Title: Moon Girl

For: aliaspiral

Prompt: phases of the moon / 072. Myth for joss100

Pairing: River/Jayne

Word count: 600 (exactly! w00t!)

A/N: Sexual situations. Nothing overly explicit, but you've been warned. And also, we've established that I adore River paired with mythological symbolism, so here's yet another.

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Her skin was pale, luminescent in the fluorescent glow of the bunk's lights. Jayne thought it would look better in the moonlight, but out here in the black, a moon was a place to live, not something to look at. And it certainly wasn't pretty, not like the moon she brought to life with her lilting voice.

He knew the stories from Earth-that-Was, ones she'd told him about goddesses and nymphs dancing in the silvery light of a moon heavy with myth. Stories of Selene, who came to her eternally sleeping lover every night; Bendis, whose worshippers venerated her with sex and debauchery; and the huntress-virgin Diana, goddess of fertility and childbirth tumbled from her mouth, and Jayne could do nothing but listen, enthralled. "They come in triplets, never less," she explained, beginning yet another story, "maiden, mother, crone. Sexuality, fertility, wisdom." She sat on his thighs, the white shift she wore to bed falling off her shoulder, exposing a breast in a mockery of innocence.

"Persephone was the maiden, the waxing moon," River whispered, her fingers tracing the muscle of his bicep. "She was kidnapped by her uncle-turned-husband, Hades, the god of the underworld."

"She became the goddess of death?"

"Misnomer. Persephone was the maiden aspect. Sexuality and birth, but not originally death. The most desirable woman in all the world, beautiful even by divine standards." River licked the spot where his jaw met his neck, kissing down to his collarbone. "Demeter was the mother, literally and figuratively. Mother of Persephone and goddess of the harvest." Her breath was hot on his skin, and Jayne groaned. "Full moon, like a woman full with child." She pressed his palm against her fla