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Clara frowned down into the deep freezer full of neatly packaged Christmas turkeys, one hand tapping out an impatient rhythm on the handle of her shopping trolley. How was she supposed to know what size to pick up? In her twenty-five years Clara had acquired a great many skills; unfortunately, cooking the turkey wasn’t one of them. Yet. Clara wasn’t giving up.
“You should try a fresh one instead,” a friendly voice suggested from her right.
Clara whipped around in surprise, her hair bouncing over her shoulders, to meet the wide-eyed smile of the woman beside her. She seemed about Clara’s age and height, with light blonde hair tied in a high ponytail, escaped strands hanging down to frame her face.
“Oh yeah?” Clara asked, eyebrows raised. “Why’s that, then?”
“Well they’d just be nicer wouldn’t they? I don’t know much about turkeys, but they had something similar on Belafon Five. Sorry if I startled you,” the blonde woman added, “it’s just that you’d been standing here a while and looked like you might like some help.”
“Right. Yes. Thank you.” Clara returned her smile, her face switching rather suddenly from slightly untrusting to completely charming. She didn’t understand all of what the woman had said, but she seemed well intentioned, and Clara didn’t know enough about turkeys to disbelieve her. “Where are they?"
“At the back. Down two aisles. Can’t miss ‘em.”
“Great.” Clara paused. “You don’t happen to know anything about cooking it too, do you?”
The blonde woman laughed. “Have you got a pen and paper?”
Clara rummaged around in her purse til she found a pen and an old shopping list (the back of the paper was still blank), which she handed over.
The woman scribbled something down. “This,” she said, as she passed the note back to Clara, "is a help line. Best help line in the universe. If you have any trouble with anything, you can call this number and there’ll be someone there to sort you out.”
Clara pocketed the number, doubtful, and thanked the woman again for her advice.
—
Christmas morning, Clara woke to the sight of a city entirely blanketed in snow. She put on her slippers and, still in her pyjamas, went downstairs to enjoy her morning tea in the kitchen.
At ten, she got dressed and found her recipe book and the ingredients she’d need for her cooking. Her family was coming over in the afternoon for Christmas dinner. Clara’s father was bringing the veggies and the mashed potatoes. Her gran was bringing the pudding. Clara was doing the turkey and a soufflé.
At noon, she had smears of flour across her nose and apron and a lot of questions on her mind. The soufflé was mixed, as was the stuffing, but she wasn’t sure a) how to cook both the turkey AND the soufflé, b) how long the turkey would need to cook for, or c) how she would know when it was done.
She pulled out her laptop and opened up her browser. ‘Turkey cooking time in relation to its size’ should fairly easy to look up.
Could not connect to the Internet.
Clara groaned. This was one problem she couldn’t fix. Why did it have to happen now? And all her friends were out of town. There was no one who could help her out. Except…
She retrieved the note she’d been given by the woman in the shop the two days previous and looked at the phone number. It might be Christmas, but still; it was worth a shot. She dialled it.
Clara listened to the sound of ringing at the other end, feeling hopeful against her better judgment. When someone finally picked up, she shot up straight.
“Ah, hello! I’m looking for the Internet.”
—
Jenny had quickly discovered that she couldn’t actually see much of the universe in such a clunky spaceship, so she’d charmed a vortex manipulator off a bloke in a bar. Now she could go anywhere and to any time, just like Donna and her dad.
After meeting Clara in the shop, Jenny smiled to herself. It was all very well preventing alien invasions and solving global crises but one of her favourite things was simply meeting the locals wherever she went.
This was Jenny’s first trip to Earth and she was very excited to be there: she’d heard a lot of myths about it and was curious to see what it was truly like.
At night she slept in the streets, and during the day she walked them. She didn’t mind. Jenny had been a soldier, and this wasn’t any worse than what she’d expected her living conditions to be when she’d stepped out of that machine. In fact, it was better than she could have imagined.
Jenny was jolted out of her daydream by the sound of her phone ringing (which she’d charmed off an abnormally tall humanoid on another planet, also in a bar - this was incidentally how she’d gotten most of her gadgets, although she did receive a fair amount of money for her spaceship, which she’d used to buy a dimensionally transcendent backpack and some clothes). She dug the device out of one of the many pockets of her coat.
“Hello?”
“Ah, hello!” said the woman at the other end, sounding a bit relieved. "I’m looking for the Internet. Where is it? Shouldn’t it just sort of… be there?”
Jenny grinned. She recognized that voice.
Her grin turned rapidly to a frown, however, when she realized she didn’t actually know what an ‘internet’ was.
“How’s your turkey?” she asked, changing the subject.
“My what?” There was a pause at the other end before Jenny heard a barely-audible gasp. “It’s you! That woman from the shop! Why did you tell me this was a helpline?” The woman’s tone changed from surprised to accusing. “Do you actually know how to cook a turkey?"
