Disclaimer: Firefly: The Series and Serenity: The Firefly Movie and all related characters are copyright 2002-2005 Mutant Enemy, Inc., Universal Pictures, and 20th Century Fox. This is a work of fanfiction. No copyright infringement is intended

A/N This is mostly pre-relationship. Not much plot at all, but still manages to go on for quite awhile. It's also the sanest I’ve ever written River -- please let me know what you think about that, and anything else you have to say!

And, in spite of trying circumstances,

voodoo_buddha at LJ beta'd. Bless her.

Starlit

The night was clear and sweet. The stars strewn across the darkening sky above were almost as thick as could be seen in the Black. River tilted back to stare at them, twisting her head to make them dance. The resulting illusion was faster than the actual rotation of the planet, too fast for her mood, so she stopped. Slow was good, tonight. Flames did a crackly ballet in the nearby bonfire, a fiddle sang from across it, and a few of the villagers did their own dance a little farther off. The night needed no quicker rhythms than those.

River closed her eyes to absorb all the tempos. A few hundred meters away, waves of foamy water slid in to stroke the sand. That beat was the most pervasive of all, a backdrop seeping through her bones with a wet warmth that made her feel clean and soft. She breathed deeply through her mouth; that was salt she tasted. It was on her lips, too, from an earlier swim. She couldn’t remember ever having immersed herself in an ocean before today. It had been glorious. She’d breathed deep and sunk beneath the waves until the clamoring tumultuous world was gone. The water’s surging had buffeted her gently while she sat on the sandy bottom and became a length of seaweed.

Until she had to breathe again. She smirked to herself, remembering the sense of her brother’s panic when she’d reappeared above the water, back in the world. It had hit her extra hard after that brief respite, but she’d been learning appropriate respon