Kaylee and Wash spoke in hushed tones as they completed cleaning the engine room, often glancing uncomfortably towards the door looking for eavesdroppers. As they finished comparing notes, they realized that while they had differing dreams, there were many similar elements: like the man in the trenchcoat, the girl named Willow, various symbols, colors, metaphors, and Kaylee also admitted to references to the twentieth century.

They promised one another not to breathe a word of this to the others, and they also discussed about the possibility that perhaps River had something to do with it. Of everyone on board ship, she's the only one who's known to have some resemblance of psychic ability. Perhaps she was disturbing their sleep patterns, causing them to have similar and disturbing dreams.

Wash and Kaylee walked to the common room together a bit before dinner, as it was Kaylee's turn once again to cook for everyone. Wash went to the bridge quietly to doublecheck and insure the progress to New Prospero on autopilot was still underway. Being near the edge of the outer rim, it was going to take them a week or more to traverse it at their current speed. Wash verified the controls, doublechecked computations and confirmed security readings for suspicious activity around them, finding nothing. Clear sailing as far as the eye could see. It was a relatively large system cluster, and there was little more than debris and asteroids between them and their destination.

Kaylee composed a delicious dinner, using the best in their newly stocked factory and what their recent trip to Beatrice had to offer. It was exquisite. She was silently proud of herself, knowing she'd outdone previous efforts. So it came as a surprise to her when an hour later she and Wash sat around the big wooden table with their friends and crewmates, and the gathering was uncharacteristically quiet. No one oohing and ahhing at her efforts when first they put fork to mouth. None of Zoe's war stories or Book's tales of monastic humor. No uproarious laughter about the table as had always been the case so far back as Kaylee could remember.

You'd think someone had farted. Wash and Kaylee looked at one another across the room, then at the others. No one was making eye contact with one another.

Jayne was playing with his food. Poking at the peas. It was so unlike him. Mal was eating at a normal pace but seemed preoccupied. They all seemed preoccupied. When Wash looked over at Zoe, she looked away and drank from her glass. Book was looking down for awhile. Then he looked back up. Simon.. Well, Simon..

"Wow this is delicious, Kaylee!" Simon said once, smiling at her. The others looked at him and Simon suddenly realized he had broken a quiet din. He didn't know why but it made him feel embarrassed. He looked at her and smiled again. She smiled back. Then he looked down and noticeably enjoyed the food, but with less enthusiasm.

Then the quiet came back! Like an unwelcome guest hogging the potatoes. Only no one was hogging the mashed potatoes! Not even Jayne and he always hogs the potatoes. Kaylee mashed those potatoes herself, with her own hands, and everyone was just mulling about their food as if she'd scraped it out of a waste disposal unit.

"It was mercy said she."

Everyone looked over to River, who was cutting an apple. A red apple, or rather, one that had been red. She had scraped off the skin with her knife, and was now cutting it in half, then quarters, and now eighths.

"Since when has she been allowed cutlery agin?" Jayne asked to no one in particular. Grunts and other negative but nonverbal reactions was all he received from the others.

The silence returned for but a few seconds. Then River interfered with it again.

"Dear me, what pretty dancing shoes!"

Everyone looked at her. She was focusing on the apple pieces. Cutting them delicately, casually, cautiously..

"Once upon a time there was little girl, pretty and dainty. But in summer time she was obliged to go barefooted because she was poor, and in winter she had to wear large wooden shoes, so that her little instep grew quite red."

Self-conscious at the stares, Simon put a hand carefully on his sister's hand, "that's enough, mei mei."

"No." Zoe disagreed with Simon, "I'd like to hear her. That sounds familiar River. Is it a bedtime story?"

"Hans Christian Anderson. The Red Shoes." River took a small piece of apple and popped it in her mouth, "Not to be confused with The Blue Sun which is metaphorically quite the same. They made them dance after the will grew tired. Have they ever cut a piece of fruit apart and then tried to put it back together?" River picked up a handful of the discarded apple peels she had left on the table. "Ever tried putting the skin back on a peeled fruit? Improbably high percentage failure rate. Once Pandora opens the box there's no putting hope back in again. Or the creepy crawlies. The blue gloves cut her up. Simon put her back together. Send a wave to Humpty Dumpty. Shylock too." She looked at her brother. "The best king's knight and king's horse. His pricks make her bleed but give a pound of flesh for the peace of mind he's given her."

The silence returned. But at least now everyone about the room was looking at each other. Trying to gauge a reaction from River's words. Perhaps the best attempt at coherent thought any of them had ever heard from her.

"Hear hear!" Jayne said. Out of nervousness than anything else.

