The lack of sunrise or sunset should make day and night indistinguishable on board a ship travelling through space, but somehow it was apparent when night fell on Serenity. Once, on a small moon, they had been in a snowfall. Thick, heavy fat flakes of white drifted lazily down from the sky to land with a noiseless sound that defied a description. That sound of the lack of sound was present in the hold at night. In the hallways and common room, on the bridge and in the infirmary. It could be deafening, drowning and disquieting. But mostly, it made for a good time to think without feeling that you had to hide away in your bunk. To think and to try and understand the slow decay of the crew's erratic orbits. Serenity, the sun around which they all rotated, the home in which they all lived, and a mini-verse unto herself had somehow lost the tug she once had on them all. Inara and Mal spent more and more time dissapearing on to any planet they happened to be nearby. Land madness, surely. It was hard to pinpoint why. Often they could be seen standing stock still together, looking off in opposite directions instead of each other, their fingers intertwined. silent, like serenity at night.

River kept mostly to the bridge, laconicly discussing the next reaver hunt. The ability to focus the wild stripped part of her mind soley on the locating and destruction of the canibalistic humanoid interstellar dwellars made her almost normal. But better than that, she reckoned, better because I am better. I can talk not nonsense, I can work, I can do for others, I have a place. I have a value and a calling. She gripped her favourite weapon, a long cruel and thick dagger she took off a particularly vicious reaver pack leader. It's handle was surely covered with the tanned hide of babies, repulsively soft and queasily good feeling to her hand. She wondered if that baby's parents had lived long enought to see it's demise. She hoped not. But she never re-covered it with cow's hide. It seemed dishonest somehow, like that poor creature's sacrifice would never be avenged. River told her baby every day that she would see the blade soaked in the blood of every reaver in the 'verse to make ammends for a life too short. No one else suspected the grisly origins of her weapon, but Zoe had some ideas from the way river treated the thing that it was an unsavoury item. Zoe didn't think much of young'ins anymore in any capacity. She bent herself wholely to the transporting of River to wherever they were needed, as fast as they could get there. she saw the girl as a weapon that zoe herself wielded, and instrument through which she could find peace in the destruction of the life she once cherished. The life she lived now was routine, rulebound, and narrow. it kept her busy and tired. when night came on serenity, Zoe fell to sleeping before any thoughts of the past could keep her awake. But lately she had been turnig over the idea that Serenity itself was whispering to her, in a voice she knew she'd never hear again. It was this feeling that made her broach the subject of a new, smaller, faster ship to River. One the two of them could man themselves, without the need of crew or any other work. River looked off into space, it's twinkling lights bekoning her with cries of help, and promises of sanity. An event horizon.

Simon and KayLee's young son James was just over two, and more at home in the engine room than any world they had ever stoped on. In towns he clung and cried, he disliked the sun, the heat, the dust, the noise and the people. Simon urged Kaylee to make a home with him somewhere soon, before the child was too old to try to acclimate to land. Kaylee laughed and said he'd soon outgrow it, what was the need of forcing the issue? The boy was quite a help for all his tender years. he could identify every gear and mechanism on the ship, and every tool in his mother's aresenal. Simon wanted a more rounded education, to unfold a larger future in his son's horizons. More like you, Kaylee responded, Less like me. No, no, he tried to spin it away from any blot on her education which had happened at her daddy's knee and in his shop. James needs the society of children his own age, he needs direction and instruction that we can't provide on a wandering vessel. He needs a home base, a point to his compass. It's us, his wife responded, we are the base. He needs more, Simon quietly whispered. Not yet, she sighed, not now. She turned away to face the wall, and her breathing became regular and even. Simon's soon matched, and not long after the child rose from his cot and joined his parents who embraced him without ever waking.

Jayne's last letter from home had caught him off gaurd. He had unthinkingly ripped it open as usual and read it off in his halting manner in front of whomever was present. Matty had seccumbed finally to his long illness. The money jayne sent had made him more comfortable to be sure, said his mother, but leechcraft on their planet was not as advanced as on others. She praised Jayne's dedication to his family, and had included a carving Matty had made of jayne's favourite gun in perfect scale out of the native wood of their homeworld. Matty's hands had more cunning than most even in his young years, and it was fancied by his family that he should be a craftsman and join a guild. An apprenticeship had been discussed right before he had contracted his slow and wasting disease. Jayne's face visibly fell, and for a moment those around him saw something more of the man than any had ever reckoned might be there. Then he steeled himself, crumpled the letter and moved on to other tasks. He had another shipment of arms for his small but growing sidebusiness of local law enforcement training programs. Who better to instruct a township's posse on the gaurding against of desperate criminals than one who knew them from the inside? As odd as it may have seemed, such as a wolf watching over the sheep in their fold, Jayne proved to have a natural way with folks once a few drinks had been exchanged and battle scars shown off. He had potential clients lined up on nearly every world they came to, his legendary status and subsequent fall in the mudder's lore did no one whit to impunge him. If anything, it made him more desireable to the private constabulary that set themselves up further and further out as new worlds were discovered and settled now that the Reavers no longer held the borders so closed. The edge of space was limitless again, and the aliance's arm was only so long. Even folks who wished to be in it's firm embrace had to learn to do for themselves, and that meant keeping the peace.

Serenity slipped through the black, her crew nearly at the point of dissolution. at any moment her pull on them could snap, and they would all head off at once into their own erratic elipses, perhaps only to cross paths at rare and far off conjunctions in a distant and uncertain future.