Shadow

Mal made his way slowly across the tarmac to where Destiny sat, silent and alone. Etris walked beside him again, and again he understood enough that he didn’t speak. As far as Mal was concerned, Etris could walk with him wherever his feet led him, so long as he respected Mal’s silence.

Ma…

So many thoughts swam around in Mal’s mind, making any coherent thinking impossible. He had visited her grave only three hours earlier, and the ground had been as untouched as it had been the last time he visited her.

She was already dead then…

He closed his eyes and stopped walking. He heard Etris stop as well, but still the other man didn’t speak.

If she’s dead, then how did I just introduce her to my crew?

So his ma was alive. Somehow, despite his vivid memories of her scorched body, she had laughed with him not fifteen minutes earlier. Her. Ma. She had been as real to him as the cross she had given him years before.

The cross…

How had she gotten the cross? The lock had been unbroken. For that matter, how had she known where to find the cross? And how had she clawed her way out of the grave? How?

How?

That simple question haunted him. With every fiber of his being he wanted to believe that the woman that he had brought back to his ship was his mother, alive and well. But in his heart, in that place that he guarded with walls and barb wire and a moat, he knew that she was dead.

What in the good gorram is going on here?

“She knows, like I know, but she doesn’t know what I know.” The voice permeated Mal’s thoughts. “She’s a veil and she’s blinded you from what’s really real.”

Mal opened his eyes, and for a second he could have sworn he saw River standing in Destiny’s shadow, but when he turned his head for another look, she was gone.

* * *

Inara wanted to usher the pair of brother and sister inside, but Governor Prenatt’s room was just around the corner, and she had left his door open when she had walked to the balcony.

“Who’s coming, River?” she sai