Ship is silent.

Book is humming.

Down in the galley, the galley so low-lit, Shepherd Book hums to himself as he folds whipped, frothy whites back into gently-stirred yolks, adds a handful of pungent hard cheese curls and slides the mixture into the hot oven. Eggs are problematical; stir them too little and they try to rejoin like displaced siblings, stir them too much and they become hard and brittle like fugitives chased too long, seperate them for a souffle' and risk rupturing the precious virginal membrane that maintains the integrity and eggness of it all, ruin the promise of the child, divide tear asunder, Blast! O Sight!--

Stop.

Turn aside the parade of words. Book carries his damaged Symbol everywhere, so full of words weighty with meaning that he reads and reads, and yet his mind is clear and open and speechless as clouds. I see patterns in words, data in clouds, I try to shut the patterns out and they creep in again, but Shepherd Book simply, he, Book--is humming.

He's not here.

Book is dead, he died in the massacre on Haven, there before it all came clear again. Dead. Zoe is on Sabbatical, with the secret she and my Brother share, and Wash is dead, Book is dead and, and...

And Book is humming. I know the tune without knowing where it leads, I feel the pressure of his fingers there on the cutting mat as they hold the scallions down in their final mute protest against their predestined fate, I hear the creak of hullmetal as he shifts his weight in perfect balance born of years of training with knife and more. Book hums in the soul of Ship and I can dance to the melody.

He has a secret as well. In tacit clarity of mind he shows me fragments of the terrible purpose he and I share, or did share, because he's dead of course, silly. And I'm just a girl. Silly. The 'Verse goes on with predictable Hawkingian physics, people die that's all girls grow up alone and secrets lie dormant in the walls of Ship like the hard seed of grief trapped in Zoe or grow like the tiny