There was something off about today; River could feel it in her bones, in her skin, in her hair, and her fingernails. A drastically altered brain led to some strange sensations.
The fourth day, ten more to go.
Love was supposed to be centred in the heart. In her days of confusion she decided that she didn't love anybody, because all the sensations were in her stomach, intestines, eyes and skin. She admits she might be remembering that wrong.
Even more disconcerting back then was looking at Jayne, listening to Jayne, feeling Jayne re-cycled through the ventilation system or imprinted on the walls. Her bodily sensations would come from odd places. She knew the full scientific names for all of the parts and fully understood their functions, of course. Except on the days when understanding refused to marry with comprehension. On those days, she tried to see with her fingers, eat with her eyes and didn't even dare experiment with those parts. Involuntary functions seemed to continue regardless, thankfully.
She couldn't understand how those parts connected to Jayne.
Too confusing to feel 'love' for one that was ignorant, crude, selfish, violent and obsessed with sex. She shook her head at her brain chemicals, lined up in her imagination as little wicked men, Testosterone, Oestrogen, Dopamine, Norepinephrine, Serotonin, Oxytocin and Vasopressin, her own Seven Dwarfs with co-starring roles in her own personal fairy tale of old fashioned lust and terror in the black. All seven of them jeering in her ear and pushing her to touch.
She thought if she touched, the connection would be unbreakable, skin bonding to skin. She both knew and didn't know what that might mean. Understanding jumped out from the closet, then skulked away to wait for the next, best moment to go BOO! Comprehension lived under the bed.
She identified his chest, the cradle of his heart as the likely source of any connection. Slashing at it didn't change anything.
He brought her apples. She wondered when some of them came up if he had poisoned them.
Today she is not that bad and could be better if she was not so stubborn, so determined to be whatever she is without her brother's liquid miracles. She looks around her carefully. The interior of Serenity looks like the interior of Serenity, no trees, and the black is outside where it belongs, not whirling and swirling with stars in the cargo bay.
She counts the hours, minutes and seconds, (thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight), since she slept. There are far too many, (thirty-nine, forty, forty-one). If she fell asleep and refused to wake up, would Jayne kiss her? She remembers the less than romantic end to some of the old fairy tales and her skin goes cold. So she climbs into a hidey-hole and puts metal at her back.
Sadly, a great number of Goblins are still inside her, thread through the point of a needle and they are angry. They do not go gentle into that good night, they fight, bite, scratch, and scream for more to swell their numbers.
Ten more days.
She presses herself more violently into the metal, hadn't she merged with the ship before? She could do it again, she could do anything, be anything. If only the Goblins would die and flush out of her system. That worried her a little, little Goblin corpses sweating into her sheets and through Serenity's drains. Would Serenity forgive her for filling her full of rotting fairy tale creatures?
Ten more days before her withdrawel symptoms are likely to pass.
If he finds her, she would have to wake up and grow up before she was ready. Better to wait, better to see him with her own eyes, to hear him with her own ears. Would the Seven Dwarfs still be there? Perhaps they would flush away with the Goblins and this inexplicable feeling for Jayne would flush away with them.
The idea makes her cry.
Ten more days for the Goblins to die.
Ten more days.
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River is thinking of 'Do not go gentle into that good night,' by Dylan Thomas