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BDM spoilers herein. Proceed with caution.

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Between Falling and Landing

by ShinyBug

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So quiet. Quiet like leaves falling, with no ground to land on. There is motion, there is life, but it is so slight it makes no mark upon the face of things.

The leaf feels differently, though.

River ghosts onto the bridge, her bare feet louder than anything else on Serenity. It is night, because it must be night somewhere, and only a mouse stirs. And Zoe.

The co-pilot’s chair is empty, so River sits there, draws her feet up and rests her chin on her knees. She pushes her breathing down into her belly, making it as silent as possible, slow, regulated waves of oxygen that stir not a one of the hairs falling over her face. The black is black, but there are little pinpoints of light in the distance, tiny speckles. A world in a grain of sand.

Serenity is far out, far away, somewhere on the edge. There are no planets here, no moons, no dead. They are in a holding pattern. Waiting for the verse to roll over, wake up, on the right side of the bed this time. Might be here a while.

Controls blink steadily in front of her knees. No ships on the radar, vid screen is dark. Proximity sensors proclaim solitude, isolation. No one coming, no one going. One already gone.

It has never been so quiet inside River. She has remembered and experiences what silence tastes like, what hollow looks like, the smell of no-longer-here. Sometimes her interpretation is joy, until she sees Zoe, and knows.

The leaf feels differently.

And Zoe breathes, and makes no sound, stirs no hairs. Watches the black, the grains of sand, the extinct reptiles on the blinking panel. Does not watch River.

“Did you know?”

River knows these three rusty words are the most Zoe has found hidden under her tongue in some time. Since Serenity found her wings again. She knows the gravity that is Zoe, kn