Donna never remembered, but sometimes she dreamed about it. The dreams were not coherent. On the contrary, they were flashes, moments in dream-time. She saw a hand glowing like a star, a handsome man in a uniform, a blonde running across a snow-white beach... sometimes these flashes would overtake her mind even in waking, triggered by something or some person that looked vaguely familiar but Donna couldn't quite place.

Once she saw a pretty, middle-aged woman walking through a park with a young boy. Donna's hand was halfway in the air to wave before she realized that she did not know the woman. Another time, late at night, she was coming home after working overtime at her secretary's job when a young man hurried past her. She wanted to call out to him, but she didn't know his name. Ricky? Nicky? No, those weren't right.

However Donna, being that she never remembered the cause of these flashes, quickly forgot the strange incidents as well. Her family was glad to see that her vivacious and humorous personality had not faded with her memory. But, watching her sometimes, tossing and turning in the middle of the night, they worried for her more because of her happiness than despite it.

Then the noise came. It was hard to describe, but those who hear it never forget the sound or fail to recognize it should they ever hear the noise again. Donna was no exception. She rushed outside, not knowing why, but knowing that she was looking for something, something that was just beyond her grasp.

The street was empty and the sky was dark. The wind whipped around Donna as she walked down the lane slowly, glancing around as if the creator of the noise would appear suddenly besides her.

A man stepped into the lane from a side street. Donna didn't recognize him, but she wasn't surprised; it was generally a crowded area, despite the stillness of this particular morning.

"Oi," Donna called. "Did you hear that noise? Do you know what it was?"

"TARDIS," the man called back, but at that moment the wind picked up and carried his words far from Donna's ears.

"I didn't quite catch that," Donna yelled, but the wind took her words as well, sweeping them away into the distance. She examined the stranger. Although certain she had never seen them before (she was sure she would remember those ears, at least), he had a hint of familiarity about him, not like the woman and child she had seen in the park, or the young man on the street, but in some different sense that Donna found impossible to describe.

The man yelled again, and this time the wind had let up enough for Donna to hear "I'd go back inside if I were you."

"Who are you to tell me what to do?" Donna retorted.

"I'm the Doctor," the man replied calmly. And then, for just a moment, everything made sense. The dreams, the woman, the child, the man, the noise, the... Donna clapped her hands to her head, trying to block out the surge of thoughts and memories flooding her mind, but even as she touched her forehead, everything stopped. She looked around, glancing past a stranger standing in the street. She couldn't quite remember why she had stepped outside to begin with, so she turned and walked slowly back towards her home.

Somewhere behind her, the man headed back to a blue police box that had appeared in a side alley, ready to travel a thousand years into the future, or perhaps a few years into the past. He had a feeling.