A small New Year's Offering
It is a testimony to how far off the earth (Verse?) I have fallen when it took me a few minutes to remember how to get to this LJ, and how to format. Yikes. I have not been writing fiction of any kind, fan or original, in months and months. Been mostly keeping up with RL, catching up with what was ignored while I was playing too much in fantasy land, and essentially treating the internet as a place of evil to be avoided lest I be sucked back in to the world of glorious irresponsibility. Could be that in 2009 I learn how to balance the two. But as it happens, as I was cleaning dishes the other night, that rascal Mal, who has been long absent from my brain, started, of all things, to sing. It was irresistible, like those Christmas cards you get from folks you haven't heard from in a year. So I wrote down his song, and rather hastily wrapped a small vignette around it so I wouldn't lose it. Many thanks to miss_daizy and hfleming8 for telling me it was OK, and giving me the idea to blow the dust off this LJ and put it here, and maybe at Mal/Inara. A few more notes to those I have woefully ignored: mal4prez, I just opened your email, so this maybe answers what I am up to. katesfriend1, if you're out there, I hope you enjoy. terimaru, I miss you terribly, and when I work out the balance in my life maybe I can come back to chat. And browncoat_2x2, I'm glad you're back in the Verse, too.
Ok then, the note is longer than the ficlet. Happy New Year. Let's see if I can remember how to format.
There were possibly not enough cups of tea in all of Sihnon to soothe the nerves that had been rattled on Serenity that day, but it was ingrained habit - and a sudden need to be a part of the catwalks and corridors - that drew Inara silently toward the galley, hand trailing along the railings, deep in the ship’s night cycle. And it was an unexpected noise from within that brought her to a halt in the shadows of the fore passage.
A low voice, hushed but sure, made her think that she had stumbled upon Mal and Zoe, tete-a-tete. Yet there was something decidedly non-conversational in the muffled stream of sound. A cadence… a prayer? Barely breathing, she dared a look around the door hatch. There Mal sat, quite alone, head bowed, lips moving. The soft glow from the table lamp washed him in a golden backlight, as his hands moved in soft circles on the surface before him.
What was this? She stood transfixed, certain she had uncovered some hidden truth about this maddening man, who looked for all the verse as though he was communing with the saints ---
“Tzao gao!” Mal snapped his hand away from the table and stuck his right thumb into his mouth. Inara retreated behind the door, covering her own mouth to keep from laughing. How she had let her imagination fly, allowing a trick of the light to conjure what she wanted to see. Malcolm Reynolds, she heard clearly now as he stopped his soft cursing, was singing. Simply singing to himself, childlike - she looked again through the doorway - as he patched his long brown coat.
“Them as came before you were brave, brave more than they were free,
Gambling generations on a journey to a land they’d never see,”
A simple tune, to keep him company as he worked. Inara relaxed in the darkness, this time listening to what he was actually saying, watching what he was actually doing, thinking he was alone.
“Trading lives to chance a dream for faces they’d not ever meet,
They gave years and fear and sweat to lay this ground here at your feet.
Gave it all so we can ride sweet from the river to the range,”
He lifted the brown coat, assessing the tear in the left arm. The tear she knew was matched in the shirt he was still wearing, and in the skin beneath it. He set the coat back on the table and continued his needlework.
“Long as we’re here standing, that’s one thing’ll never change.
So come along with me, little one, swing up along with me,
I’ll show you all that’s ours, that’s yours, as it’ll ever and always be.
“Them as landed here - ow! - they were hardy, they were strong,
Born among the stars but bred to live here long
Fearless as they tamed the terra, so foreign yet so known
Was their blood, their tears, their fierceness made this place your own.”
His voice was a dusky tenor, not rich but not at all unpleasant. Honest, he would likely call it. From honest folk. A casual, unassuming honesty that was somehow now causing her own throat to close up as she watched him, hair hanging over his face, watched his fingers work the steel through the unyielding fabric.
“Gave it all so we can ride sweet from the river to the range,
Long as we’re here standing, that’s one thing’ll never change.
So come along with me, little one, swing up along with me,
I’ll show you all that’s ours, that’s yours, as it’ll ever and always be.
“So stand up, son, when you hear their names
When their tales are told.
Know their strength and pride runs through you
Your heritage can’t be sold.
