“Lots of newness. Must be exciting. Don’t forget me out there, eh?”
He’s careful, strategic, even, to bare his back to her while he speaks.
“I am to keep being living proof of your theory of change.”
“Oh, but it is! It is, but don’t you know this by now, Koschei? There isn’t an adventure or a mystery in existence that could so completely capture my attention that I might forget you.”
She dashes up to him and hugs him from behind, kissing the spot behind his ear and nuzzling into his neck.
“My proof of all things hopeful and new, but simultaneously familiar. I love you, Kookaburra. I’ll be home soon.”
He spins at her kiss, ordinarily reason to shiver into rollicking raunchy activity. But right now he’s too preoccupied with another thought, siphoning off her enthusiasm, the way they always mutually feed.
“Your friends. The ones you told me about. The new ones. D’you think they’d like me? I mean the police girl, she sounds impressively intelligent for an earth ape. Or the lad, Ryan? The one that just lost his … well I mean, maybe if you told him … I’m an exceedingly accomplished person, and sometimes my back, and my leg, they … and you know, I have certain neurological, er. Oddities. That I cope with, too.”
He pauses, fidgeting somewhat transparently, ruffling his hair and the nape of his neck. Self-conscious, for the first time in distant recollection.
“I’m on my best behavior. Except with the old one. Graham Cracker or whatever. Bit like Wilf Mott, that one.”
Brown eyes darken to black, with the thought of how the Doctor and Mott parted ways, and snap to her face.
“While you’re out there: don’t protect others at your own expense. I’ll know. And I won’t talk to you for a week. Not even if you give me The Face.”
A pause.
“Course, you know, if Graham Cracker drives like, the Magical Schoolbus, like Miss Frizzle, I could be arsed to half-tolerate him.”
Be patient with him, he may think that the Magical Schoolbus is real, like he did the Teletubbies.
Icarus 