Malcolm raised a glass, attempting to smile, "A toast then! To Simon! For putting his sister back together."

Simon blushed, and looked uncomfortable. He looked over at Kaylee who was trying to smile with some difficulty.

Wash raised his glass too, and added, "And putting all of us back together. Many times. I know I'd be worm meat if not for you, kiddo. So would all of us."

Everyone raised their glasses and verbally seconded and thirded the notion that Simon was the man of the moment. Kaylee stabbed at her plate quietly.

"Kiddo?"

Everyone looked at Zoe. Zoe was looking at Wash.

"Did you just say kiddo?"

Jayne rolled his eyes.

Book pushed himself away from the table, but remained sitting, "Here we go again."

"No we don't - Zoe don't go there." Mal pointed an eating utensil at his second in command.

"Excuse me SIR," Zoe was being sarcastic, "but I'm just having a pleasant chat with my husband if you don't mind. I'm not hurting anyone."

"Yet," Jayne put a wad of food in his mouth and his eyes looked up at the ceiling.

"I-I I think I mind," Wash said hesitantly, looking back at his loving wife.

"Where'd you hear that word?"

"What? Kiddo?"

"Yeah."

Wash felt like he'd walked into a Becket play, "What's the big deal?"

"Grasping at straws." Mal interrupted.

"Simple question," Zoe looked levelly at Wash.

"Where'd I hear it?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know! I've always known it."

"No you've never used that word as long as I've known you."

"Of course I have."

"No, I'd remember."

"Zoe!"

"Mal stow it!"

Mal stood up. Zoe matched him. They glowered at one another across the table, fists into the wooden table, leaning into their arms.

You coulda heard a fleck of space dust bounce off the hull.

Kaylee looked over at Wash. Wash looked over at Kaylee.

Exasperated, Wash threw up his arms, "Will somebody please tell me what the hell is everybody's problem? Y'all are actin' like somebody died!"

Kaylee cleared her throat. "Looks like their realization didn't go over as smoothly as ours, Ace."

"What you mean, Kay?" Wash asked.

Jayne looked at Kaylee in awe, "You too?"

Kaylee nodded, still looking at Wash.

"Well don't that beat all!" Jayne smiled a big smile, "All eight of us! Everyone except--"

"Did you hear that word in the twentieth century, Wash?" Zoe spewed the words as if her saliva were venom. She looked over at River. "Cuz that's where I heard them. From a guy named Zandew."

Wash followed Zoe's gaze to River. His blood ran cold. "Xander, actually" he corrected her.

Zoe continued, "Or that's where I dreamed I heard them. Where something made my mind think I was in the twentieth century. And even though I knew I was dreaming I couldn't break away. No matter how much I fought."

River looked back at Zoe coldly, "Your sky is not falling. She is not your prize."

Wash stood up and purposefully placed himself between River and Zoe. "Look it's not her fault."

"De ja vu ja de." River singsonged. She popped another piece of apple in her mouth. "They almost lynched her a few hours ago. Swing and a miss."

"And why is that?" Zoe took a step toward River. Wash put his hands out to stop her. Hold her back as long as he was able, which Wash predicted would be about three point five seconds.

River screamed at the top of her lungs. Sudden sorrow and bitterness and despair exploding from her very being, "BECAUSE I CAN'T DREAM!"

She stood up. She ran away from the table and up the three steps to the doorway that led to her quarters. Then she stopped. She turned around. Tears welling up in her eyes.

"You've NO idea how envious she is of all of you! Simon put River's brain back in her skull but it's at a price. She has to get pricked twice daily. How would YOU feel? Pricks. She used to have a hundred and twenty seven pricks from Blue Sun! They used her as a pin cushion. Sliced her open and argued over how pink her flesh should be. How grey the matter. Was it the right type? Irony of ironies. Two pricks a day keeps the hundreds at bay. Now she can think straight. She can be in the room with all of you without the voices wanting to make her scream out well let her tell you! Paranoia runs deep. She may be mad but you be madder! Looking under rocks for hard places. Looking under needles for haystacks. The sky is not falling anymore. She is not your prize because she can't do what you fear. Even before the pricking. Her brain doesn't work that way."

"River," the doctor pleaded.

"SToW iT sImOn!"

She looked at them. They were all looking at her.

"Tell us how it works, child."

"Shepherd please," Wash interrupted.

"No honestly this is the most River's been willing to share with us since she first danced into our lives," Book took a daring step forward. Just one step, "And I for one am thankful she's in our lives. I have wanted her to open up. Not in the bad way that those men did with their knives. They took from you River. We'd never want to do that. We don't want to take we want to give and we hope someday to receive from you what you will. I can't ever know what it was like for you, we can't ever understand it fully or appreciate it. We don't know what they did. Please. I want to hear from you. How does it work? What might they have done that could cause us all to get these dreams from you--?"

