An Entry from the Journal of Inara Serra one month after leaving Avery for the first time:

Though I knew my choice to stay with Serenity, to stay with Mal, would be fraught with change, it was the grief for which I was most unprepared.

Silly of me. I know all the psychological babble. I understand that those events termed “life altering” really are. Perhaps I thought that because I knew about it, it couldn’t hurt me. It came on me slowly, a sort of depression I suppose. I never realized I was slipping away.

The first days of our newest job were mild and uneventful. Mal dubbed it the Apple Pie Job and seemed strangely content not to be dodging bullets. River and Kaylee kept Zoë busy demanding tales of our trip to Sihnon. I braided their hair with ribbons I’d bought them, and listened with a smile as Zoë described the House to the girls.

I think it was shortly after that I began to notice the feeling of being disconnected. I was there, but I began to have the sensation that I had to swim through heavy air. I was sluggish and withdrawn, even though my mind was aware.

I know, for a while, that no one expected me to really stay. River’s look became measuring, half threatening, half pleading – not today. Her glance would go from me to Mal and back to me. Don’t leave this day.

As for Mal, well, Mal never expected me to stay no matter what he said. He loved me by the hour, the way he lived his life, one hour at a time. He’d shared that philosophy with River during one of her bad times.

“You can do anything, lil swami, if you do it one hour at a time – one thing at a time.”

River, of course, saw what was happening to me, but she knew, too, that it was all part of the process of change. If any of us on board was aware of that it was River.

My breaking point, oddly enough, was a handful of wild cherry blossom stems. Mal found them and brought them into the shuttle, dropped into a small coffee can from the kitchen. It was the first and only time I have ever been able