Day of the Dead (open)

[The 4th Doctor]

((Continued from Davros's revenge

"Día de los Muertos, Cuanajo Mexico." Sarah Jane replied with a smile.

The Doctor grinned as he got up, offering his hand to help her up. Then practically jumpping over to the console room, excited about going to Mexico. He started rambling in his excitement. "Wonderful choice my dear Sarah Jane. Excellent choise in fact. The Day of the Dead, November 2, Oh let's try the year 1999. Did you know, that the Day of the Dead, also know as the Festival of the Dead originated from an Aztec festival?"

"Interesting people the Aztecs, met them once... but that's in the past... Where was I? ... Oh right!" The Doctor began to send the Tardis into the Time Vortex as he went on. "That the festival is technically two days long, started on November 1st for the children and infants that past away, and then continueing onto November 2nd, which is for the adults who died. Quite fasinating if you ask me."

"The humans that celebrate this event, plan and prepare for it throughout the whole year. 365 days of deciding what kind of sculpures, alters, food, shrines, and other ways to help guide the lost souls home." He carefully landed the Tardis with little turbulance. "You know they make sugar skulls for both to give to those living and to those who have left this life. I've always wanted to try one of those. Oh you should see the wooden horses! They decorate carefully carved wooden horses with candles and flowers."

Looking at the door, his excitement was obviously bubbling over through out his body. "Ladies first." The Doctor help open the door for Sarah Jane, smiling at her.

[Sarah Jane]

Up and off they went to the usual control room, all but racing each other down the hall.

The Doctor was like a Jukebox Library. It was one of the things she loved about him. As a child she'd spent many hours at the library turning curiosity into a course of study into a day of Dewy Decimal cards and books about distant lands or long lost days.

The Doctor could fall into a subject, sparing her all the work and handing her the stories like fresh Jelly Babies.

She listened with the sweet tooth of her mind as she hurried about in the next room getting ready for the day. Ripping through the Wardrobe was one of her favorite parts. Hair tamed, wearing a simple peasants dress of wine and brown with and sandals, she came out in time to spin once for the Doctor happily before he let them out the door.

They poured out of the TARDIS from a little niche in a back ally on an adobe street.

"This way!" she said excitedly, seeing what must be a hub of the celebrations by the amount of festive flags and banners that were tied in desert rainbows of color from rooftop to rooftop. She burst into the open area first, having nearly run there, but she slowed by the step.

It was still. Too still. Surely, there were the decorations and the tables, humble buildings in their Sunday best. Then she saw someone and gasped. A man laid out under a tree strewn seemingly boneless with his face obscured by his hat. There! Two little children on a wooden porch, limp as well with a flat out pup beside them. A woman laying in a wheelbarrow behind her tortilla stand.

"Doctor!" She said in horrified whisper, "Look at them!" She pointed, mouth growing slowly wider with terrible trepidation. A bell began to toll that moment like a hard heartbeat through the square startling her quite a bit. Then, the people of Cuanajo began to yawn, stretch and sit up in perfectly normal fashion.

"Oh! I - it was Siesta!"She looked to the Doctor and laughed at her paranoid mistake. She very much needed this day off. She would take the beauty of this day.

[The 4th Doctor]

The Doctor laughed with her, before pratically dragging her around and showing her everything he could. Trying the sugar skulls and Tamales with her, along with Pan De Muerto. Walking and explaining some of the facts of the Festival, at a mile-per-second speed.

The whole town seemed to be filled with wonderful life, as the celebration went on. That is except for one place, and that was by the mining area. It seemed that everyone there avoided it, and that observation in itself, made the Doctor curious as to why.

The Doctor walked up to one of the townsfolk and asked. "Why is everyone avoiding the mine?"

[Sarah Jane]

Pictures in the book she'd found could not do justice to the joy in the art around her. Never had she seen such welcoming skeletons. In her culture, they were always portrayed as something horrible to be avoided. Here they were old friends just waiting for you to come up and say hello. She did introduce herself to a couple of them, shaking hands and introducing her friend as well. Sarah Jane thought for certain that the skull candy would have been made sour, but it was sweet melting in her mouth, after she apologized to the poor grinning little fellow.

She'd traded her bone bracelet for a bundle of flowers and placed them on an alter for her parents. It was the first time she'd thought of their deaths without feeling like crying. This felt lovely, like dropping in on them for tea, however brief and silent. However insubstantial her memories were of them.

Certainly, people grieved, but they grieved together, laughing and crying, sharing tears and stories. No mournful black, no sad little buffet. The food was everywhere, hot and fresh, folks feasting with gusto. The road was dusty, the surroundings were near jungle into sand. She even took time to dance in the square when the band got going.

