Note: I know the italics are annoying but they are necessary to differentiate River's trains of thought. Apologies for late update. Firstly, I crashed my car and have been feeling somewhat uninspired to say the least. Secondly, I hated my first draft of this chapter so much that I had to start all over again – hopefully this is better. Mostly just an idea that wouldn't get out of my head. Not necessarily important to story but (maybe) a character study. Translations at end of post. Anyway, read and review! -esprit noir

All usual disclaimers etc - what's mine is mine, what's everyone else's is theirs respectively...not making any money from this (although I do wish I was)

Part 18.1 – Gold

The dying light reminds of her of things she can't really see clearly anymore. Hazy recollections she hoped she might remember again one day. Her limbs feel delightfully heavy and her skin tingles with relief. Maybe just a few moments, she thinks.

River loves to dream.

They tell her not to.

You can't live on a dream they scold.

But River knows better.

River dips her head back against the arm of the long chaise and closes her eyes. The sun filters through her eyelids like they're tissue paper as she falls away from the light.

A dreamy summer afternoon. The sun swamps everything in a thick honey glow. The sweet, spicy scent of azaleas wafts through the window – a smell that she remembers but can't recall. Hours spent in daddy's study, rifling with a child's enthusiasm through his Earth-That-Was collections.

Gabriel Tam loves beautiful things. Their house is littered with costly paintings, priceless antiques and rare artefacts. Each piece as delightful and as loved as the next. Above the fireplace, a family portrait in the old style of paint and a canvas, created by a artist with an old soul and a wonderful eye for proportion, the Tams themselves make a fine addition to the collection.

Of course, these things cost dearly to maintain, but Gabriel Tam's fortunes are in sync with his expensive hobbies so it doesn't occur to his daughter to ponder any vulgar questions of money. No distasteful inquiry as to why her father can surround his family in useless magnificence, even as the Independent political spiels she finds on the cortex tell her that people are suffering. Her teachers tell her they're suffering in ignorance. It's their own fault for fighting the civilisation of the Alliance. Her parents tell her to remain silent on such topics (especially when they have company) and it's on those nights that she goes to sleep troubled.

But a child is volatile and fickle and the ultimate in pragmatism. So she awakes with these pangs forgotten. Books and albums full of dazzling inspirations, fill whole walls of shelves. Antique captures called photographs of people in strange clothes stare intensely, begging her to unravel their secrets of their sepia pasts. Frightening, glittering things, formed under the hands of those who are long gone. How can you expect a child to notice the shadows behind them?

So, on dreamy summer afternoons with the sun pouring through the giant glass windows and the smell of antique love and cloves on her skin, she forgets everything but the gold. Simon has no soul for poetry but River falls in love her father's Shakespeare and sinks under the spell of the paintings of great lovers and great warriors and great fools of mythology.

"I have something for you to see Princess," daddy beckons her into the study.

River trips in on light feet, vibrating with anticipation. That morning a woman dressed in a green suit arrived with a package and two assistants to carry it. River waited outside her father's study as it was brought in and for awhile all she could hear was quiet murmuring. Then the green suit and her two underlings left the place and for a few painful moments, her father remained closeted by himself in his study. River steps onto the threshold and meets with a picture of her father, standing profile, staring with gleaming eyes at the west wall.

The squeaky floorboard makes him look over, and he beckons her closer, but more like an excited child than a controlled Core-bred gentleman, "Quickly River, you must see this!"

River takes a few steps forward, and is almost at her father's side when she turns her head to the west wall before the breath is quite literally knocked from her lungs. . She stumbles, and her throat pops as she realises she's never beheld true magnificence before.

"Wo de tian a..." she whispers to herself, tears almost coming to her eyes.

A golden fresco, pulsing with something vital and magic. A man, nay, an angel, fallen from heaven (she's sure of it), a sculpted Adonis laid out with three silken maids weeping over his lifeless form, with his dark sweeping venal wings gloriously splayed across the scape.

It was beautiful and sorrowful. Deep and so full of life that River almost fancies that she could see the man's chest rise and fall with his last breath.

