Back Stories II, Chapter 16
Friday, February 29, 2008
More of the crew’s adventures on Highgate: Kaylee, Jayne, Wash, and River each have their turn to do the telling.
CATEGORY: FICTION TIMES READ: 3971 RATING: 9.0 (PG13) SERIES: FIREFLY
Disclaimer: It belongs to Joss and all those business people. I'm just playing.
Many thanks: fireflyfans.net members: and for beta-reading and for the artwork on earlier chapters. Links: Prequels: The Fish Job () (), Easy Tickets () (), and Book I () (). Timing, pairings, and canon blurbs are in my . House of Huāzhù, Highgate Zoë fiddled her thumbs as she sat on the end of the dark pink bed, but her impatience didn’t have the chance to build to any kind of breaking point. Which was a good thing – she had no wish to lash out at the doctor. He’d been under a pile of stress, and he’d come through where it counted, though it’d taken him more time than she’d have liked. The captain was getting his help, and Simon’d earned this chance to tell of his trials. More than that, he wasn’t taking long to do the telling. No, it was clear to Zoë that he was rushing, leaving out a pile of details. Kaylee’d done the same. The doctor and the mechanic were sitting across the small room from each other, Simon in the chair against the far wall, Kaylee at the head of the bed with River curled
Anyhow, this chapter’s been very close to done for some time, but it took the right moment for me to drag it out and deal with some insightful issues raised by my beta readers. One thing in particular I can’t address without some pretty fundamental rearranging of the chapter, so I’m letting it slide. I won’t get it into it now, it involves a lot of explaining. Involves POV and narrative. Maybe I’ll blog about it, cause I’d rather share a fun little detail that I wasn’t able to write into the chapter.
So, regarding the phrase “semi-quantitative histidine scale” which River plays out in charades… I have a pretty specific picture in my head of what she’d do for this, because you know she’d think it was something obvious and act-out-able. Wash would try at first, then end up looking at her like *wtf are you doing?* and then River, in a duh voice and while repeating her charade briskly with each word, would say:
“Semi. Quantitative. Histidine. Scale. (Idiot.)” (looking at him and slapping her forehead for “idiot”, of course)
Which might very well be a subconscious borrowing of the rhythm of “Out. For. A. Walk. (Bitch.)” One of the best Joss lines ever LOL!
OK, enough. I’ll go blog about my narrative issue now. I hope life is treating you all well! And I hope Homespun has her next Rabbit Hole chapter ready to post…. :)
But what did River do?? And how did they lose the ship??
And - Hey! I just noticed that last line. Uh, yeah, sure, I have my next chapter ready. I was just taking February off. And now that you've posted a new chapter, I'll wait another few days because everyone will be busy reading this. :)
This was yet another great chapter. I can't wait to find what tori is up to. Is she really evil, is she using Simon or does she just want him back? And I want to know just what River does to attempt to save the day. I think it is awesome that we already know she screwed up and lost the ship. So often its River saves the day - the end. I know I've written that. This is a great switch.
Is man going to get better soon, I really hope so. And is Inara going to make it back to Serenity soon?
Great chapter -
And River and the ship and now wanting to fix Mal, good developments
I think the "fodder for taunting" was perfect. And gosh darn it, Mal *is* quite lovable. (!)
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