Marie had left the Doctor, with his promise that he’d come to see her again, if he could. The Doctor watched her walk off, nearly soundlessly, into the woods. He was left with an oddly discomforting feeling of having lost something close to him…something that was a part of him somehow. He stood with his head tilted, looking wistfully in Marie’s direction. A quiet unease filled him, a distant sorrow, like a small empty void inside his soul that needed filling. Shuddering for no apparent reason, he forced himself to shake it off. Taking up his makeshift staff again, he walked in the direction of the distant highway. Twenty minutes later, he was walking along the edge of the stony riverbank when he decided to take a brief rest on a fallen tree trunk. He was gazing into the swirling dark waters of the river when he saw something on the steep bank below him. Something was there that was out of place. Something that was not natural in color. Amid the browns and gold’s and grays, it was pale and white and…fleshy. Disregarding the mud and stones, he kneeled down and prodded the object with his staff. It was a hand. Carefully, the Doctor uncovered the rest of the body. It was a man. In a detached fashion, he cataloged the grisly sight. A man of later years, thin build, narrow hard looking face, gray hair, possibly arthritic by the gnarled appearance of the hands, probably about sixty years of age. What was disturbing was the way the body was–dried out like an Egyptian mummy. Which might not have been unusual in the desert, but in this damp climate…not possible. The Doctor cautiously leaped down the bank and crouched near the body. No telling how long the body had been there, except by observing the ground beneath him. Calmly, the Doctor turned the body over, only to have it disintegrate into dust at his touch. He frowned in concern. Something was definitely not quite right here.

The Doctor looked around him. All he saw was the melancholy river, the sad gray-green hills, the forlorn brown weeds and little else. There was the murmuring of the river, the wind humming in the pines and whispering through the scarecrow branches of maple and birch. There seemingly was nothing to indicate how this man may have died. The Doctor bit his lip and dug his hands into his pockets, uncertain of what to do. That didn’t seem right, somehow. He nearly always knew what to do—pausing, his asked himself aloud, “How do I know that? Just who am I, anyway?” He sat on the log again and pondered the situation. Picking up a stick, he idly scratched patterns in the dirt while he drifted into deep reflection. He must look for clues. They must be there, he just wasn’t looking hard enough…or, perhaps, maybe he just wasn’t looking for the right things. “Think, man, think!” He muttered to himself, pounding his fist against his jeans. He looked down at the dirt near his feet and gave a start. Unknowingly, he’d written words in the dirt–three of them. He bent over to examine what he’d written. “BAD WOLF” and “ROSE”