reminisce

There were two things Rose would never understand about the Doctor: his fascination with Earth and humankind, and his love of alien ceremonies. Though, to be fair, humankind was alien to the Doctor, so maybe it was all the same to him.

“What are you thinking about, Rose?” Jack asked, holding two glasses of something green and bubbly.

“I just don’t get it,” she said. “What is the point of spending a whole day cutting the saplings of your tree relatives?”

“I don’t know, Rose, what was the point of the twenty-first century Christmas paper hats?”

“That’s different,” she defended. “They’re tradition.”

“Well, it’s tradition for the people of Cheem.”

“The trees of Cheem, you mean,” Rose emphasized. She still couldn’t wrap her head around talking trees, no matter how much she had seen so far.

“Be more respectful of your relatives,” said the Doctor approaching them. He was wearing a crown on his head, the tiny flowers moving in search of the light coming from above.

“Technically, they should be respectful of me, shouldn’t they? I’m their ancestor after all.” Rose bit back.

“Distant ancestor,” said a tree-person behind the Doctor. Rose felt her cheeks warm with embarrassment. “And yes, it looks strange and silly to outsiders, but this is how the rainforest can take root somewhere else, taken to the next colony by our strongest people to grow and populate the planet.”

Rose wanted to apologize for asking, but Jack was already ahead of her. “We’re sorry, neither of us had ever been at a sapling blessing. We don’t know what we’re supposed to do.”

The tree-person smiled. “Find a tree that calls to you, ask for their permission, then carefully get a sapling. The priest will do the rest.”

The Doctor smiled his brightest smile. “Go on. Find that tree that calls to you.”

He let them go, still talking to the tree-person that followed him. For all the smiles he had, he still looked sad among the trees and Rose wondered if he was thinking of Jabe, the tree of Cheem they met on Platform One on the day of the end of the Earth. Rose herself had thought about her a lot since they first arrived, knowing that without her they probably wouldn’t be here today to experience this.

She was brought back to the forest by Jack’s hand softly touching hers. “Are you okay, love? You looked a bit lost for a second.”

“Yeah, just thinking.”

“Anything you care to share?”

Rose gave it some thought. She wanted Jabe to be remembered, to live on in another part of the forest that would allow her a second chance. She wanted to thank the forest for giving birth to Jabe and honor her sacrifice as well as she could.

“Would you help me find a tree, Jack? It’s a very specific tree.”

After she told him her plan, the man gave her his most beautiful smile. “Let’s find the tree that made today possible.”

They walked around the forest for a long time, whispering Jabe’s name in the hopes that a tree would answer, but it was a futile effort. Minutes turned into hours and the light filtering through the thick canopy was less and less until they had to stop walking when there was barely any light left. 

Jack took a small flashlight out of his pocket, but the light wasn’t enough to help them go back the way they came from and, with a pang of guilt, Rose realized they wasted the entire day on a fruitless mission. “We’re lost, aren’t we?” she asked.

“Slightly,” Jack replied. “See, if the Doctor would stop being so stubborn about my vortex manipulator, I could take us back to where we started.”

“No, no, it’s fine. We’ll get out of here soon enough.” She reasoned. “The clearing was full of tiny lights. We’re bound to see them again soon.”

“Rose, I love you, but we’re on a rainforest planet. There’s no guarantee we’re going to run into them any time soon.”

“Well, if we’re lost, we can keep looking for the bloody tree. I’m not giving up yet.”

“Of course, you’re not,” he said, a smile creeping up his face.

Rose didn’t dignify that with an answer, knowing that he would say she was as stubborn as the Doctor when it came to her decisions.

After a while, Rose was starting to believe they would never find her birth place and the ceremonies would end before she’d had a chance to honor Jabe’s life, when she heard a whisper in the wind. She turned in the direction of the sound and walked weaving a path in between the trees. Distractedly, she heard Jack curse behind her, calling her name, but Rose was entranced by the sound and needed to get to it before it was gone.

She wondered if that was what the Doctor meant: find a tree that calls to you. Rose shouldn’t be surprised it was a literal expression, that something or someone would be calling with a music that kept the same tempo as her heart.

A soft breeze caressed her bare arms, bringing her thoughts back to the mission of finding Jabe’s birth tree, and she realized she didn’t have to keep looking. The massive mahogany tree in front of her was the one. Not only could she hear its song as clear as her thoughts in her head, but the TARDIS parked next to it gave her the final confirmation that she was at the right place.

Sitting next to the tree, caressing some of the exposed roots was the Doctor, still wearing his flower crown, but all the blooms had gone to sleep, resting on his head softly and highlighting his melancholic mood.

“Doctor?” Jack asked. “How did you get here?”

The man didn’t look up when he answered. “I came to pay my respects before we leave.”

Rose frowned. “But the ceremony is supposed to last until sunrise, right? When we plant the new saplings.”

The Doctor sighed, “but you guys never found a tree that called you.”

Rose came closer carefully, not wanting to upset him in case he wasn’t in the mood for comfort. Instead, the Doctor reached a hand towards Rose and she took it, sitting down next to him. Following her steps, Jack sat on the Doctor’s other side.

“I was actually looking for this tree,” Rose said.

