Most of the day had been too hot by far for working outside when Kaylee and Zoë had parked the hovermule among some piles of scrap, the air wavering as it rose off the shimmering dunes. Kaylee had given the mule a long look, but figured she didn't need to disable it, since no one was around in this heat anyway and she had to admit it kind of blended in. Kaylee felt bad for the machine, in that way most other folks thought was crazy - she didn't always have the parts to keep everything on Serenity better than mint, including the mule, and while she might be able to look at the heart of things and see something shiny there, everyone else always just saw something broken down and good-for-nothing. Maybe that's why she'd been drawn to the people she was. Her crew had a lot in common with her ship.

So she and Zoë had holed themselves up in the shade of the grandmother of Serenity , a model 01 Firefly, waiting for the cooler hours. The Susanna didn't have the part she needed, she'd found it earlier on a Huey and she'd checked the Firefly already the first time she'd been by. They could still use some of the other stuff though, because except for a few modifications on the extenders, the Firefly models hadn't changed much. The ship was dead, its family scattered. But everything lived on in some way or another.

They both worked quietly at first, Kaylee only speaking to point out what they wanted and explaining how to take things apart. Kaylee had always looked up to the warrior woman for her strength, but she had some trouble communing with her - when Zoë wasn't focused on work, she also wasn't much for girl talk. Sometimes she'd taken to asking Zoë about the war, with some mixed results. Nowadays making chatter was even harder. Used to be she could talk about Simon, and Zoë would talk about Wash, but that had changed too, with her and the doctor carrying on while Zoe was in mourning.

She found herself really missing Was