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Part 1: Behind the Big Ben

London: June 1876

"Chapter 1: I am born," scrawled a small nine-year-old girl in a brown, leather bound notebook given to her by her uncle William not so long ago. The sun had started to set outside, filling the little old house where young Clara Oswin Oswald lived with a golden light that temporarily replaced that darkness which was commonplace within it, even during the daytime. Because Uncle William was always telling her that the best time to start a story was when you saw brightness starting to settle, Clara decided that she would always begin writing new stories when the sun was either rising or setting, even if it meant keeping a candle on once the darkness returned again.

So far, she had begun with the first sentence from David Copperfield, a book which Uncle William had read to her for the first time when she was only three years old, and which she'd proudly read on her own shortly after her ninth birthday last November. This had impressed strict old Miss Adams, her teacher, who was more likely to whip her students' desks with a ruler for misspelling "obedience" or for hiding Punch magazine around their readers than she was to give them treats for a job well done. However, upon hearing the girl her pupils liked calling "raggedy Clara" due to the often dirty brown dress she had to wear every other day reading two full pages of David Copperfield, she'd not only given Clara a juicy red apple for her dinner, but also told her, "If you worked as much on your penmanship as you did on your reading, Miss Oswald, perhaps you could become like Charles Dickens yourself someday, giving powerful readings of vivid tales which will shock the people of England into change once again."

And that had become the young girl's greatest ambition: to become England's most famous storyteller. The way she saw it, her life was already worthy of a story. According to her Uncle William, who always told her things as they were no matter how improper they seemed to other adults, she'd been born as her mother was on a promenade across London with her father, and because she decided to come "burst into the world" two weeks before Mary Oswald was told she'd possibly give birth, Clara had actually been born around the Big Ben, with about two strangers, and one of them a doctor, helping her give birth as many visitors coming to see the famous landmark froze in astonishment upon noticing what was going on. This all happened in the twenty-third of November, 1866.

A year after Clara was born, her father had made the fatal mistake of drinking too much whiskey before climbing up a ladder to repair the roof of a neighbor. As soon as he'd made it to the last step, one of his legs started dangling over, and then, "looking like a ballerina in a circus" as Uncle William candidly recalled, Fredrick Oswald leaped to his death, breaking his neck as soon as he landed on the floor. Despite the somewhat comic manner in which he died, it was heartbreaking for Mary Oswald, who apparently did nothing but weep for four days straight, remaining in her bed like a maiden in distress except when she left to attend her husband's funeral at St. John's Church. Five months later, she caught a cold after going out in the rain, leaving her so gravely ill with fever that she was dead within a week. However, according to Uncle William, "It wasn't the fever that killed her, Clara. Most people recover from a small illness like that in just a few days. It was the damned grief and her vulnerable temperament that did all the work."

Because of this, Clara now lived with William Oswald, who was six years older than her father had been and worked nearly all night in a tavern, serving beer, wine, whiskey, and all other forms of liquor to both local drunkards who came in on a daily basis and wealthy men looking for entertainment in the worst of places just for a change in their routines. Clara was looked after by Mrs. Hawkins, a middle-aged widow who was one of the few people in their neighborhood who showed any tolerance towards William, believing that he was just a misunderstood soul who'd become bitter due to a life full of tragedy and disappointment. However, Clara never saw him as a bitter man, but rather a funny person whom other people couldn't tolerate because he refused to fulfill their expectations of a gentleman. "Here in England, there's always contempt towards the vulgar," he liked telling Clara. "And if the vulgar are willing to stand up for themselves, they're despised even more." However, he did like Mrs. Hawkins, believing her to be one of those people who could never be corrupted by the system, and always trusted her to look after Clara while he was gone in the evenings.

On that night, Mrs. Hawkins had decided to take an early slumber, and had fallen asleep in William's old rocking chair, with her feet bare and giving off a series of unladylike snores. All around Clara, there were several empty liquor bottles along with piles of old newspapers and issues of Punch (which William loved reading due to the crude cartoons and parodies of nearly everyone in British society whom he disliked), since cleaning had never been something which Mrs. Hawkins was good at. Inspired by the uncleanliness, Clara added the next sentences to her story: "All around my mother's chamber, everything looked really dirty. The colour of gold which came from the sun only seemed to make the liquor bottles and newspapers more visible than they already were. Knowing that I was soon to be born, my mother started to go into a fit, because she did not want the doctor to think that she was like all the other vulgar people in the neighbourhood."

