Captivity, in threes

“Miranda.”

A whisper, a heartbeat, a wish.

Her breath suspends, hovers, and then rushes its release. Her limbs and senses disconnect from her brain, as consciousness deserts her body.

Spinning, flying, dancing. Fists and arms and feet push through air as through water. She is weightless and movement is heavy. Connecting with bone and flesh. The sounds register as tremors, not as touch. Insensate incoherent inalterable. Her eyes flicker, not seeing anything but the next movement.

An object in her hand. It doesn’t mean what you think, but there is no thinking and it fires and finds its target true. Inevitable infallible instantaneous. The gun is a magnet and pulls north, whirls her around to stare, blind, up the stairs. Unwavering unerring uncomprehending.

“Ai de kuo nas meh!”

Collapse. All air is gone, all lights shut out, all is black. A stone does not dream.

****

Wake up. Shiver, jolt, gasp. Wake up.

Fingers twitch and eyes burn with the first flash of awareness. Catalyst captive cataclysm. Air and thought and memory rush in, crowding out the cold fear she tastes deep in her throat. It’s not safe for them. Deck plates are a bitter bed, angry grates branding her skin.

Panting, she crests a wave of remembrance. Simon and Mal: her lodestars, the poles that align her axis. Partners and protectors, they saved her. They were saved from her. They ran. Revive resuscitate recover.

Once, she had been dancing, but now she knows. Her body betrayed her, and it aches with the destruction she wrought. Excavate extract exhaust. The weight of memory flattens her, presses her down and hollows her.

Her prayer to be made a stone is a vanished whisper into the black. There is no rest, no relief, no end.