It was a beautiful planet. That was the first thing Kaylee had realized when they set down. Of course, the last time they had entered atmo and stayed for a while had been about three months ago, so Kaylee was fairly certain the ground could have been covered with hot lava and she would still have thought it beautiful.

But no, this planet was a jewel in the black. They had parked Serenity in an empty field, bordering a wood, and while the Captain and Zoe had gone into town to finish the job, Kaylee had decided wandering about was the best way to spend her down time. She walked near the tree line, the waist high grass tickling her hands as she held them, palms down, just over the blades. She had seen some wildflowers and a few bushes of some type of berry. Everything was a different color. There were reds and oranges, a ton of greens and yellows and every once in a while a shock of blue, as she noticed a short flowering bush, with buds the color of midnight.

Everything was so different than the ship. On Serenity, she knew every nook and cranny, every groan and sigh, every part and smell. She could listen to Serenity for less than a minute and be able to diagnose and often times fix any problem. She supposed her relationship with the ship, was similar to Simon’s with patients. He was so good at what he did. He could easily look some one up and down and have their illness and cure produced in the time it would take most folks to blink.

But while she and Simon both understood their own little worlds, this world was completely new to her. And different than anywhere she had ever been. Different than her home planet that was for sure. Kaylee had grown up on a border moon, one that had been terraformed shortly before the war in an effort to get settlers out of the air where they might be sitting targets. Also to get them off ships that could be used as mighty powerful weapons. The speed with which the planet was changed meant it wasn’t necessarily ready to support human life. As a result, the grou