"River," he says, "There's a line--"

But a line is only an artificial construct. It doesn't exist in nature.

So she steps over it.

Once she was lost.

Well, not really; she wasn't lost . She knew exactly where she was--the shoe department, running her fingers over buckles and sharp toes and rounded heels, and laces all the colors of the spectrum. It was everyone else that was misplaced. But even so, those are the words you use: getting lost . So, okay. Fine. She was lost.

There was a man that found her. He was tall and had stubble and didn't smell very good. He had the kindest eyes. They were brown. He wore a belt made out of braided milky plastic, the kind they use to bind soda into packs of six.

She takes a moment to run through the multiples: six, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four, thirty...

He held her hand, the man, and he took her to the store cafe and bought her a three-scoop sundae with a handful of hard cred. She'd never seen hard cred before. He let her have one of the coins. Later she wore it on a piece of string, under her clothes, where her mother wouldn't see it, until finally the string broke, and she lost the coin. But she remembers it, the texture of it against her fingers.

She hadn't eaten very much ice cream before her mother came running up. She'd never seen her mother run. She'd never seen her look so frightened either. Her blue eyes are wide. Her mouth is a rouged O of horror and dismay. She tries to explain but her mother rips her from the booth. Over and over again, she asks, "Did he touch you? Oh, River, did he touch you?"

But her mother never gives her a chance to answer. Her father and Simon are waiting near the store's doors. With one somber look, her father ushers them into the waiting car. At home, she's lectured about the importance of staying with the family. Later, her mother talks to her about "good touch" and "bad touch".

"He was nice," she insists, tired and cranky now. She doesn't know what she did wrong. "He just held my hand. He bought me ice cream. I just wanted some ice cream." She starts to cry, and her mother showers her face in kisses then takes her downstairs and they have sundaes, just the two of them.

The whole time, though, her mother's hands are restless. They fiddle with the collar of her pyjamas, tangle or stroke through her hair, grip briefly at her arm. Finally she grabs her mother's wrist and looks at her. "Mom," she says sternly, "I'm fine."

Her mother gives a nervous, yelping laugh, and that's the end of it.

When she can, she watches Simon in the infirmary. She likes to see him there, where he feels most at home, most himself. It's not home, but he makes do. Simon always makes do.

First he wipes down the surfaces. The smell of astringent makes her sneeze, a sound she hides behind both hands. She doesn't want him to know she is here. He will worry, and he will stop, because he won't want her watching. This is his time, a ritual he conducts in private. There is so little private. She is not private; she lost everything and held back nothing. Now it all slips through her fingers, and she misses when she could cup it in her hands and hold it.

There's a line, he says, and though it isn't real, he needs to pretend it is, and he needs her to pretend it is. For Simon, she can pretend. He would always pretend for her, when she asked.

Next, he sterilizes all his instruments. Surgeon's fingers caress metal familiarly, like they could caress skin. He knows these devices, their every nick and blemish, the way he knows the bones of his own hand. He knows what they can do and what they won't. He lays them out in neat rows on paper. When Simon holds them like this, they are beautiful, and not scary at all.

Sometimes, he touches her like that; like she's beautiful and not scary. He combs her hair, the way he did when they were little, and she says: See? See how we've come full circle? The line is gone.

"Yes, mei mei, I see," he answers. But his smile is the squinchy eyed on that tells her he hasn't. He doesn't understand.

Not at all.

She's very conscious, after the store. Of touch.

I touch, he touches, she/he/it is touching.

Touch, touching, being touched. Her mother has always been a toucher; tugs Simon's vests straight, rearranges her hair, runs fingers across the maple and mahoghany of the sideboard when the maids aren't looking. Their father, on the other hand, is not. Rarely does he rumple Simon's hair and she thinks only she notices how Simon's eyes glow when he does.

Sometimes touch is not a function of the physical. Her mother watches a vid and cries. Oh, that was so touching , she says, and she understands her mother has been touched on the inside, by something different than skin and bone. Her father gets a promotion, his third in two years. I was so touched, when Brisdon thought of me, he says.

This is what she learns: everything touches and is touched in return.

At the Academy she was touched. It was bad, a bad touch, all the time, until every part of her felt pierced and holed and shamed.

But when her mother caught Simon masturbating, she said that was a bad touch too. She has masturbated, more successfully than Simon. She can't remember much that ever felt quite so good.

And this is what she learns: good touch, bad touch--it's just another line.

Touched is also slang for crazy.

They think she is crazy, often--though not all the time. It's mixed in with other things, a confusing tumble that hits and hits and hits until she is on the ground, gasping from blows no one can see. And then it comes floating out to her like the smell of cleanser from the infirmary:

crazycrazycrazy

that girl ain't quite right

touched/tetched

poor crazy thing

I'm not a thing/i she wants to say, and I can hear you! But there's so much and she can't make them understand, even when she tries, and it just makes her tired. So very tired.

Still, crazy means they don't touch. Mostly. Sometimes they do. Chasing Kaylee down staircases and across catwalks, wresting an apple from calloused and clever fingers. Inara, soft and perfumed, and pressure on fourteen parts. Sometimes, Wash will ruffle her hair exactly like their father didn't. But mostly there is space around her, empty and untouched.

She thinks of the shield maidens on Earth-that-Was. She thinks of oracles. They too were untouched, symbolic. She knows that she too is a symbol, though she's not sure of what. She doesn't want to be a symbol; a symbol is yet another kind of line, and lines do not exist. She thinks she exists. She wants to exist, and thus she can't be either line or symbol.

But this she can't explain either.

Untouchable.

It's not only for shield maidens and oracles. The absence of touch does not make it good. Also there are lepers, pariah. They are untouched. Unwanted. Unclean.

And she wonders, which am I?

At night she wakes from bad dreams, even unbounded by nutshells, and she is alone in her room and the skin that cried out so desperately to stop! stop now screams with the desperation for something else. She wants to be held, to be given form and shape by the hands of another. Unsteady, she crawls from beneath clinging sheets and opens the door and crosses the hall.

The bunks are not wide, but even so, Simon always sleeps crushed to one side, leaving space for this very thing. For her. She huddles against him, and even in sleep, his hands creep around her, and pull her close. "Mei mei," he murmurs, and something in her unclenches and something in her unknots.

He loves her, Simon. He came for her, and took her back, and took her away, and now it's he that holds her up and makes her remember. There is a River-shaped hole in him, and she fills it gratefully, knowing it's hers.

With Simon, she's never untouchable.

She's in his hands.