Entry Nineteen - Vesper

We stayed at the Powell Estate for two days. Mum was ecstatic and I am not sure Mickey left for the entire time. There was plenty of room with the TARDIS which the Doctor moved into my bedroom, mum wasn’t entirely happy about that but it was better than the living room and with everyone sleeping there it was impossible not to leave it in the courtyard. So in my bedroom it stayed and it was sort of like a big sleepover for two days. But then we all start to get antsy and we all knew it was time to shove off. The Doctor moved the TARDIS to downstairs and I collected up my laundry, kissed mum goodbye, hugged Mickey (knowing this would be the last time I’d probably ever see him), and then went down to the TARDIS.

Ariella was staring at the sky, well, the sun to be exact, and the Doctor was probably inside. I paused in front of her, about to ask if she was going in, but she spoke first.

“It’s mine, you know. That’s my star, the one I was born with and the one I will die with.” I hadn’t ever really thought of that. Each Nyklus was born at the same time as a star, Ariella’s was our sun. It seemed like such an expansive lifetime I couldn’t even fathom it.

Also, I’d seen it die. My first trip with the Doctor, I’d seen the sun expand and engulf the Earth with it, I’d been thinking of my planet, all the things left on it, even if there weren’t people. It had been hard to watch, but now all I could think was that I had been standing on Platform 5, and across the universe, on Jacowitz, Queen Ariella was dying.

But then she’d seen her fill and we both walked back into the TARDIS.

We decided that we’d had a bad enough time of it lately so the three of us, The Doctor, Ariella, and I, thought it’d be nice to have a bit of a fun day. Not that we’re not all big fans of trouble, because we obviously are, and the running, that can be brilliant too. But after everything that’d happened lately the Doctor set course for the planet Vesper which is a little bit like what Las Vegas looked like in films and stuff. It was like walking onto the set of Ocean’s Eleven complete with good looking blokes and high rolling casinos. And this apparently covered the whole planet.

The Doctor landed the TARDIS in an alleyway off of the high street and immediately after exiting we were engulfed by people. I know that Ariella had done her fair share of travelling at this point, with us and probably in her past and all that, but Jacowitz is such a docile place I am always convinced that Ari’s going to be overwhelmed with places like this.

Instead she nearly jumped up and down clapping her hands. The Doctor looked ridiculously chuffed, and I couldn’t help laughing with glee at the whole thing.

“Well, then,” he said after several moments of us all looking around at the all the people and tall buildings of neon and bright colours and everything, “to the casino?”

Ari and I exchanged glances then looked back at the Doctor, “Yeah!”

Ariella had plenty of money and insisted that she use her credits instead of the Doctor using jiggery pokery on an Instacredit machine, which, well we all knew was all kinds of wrong anyway. It seemed that the Doctor was very good at a game that very closely resembled poker and I wasn’t so bad with the slots. They both seemed to think it was very amusing that whenever I won a game I’d scream shrilly and jump up and down. I couldn’t quite help it though! It was fun!

A bloke that very closely seemed to resemble Brad Pitt seemed very taken with Ariella and had her blow on his dice every time he’d throw down at the table. He ended up winning quite a bit and gave Ari a million credit chip as a reward. She wasn’t going to take it but I told her that she should because the bloke was good looking and he seemed to like her without knowing that she was the Queen of the Nyklus, which was pretty impressive in my book. Then again, I’ve always been a sucker for a pretty boy. And this one was pretty.

But Ariella didn’t seemed entirely interested so instead of pushing it I leaned my hip against the gaming table in the same fashion that I leaned it against the TARDIS console and bit my bottom lip. “Any chance for a drink?” I asked.

