Author's Note: I appologize for being so late in getting this up. I know it's been like a year! Please click on my name and check my Blue Sun Room items to read the Prologue, and first 2 chapters! Chapter 4 is ready for typing and Beta-ing. Thanks to IvoryValentine for telling me this doesn't suck!

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It had been two days since their last fight. Every night Mal sat at the table in the mess hall drinking what was advertised as coffee. The little anime geisha girl on the jar of coffee crystals assured him that these tasted “just as good as the coffee from the mountains of Earth-that-was.” If this was true, he understood perfectly what could drive a planet full of people to destroy said planet, said coffee producing mountains and flee. If anything it was so they could stop drinking this bitter goh-seh.

He sat there rolling the cup between his hands, watching the steam disappear between each sip. He was waiting for her. When she was on board, every night at approximately 9:13 she would come down to the mess, covered in silks and tapestries, smelling of spices Mal couldn’t pronounce, and make tea. She had the capabilities to make tea in her own shuttle, but she always chose to come down and slum it with the rest of them for a few hours. She had not shown for 2 days. Mal figured he really had pissed her off this time.

Kaylee came bounding into the mess, humming some tune she had created in her head.

“Hey captain! How’s it goin’?” She asked while rifling through the cracker drawer.

“Fine Kaylee, how’re you?”

“Better than perfect!” She was always bordering on too cheerful for Mal to stomach.

“And how’s my ship running?”

“Somewhere between dead in the water and good as new! You know, the usual.” She smiled, and patted the metal beams in the mess, “My girl, she always finds a way, don’t she?”

“I think that has more to do with her mechanic than the boat herself.”

“Thanks Mal.” Kaylee busied herself trying to make the moulded protein as appealin