River dreamed of Wash that night. They were piloting Serenity together. He sat in his old seat, the one she’d taken over once the captain was comfortable with her skills, and she was riding co-pilot. They talked about everyday things, laughing together while he told her stories about when he first met Zoë and how he’d finally wooed her.

He looked over at her and smiled. “You’re doing a good job. You can keep her flying. You can keep them all flying.” Dream Wash guided the controls toward the rusty atmosphere of a planet she couldn’t immediately recognize, and his movements were so graceful and sure that he seemed a part of the ship.

As dreams often do, time passed in a blurry haze and she found herself walking with the pilot down a dusty moonlit road, neat rows of ready to harvest corn on either side. She felt his hand on her shoulder and she turned to face him. “When the time comes, don’t let anyone tell you that it isn’t right. Don’t let them tell you that the gap is too big. Space is a void and we cross it all the time.” He turned and started down the road toward the sunrise. Just before he disappeared into the growing light, he turned around again and called back to her, “Tell Zoë I love her, and tell her that she can pick up her birthday present from the doc.”

The dream stopped and her eyes opened, the transition between the two states happening as naturally as walking from one room to another. As a child, River had always been slow to wake, always savoring that floating sensation of being partly awake and partly lost in the land of dreams. That was yet another thing that the Academy had stolen from her. The fragmentation of her mind had been in order to bring the intuitive side of her nature to the front, to force her to use more of her brain.

She knew that her dreams were a new facet of being a reader. Her exercises in meditation had allowed her to encourage the less urgent flashes to visit in her dreams. Foretellings of long term trouble or benefit always came to her during