(no subject)

[river_meimei]

In one sense: River is curled up in her bunk's narrow bed, a tidy lump under blankets with dark hair fanning all around her head. She's sound asleep.



In another sense: River is in a maze, old-fashioned, planetside -- a hedge of high green bushes with white flowers, with a floor of incongruously dead dry grass. It crackles under her ballet slippers. The blossoming walls are too dense to see through, rearing twice as tall as River, and the corridors are green and cool and silent. It's a labyrinth.

She doesn't know her way through. But in the dream, she hasn't really stopped to notice that. She just has to keep moving, and she'll get... somewhere.

She hasn't really thought about that one, either.

Comments

[lastgunslinger]

"He makes his decisions, as you do yours. No shame, if they're not the same."

One arched eyebrow. "You might even learn something, mayhap."

[river_meimei]

No shift: they're on a couch, old and sagging, with stuffing billowing out from scattered rents in the upholstery.

(It's popcorn.)

River leans against his brown-coated shoulder in silence.

[lastgunslinger]

Roland, monolithic, seems comfortable maintaining it.

In front of them: a map of the Anglo-Sino Union of Allied Planets.

It moves, slowly.

[river_meimei]

Eventually: "It's hard."

She isn't whining. Even in her dreams, River lost the habit of self-pity a long while ago, and this isn't a dream to bring it back out.

But Roland's shoulder is warm against her cheek, and the map in front of them swings through its colorful rotations (inaccurate, but in the dream it isn't), and her voice is soft and sad.

[lastgunslinger]

"Yes." And Roland is thoughtful, rather than impatient. "But not the hardest you've done, I wot."

[river_meimei]

River makes a little face.

It says, I know.

And it says, But still.

[lastgunslinger]

"Then when will you tell?"

[river_meimei]

The answer in the waking world is: soon.

Today, maybe, when the day has properly begun. It's nearly morning. And the deadline's coming up fast for Simon and Kaylee to settle their housing arrangements.

The answer here is: "I will."

[lastgunslinger]

When Roland looks at River, it's with that piercing dead-on blue gaze that's more intimidating than the gun by far.

Simply:

"It is very well."

[river_meimei]

River meets his

(faded bombadier)

eyes in silence for a long moment. She doesn't flinch, or blink. Instead, one corner of her mouth crooks up, just enough to see.

"I miss you," she whispers. This, too, is wistfully accepting.

[lastgunslinger]

And Roland replies, with something approaching uncustomary warmth.

(Uncustomary, if you're not River Tam.)

His eyes stay bright; the rest begins to fade.

[river_meimei]

River's eyes fill with tears.

Stay, she says, Roland, stay, but she can't talk. The words break on the air, splintering around her, and no sound is audible.

The couch is gone too; the rug is gone, the walls, and the hedge and the mirrors and the fine drifting cigarette smoke. And Roland.



River is left in a narrow cobblestoned street, alone, on a warm summer's night. She's wearing toe shoes, taking tiny delicate steps (pas de bourrée, triple run, assemblé) en pointe, even though her feet are relaxed and comfortable as they never could be doing in this position. She's holding a cupcake; it has sprinkles. The candle in it burns a faded, piercing blue. She doesn't remember why she was sad a moment ago.



But when she wakes, she will.