mad. Vairë? What’s the matter?” The woman was staring off in the distance, her expression thoughtful.
“Oh,” she said, coming back to herself. “I thought I smelled salt in the air. As if we were getting close to the sea.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we were,” Koschei said. “We can follow it for a while. It’ll make skirting the mountains to the north easier.”
“Yeah. We should probably plan to winter in those mountains. I saw some good caves on the maps of the terrain. We can hole up there for the winter. The sea should be able to provide us enough food if we can’t store enough ahead of time.”
“I want to get a picture of us once we have the meat here ready to pack away,” Koschei said as they were getting ready to get some sleep. That was the only “modern” convenience Vairë had allowed him to bring with them. She’d even left her sonic screwdriver behind. Still, he had plenty of photos of the two of them living like a pair of primitives. He was glad she had decided not to photograph him strung up in his own trap. However, he knew that he wasn’t going to live that misadventure down anytime soon. Settling himself in the mat of grass he’d cut, Koschei fell asleep to the sound of his sister’s deep breathing on the other side of the fire.
~*~*~*~
“That’s an island!” Vairë shouted enthusiastically. “I actually think that would be the perfect place for the TARDIS nursery and the Untempered Schism.”
“It would take us months to build a boat that could carry us out that far,” Koschei pointed out. The island was just on this side of the horizon. From the arc of the sky, he could tell it was probably about five miles out.
“Then we’ll cheat,” Vairë said, fingering her earring. “I want to investigate that island. Something about it…it’s like it’s calling to me.”
Vairë sent a mental summons to her sister through the earring she still wore and within moments, she and Koschei were standing in the console room. They flew out to the island and disembarked again, Koschei grumbling about his little sister telling him that taking a shower and shaving onboard the TARDIS would be cheating.
“I’m home,” Vairë whispered to herself too softly for even her brother to hear. The island felt right to her. This is where she belonged. In her mind, she could hear Maggie humming contentedly as if she had just returned home as well. Still, she didn’t want to commit herself too quickly. The island itself was bare rock and only a thin layer of soil. She and her brother had spent their time cultivating the main continents and only a few larger islands. This one, only a few miles across, was deemed too small to be worth their efforts. Vairë closed her eyes. She could see this island as it would become. Green grass – not red. Oak trees. Magnolia trees. Apple trees. Earth wildflowers mixing in with the grass. Her house would be built near the western coast. A large garden would surround it where she would cultivate a mixture of vegetables, fruits, and flowers. It would be her permanent home, a place of quiet solitude and contemplation. “The Tol Eressëa,” she sighed softly. Koschei studied her face. Vairë looked so serene, so relaxed…so young and yet so ancient. “The Lonely Isle. This will be a place of solitude and peace. Those who cannot face the Untempered Schism will be given healing here so that no more minds wander broken and in pain. Those who have been beaten and battered by the travails of life will journey here and find rest and comfort. Those who have broken under burdens too heavy for them to bear will find strength and renewal here. This will be a world apart. And, when the end comes for each, their body will be laid in a white boat and sent past this island, heading into the ever-most West. And I myself will stand watch over that last journey as each makes it and sing them to that eternal sleep.”
Koschei stared at his little sister, his mouth hanging open. Her voice had changed, growing deeper and losing her native accent. It throbbed with power. Her eyes had lightened until they were flashing gold discs. He could feel Time itself wrapping around her, melding itself to her, embracing her. As she spoke, her words took on the lilt of prophecy. He regarded the island once more. At first, he had thought it nothing but a wasteland. But now…now he knew that this would be his sister’s home. Her realm. Her sanctuary. And, to him, that was enough.
Vairë blinked and her eyes returned to their normal hazel color. Her voice regained its normal pitch and accent. “I like it here,” she said to her brother. “Let’s go explore that cave over there. Could be the perfect place for the TARDIS nursery.”
He followed her as she sprinted off to the cave near the southern end of the island. He had a feeling that it would be perfect and that, in time, this small island would become everything she had said it would be. All of that and more.