"She's not your prize!"

"No one's accusing you, River--" Wash said.

River looked back at Wash. "Yes they are."

"ENOUGH!"

All eyes turned to Inara, who had remained silent this entire time. Until now. She stood up. She walked over to River. She stood between her and them, at the bottom of the three steps.

"You ARE accusing her. You fear what you don't understand. God! That's precisely why I--" Inara faltered. River reached out and put a hand on Inara's shoulder comfortingly. Inara touched River's hand with her own but kept her back to River, addressing the group, fighting tears.

"Why you did what, Inara?" Mal wanted to know.

"Nothing. I mean that's not what matters at the moment. The point is you don't understand how her mind works any better than she does, or the bastards that did this to her. You think it's psychic phenomena? What's happened to our dreams? You assume it's River doing it. You think that's a rational and logical choice? I tell you right here and now the only person in this room who can think rationally and logically is the one you fear the most. Her brain was tailor made to approach everything like a laser beam. It's how come she thinks, reacts and feels as fast and as hard as she does.

"She can't not." Simon had stepped over to stand beside Inara. "She has no amygdala. She can't not feel. Or think. They've bypassed the failsafes and slowdowns in brains that we take for granted. Second guessing and pushing down impulses? What we do with our emotions all the time? She's not capable of that."

Jayne hadn't interrupted his eating, but managed to fit this in in between bites, "Then how you explain her psychic stuff? How she knows stuff?"

Simon sighed, "They took her brain and made it like a machine. Like a computer. We're all mathematical equations to River. She knows all the general laws of nature and sociology--"

"God knows what all has been programmed into her," Inara added.

"And she factors everything into this big ongoing mathematical formula that she's constantly updating and reprising. She's not even aware she's doing it but she finds patterns where you and I wouldn't even look and from that she extrapolates probable conclusions. If everything she senses remains constant, X will happen to Y. It's simple algebra to her."

Inara added, "Calculus. Trigonometry. Spatial relationships..."

"She observes her surroundings and it all gets calculated into probabilities. And her brain works on probabilities nonstop, probably several at a time."

"Up to twenty-three simultaneously," River interrupted unemotionally, although tear streaks were down her cheeks, "She's never needed to do more than twenty-three. Could do more." She shrugged.

"How come you know all this, Inara? Simon?" Mal asked.

Inara stewed, "Because I observe. And if you people would quit being so afraid of her all the time. Spent time with her--"

"I have. I do," Kaylee defended, "But how do you know how her brain works?"

Inara smiled, "I don't try to come up with things to do with her, Kaylee. I just try to come up with time to be with her."

"She's not your prize," River repeated. "She can't affect dreams. She can't observe dreams. Never could. Now, she can't dream. Simon's pricks won't let her."

Simon turned to face his sister, shocked at this discovery, "You mean since we started this latest treatment? That was two weeks ago?"

"And she was thankful. The night before, she had a dream, telling her he's coming. She didn't like it. She didn't want to dream again. But how she envies all of you. Sharing your dreams. Then you get mad at each other and she thinks you're all being mean. Shouldn't be this way."

Wash just sat back down, "I'm all overwhelmed over here I don't get what y'all are talking about. Why did ya just assume River had anything to do with what's been going on?"

"She's the only one--" Zoe started.

Wash interrupted, "didn't y'all dream about Willow? She played with magic like it were a recreational drug. Weird kid. She coulda screwed up and--"

"Willow's not the prize either." River shook her head, "She's harmless. He's harm. He's the one we need to worry."

"He who?" Book asked.

"Captain's quarry. The man we're going to see. He wants to end it all."

"All what?"

River looked down at her feet.

"Simon. Inara.." Book motioned for them to step aside. He put his hand out towards River, "Please, dear. You have our undivided attention now. I've tried to be a listener before. I'm sorry if I didn't listen hard enough."

"You listen. You do not hear."

Still sitting at his place at the far end of the table, Mal said this out loud but more to himself than anyone else, but they all heard him.

"We understand, but don't comprehend."

He looked up and his eyes met with River's. "We want to comprehend now. Please River. Tell us what you know."

Book added, "Tell us your dream, River."

River glanced at Book, then looked long and hard over at Mal, who sat thirty feet from her, across the room. She looked at his eyes and he looked at hers.

River looked. And then she smiled. She smiled the biggest smile, and her tear streaks sparkled on her cheeks in the light of the room.

She wiped the tears from her face with her hands.

"Okay."

TO BE CONTINUED