When you stand up, son, you’ll know who you are
What you were meant to be
You’re a Shadowman who won’t lay down
A Shadowman, like me. ”
He held the coat up again for scrutiny, the needle clamped temporarily in his mouth. “I know, momma, ain’t my best work, but it’ll do.”
Inara could barely hear his refrain as she retreated down the passageway to the stairs, one hand again over her mouth, the other hand guiding her along the walls as her vision blurred.
“You'll give it all so we can ride sweet from the river to the range,
Long as we’re here standing, that’s one thing’ll never change.
So come along with me, little one, swing up along with me,
I’ll show you all that’s ours, that’s yours, as it’ll ever and always be.”
Ok then, the note is longer than the ficlet. Happy New Year. Let's see if I can remember how to format.
There were possibly not enough cups of tea in all of Sihnon to soothe the nerves that had been rattled on Serenity that day, but it was ingrained habit - and a sudden need to be a part of the catwalks and corridors - that drew Inara silently toward the galley, hand trailing along the railings, deep in the ship’s night cycle. And it was an unexpected noise from within that brought her to a halt in the shadows of the fore passage.
A low voice, hushed but sure, made her think that she had stumbled upon Mal and Zoe, tete-a-tete. Yet there was something decidedly non-conversational in the muffled stream of sound. A cadence… a prayer? Barely breathing, she dared a look around the door hatch. There Mal sat, quite alone, head bowed, lips moving. The soft glow from the table lamp washed him in a golden backlight, as his hands moved in soft circles on the surface before him.
What was this? She stood transfixed, certain she had uncovered some hidden truth about this maddening man, who looked for all the verse as though he was communing with the saints ---
“Tzao gao!” Mal snapped his hand away from the table and stuck his right thumb into his mouth. Inara retreated behind the door, covering her own mouth to keep from laughing. How she had let her imagination fly, allowing a trick of the light to conjure what she wanted to see. Malcolm Reynolds, she heard clearly now as he stopped his soft cursing, was singing. Simply singing to himself, childlike - she looked again through the doorway - as he patched his long brown coat.
“Them as came before you were brave, brave more than they were free,
Gambling generations on a journey to a land they’d never see,”
A simple tune, to keep him company as he worked. Inara relaxed in the darkness, this time listening to what he was actually saying, watching what he was actually doing, thinking he was alone.
“Trading lives to chance a dream for faces they’d not ever meet,
They gave years and fear and sweat to lay this ground here at your feet.
Gave it all so we can ride sweet from the river to the range,”
He lifted the brown coat, assessing the tear in the left arm. The tear she knew was matched in the shirt he was still wearing, and in the skin beneath it. He set the coat back on the table and continued his needlework.
“Long as we’re here standing, that’s one thing’ll never change.
So come along with me, little one, swing up along with me,
I’ll show you all that’s ours, that’s yours, as it’ll ever and always be.
“Them as landed here - ow! - they were hardy, they were strong,
Born among the stars but bred to live here long
Fearless as they tamed the terra, so foreign yet so known
Was their blood, their tears, their fierceness made this place your own.”
His voice was a dusky tenor, not rich but not at all unpleasant. Honest, he would likely call it. From honest folk. A casual, unassuming honesty that was somehow now causing her own throat to close up as she watched him, hair hanging over his face, watched his fingers work the steel through the unyielding fabric.
“Gave it all so we can ride sweet from the river to the range,
Long as we’re here standing, that’s one thing’ll never change.
So come along with me, little one, swing up along with me,
I’ll show you all that’s ours, that’s yours, as it’ll ever and always be.
“So stand up, son, when you hear their names
When their tales are told.
Know their strength and pride runs through you
Your heritage can’t be sold.
When you stand up, son, you’ll know who you are
What you were meant to be
You’re a Shadowman who won’t lay down
A Shadowman, like me. ”
He held the coat up again for scrutiny, the needle clamped temporarily in his mouth. “I know, momma, ain’t my best work, but it’ll do.”
Inara could barely hear his refrain as she retreated down the passageway to the stairs, one hand again over her mouth, the other hand guiding her along the walls as her vision blurred.
“You'll give it all so we can ride sweet from the river to the range,
Long as we’re here standing, that’s one thing’ll never change.
So come along with me, little one, swing up along with me,
I’ll show you all that’s ours, that’s yours, as it’ll ever and always be.”