Chapter Text
Changing Tides - Chapter 1: Gallifrey
The streets of Gallifrey were not meant for midnight strolls. You will not find any couples or children out past 12 o’clock on these streets, only shadows that creep in the night, filled with darkness and terror.
Clara Oswald was only 28 when she moved to the United States from England. She loved Blackpool, but she wanted to see the world and explore all that it had to offer. After she graduated college, she tried to look for a nice city with a great education system so that she could use her newly attained degree of Early Childhood Education to better children’s lives.
Or so she told herself…
But Clara didn’t have time for self-doubt, she spent months looking for a suitable place to live but no options were sticking out. She traveled to different cities to look for jobs personally and not relying on the Internet, but her hopes were crushed. She almost gave up, almost agreeing with her Dad that ‘education is a failing field, why not go into law enforcement?’
“I need to clear my head”, she said. So she took to the streets, she didn’t know where she was going- as long as it was away from her life that was currently being flushed away. She walked along the curb, hearing the cars go by against wet pavement. She hadn’t noticed the rain before, but luckily it was only a light drizzle. She popped up her hood and kept walking, dim streetlights showing her the path through the night.
Clara walked up and down the streets, passing corners and allies but never people, she noticed. She thought for a moment about how to get home, but she didn’t know.
“Oh no.” she whispered into the night.
She tried to remember where she came from, which direction, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even remember what city she was in. After the city of Akhaten, they all kind of blurred together.
'Not Akhaten… No. Greenwich, no, but- G…' Clara tried to think of where she was but could only think of the letter ‘G’...
“Gallifrey! That’s where I am!” she shouted into the night.
She was so happily distracted by her discovery that she failed to notice the shadows creeping up behind her.