She followed the quiet murmurs through the excavated halls, trailing her hand along the sandy walls and trying to settle her feelings. Not thinking about Mal was best, not thinking about the fluttering that resulted whenever something like civility passed between them. That wouldn't last, it never did.

Unfortunately, without any other distraction, her anxiety from when she had woken up returned. Her dreams the night before had been troubled, a product of unfamiliar surroundings. She forced some confidence into her steps, focused on her teachings, the sensuality of her heightened senses, the feeling of the earth under her fingers. She had never been afraid of the dark and she certainly wasn't about to start now.

"Kaylee?" she called, and the two voices went quiet for a moment that her nerves drummed up again. The muttering started anew, and she was able to catch something that sounded like ' don't go, stay ' and ' cant, capn already formed a search party .' Some fabric rustled, one of the two gave a low groan, and they fell quiet again for a suspicious amount of time. " Méi méi ?" she tried again, uncertain.

"Be right out!" her friend finally answered, and Inara had a fairly good idea that she had interrupted something she hadn't wanted to. Regardless, Kaylee skipped out into the hallway with no complaints and her usual sunniness, pulling up one of the straps of her coveralls. "Ain't doin' engine diagnostics on an empty stomach," she announced, tugging at Inara's arm.

A short trip revealing that the tunnels underneath the sandstone domes on the surface were all connected, and they emerged into a large hall under a vaulted ceiling, lit by eyelets carved geometrically into the cupola. This was where all the villagers were, Inara realized, bustling around intricately woven rugs laid across the floor for sitting and a buffet of homemade bread and cereal grains out on what appeared to normally serve