Note: The title is from Joanna Newsom's song "Sprout and the Bean". I was thinking about continuing this with more small scenes/fragments if people are interested...

-1-

“I never thought I’d see the day when Malcolm Reynolds kissed the dirt,” she said, standing at the edge of the wide field. She had been watching him for long minutes, the slow and steady movement of the plow, his bent head and graying hair. He had not looked up, not once. Part of her wished to leave it that way, to hold her breath and turn away, so that he would continue forever with the image of another her, a younger self. Seeing him like this was a shock, she could admit that in the privacy of her thoughts — no River now, to invade — and how would he look at her, with the years on her?

She waited until he was close enough to hear, close enough to see, and in the end she stayed, spoke.

He raised his head, wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving smudges of dirt. He squinted at her for a long moment, his face unreadable. She gazed steadily back, years and years of calm carrying her through this. What did he see? A beautiful woman, still, but no longer young. There were tiny soft creases around her eyes and mouth, in the flesh of her hands. It was cool for spring, and styles were soberer now — none of her old red silks, she wore a wool gown of dark blue, simple and elegant, a heavy shawl wrapped around her torso. She was not the vision she had been. Neither was he.

“I don’t kiss it,” he said finally, voice rusty. “I work it. There’s a difference.”

“I’m sure there is,” she agreed equably, and smiled. He smiled too, and then didn’t. He stepped carefully over the furrows between them, his eyes always on her.

“What brings you to these parts Inara?” he asked. He didn’t say: I never thought I’d see you again. He didn’t say: you look the same. He said, “I didn’t think we had any folks on this ball of dirt with enough to entice a high-class… woman, like yourself.”

She’d been expecting