useofaswhat | 008 ✫ Video

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008 ✫ Video

[One of these announcements. He hasn't ordered anyone around via electronics in a couple of months, Natasha excluded (and it's not like she listens anyway), and it feels good for Mal to be back in the saddle. It makes the whole Barge thing a little easier to get a grip on.]

Firefly-class Serenity, come in if you read. This is your captain speaking direct from a giant eyesore hellboat. Frequency's open and I ain't going anywhere. How're y'all getting along?

River. You around there, girl? Seems your brother needs a little looking-after.

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Ones on fire. [One day she will speak literally and it will be glorious. But at least it's making her calm down. She seems to get taller in the video, rising to her toes.]

They can't burn when you fly.

[There are times when River speaks almost coherently or with her own crazy kind of poetry and Mal understands her with only the slightest bit of pause. This is not one of those times. This particular odd pronouncement just befuddles him.]

Uh...huh. And why're they better off on fire again?

[She gives him a look like he's the one being incomprehensible.]

Can't dance to what you don't like. Don't want to do the steps. Can't follow through. [She's actually walking very gracefully on her toes, on the cat walk in Serenity's bay.]

Don't hear music for a while; when it comes back, do you listen to something ugly?

[The ballet thing he can put together, and even the part about not dancing to what you don't like, but the rest is too tangled for him to undo.]

Wǒ tīng bù dǒng*, little River. 'S there a way you can say what you're sayin' in dummy-talk?

*I don't get it.

Edited 2012-11-18 06:57 (UTC)

Ask Simon. [He's the dummy. Maybe he'll translate for you, Mal. She frowns then, because she doesn't like that Simon is there at all.]

Should be with Serenity.

I'll do that.

Should be with you, you mean. [Assuming they're both talking about Simon.] Don't you worry. Like I told Zoë, we won't be gone but a couple minutes.

I am Serenity. [Or she was for a little while. Or will be. When are you from, Mal?] Simon said. Can't be here and gone at once, can't be in too places. Math doesn't add up. Doesn't make sense.

Still? [Well, "still" might be a bit unfair, considering he left but a few hours after River guided him to jettison Jubal Early. It may yet be the same day for her.] Plenty of things don't make sense, but that don't mean they don't happen.