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Never knowing's like knowing too much Tap the table, oh here's more bad luck. --Dig Ophelia, Rasputina * ”River, what are you doing?” “Counting.” “Counting what?” “Locusts and honey.” “Why?” “All the doves are dead.” She shivers violently, and burrows a little closer to Simon. Sleep was a bit further than close by. But there was counting to be done. * Inara doesn’t remember the precise day or hour. It was raining some. She did it herself. Bundled into some cotton blanket was her stillborn baby, nine Ceres moons old, just like a perfect child from Earth That Was. She walked out of Ceres’ palatial estate. She walked until the sand turned into wet mud. Out way past the gates near an outcropping of rocks, she used her hands to move some rocks out of the way, then began to dig. It must have been a couple miles away. She relished the quiet in her slow return. She’d worn a dress of white and it had gotten soaked, as sodden as bread broken and dipped in tea. When she returned to her quarters, she built a fire and threw her wet clothes away. The following morning she left, and began to look for a ship to call her own. * Kaylee Frye was happy. No doubt about it. Her parents were dead, and her six brothers also, ‘cause when they planned together to see a supernova somewhere in the Rim and ended up with their ship being helter skelter blown away, by an Alliance authority no less, which started Kaylee’s trends for witnessing to unhappy accidents. She’d been seventeen and eager to do her job at a space mechanic’s garage and she just couldn’t leave her job and head with the rest of her family on vacation. She cried harder than ever seen come hearing the news, and she always knew she’d do right by their memories. There was nothing else to be said for it: Kaylee was a happy person. As the rest of her family had been. She would be happy all the days of her life, even if her life conspired against it, which, random, bizarre, heart-wrenching so-called accident aside, it was not wont to do. * “Blessed are the undefiled in the way, Who walk in the way of the Lord!” Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth… Book counts through the psalm, and tries to clear his head. He needs to buy a new bible. River’s editing amounted to about forty or fifty missing pages, seemingly torn at random, and he did not want to even try and find a method to her madness. At least the Psalms were okay, the Proverbs were almost red-inked into oblivion. Both were his favorite parts of the bible. After fifteen minutes or so, he admitted to himself that he was not finding a prayerful space of mind any time soon. Maybe it had something to do with what he’d overheard Jayne telling the captain earlier, about River and her mind powers. If he believed in what Jayne had said, then maybe yes, there was much to fear. Jayne had been a heartless mercenary once; the topic had come up one night while every body else on board was away, except for Jayne and Book. Book thinks that if Jayne, or anyone on board, ever finds out about him being some kind of mercenary himself (oh, Lord. The Killing Fields, and not just Juno..) ((It was the longest never-ending day of his young life)) it’s probable the captain might blow his brains out himself. Right between the eyes, where Book now knows River knows, far too much and for a second it makes him so itchy he bangs his hands upon the table. Surreptitiously, he continues to find himself alone. He, Waw, Zayin, Heth. Teth, Yod. Kaph, Lamed.. * Jayne is a man who lives for his gun. Vera’s the only woman in his life and he loves it that way. Vera owns Jayne’s heart. The last woman Jayne tried that mushy business with just about stomped on his bleeding heart and threw it away. O’course Jayne could say right away that he was only sixteen. A good defense. First time on a mercenary ship, and quick as a whistle, except to women, and her name was Evalene. Sweet Evalene! Sweet as a viper, more like it, and likely as poisonous a man-eater that ever met anyone. Now Jayne was in his early thirties. Now he was up to snuff, ‘cause ever since Evalene he ne’er gave his heart to no one and no woman, ‘cept for Vera, which he “found” off the carcass of a man who would have killed him quick, if given have a chance (which Jayne did give him) and may an undeserving man and his gun be never parted. To the day, Vera and Jayne have been happy together for ten years. Amen, and allelujah! * Wash has never been a jealous man. When he and Zoe married, he thought to himself: I am the luckiest guy in the universe. When he’d learnt what loyalty meant to the woman, he’d thought “By the gods! I love this woman!” and he knew that if he had to pilot Capt’n Reynolds to his death with Zoe by his side, by the gods, he would do it. That is why he always remembers the first day he saw Malcolm Reynolds. * He’d left the brawl with relatively few bruises. As Captain, perhaps he ought not have gotten so hot headed. Let the dogs have their mongrel joy. For really, what does it matter, having their lost and their suffering and their dreams put down in the dust, and celebrated by a bunch of ga nin niangs? Those zhu tous can gi wo de pi gu. Alone, he sleeps. He dreams of Inara and wakes himself up, hard as stone. His hand is steady, and works fast. He tries to sleep again, but he cannot. He will be cranky when he leaves his room come the next morning. * Zoe rattles off at least a hundred names in her head. She can’t sleep, and the earlier bar fight makes sure she remembers today, how important it was, how tragic the blow to end all their dreams on Hera. Counting the dead makes her heart just that bit heavier tonight, but Wash is already asleep and she doesn’t know what else to do. * Simon has no idea what River means. All the time, he has no idea. He doesn’t have a plan in sight. He knows she thinks he can make it all better. But he can’t. All he had to go on was her letters, with a hope and a prayer. And now he knows he can’t trust their father, and where Father goes, Mother goes as well. And also now they are both lost to acceptable society, and he was to be a famous surgeon, and she was to have a coming-out ball and River was supposed to be pretty, *and* pretty together and now, *now* his sister’s in tatters and they are both exiled and nobody will ever hear from them, ever, and he has *got* to get it together, because something was coming, he could *feel* it, and he better snatch it, yes, he did. ‘Cause he did do what he did done and now there was no more backing out allowed, not that there ever was, because these people had *hurt* River but now he was here. Now she was free. Walking early on the next morning, foraging for future food or what have you, he was in need, dammit, and that was what counted, and then—he saw it. The Firefly. And he knew where he was going next. * Dearest Simon, It is my fourth year here at -------------------------, and thus it is the fourth birthday of yours that I have missed. I miss you so much. There is so much, also, that I wish to tell you. But I cannot. The school forbids it. It’s getting very difficult here, Simon. I am sending this letter via a sending box on a non-governmental space bus. I have had to hide this from my teachers. Oh, I wish you were here. Come find me soon, please. I love you, Your sister River * River finds Jayne’s big bulk hilarious, now that she knows he’s “skirred” of her. She finds the melancholy spaces in Inara to be soothing, because it’s such the opposite of her own head. Kaylee is a playmate; Book, the dangerous preying kind. The Captain only thinks he can bully Simon around as an older brother might; she knows to him she might as well be a mouse, but at least a mouse with fangs. Zoe and Wash are bookends; two different flavors that you know go great together. Simon, dear Simon, is, as ever, her beloved and true brother. He sees the cracks in her, but dares not mention it, lest the ‘verse decides to whirl her in another spell of insanity. She has her own abacus. It’s a noodle in her gray matter, wrinkled as it is from invasions of the blue-handed, precocious as it is with her own River brand of humor. She counts down the days to when the blue-handed men will find her again, and extends her hand for Simon to hold. They have _ _ _days. ‘Til then, she has found away to keep pigeons alive. These are the pigeons of her heart. It is enough, sometimes. |