This belongs to Joss, just borrowing them for a while, 'cause they're so shiny :)

***

The afternoon was shiny. Rain in the morning had left the air scrubbed clean. Water puddled everywhere in this little backwater town with dirt, now mud, streets. The crew people from Serenity did their best, but Simon ran out of luck and lost his right shoe to the morass with a sucking sound. Jayne wasn't around to bray his head off, for which the young doctor was grateful. As he stood there on one foot, looking at the hole in the mud which was rapidly filling with brown water, Mal made his profound thoughts known.

"Huh!" He looked at the Doc. "I guess you'll be needing an advance to get some decent boots?"

"What about my shoe!" Simon hated the way he sounded and visibly calmed himself. "I don't suppose there's much point?"

"Even if we were able to find it, do you really want it back? They've got horses passing through..."

Simon nodded. "Right." He hopped along, then gave in to the inevitable, sat down and took the other shoe off, then pulled his socks off and stuffed them into the singleton shoe. "Not much good without the other one, I suppose..."

"Hang on to it. We might meet a one-legged man who'd really appreciate it," said Zoe.

"In the country of the lame, the one-legged man is king..." River smiled, as if that meant something. The terrifying thought that it probably did was, well, terrifying.

"This place here will do." The captain hooked a thumb at the general store. "They'll have boots or know where we can get you something."

The mud was cold and squished between Simons' toes. Being a doctor, he couldn't stop himself from making a list of all the diseases he was potentially being exposed to. Simon gingerly made his way into the store, his bare feet tender on the rough wooden planks. Mal and Zoe were following when they heard the gun-fire.

"Tamade! Everybody down!" Mal and Zoe where quickly crouched by either side of the door, looking. Mal, on the right, could see a squad of Alliance soldi