River. Objects in Space. Jubal. Floaty McCrazyVoice. Free for all ages.

------------------------------------------- Space

The unlimited expanse. The absence of sound.

All things are cradled in the nothingness that connects and disconnects them, bowing to natural laws, bowing to chance, allowing for cause and effect, discounting the uncountable, held unaccountable, force and interpretation, we're all just floating.

The absence of sound does not equate to the absence of the signal because the signal is unstoppable and reception transforms for comprehension.

River receives.

River understands.

River rises, with the tides of information. She sorts relentlessly. Keeps track. Attempts to keep track.

She understands what she sees, what she hears and she is empowered by the beauty of the vastness and its infinite repetition in everything, the pointlessness and the freedom of sense.

She was close to it once.

Close is the only way because it cannot be touched, it requires barriers to be appreciated. Barriers and borders, enclosure. Skin, the unpermeable, the pleasure in the collision.

Limits in expanse benefit the intensity of the achievable.

Space is vast, but Serenity is small, a cell among many. A cell is a prison but only the cell is life. What is beyond is unquantifiable, is ultimately irrelevant.

Relevance is imbued.

Not inherent. Not unchangable. Not... objective.

The object is meaningless.

Early knows. Early is coming. Jubal is very loud and River is very quiet.

Quiet feeds the illusion of isolation, noise feeds the illusion of company. They are none of them either. Isolated in barriers but drawn by gravity to each other, giving off signals, imbuing each other, connecting over the distance and making noise. Reception. Deception. Conception of perception as exceptionally integral to the construction of the self.

Distortion.

They are lost in the woods, a compelling metaphor. She... wavers, in the multitude of choices, increases distance from outside to inside, misrepresents, miscomprehends, mishandles.

Receives instruction. No connection. No touching.

Calculation.

She increases distance from surface to surface, changes the filters and transforms the banisters - barriers - for the alteration of her point of view. She broadens. She expands. She sees reason. Reasons. His. Hers.

Compulsion. The irrational motive. The instinct that disturbs the equilibrium to uphold its basis. Protection, affection, collection. The herd.

She is very, very quiet.

She is very, very effective.

Knows things she shouldn't, things she couldn't. She is not normative, better, she is not right, she is what is left of River, a vessel of capabilities. Like Serenity.

She points and aims and utilizes by the slender thread of rendered meaning. Like Jubal.

"I'm right here."

She unfolds, marks, redefines the contemptous familiar. Unblinds them to her. Asks permission to be more than tolerated. More than before.

"Trust me."

River is not infallible.

"Didn't think you'd come for me."

"Well, you're a dummy."

Her tools are very pretty. Erratic. The beauty in the freedom of sense, the lack of point. The design is not functional, not predictable. She doesn't even see it.

Skin, the impermeable.

Scream.

"See? That's what it feels like."

The weight of the thing. The plan. It never goes smooth?

"Shhhh, it's okay."

It will be. It can be.

It has all the options.

"That was a troublesome amount of fuss to put up, little girl, considering your intention matches mine. It would have saved the harm to say so upfront."

Communication is the problem to the answer. He talks too much. Establishes nothing. Just walks her prearranged path, follows her cues. She is the writer tonight. All-knowing.

She is the reader every night.

"I am seeing all and hearing all." Space is not silent, after all. The signal, the signal. "Does that seem right to you?"

The challenge has been issued without her consent. They took the barriers, took the rules, they penetrate and infiltrate and desecrate and shift in irreversible ways and they unmake the unbroke and fix what is finished. She is altered, she's insane.

But she knows the directions of being a good deal more dangerous.

"Made the right move, darlin'."

They disagree.

He confines, collides, inserts, pollutes.

She liberates, avoids, removes. Executes.

Retributes.

Jubal Early is made disconnected. A literal epitome of the metaphorical. The irony appeals.

Isolation is restored to the relative form that is attainable and practical and the ripples fade with the disturbance of their balance. Reduction of space, primal response. Reinforcement of the desired illusion.

They make noise and speak with their mouths and hear with their ears and see with their eyes and the signal is everpresent while they function like a home. That kind of strength. Gravity directs the nature of their course.

Everything is placed in relation. Mutual definition. Imbued meaning. Reshuffling. Redefinition.

She has taken off her covers. Made her plea. Acceptance pending.

She has taken up the challenge because a solution is within reach.

"I can win this."

- - END.