Can people change?
Book tries to stop the errant thought from disrupting his meditation, but it's too late. Awareness has crept in, and with it, an end to the attempt to reach a state of calm this evening.
Letting out a heavy sigh, he opens his eyes, and focuses them on the wall. The translucent panels of his dorm are darker than they were before, indicating that some time has passed. Not that there is real night out here, in the black, but Serenity does all she can to give the illusion of change.
Unfolding himself from the floor, he shakes his head bitterly. How much of an illusion is change, anyway? Yet another chapter of his life is passing through his hands, and even though he keeps trying, it's beginning to read like every one of the previous sections. Book sighs again. There's a purpose behind his attempts to metamorphose. One gets tired of the same words over and over again, the foreknowledge of the plot, the inevitability of the outcome.
Damn.
This isn't why he's out here. He wasn't supposed to be dragged into this. The Southdown Abbey promised peace, at least on the surface. But of course, he couldn't live with quiet for long, could he? His mind was always on the move, and where his mind went, his body inevitably followed. So, he left. He carried his new chapter to the docks, booked passage with a bright umbrella and a brighter smile. And now? Here he is. Not where he started from, but near enough as to make no difference.
Book pulls back the covers, sits and kicks off his slippers, and lies back on the bed. He feels like prostrating himself, but is aware of the pretentiousness of that act, even alone as he seems. Of course, his faith says that he is never alone... the omnipotent, the all-seeing, the omnipresent God... the words echo in his disquiet mind. Faith was never a simple thing, a smooth path, for him. He still works at it daily. The concept is elusive, even as he tries to explain to the others the basis of that faith. But it has a tendency to slip from his fingers, the same way his life does.
His center is lost, a swirl of chaos has replaced it. Just like before. It's what drives him to change, to attempt to start a new chapter. The story's the same, just the setting is different. And somehow? That doesn't bother him as much as he thought he would. Or at least as much as it used to. He feels the thrum of engines, the whirr of air recycling, the pulse of life. Book finally feels connected. He has embraced the chaotic center, for now, at least. And it is comforting. It is part of him. These people are part of him, because they are part of this ship.
And it's night out in the black. Just like it always is. There is no change. There is always change. Time to close an old man's tired eyes.