“Well, no. Not really,” Jenny replied cheerfully. “But I bet I could figure it out.” She could tell the other woman was on the verge of hanging up. Earnestly, she continued speaking. “I just want to help, honest! You called, you must need it.”
“But it’s Christmas.” The other woman sounded a bit puzzled now. “Don’t you have other things to be doing? Unless you don’t celebrate, of course,” she backtracked. It sounded like the brunette was beginning to trust her. Jenny had that knack. She wondered if it had something to do with her dad.
—
Clara wasn’t exactly sure why, but she’d ended up inviting the blonde - Jenny, she’d said her name was - over for dinner. She was coming over now to help out with the turkey.
Soon, she got a call (“I’m here! What do I do?”) and went to answer the door.
“What do you mean, ‘what do you do’?” she asked as she pulled it open. “You could have just rung the doorbell. Seeing as that’s what it’s for.” Clara gestured at the button next to the doorframe.
“Doorbell?”
“Those bells on our houses we use to tell each other we’ve arrived?”
Jenny’s eyes, still slightly confused, met Clara’s skeptical ones. She turned and pressed the indicated button. Chimes sang throughout the house.
“Oh, that’s beautiful!” she beamed, and pressed it again.
Clara laughed. “I can’t believe you’ve never heard a doorbell before. Where are you from? You can come in,” she added.
“Far away,” Jenny answered belatedly as she crossed over the doorstep into Clara’s front room. She repeated her answer quietly to herself as she shrugged off her coat. “I’m from far away.”
—
At two, the turkey was stuffed and in the oven and the soufflé was covered and waiting to go in when the turkey came out. They’d figured out how to use the Internet on Jenny’s phone and found out how long it would need to cook for. It had all been rather simple, really.
At three they were on the couch watching Christmas specials. When it became clear that Jenny was unfamiliar with these, too, Clara explained the Nativity Story and the more recent tales of Santa Claus, and Rudolph, and the Grinch. All of which, she told Jenny, were well known and beloved and would continue to be passed down for generations.
Jenny listened, fascinated, her blue eyes fixed on Clara so intensely that the brunette found herself blushing.
At four-thirty, Clara’s family arrived. She introduced the blonde to them as “my friend, Jenny.”
They liked her. Who wouldn’t?
—
The turkey was perfect. So was Clara’s soufflé.
—
At nine-thirty, Clara’s family left. Jenny was still there, finishing off a glass of red wine. She’d really made herself at home. Clara wondered if she did that everywhere she went.
“Want to go for a walk before you leave?” Clara asked.
“Ooh, yes! I love walking.”
Jenny drank the rest of her wine and set the glass back down on the table as she stood up. The pair put their coats on (Clara also put on mitts, a hat, and a scarf) and headed outside.
The snow had continued to fall throughout the day so that most footsteps from that afternoon had been at least partially covered up again. Clara and Jenny walked along side-by-side, creating two new sets of bootprints. Clara steered them towards the seaside, and they continued their walk along the beach.
Jenny chattered away as they went, telling Clara about everything she’d seen since she’d arrived in town and hardly stopping to take a breath. She really was a peculiar girl, Clara mused. She never did say where she was from.
After a while, they stopped at a bench. Clara brushed the snow off with her mitten-clad hands and, together, they sat down.
Clara looked out over the water, thinking, before blurting out, “I was going to travel too, you know. I was going to go to so many places.”
Jenny was quiet.
“After my mum died, I was going to leave. On my own. But then some friends of the family needed my help, and I couldn’t say no, not after… So I stayed. Looked after the kids for their dad. Eventually they could get along without me, but I realized that - I need to do something. For other people. Not just for myself. And I’m good with kids, so I’m back in school now. Teacher’s college.” She nodded, perhaps more to herself than to the woman beside her.
Jenny was still quiet. She looked down at the space between them. Clara's hands were clenched around the edges of the bench on either side of her, tense. Without hesitation, Jenny placed her own hand gently on top of Clara’s - one of the few reassuring gestures she knew.
Clara didn’t move away.
“Where would you go? If you still could?”
“Everywhere.” Clara leaned into the bench and looked up at the sky, leaving her hand that was under Jenny’s where it was and placing the other over her heart. “I have a book, 101 Places to See. I used to look at it with Mum. But that’s just the beginning.
“Every place I’ve ever heard of. Every place I’ve ever read about, imagining I was there. Oh God, I want to go there.” She took a deep breath and repeated, “Everywhere.”
“Me too.” And then, more quietly, “I’m sorry about your mum.”
The two sat in silence for a few minutes, lost in their own thoughts, before Jenny began to sense that Clara was shaking.
“Are you ok?”
Clara nodded.
“Are you sure? You’re shaking!”
“I’m shivering!”
And she was. Her teeth were beginning to chatter, too; it was cold outside, especially now that they were sitting still.
“Shivering?”
“I’m cold!”
“You shake when you’re cold?”
“Shiver! Everyone shivers when they’re cold!”
Clara finally pulled her hand away, throwing both up into the air in exasperation. “My God, I swear sometimes it’s like you’re not even from this planet.”
