The Pro-Fun TARDIS landed.
Everybody stuck their heads out of the doors.
Thomas frowned. “This isn’t where we were…”
“No,” their hostess said. “We’re in Hawaii, same day we left…” Her face broke into a massive grin. “Anybody for a Pro-Fun Luau?”
A mighty, re-energised cheer came from the crowd.
Later…
Compassion had managed to get Eloise alone. “Listen… I was wondering…”
“Yes?”
“Your TARDIS wants to know if you want to change the link between you and her…” Compassion said.
“Change… how?” Eloise asked uncertainly.
“She knows your surface thoughts… and you can feel her emotions…” Compassion murmured. “She wants to know if you’d be willing to share a full telepathic mind link… You’d be able to share each others’ thoughts…”
“Why’re you offering?” Eloise asked. “Not that I’m suspicious, but…”
Compassion glanced at ‘her’ Doctor. “It’s just… I don’t know. But it’s something I could do, while she and I are still linked… and… she wants to be able to talk to someone who isn’t a TARDIS.”
“And maybe,” she said, almost to herself, “it’s because I fell in love…”
“With my TARDIS?!” Eloise exclaimed.
“No…” Compassion said. She looked at her Doctor again.
Eloise followed her gaze. “Why?”
Compassion shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m still learning what it means… but I know our time’s coming to an end…” She shook herself. “So… do you want to do it? Go ahead with changing your link to your TARDIS? The change would be irreversible…” She halted, and looked surprised. “Oh.”
Eloise took a deep breath.
“Whether it would be irreversible or not,” she said, as gently as she could, “I’m afraid the answer would still be ‘No.’” She paused, trying to find the right way to say what she was thinking. “True love,” she said at last, “can only exist between two separate minds. There have to be secret places that we can both retreat to, so that we can each grow, and return with new gifts for the other…”
She let her voice drift off, becoming absorbed in the sound of the waves lapping the shore. Then she patted Compassion’s hand. “No matter how long we’ve got,” she said, “from Event One until the end of time itself, we’re all ‘still learning what it means’ – that’s the magic of it.”
The quiet moment was interrupted when Orange Anubis came trotting over, sipping a drink from a large paper cup. “You have to try this,” he said. “It’s the best banana daiquiri I’ve ever tasted!”
“Where’d you get it?” Eloise asked. She wasn’t too fond of either bananas or rum, but a rave review like that had to be checked out, especially when it came from one of her central heroes.
“A little bar down the beach, called ‘Galli’s Paradise’. I tried to get the bartender to give me the recipe, but for some reason, he insisted that would be against the law.” Orange shrugged, and took another sip, rolling it appreciatively around his tongue. “Funny,” he said, after he swallowed, “I could’ve sworn I’d met him someplace before, but I just can’t quite remember…”
~ ~ ~ THE END ~ ~ ~