Broken souls dance like leaves on the wind,

Waiting for sun to break out again,

Out here in the dark we wait in shadows,

Broken dreams, wrapped in our hands,

Like streamers for the things that leave,

And all we do is hold on tighter and tighter,

Until the hopes we long for fly away,

We search for answers we know we won’t find,

And we dream the dreams that we know are too big,

Because if we scale ourselves down to size,

We lose ourselves in the chaos,

We are the broken souls,

Dancing to our funeral march….

River sat quietly, eying the rest of the crew, who were engaged in a game of hoopball. Even her brother was playing, and they seemed to have forgotten all about her. Even after Miranda, they were just too used to having her slip about quietly that most of the time they still forgot about her. She had a sudden image of her dead, sitting there quietly at the table in the kitchen, and no one noticing…

She screamed softly to herself, but not loud enough to catch anyone’s attention.

“Can’t think, can’t think, no, please,” she begged to whatever god might be listening at the moment to make the image go away. “I don’t want to melt away anymore, I don’t want to fade into Serenity…”

Her mumblings caught Kaylee’s attention, and she held up her hand. Everyone quieted, but River didn’t notice. She kept muttering to herself, and then she shot to her feet, surprising everyone.

“Don’t you get it?” she screamed at them, holding her head in both hands. “Leave me alone in my sanity I fade into the darkness!”

She stood silently, and trudged to the trunk that held her two swords. The only change after Miranda had been that weapons had become more readily available to her. She kicked it open and snatched up the two swords.

“I’m going to go practice. You go play your silly games and leave me to my torment,” she growled, holding each weapon carefully. She clambered up to one of the walkways she was so fond of and began to calm, spinning and twirling the gleaming pieces of metal like a bal