We get to do Firefly shit here, right?
'Cause, wow, not sure what happened, but I was ambushed by a bunny, and now I'm writing Firefly fic, I just did 770 words. Which is a LOT since apparently a demon sucked out my writing ability over the summer-- this is the most I've written in months & months.
I have plans for two more sections.
You'll *maybe* be able to get a little bit more out of this if you've read the script for the pilot; but I wouldn't describe it as spoilery for those who haven't. It doesn't give you any information you didn't get from Train Job.
I. TITLECAKES
The girl walked along the wide cement sidewalk, staring at the sky. Her family had landed here at night, but the sky was domed low with clouds, and it reflected back the various lights of the city until the clouds were a dull, unnatural pink-purple. They blanketed the city in a strange suspended state of half-day. So different from her own world! She couldn't stop staring at the natives, stepping across the vast pavement in their various uniforms with their heads down and shoulders pitched forward. The air was cold.
This is the central Alliance planet, her father had said. A lot of important business takes place here. I never would have brought a child to it....
The wind tugged at her hair and blew inside the loose flaps of her jacket. But the girl didn't reach to close it: she liked the wind's cool fingers against her neck. The formal gown she was wearing underneath her jacket was already hot and itchy.
Up ahead even Simon was hunching into his own jacket, and their mother hurried forward wrapped in her swathe of fur and fabric.
Hothouse flower. River smiled. That was archaic, English. Hothouses mean brothels now, and the sudden image of her mother dumped, in all her satin and brocade, into a whorehouse, was just startling enough to be funny. She laughed aloud, and Simon turned around.
"River? C'mon, we're already late for your assembly." He held a hand out to her, in perfect big-brotherly fashion, and River normally would have rolled her eyes at him trying to act all grown up, only nineteen years old and already with a head as big as their father's. But today she just skipped ahead, skirt of her dress rustling, and took his hand. She could feel the beginning of another grin welling up from somewhere warm in her chest.
The Academy. It was so important, enough to be secret-- she'd never heard of it before they'd gotten the letter. For a moment her family'd thought it had been the Companion Academy's recruiting brochure, flickering in the electromailbox one morning, and wow, hadn't that been a kerfluffle. Her mother had gone bright red, and shouted at River's father at the top of her lungs; Jenna, River's littlemother, had had to shoo the other house servants out of the kitchen in the middle of cleaning up breakfast.
But no, it wasn't the whore school, it was something different. New academy, formed by the Alliance, collecting together all the cleverest minds in the galaxies for training and study. To make you the best citizen you could be for the Alliance. That was basically the idea, her father had told her.
And they'd picked her as a charter member.
Her mother had stopped and was motioning her toward the steps of an imposingly tall stone building. She was far away enough that the wind whipped the words away, but River could see her mouth forming the words, Hurry up! It was true, they were late for the first-ever assembly, and it was River's fault. When she'd found out, half an hour before departure, that Jenna wouldn't even be allowed to accompany them on the ship ride over, River had thrown a wailing fit and banged her head against the wall of the music room until Jenna had scurried in, crying herself, like she did whenever River was hurt. In between sobs she cradled River and told her that fourteen was almost too old to have a littlemother, anyway. Simon's littlemother, Rekba, had left when he was fifteen and a half, and Simon only cried for a night, hadn't he? River would have to be grown-up now. She was going away to school, and the girls there wouldn't have all had littlemothers, they were from all over the galaxy, where things were different. River would have to be strong. She had to not cry, so the girls wouldn't think she was scared.
So she was. When she got on the ship she was River Tam, in a fancy dress to show she was rich, and all of her medical records to show she was healthy, and dry eyes to show she wasn't afraid. The pilot gave one last scowl because a fourteen-year-old's tantrum had put them off schedule, and then they lifted off from the ground and exited orbit, into the gravityless space River had never been in before. She got lighter and lighter until she didn't weigh anything at all, officially. And after a few minutes the weight lifted off her chest, too, and the smile stretched itself back onto her face.