Summary: Just read it. It’s good; you’ll like it. Tell your friends.

I don’t own any of these characters. I don’t own anything, actually. I’m a poor college student. Therefore, donations is welcome. Also, hamsters is nice.

Rated PG-13 just to be safe.

Rising Smoke-Chapter one

Four A.M. Not the best time to be lying awake in a bed, but she was doing it nonetheless. Staring at the green numbers of the clock on her bedside table, Kaywinnit Lee Frye sighed and decided to get up and do something about her restlessness. When she was younger, she used to go out into the main room of her house and get a glass of milk, sit on the couch, and stare at the stars, wondering just what was going on out there. Wondering just how many unseen moons and planets were actually in her field of view; wondering how many ships, with their own close-knit crews, were buzzing to and fro between them. She so desperately wanted to be out there, working on a great ship, keeping her in shape, making sure she flew to the best of her ability. Communing with it, she told herself. Her unique talent to just intrinsically know what was wrong with faulty machinery, and also know how to fix it, was something of a legend in her small community. It was a good source of work for her and her father; they soon became the town’s “fix it” people. Eventually, though, her talent landed her a place in her dreams, a place aboard Serenity. And that was something she could never give up, not in a billion years, not even for the entire ‘verse itself.

Pulling back the sheets and swinging her legs over the edge of the mattress, she got to her feet in the dim light of the room. Moving slowly, cautiously toward the closet, she found her robe hanging on the knob, and put it on. She knew she couldn’t do what she used to, as Mal was currently sleeping on the couch in the main room. Her parents had insisted; not one of their daughter’s crewmates were to stay anywhere else while on Heathmore. As a result, the small Frye house was literally packed to the roof w