It was as they drifted away from there, and the beginnings of Sunset were painting the world with long shadows and thick orange light, that the Doctor suddenly questioned someone about the mine. She had noticed it looked abandoned, but she never had seen a mine that wasn't abandoned and hadn't thought about it much. The Doctor's question provoked an unexpected look of fear on the old man's face. He shirked and turned away, Sarah Jane was already on the other side of him ready with a smile.

"Hello, my name is Sarah Jane. We had your peanut Mazapan candy. It was the best Mazapan I've ever had. Does your wife make it? I think you should charge more for it."

He laughed a little then and smiled at her, shaking her had. "We do charge more! Just not on the holy days. Everyone should have treats."

It was from there in slow stages that she eased his nerves, introduced him to her friend the Doctor, and got the man talking about his family. Eventually, she got the conversation back around to the Mines. She asked the Doctor's question again, but more gently. Now the man only looked reluctant, but not suspicious.

"We stay away. We don't want to . . .disturb them. We don't know if they are a thing of good or of the Devil, so we just stay away now. They are. . . ." He makes a confounded face. "Haunted by the spirits of dead children by night, some say, but no children of ours." He gave a little shudder and she looked to the Doctor.

[The 4th Doctor]

When the man started to shrink away from his question, the Doctor knew instantly that something was going on. Just as the Doctor was about to persue and ask again, Sarah Jane stepped in and started conversing with the old man.

"Hello, my name is Sarah Jane. We had your peanut Mazapan candy. It was the best Mazapan I've ever had. Does your wife make it? I think you should charge more for it."

"We do charge more! Just on the holy days. Everyone should have treats." The man was calming down as he talked to Sarah Jane. The two conversed with several things, the Doctor was even introduced to the man.

It didn't take long for the Doctor to pull out his yo-yo and start to play with it, while he waited for his question to be answered.

Finally, after a couple minutes (though to the Doctor, it was more like an hour,) Sarah Jane asked him the question that the Doctor asked ealier. To which, the man answered with some relunctantcy. "We stay away. We don't want to . . .disturb them. We don't know if they are a thing of good or of the Devil, so we just stay away now. They are. . . ."

The man paused, a confounded look appeared on his face. "Haunted by the spirits of dead children by night, some say, but no children of ours."

The man shuddered from thinking about it.

The Doctor met Sarah Jane's eyes, his eyes sparkling with the thoughts of this mystery. "When did the spirits first begin to haunt the mines?"

Even though the Doctor was skeptical about these 'spirits' haunting the mines, he still wanted to know why.

[Sarah Jane]

Jesus hesitated a moment when the Doctor slipped in another question. It had been this young Sarah Jane Smith who had captured him so, but there was something so fathomless in the man's bright blue eyes that Jesus decided to answer him anyway. He shot one nervous look over at the girl for reassurance, and she nodded and smiled at him. Tell him, she was saying with her eyes.

"Solstice it started. On the night of the New Moon when the world is dark. Then a few months ago, it was the Full Moon and the New Moon. This month, this month of our Celebration of the Dead, the little horses come almost every night. That is what I hear. I do not go. My nephew died this year, and I am afraid to see him there."

Sarah, for her part, listened raptly, put at ease by the Doctor's yo-yo. When talk turned to little horses and dead children, she watched the Doctor's face closely to see what he thought of this. The only part she understood was about the little horses.

Last night, the families who had lost a child to death this year would make a little wooden horse, weighing it heavily with fruit, gifts, and flowers. They would do it in the night to keep the flowers fresh for the next day's tragic, beautiful little parade of these gift horses. They had missed the day procession this morning, but Sarah Jane suspected she hadn't missed the show yet. She can't help but flash a half contained smile at the Doctor. Inappropriate as it might be sometimes, she loved a mystery.

[The 4th Doctor]

Jesus was hesitant with his answer, looking towards Sarah Jane as if for encouragement. Replying after she nodded him into the answer.

"Solstice it started. On the night of the New Moon when the world is dark. Then a few months ago, it was the Full Moon and the New Moon. This month, this month of our Celebration of the Dead, the little horses come almost every night. That is what I hear. I do not go. My nephew died this year, and I am afraid to see him there."

"The little horses?" The Doctor repeated quietly before asking Jesus. "Are you talking about the horses that are meant for the children who've passed away? Also what do these horses do?"

He was intrigued by the way the subject was turning out to be. Trying unsuccessfully to hide his eagerness about solving this mystery, barely managing it as the conversation went on.

[Sarah Jane]

"Si, Señor. La horses por los Angelitos."

