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The TARDIS twirled and landed with a flourish, making the four-year-old inside giggle and wiggle in her seat. Rose unbuckled her and lifted her to the ground as the Doctor moved about the console. Piper looked to her father for the thumbs up and, when she received it, she threw open the wooden doors (with the help of the TARDIS) to reveal the new planet waiting for them.
An ocean of sparkling indigo whooshed and crashed in steady tides onto a golden beach.
“YES!” Piper danced through the tall grass and called to her parents to hurry up. “C’mon! Look, Daddy, birds!”
The Doctor shielded his eyes and followed her pointing to the seagulls above. Unlike Earth seagulls, this planet’s variety were bright yellow. He wondered if it was a clumsy attempt at camouflage against the golden sand.
Rose slipped her left hand into his and carried their trans-dimensional beach bag in her right. They ambled down the sand dunes to the mid-morning beach scene, chatting and letting Piper run and skip and hop freely in front of them until they reached the crowd.
The little girl stopped and stiffened in surprise as a huge surfboard passed right in front of her. The creature holding it was at least six and a half feet tall and had red tentacles for hair. Piper scrambled back to hold onto her mum’s leg.
“It’s alright, love. You’re safe,” Rose reassured. “Just stay close so you don’t get stepped on, yeah?”
Piper still looked hesitant, however, biting her lip and checking with her dad for further confirmation.
“The sand can be hard to walk on… Want me to carry you instead?” he offered.
He bent down and open his arms to her. She grinned and gladly accepted her position on his hip. He returned his free hand to Rose’s and the little family took off down the beach again.
They arrived at a free spot and made sure no one was looking as the Doctor pulled a blanket and folding chairs out of the beach bag. They gave Piper her sandcastle-building tools first and kept an eye on her while setting up.
“I just remembered,” Rose sighed, “I put sunblock on Piper, but I forgot to put it on myself. You two go explore and I’ll catch up.”
“Sure you don’t need help?” the Doctor said in a low tone that was quiet enough not to be overheard by their daughter and deep enough to convey his innuendo.
“Oh, you,” Rose scolded, but her tone was negated by the bright tongue-touched smile and wink that followed.
The Doctor pecked a happy kiss to her lips and waggled his eyebrows. She laughed but nodded to their daughter who was waiting less than patiently for them to be done flirting.
“Daaaddyyy,” Piper whined, “Mummy said we could go exploooore!”
“Right on. Allons-y!” He grabbed her hand, and they took off down to the water’s edge. Piper squealed at the coldness of the water, making Rose laugh from where she watched with her sunblock bottle in hand.
The teal bubbles chased Piper as she ran along its edge, with the Doctor splashing her along the way. A few meters down the beach, they reached a brown and black enclave of rocks. Slippery rocks.
Luckily, the Doctor reached Piper just as she began to climb them. She lost her footing, just as he had predicted, and he was right there to catch her. She clung to him for a bit after that, but eventually he coaxed her to sit on the rocks with him, dangling their feet over the edge into the still water.
He waited, sure the species he intended to show her was in here somewhere but not wanting to spoil the surprise.
A golden rock trembled. Then walked away.
“DADDY!” Piper gasped and grabbed his arm.
“What did you see, princess?” He held back a laugh, delighted at her wonder.
“It moooved! The rock moved! Can rocks walk here?!”
“This one can. It’s not a rock at all,” he explained, scooping up one of the tiny creatures. “On this planet, this is a goldwalker, at least that’s what it translates to in our language. It’s a type of decorator crab that uses the sand and pebbles found here to hide from animals that want to eat it. Of course, it can defend itself as well. See the tiny pinchers?”
Piper reached out a hand but changed her mind when she saw the pinchers.
“It won’t hurt you if you cup your hands like this.” He demonstrated and transferred the crab to her. She let it crawl over her hands a bit and examined it up close.
“Can we keep it? Pleeeease?”
“No, this little guy has to go back to his family. See all those rocks that look like our friend here? Those are his brothers and sisters. Probably a hundred of them in these pools around here. This beach is the perfect home for them.”
“Wow,” Piper exhaled, taking in all of the crabs she hadn’t even noticed stirring beneath her.
“Why don’t you let him swim home now, so he doesn’t get too scared?” The Doctor guided her hands close to the surface of the tide pool and they dropped the crab back into its natural habitat.
“Does he have a mummy and daddy? Does he go to school? How do you know it’s a boy, anyway? What if it’s a girl crab and she wants to come home with us instead? Why does it have so many brothers and sisters? How do crabs have babies? Do they come from the mummy crab like I came from Mummy’s belly?” Piper asked with her preschool curiosity.
“Ah…” the Doctor stalled, unsure of how to begin to answer such questions. He glanced around for a distraction. Luckily, Rose was approaching. Just as she was behind them, before Piper had seen her yet, Piper continued her line of questioning.
Her tiny brow furrowed as the thought occurred to her for the first time.
“Why do crabs have so many brothers and sisters, but I don’t have any? Am I going to have brothers and sisters like Henriette?”
“Who?” the Doctor asked, dazed, as Rose sat down beside him.
“The crab. I named her. If it’s a her. If it’s a him, it’s Henry.” Piper turned her attention to her mum. “Mummy, why don’t I have brothers and sisters?”
“Umm… We… that is…” Rose stuttered and glanced to the Doctor. He tried to answer, feeling obligated as he was the one who showed a genius preschooler a tide pool full of siblings.
“Well, you see,” he attempted to satisfy her with facts, “humanoids only have one or two babies at a time, usually, though not always. We just had the one, you, and…”
“But after that,” Piper interrupted.
“Would you want one, a sibling?” Rose asked, amused and no longer flustered.
Piper thought for a moment.
“Maybe. If they were nice. Maybe just one or two or so. Not a hundred like crabs. Henriette says that’s too many.”
“Alright,” Rose laughed. “Glad to hear it. Maybe someday then.”
Piper quickly forgot the conversation ever happened and climbed down the rocks.
“Beach time!” she shouted over her shoulder as her parents scrambled up to follow her. She ran into the waves and splashed around in the shallow water.
The Doctor took Rose’s hand and squeezed as they watched their only child.
“Someday,” he said with hope.
“Yeah. It’ll happen.” Rose shot him a sad, tiny closed-lipped smile with one corner quirked up. Her eyes said she had faith in his words, but that her heart also ached with the most recent negative test.
“It will, love.” He wrapped his arms around her from behind and kissed her hair. Little did they know, a year from then the place on her middle where his hands were resting would be stretched round in a small bump with their growing second baby. For now, they just clung to each other and to hope and to each precious moment with their wild and free first one as she danced in the spray of an alien ocean.