Kaylee and Wash spoke in hushed tones as they completed cleaning the engine room, often glancing uncomfortably towards the door looking for eavesdroppers. As they finished comparing notes, they realized that while they had differing dreams, there were many similar elements: like the man in the trenchcoat, the girl named Willow, various symbols, colors, metaphors, and Kaylee also admitted to references to the twentieth century.

They promised one another not to breathe a word of this to the others, and they also discussed about the possibility that perhaps River had something to do with it. Of everyone on board ship, she's the only one who's known to have some resemblance of psychic ability. Perhaps she was disturbing their sleep patterns, causing them to have similar and disturbing dreams.

Wash and Kaylee walked to the common room together a bit before dinner, as it was Kaylee's turn once again to cook for everyone. Wash went to the bridge quietly to doublecheck and insure the progress to New Prospero on autopilot was still underway. Being near the edge of the outer rim, it was going to take them a week or more to traverse it at their current speed. Wash verified the controls, doublechecked computations and confirmed security readings for suspicious activity around them, finding nothing. Clear sailing as far as the eye could see. It was a relatively large system cluster, and there was little more than debris and asteroids between them and their destination.

Kaylee composed a delicious dinner, using the best in their newly stocked factory and what their recent trip to Beatrice had to offer. It was exquisite. She was silently proud of herself, knowing she'd outdone previous efforts. So it came as a surprise to her when an hour later she and Wash sat around the big wooden table with their friends and crewmates, and the gathering was uncharacteristically quiet. No one oohing and ahhing at her efforts when first they put fork to mouth. None of Zoe's war stories or Book's tales of monastic humor. No uproariou