She could tell just by looking at the man that he was afraid. The Doctor had won him over though, she noted with a great wave of affection for her tall friend. The Doctor poured charm when he was engaged, the impossible blue of his eyes as eager as a spring sky and just as compelling. She flashed him an excited smile. They had spoken of these horses together today. Even now, she knew, those of Cuanajo that grieved their children this year would be returning to their homes to decorate little wooden horses with orange marigolds and toys for the Día de los Inocentes parade in the morning.

But what dark parade would Jesus tell of now? She wondered, listening raptly, quite taken with the beauty of the man's smooth copper skin and the jet black of his hair. His Festival clothes were beautiful as well, his shirt the cleanest white.

"Giant marigolds and toys just as alto. But when the horses come back out of the mines, the Inocentes must not want them, for they go back from where they come still burdened." Now his voice drops to a whisper. "They horses make no sounds but moaning, and they leave no tracks." His jet black eyes look with some hardness at the sun that is beginning to dip toward the hills.

"It won't be long before they come."

Sarah Jane looked over at the Doctor, her jaw an angle of contemplation, the spark in her eyes saying 'wanna?'.

[The 4th Doctor]

The Doctor flashed a quick grin to Sarah Jane before turning back to Jesus. "Thank you for telling us what's been going on."

"So shall we go investigate Sarah Jane?" The Doctor's eyes seemed to sparkle with the excitement of this mystery. "I know this was suppose to be a vacation.. so it's up to you."

((Ooc: sorry it's short. I just need to get back into posting regular with 4th.))

[Sarah Jane]

They said good night to Jesus, who turned a wary eye on the sunset, as if wanting to be sure to be well home before any of the Horses could make an appearance. He was not the only one, the square was nearly empty but for an old woman collecting bowls who didn't look like she was afraid of anything.

"Doctor." She says with an earnestness. "I think there is something going on up at the mines, don't you think we better go find out what it is?" This delivered as if it never occurred to her not to. Whether they were strolling or running, she was on vacation as long as she was with the Doctor. Well, not always, but mostly.

She started walking toward the mine, a spring in her step.

[The 4th Doctor]

"Doctor." She began.

"Yes Sarah?" He asked curiously.

"I think there is something going on up at the mines, don't you think we better go find out what it is?" Sarah Jane finished with earnestness.

"I think your right Sarah, and I believe we should." The Doctor agreed following her quickly to the direction of the mine, with his wide grin plastered on his face. "Don't you just love the sound of a mystery, Sarah Jane?"

[Sarah Jane]

She was striding, wanting to find a place to watch while there was still light in the sky. Twilight was coming on fast. That, and she was simply eager for answers.

"I love the answers. It's like scratching an itch. These gift horses, Doctor." She grinned impishly at him. "Dare we look them in the mouth?" She challenged.

They hiked up the foothill that lead to the entrance of the mine. the way was rocky with both the natural jaggedness of stone, and the smooth slabs of forgotten, fallen ruins. She could see the hard faces of a few older men standing back a ways behind something that might have once been a stone wall and was now less than half it's original height. As the sun slipped away, clinging by a list hint purple of into night, the men's faces were most beautifully etched with the slim light of the sliver moon.

"What do you say, Doctor? Behind the wall with the others? Maybe up above there? Or down the gullet of the mystery itself?" She said, her voice soft only because she knows he is listening. He always listened.

Well, almost always.

[The 4th Doctor]

The Doctor soon got lost in his thoughts, only to be brought out of them a second later.

"I love the answers. It's like scratching an itch. These gift horses, Doctor." She grinned impishly at him. "Dare we look them in the mouth?" She challenged.

"Of course I dare to. Do you?" He answered accepted the challenge she gave him, and in turn challenging her.

"What do you say, Doctor? Behind the wall with the others? Maybe up above there? Or down the gullet of the mystery itself?" She said, her voice soft only because she knows he is listening. He always listened.

"Surely we go down the gullet. After all we can't figure this out by simple observing from above, or hiding behind a wall." The Doctor stated simply as he tried to look down into the depths of the mine shaft.

[Sarah Jane]

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly through pursed lips from puffed cheeks to brace herself it was mighty dark down there. She flashed him a swashbuckling bright smile that turned wry with her words.

"Past the teeth, over the tongue, look out belly, here we come." And she was off, picking her way down the rocks with quite a bit of grace. As she went through the cave opening, hearing soft sounds of alarm from the men hidden in the scrubby trees, she looked back at the Doctor to be certain all was well.

[The 4th Doctor]

He couldn't help but roll his eyes at the sounds some of the humans made from their shock. But none the less, he ignored them and followed after Sarah Jane, who was already making her way down the rocky path.

"Into the depths unknown. Down, down, down we go." The Doctor grinned at his companion, enjoying the thrill of the mystery that was set out in front of them. "Not nervous are we, Sarah Jane?"