Inara’s eyes narrowed in concentration as she maneuvered the shuttle past another hairpin curve. The journey to the job had begun boringly enough but after an hour of the seemingly endless flatness the barren landscape had changed drastically. At first, Inara was happy for the challenge the new terrain presented - she needed a diversion to keep her mind occupied on anything other than the idiocy that she and Simon were about to undertake. But her happiness was soon replaced by fear as she realized just how tricky the route was.

Another blast of wind pushed the shuttle toward the wall of the canyon. She heard Simon’s swift intake of breath before she quickly corrected the shuttle’s course. Her hands tightened on the steering column and didn’t relax until they reached their destination.

“We’re here,” Inara said quietly as she circled around the meeting spot before finding a satisfactory place to set down the shuttle. After powering down the shuttle, she unstrapped the safety harness but couldn’t seem to rise from her seat. Neither, apparently, could Simon. In nervous silence, they gazed out the window.

They were in a deep, uneven valley. Brown and rocky still dominated the landscape but whereas the terrain surrounding Serenity had been devoid of any life, here, there were big clumps of brown, tough grass. The tufts littered the landscape, rising to over three feet tall in some places but they were dwarfed by the rise of red and beige rock formations that grew out of the ground. Inara admired the gentle lift of the rocks. The formations made her think of what a wave would look like, frozen in time, curving up on one side, falling away on the other. Her eyes continued to scan the valley until she noticed how low the sun hung in the sky. Almost time for the meet.

“Should we wait here or out there?” Inara asked.

“I think out there.” Simon unbuckled his seatbelt and got up. “That way they’ll know we’re not…”

Afraid. Inara took a deep breath pushing aside the nagging realization that this endeavor w