~*~*~*~
“Dear God, am I glad to be back here,” Vairë groaned contentedly as she sat down at the table in the galley. She and Koschei had wintered in the mountains after setting up the TARDIS nursery in the cave on the Tol Eressëa. They both understood now exactly what they would be asking of the Galliterrans and knew that they would survive it and thrive. Being forced to eke out a bare existence without cities and technology would be difficult, but in the end, it would make them stronger. It would give them ties to the world and nature. It would foster a better civilization. Still, it was wonderful to be back on board the TARDIS, taking a hot shower, using soap, shampoo, and conditioner, and being able to shave her legs and underarms. Koschei had bolted for his own shower swearing that he was going to get rid of his beard first thing. Vairë had gotten out some barber’s scissors and an electric razor so she could trim his hair. She’d cut her own off again in a blunt bob just above her shoulders. When they went to pick up Lucy, she was planning to visit a proper salon and have her hair done more nicely.
“I will never complain about dull razors again for as long as I live,” Koschei vowed as he walked into the galley. “Or shoes. Though it does feel strange to be back in proper clothing again. I’d gotten used to going commando.”
“Oh, I hated it,” Vairë grimaced. “Glad to feel like all my bits are covered. Anyhow, we need to swing by Earth to pick up some plants there so I can get the Tol Eressëa seeded with Earth flora. Then, we’ll jump ahead, seed the Galliterrans, get them set on their path, and then check in on them periodically until your house is ready and we’ll go get Lucy and be done.”
“Where does that name come from, Vairë?”
“Hold on a sec,” she replied, darting back to her old room and returning with the books Magnolia had bequeathed to her. “It comes from Tolkien. The Tol Eressëa was called “the Lonely Isle.” It was just off the eastern coast of Valinor. The Elves lived there – they were the only ones who were allowed to live within sight of Valinor, especially after Fëanor and his kindred swore their dreaded oath to reclaim the Simarils. You should read these,” she added, handing him the books. “Just don’t mess them up. They were given to me by my sister Magnolia Gloria.”
“But there’s no other islands near the one on Galliterra,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, it’s not an exact match, I know,” she grinned. “Sit up straight and let me tuck this towel around you so I can get your hair trimmed a bit. Anyhow, I’m going to call it that regardless. And it will be a great place. It will give me a home where I can be domestic without the pressure of also being sociable. And, with the Untempered Schism there, I can set up some dormitories for initiates who need help overcoming their viewing it. And for all those who are suffering. It will be a peaceful, calming place. With all of the plants there being Terran in origin, it will also be otherworldly to the Galliterrans which will help them with recovering.”
“It sounds wonderful to me,” Koschei said while Vairë clipped his hair close to his scalp. “Still, you do realize you won’t be able to land a TARDIS there due to the Schism, right?”
“I know. I’ll land near the beach on the western part of that continent and just have the TARDIS taken by boat. There was a gentle slope up where we could build a dock. If the TARDIS was on a wheeled platform, it wouldn’t be too hard to get her up there and then pull her to my house. The terrain is fairly flat.”
“You’ve thought this out.”
“I have. Koschei, I love you. I love Lucy. I’ll love my nieces and nephews. I’ll visit and stay with you frequently. But I know myself well enough now to know that I’ll want solitude and quiet.”
“Will you ever marry? Have children of your own?”
Vairë sighed. “I don’t know. If you’d asked me when I was nineteen, I’d have told you ‘yes, of course,’ because I was head over heels in love with this man. But he didn’t love me. Maybe one day I’ll find another man but I don’t know that I’ll ever love anyone the way I love him. I don’t know that I’ll ever get over it. Part of me truly doesn’t want to because it’s all I have of him and it’s all I’ll ever have. I used to dream such little girl dreams about marrying him, being with him forever, having children with him…but that’s all they were. All they’ll ever be. Just childish dreams. Even if I can’t quite bring myself to let go of them.”
“It’s the Doctor, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Vairë said softly. “It is.”
“That tears it,” he grimaced. “As soon as you get my hair trimmed, we’re going back to France and getting him.”
“Let’s finish our work on Galliterra first, big bro.”
“Only if you promise that we’ll go right after that’s done. Before we even go to pick up Lucy.”
“We’ll try,” she winced. “God knows I’ve made enough attempts already. Seems like I can go anywhere but France in the late 1700s.”
“All right. Finish my hair and then we’ll go hit Earth during the Ice Age, get your plants, head back and finish up Project Galliterra, go rescue the Doctor from France, and pick up my wife on the way home.”