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Return to Serenity

By Mike Smithwick

One wiser then I once wrote: “There is a fine line between dedication and obsession. How one is pushed over that line may happen in the most subtle of ways. From what a person is served at dinner, to the gift of a child.”- Darrial Book, Shepherd, private correspondence.

In “The Black,” space and solitude conspire together so as to affect people in ways unlike anything else. And that emptiness can carve up a hole in a man bigger than any valley, or haunt him as a thousand ghosts.

The little transport ship wheeled its way through that solitude leaving the “dust of a thousand worlds far behind.” Enveloped by the night, she slumbered. Were one to navigate her corridors, he might catch sight of an empty bridge and wonder at the scattered childrens’ toys making their grand procession across the panels glowing their warm glow in an otherwise darkened room. Finding his way to the untidy dining area, where just hours before the walls witnessed good-natured verbal jousts being fired back and forth followed by an easy laughter, quietude now resides. In the distance however he might hear a low lumbering growl.

Coming into the cargo hold, he would spy a weight-set in one corner, and an unsettling amount of open space normally occupied by cargo in better times. The growl grows perceptively louder. It comes from the engine room. It was generally a utilitarian space, now lovingly adorned by her master in stickers, drawings and other odd decorations. The humming, a barely perceptible presence, suggests that the ship is sleeping. As is her master.

One would notice that Kaylee’s perpetual smile rarely vanished as she slept. Her left arm was outstretched, loosely wrapped around a bright peach gown decorating the wall amid scattered engine schematics mixed with the occasional pictures of kittens. It was a rough day, but she nursed