“You were?” The Doctor frowned, which made his flower crown tilt on his head. She wanted to reach out to smooth that frown and fix the crown, but she didn’t need to: Jack noticed her looking and took the crown off the Doctor’s head for a second, then rearranged its flowers and put it back on.

Jack cleaned some fallen leaves from the Doctor’s shoulder. “You know, Rose isn’t as forgetful as we’d like to think.”

“I don’t forget things,” she said. “I wouldn’t forget about Jabe anyway.”

The Doctor glanced at her, his sad eyes a reminder that he had seen more death than anyone she’d ever met, that he had suffered loss so great that it seemed endless.

“I think no one could forget her,” Jack added. “You said she was loved by the forest and the forest remembers.”

Rose tried to smile, but she wasn’t sure it came through as a happy smile. “She saved us, Doctor. If it weren’t for her, I would’ve died at Platform One. Maybe you would have too. Jabe knew what she was sacrificing and I think it’s only right to honor her by making sure she lives on.”

A smile finally cracked the Doctor’s nostalgic expression. “I see you found the point of this celebration in the end.”

Rose’s smile grew bigger out of its own volition. “Well, I had the best guides on this trip.”

Comfortable silence fell around them and Rose drank it in with gusto. She saw Jack lean against the Doctor until their bodies were flush together and Rose followed suit, hugging him from the side. 

She was distracted by the music coming from the tree when Jack asked, “how much longer until sunrise.”

“A couple of hours,” said the Doctor.

“Do you think it’ll let us get the sapling? The tree, I mean?” The music Rose heard was anything but a confirmation. No matter how much she tried, she didn’t understand the language of the trees.

“You should ask,” the Doctor encouraged.

Rose, unsure of how to proceed, stood up and looked at the foliage looking for a branch that would give them what they were looking for. She knew it the minute she saw it: the leaves were greener than the one surrounding it, it seemed to shine from within with a halo of light.

“Should I ask Jabe?” Rose asked, still lost.

“If that’s how you want to do it,” the Doctor said.

She closed her eyes, paying attention to the music coming from the forest. Rose thought of Jabe, picturing her in her mind as clearly as she could: her deep brown eyes, her royal stature, her warm voice. It was easy to picture her in this forest, as another part of this huge, live ecosystem whose path diverged from the Earth’s millions of years ago. Rose didn’t know much about biology, but she knew that in a universe so big and so full of life, when two beings shared the same ancestral DNA, they shared more than just the building blocks of life, they shared a piece of their planet’s soul.

“Jabe, may we take part in the sapling ceremony by planting a piece of your home?”

Words weren’t necessary for Rose to understand the answer, as the music inside her head reached a crescendo, the wind blew stronger and the canopy above her head parted enough for the starlight to reach her, illuminating the area surrounding the tree.

She turned to her boys, still sitting on the floor. “Did any of you think to bring scissors or something to actually cut the tree?”

The Doctor gave her his brightest smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”

He pulled out a pair of scissors from the inside of his leather jacket and stood up, passing them to her by the handle.

Then Rose realized a big problem.

“I can’t reach the sapling,” she said.

Jack laughed as he stood up. “Come on. Up my shoulders you go.”

She rolled her eyes, but it wouldn’t be the first time the solution to one of their problems was Rose climbing on her partners’ shoulders. Jack kneeled on the floor and Rose sat on his shoulders, the Doctor helping by keeping Jack balanced as he stood tall.

It didn’t take long for Rose to cut the little sapling and she immediately wished she’d brought a pot to keep it safe during their walk back, feeling very protective of the little branch.

“So, which direction now, Doctor?” she asked once she was back on the floor.

“Oh, we’re not walking back to the festival, we’re taking the TARDIS.”

Jack gave him a playful shove. “So you had us walking the whole afternoon only for you to use your ship?”

“You never said where you were going!” he said, defensively. “I would’ve brought you here at once.”

They continued their playful jabs at each other as they got into the TARDIS when Rose noticed two more flower crowns on the console. “And this?” she asked.

The Doctor looked at the crowns then back at the TARDIS console. “Oh, it’s nothing. Just in case you two wanted to fit in.”

Jack was already putting on his own crown, not missing a second. He turned to Rose with his winning smile, holding the crown in his hands. “Shall I, my dearest?”

Rose couldn’t stop smiling as she nodded. The crown fit her perfectly and she wondered if the Doctor had made them himself. It was likely he had and would never admit to it. The idea of the Doctor weaving branches and flowers together was too good not to smile about.

Later, as the sun came out on this side of the forest of Cheem, birds sang their morning tunes and giant butterflies flew around the clearing, Rose accepted the priest’s blessing on her sapling, trying not to tear up when the tree-person said “Oh, you’ve found Jabe! The forest could use more of her.”

She chose a black pot that was lined with an intricate design of flowers and birds that reminded her of Earth. Rose hoped it would make the tree grow as tall and strong as it was possible and that when the tree eventually sang, it would sing Jabe’s song, sweet and hopeful all across the stars.

As the ceremony came to an end, Rose reached her limit for adventure in a day and started to feel sleepy. They went back into the TARDIS and crashed in a pile on Rose’s bed. She dreamt of a tree taking root in the giant forest she’d just visited, growing tall enough that its branches got lost in the sky, Jabe’s warm voice singing the same lullaby Rose’s mother used to sing her to sleep. 

It was the best sleep she had in a long time.