Clara knew that her uncle would find her story to be funny, while Mrs. Hawkins would make a fuss over how such subject matter was unsuitable for a nice little girl like herself to be writing about. Yet, for some reason, such stories like these were often the only ones that could come to mind, just as other girls in her class liked coming up with their own versions of fairy stories. It didn't just seem to be a matter of what kind of stories you liked reading about that seemed to inspire the stories people told, but also the kind of life you had and what you knew. Uncle William had told her that Charles Dickens had spent several years working in a factory instead of going to school (something which Miss Adams had failed to bring up even despite her apparent admiration of the change his stories had brought about), and that Louisa May Alcott, who'd written Little Women, another one of Clara's favorites,had to take on many different jobs, including as a nurse in the American Civil War, before she became successful as a writer. Therefore, it seemed to both William and Clara that it was those who went through hard times were the best storytellers.

But before Clara could go on, she thought she could hear the wind blowing much louder than before. Then, she heard something going whoosh, followed by a thump to the ground and some yelling. Afterwards, there came the sound of what must have been the strangest music she'd ever heard in her life. The instruments were mostly unidentifiable except for what sounded like a violin, and the lyrics seemed to pop out of nowhere during the middle of the song, going, "That's right! Get up and boogie!" Whatever that music was supposed to be, and whatever the word "boogie" meant, Clara thought that it certainly didn't sound like the lovely hymns she heard during church on Sundays.

"Turn that racket off, Jack! We're in 1876, not 1976," came the sound of a feisty woman as they started hearing some angry shouts from people who were out on an evening stroll. Apparently, they weren't very fond of the music either, because one woman called it a "senseless abomination," and someone else was demanding where it came from.

"Looks like you're right about that, River," the man, whom Clara could now see from the window, responded. He had on brown trousers held up by suspenders, giving him the look of a working man, but his shirt appeared to have all the colors of a rainbow, making him look very unusual. Taking in the crowds of people, who seemed to be getting even more confused and angry by the second, he then said, "Apparently, no one here looks as if they're ready for disco music." He then grabbed a small brown box that had been on the ground for a while, and pressed a small circle on the top of it that finally made the lively music come to a stop.

The woman named River, who seemed to be dressed more appropriately in what looked like a white summer dress with stuffed sleeves, then got a hold of Jack's hand as the two made started running away together, heading to none other than Clara's small house on Willow Street.

At first, Clara thought they were there to pay a visit to a neighbor, but when she noticed River walking up to the door of her house, followed by a soft knocking, she thought that perhaps these were visitors from Uncle William's tavern (Jack in particular looked as if he were a little tipsy), perhaps coming to pay off something they didn't have money for the night before. It had happened before, and both Mrs. Hawkins and Clara always knew how to act appropriately towards these people. As a result, she walked up to the door and then gave off a small curtsy, followed by saying, "How do you do, Miss? My name is Clara Oswald…"

Before she could finish though, River took a gentle hold of her hand and started shaking it, saying, "Hello, sweetie. We weren't expecting to find you here of all places."

So, that's the start of this story. I'm still trying to decide whether to have it be a novella (that is, a short novel) which leads up to a longer story, or have it be a story as long as some of my other completed works (usually around twenty chapters or more). Which would you like to see? Let me know so I can make a finally decision on the length. This story is also set within the same universe as my other Doctor Who story "Gifted", so if you've read it already, be on the lookout for more supernatural phenomena mentioned at different points in the story, and if you haven't, try to check it out sometime. You might enjoy that story as much as this one.

Also, just so you all know, the word "vulgar" once meant "a typical person", usually referring to someone who wasn't wealthy. Although throughout this story (and perhaps within past society as well, whether intentional or not), this word sometimes refers to someone who's viewed as "classless" or as foul and without manners. In addition, Punch was a popular humor magazine in nineteenth century Britain, not that different from the American Mad magazine in the twentieth century.

Next, Clara will be in for a big surprise when she discovers who Jack and River are and what they do. Also, we'll learn a little as to why they're on the lookout for her, but the full story is yet to be revealed.