Post-BDM I guess, but no real spoilers. References the Sessions so you may want to watch those.
(Joss Whedon once said that if Serenity is the tenth character, River's feet are the eleventh.)
Feet are to body as body is to soul. So much you can't do without it and yet is it what really matters? Cut off your feet and you are still you. Just unable to walk on the earth with the rest of them.
Her small messengers feel and see for her. Doesn't understand shoes. They cut you off. Like wearing a mask. She hates masks. Can't see anyone. Orderlies. Cut you up.
They didn't touch her, not on the outside. Whole perfect graceful feet, ten toes like parents wish for in the fearful whispers before the bird touches down on the rooftop. Whole graceful body, more than intact, perhaps better.
It doesn't match! She screams into the void between. What has the one to do with the other? The length stretches out as she peers down from the bent-metal-broken-glass smudge that they left of up here. Feet are so far away. So perfect.
Too perfect.
She tries not to think of finding one of those meaningless objects that should mean fear and pain but don't and tearing them up to match the rest. Bleeding feet like bleeding brain. Fight that like you fight reavers. Otherwise no better than being one. Enough of her left to know, most of the time, blood is precious.
Better to start at the top, where the wrong is. Wipe it clean. Start fresh. So much simpler. Bullet to the brain pan. Squish!
Cut the rest off, leave the feet. But they won't dance anymore. Simon would hate that. He loves them to dance.
So did she…when she was just simply she. When did the head grow so far from the feet? She should still be a little girl. Looking down at the feet now she gets dizzy.
She looked at them. Were they part of her?
They walked Serenity of their own accord. It was what they did, walking. Sometimes she wasn't even really there. They told her later what they learned from the old metal.
They've been made soldiers too. Made to wear boots, made to fight. Good, she didn't want to face the reavers. Touch them. Little soldiers wear little helmets to hide her face. But she didn't want to be soldiers. Never did. Just wanted to dance. Then they could smile, wouldn't have to hide. Little naked innocent feet like laughing children attached to a train wreck by this nervous system running in between.
But the wreckage was being cleared away, things being fixed.
She sent an impulse through the system that made her toes wiggle. They laughed.
Maybe someday they'd all be one again. The three of them.