//------------------------------//
// Chapter Three: The Right Place at the Right Time 
// Story: Dr. Hooves and the Broken Box 
// by Lyichir 
//------------------------------//


The Doctor knew he had died. But he wasn’t quite confident he knew for sure anything that had happened before or after that. What had he been doing beforehand? He didn’t remember. Whatever it was, it certainly hadn’t seemed important at the time; he hadn’t been saving the Earth or facing down hostile aliens or anything like that, not this time. But the next thing he remembered was waking up in a dead TARDIS, in a body completely alien to him—to him, someone who had probably encountered more alien species in his lifetime than others had in all of their lives combined.
He was some sort of pony now, and he had gone looking for shelter from the night only to find it in the house of yet another pony who called herself “Derpy Hooves”. He had fashioned a pseudonym to go by in this world—the somewhat uncreative “Dr. Hooves”—and in doing so had earned Derpy’s trust. And he had just been going to get something to eat when he had tripped and fallen down the stairs.

In any case, he had finally come to his senses and was hungrier than ever. The clock on the wall said it was one o’clock in the morning. He hadn’t bothered to check it before he went upstairs, but he was confident that at least an hour had passed. He needed food.
He struggled to get to his feet (hooves, now) and stumbled toward the fridge. He opened it, and it was ice cold. Yet it definitely was a refrigerator. The inside was lit with an electric bulb, like the room he was in. But he couldn’t remember seeing any power lines outside, where he had left the TARDIS. Before he had seen the electric light coming from this house, he would have sworn he had landed in a pre-industrial society. He knelt down and looked at the base of the fridge, yet there were no cords leading from it to the wall or floor. Somehow, this fridge was running off its own power.
But what was he doing investigating the technological progress of ponies? What mattered was that it was a working fridge, and he was famished. He moved back to the open door of the fridge.
The fridge was far from fully stocked. It seemed like the gray mare had done a number on it already. Still, what was left was varied: milk, eggs, fruits, vegetables, cheese. The only thing absent was meat, but then again, this was the house of a pony.

The Doctor proceeded to try almost every item in the fridge. Most went down the drain in the nearby sink, half-chewed. Some were devoured heartily, but weren’t nearly enough to fill him. By the time he was full, the only items remaining in the fridge were those he found it impossible to open with only teeth and hooves: a bunch of bananas, a tube of tomato paste, and a jar of jam.
“I’m afraid I may have overdone it,” mumbled the Doctor as he observed the state of the fridge. He briefly considered leaving a note apologizing for the state of the fridge, but then realized that even if he did have a pencil and paper, he wouldn’t have much luck writing if he couldn’t even open a jar of jam. He glanced at the clock. It read three o'clock now. He wanted sleep, real sleep this time, not another bump on the head. He crept upstairs, this time paying close attention to the position of each stair.

In the hallway at the top of the stairs he went into the second door on the left, as Derpy had instructed, and was greeted by a well-made bed. A bed! He had almost expected a stall. How long had it been since he had slept in a bed? As a time traveller, he took advantage of his ability to skip straight to morning more than was probably healthy for him. Not that he necessarily needed sleep most of the time (and he had gotten plenty of rest out cold in the TARDIS after his surprise regeneration), but without it, one adventure after another caused him to get easily agitated. Tense. Amy would have convinced him to call it a night after an Earth day’s worth of adventures. Donna too. But they were gone, now. He had gone so long without friends…
He couldn’t sleep yet. He was restless. He left his room and stood outside the adjacent one, the one Derpy had entered. But that wasn’t enough. He pushed the door open an inch and peered in.

Derpy lay in her bed, sound asleep. Outside her window the sky was clear, with distant stars twinkling in the horizon. The only sounds to be heard were the sounds of nature: chirping crickets, the occasional hoot of an owl, and above it all, the quiet, rhythmic breathing of a pony who had invited a complete stranger into her home.
The Doctor knew that this was what he had wanted to see. Somewhere, maybe a universe away, was something dangerous. Something that had killed him. Something he still couldn’t even remember or identify. But in this place, in this time, a world was at peace.
He closed the door and returned to his own room. That night he slept more comfortably than he had in many, many years.