And the next thing that I knew we were in the casino bar, the classy one with no strippers or dancers gyrating on the tables, with a bottle of something called Argo Tequila which the Doctor assured me tasted nothing like Earth tequila. He was right on that account. He poured us all tiny glasses of the stuff, I was a bit wary of drinking it without mixing it with something but he assured me it wasn’t necessary, and we toasted to Vesper. It tasted nothing like Earth tequila, if anything it tasted like a strawberry sundae. It didn’t look like Earth tequila either, it was a sort of misty purpley pink colour that looked much like Jacowitz’s sky at sunset. I immediately held out my glass for another go, and he poured three more glasses. This time we toasted to Antalusians. Then we toasted to being alive, and to spaceships, and to Kit, and to mum, and aspirin, and the TARDIS, and Ariella, and me, and the Doctor and by the time we finished our second bottle of the stuff and had moved on to Maugini liqueur we were, all three of us, well pissed. Superior physiology or not.

I would have thought that the different physiologies of the three of us would give us different the liquor different effects in our systems, but as it was explained to me the next day over a full on fry up (which, I don’t care where or when you’re from, is the only cure for a hangover) the distillation process and added something or other, it was a very long and confusing explanation which I was only half listening to, had properties which would react similarly with physiologies. Still, I maintain that I was much more pissed than either of them. But, that, apparently, was the reason that he’d chosen that particular kind of liquor (which earned a raised eyebrow from me, as I had the distinct impression that he’d wanted to get pissed).

Anyway, Ariella started talking about one of her advisors who she considered to be particularly slimey (her words). We all giggled like school children because it’s a very un-Ari like thing to do, speak poorly of anyone. I teased her for being almost human after all, she scoffed and I pretended to be offended. This advisor apparently thought Ari was too young to rule Jacowitz, which I could understand to be a valid concern seeing as though she’d taken the throne at an extremely young age, but that was ages ago. Now she was well into her thousands, maybe millions, I hadn’t asked it seemed rude.

The Doctor, of course, had no problem. “How old are you now, Ari?” I shoot him a glare and Ariella giggled a bit. He actually did look a bit sheepish, “Right. Women. I’m not meant to ask that, am I?”

We both laughed and then Ari answered him anyway.

Then we started reminiscing about all the adventures we’d been on together when she travelled with us before. The sea of space mines we’d gotten stuck in when we’d popped out of the Vortex to check a bearing. The spice factory on Guarentula, which I remembered smelling exactly like curry, and the star fields in the Lex Sphere. But then the Doctor started in about the aquarium on Bellalux Five and we both stared at him blankly.

(this was when Ari travelled with us the first time, she was apparently the only one aware the TARDIS was taking photos)

He blinked several times. “No really?! I’ve never taken either of you to Bellalux Five?! Oh that’s it, we’re going to Bellalux Five!” he tried to get up then but ended up tripping on his own two feet and falling back into the plush seat he’s been sitting on. Both Ariella and I laughed into hysterics.

“I think I’ve sat on my spectacles,” he said. He hadn’t. It was a shot glass.

The Doctor poured a few more drinks of the Mauguini and then engaged into a conversation with Ariella about something which I could not focus on so I got up, glass in hand, and went to investigate the rest of the bar, especially since I could now hear some sort of… frankly, horrible music coming from the just opposite the bar. I moment later I went running back, “They’ve got karaoke!” I practically yelled.

Ariella looked slightly horrified but the Doctor’s face lit up like a child on Christmas and we both hightailed it towards the little stage. Ariella trailed behind us, Maugini bottle in hand and watched in horror as I did a, probably, very poor rendition of a Spice Girls song (they didn’t have much 21^st century Earth music to choose from), and when the Doctor decided to take the stage she nearly keeled over shouting “Oh don’t!” and “You must be joking!”. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t help and he got a standing ovation from a group of little blue aliens in the corner. He said it didn’t mean much since that race was known for its tone deafness, but I still thought it was hilarious. We went back to the bar and ordered something that I can not pronounce (not even sure my tongue could make those movements), and toasted to embarrassing Ariella. I remember my head going a bit fuzzy then, and then the next thing I remember is waking up in the TARDIS console room.

I was curled up on the jumpseat in a very awkward angle and was, for some reason, wearing the Doctor’s coat. I found him tucked up in the bathtub and Ariella was drinking a very large cup of tea in the galley. Without a word the Doctor set course for a greasy spoon in 1960’s New York City.

We figured we’d nurse our hangovers before Bellalux Five.