Rather than being upset, Jenny smiled at her and caught her hand when it came back down on the bench again, her thumb sliding down to rest on Clara’s wrist. She felt the pulse of Clara’s single heart and wondered, not for the first time, if the extra heart was the only thing that made a ‘Time Lord’ different than a human.
Clara raised her eyebrows.
“What are you doing?”
“Can I show you something?”
Clara nodded, brows lowering again to form a confused frown.
Jenny took the hand she was holding and placed it over the top of her own chest.
When Clara felt the double heartbeat beneath her fingers, she nearly scooted sideways on the bench, as far away from Jenny as she could, but she restrained herself. Instead, she looked intently at the blonde’s face, still frowning, as if expecting to see that all along she’d had an extra eye, or antennae, and Clara had simply missed them.
But there was nothing unusual about Jenny’s appearance. She was just a woman.
A very beautiful woman, Clara corrected herself, before scolding her own train of thought for speeding in that direction when the woman with whom she was currently sitting - who happened to be the beautiful woman in question - had just revealed herself to be an alien.
An actual alien, from outer space.
Clara snatched her hand away again.
“I am from another planet,” Jenny told her, confirming any last doubts Clara might have had. “I only have a dad, no mum. He travels in time in space with his friend Donna. I have two hearts, just like my dad. He says that he’s called a 'Time Lord', but that I’m not one. I think it’s because I was born on a different planet than he was. I don’t know what I am. That’s fine. I’ve never been a child. I was born a soldier, from a machine in the middle of a war. Now I travel in time and space just like my dad.” Her face went from serious to smiling again, proud of herself for what her life had become.
Clara’s face softened. There really was something about Jenny, she thought, that she felt she could relate to despite how different they clearly were. But it was more that Jenny had been where Clara was now, and had managed to pull herself away.
Jenny, the soldier, and Clara, the caretaker of children, had both fulfilled their duties of out a sense of obligation rather than because it was what they truly wanted. Because what they both wanted was to travel. Everywhere. And now that’s what Jenny was doing.
“You could come with me. Creatures to see. Civilizations to save. An awful lot of running to do.” Jenny grinned at Clara, pleased that the other woman was still next to her at all.
Clara finally spoke.
“I - I couldn’t. I’m in school. I have a career ahead of me.”
“You could be back before anyone realized you were gone!”
Clara looked backed up at the sky.
Jenny did the same.
Against her will, Clara felt her heart speed up. She imagined being able to visit other worlds - other species that didn’t exist here, scenery that could never even be possible on her singular planet - and suddenly Earth felt so small. How could she stay here forever if there was a way to see the stars?
“When?”
“Any time at all! Tonight, if you like!”
“Yeah… I think I’d like that.” Finally, she grinned back at the blonde, whose face lit up.
“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! It will be so much fun to have a friend come along!”
Jenny leaned forwards and wrapped Clara in an enthusiastic hug.
Before she could pull away completely, it was Clara who clasped their hands together between them, hers still in her mittens.
“Do you really not shiver?” Clara laughed.
“No! I think my body temperature must be lower than yours.”
“That’s so weird.” Clara paused. “So... why’d you actually give me your number?”
“Because you’re pretty and I wanted to talk to you again,” Jenny said matter-of-factly. Then it was her turn to hesitate. “Is that alright?”
“Yeah.”
Jenny had moved over on the bench when she'd hugged Clara and they were now so close together that Clara could have counted the lashes above Jenny’s bright blue eyes. Jenny met her gaze unflinchingly, and then looked downwards. Clara couldn’t help but do the same. She could feel Jenny's breath on her face, warmer than the cool air around them.
Neither would have been able to say who moved first, but after a moment they were leaning their heads together til their noses touched, and then lips. Jenny’s mouth was soft but colder than Clara’s own.
Clara sighed when Jenny pulled away again.
“That was nice.”
“Yeah,” Clara said, smiling shyly. She might have added more, or kissed Jenny again, but curiosity got the better of her. There were still so many things about Jenny that she wanted to know.
“Where’s your spaceship? How do you park a great big spaceship in the middle a city without people noticing, anyways?”
“Haven’t got one anymore!” Jenny told her cheerfully. She nodded down at her wrist, around which Clara could see what she’d previously assumed to be a curious sort of watch. “Vortex manipulator. Gets you anywhere - and anywhen - you like.”
Clara looked doubtful again. “You mean it’s like a… magic teleporter.”
“It is!”
“Alright, prove it. Where are we going to go?”
“Your choice. Anywhere you want.
Clara opened her mouth. “I want… I want… What I want is…” She shook their hands up and down between them in indecision, before stopping and smiling. “Something awesome.”
“Alright!” Jenny pulled her right hand away to turn some dials on the magic teleport… thing, while still grasping Clara’s hand tightly in her left. “Are you ready?”
Clara only hesitated for a beat. “Yes.”
Jenny pressed a button and the pair disappeared.