"Henry James Draper," her father's voice breaks her reverie, "The Lament for Icarus... 1898."

"Icarus?" she tests the name on her tongue, it sounds strange to her.

Gabriel turned to his daughter, taking pleasure in her glassy-eyed admiration. He tells her the story, passes it on like his mother had passed it on to him. The foolish son who did not listen to his father. Got too close and didn't realise until it was too late. A tale to warn about the incautious exuberance of youth. The dangers of hubris.

A pause. River looks at her father suspiciously, tearing her eyes away, "Are you trying to tell me something daddy?"

He only smiles, but the light in his eyes are so bright they blast away River's vision.

And then the library's gone.

All that's left is light.

Pure yellow light.

Dare she say...Gold?

Bursting like firecrackers.

But silent like the grave.

Then she hears his voice. Many voices in fact as she floats here in a vacuum of light.

"Trust me River..."

So she closes her eyes and is vaporised.

Atoms of River Tam spin slowly, and then faster, whirlpooling around in space.

"Stop now River..."

River gasps as cold air rushes her, and she opens her eyes, only to find herself standing at the end of a cliff. The wind whips around her and the sea below her crashes against the rocks. She screams, a girlish, childish scream and stumbles back, landing against hard ground. Suddenly a shadow is cast over her.

She looks up. Stops breathing. He's lovely. Oh so brilliantly beautiful that she can't look at him, and can't stop looking at him all at the same time.

"You're finally here..." his voice is smooth and silky, but deep and strong all the same, "We've been waiting a long time haven't we, my love?"

She can't reply because she's breathless and confused. Her heart's fluttering a hundred beats a minute, she can feel the blood pulsing through her chest. She casts her eyes over his wonderful form. Sees the straps which bind the wings to his arms. She hates them. She thought he was an angel. He looks like a god. The straps make him hatefully mortal.

"Are you scared River?" his question goes unanswered, but he continues, "You shouldn't be, my darling."

His endearments send bolts of something she can't describe through her body. She shakes her head numbly for no reason she can't think of.

He looks down at her, with a face filled with the tenderest of love, and smiles, "I always wanted to fly..." and he begins to run.

Don't fly too close to the water River.

The waves will drench your wings and you'll not be able to fly.

Don't fly too close to the sun River.

The wax will melt and you'll fall to your death.

River gasps with horrible realisation. "WAIT NO!"

He's not more than a few steps away when it grips her deathly hard. Sharp fear shoots through her now. She's going to lose him.

"No!" she screams, stands and runs after him, her legs suddenly weighted with lead, "No! You can't leave me now!"

She's almost there. Reaches out to grasp him but misses and stops short of falling past the cliff face. Her heart plummets as she sees his disappear over the edge, only to have it jump into her throat when he appears again, catching the wind under his wings and flying.

With horror she watches him begin to rise higher and higher into the sky. With the sun...

River gasps as she's knocked back.

With the sun...in her eyes...

River feels the rush as she swoops down and then glides up again. The wings span outwards and buffer her on the wind, pushing and pulling and beating against her body.

But she can't feel discomfort now. She's entranced by the sight of it.

The sun, the moon, the verse, the stars, the sky, the sea, the land, the Black.

She's rising higher and higher, where the air is is sweeter and sweeter...

The adrenaline shoots through her, making her eyes glassy and silver.

She hears something. Someone calling her back.

"Silence you old fool," voice is husky and not her own, "You will not stop me!"

Sometimes flashes of temper. Flashes of ambition. Flashes of hubris.

Lashing out because she knows no one can stop her.

Dangerous.

So she holds back and stops herself before she goes too far.

But Icarus is not River. And today River is Icarus.

These wings that are bound to her with leather straps cut into River's flesh and pollute her blood with Icarus.

She feels her soul grow larger and broader with his daring.

For a moment she's entranced by the sight illuminated by the sunlight and powerful like a god.

The wind is thrilling under her soul and he makes her forget herself.

She hardly breathes twice.

A voice she hasn't heard before, which fills her with dread, "You have no place in the realm of the gods."

It all unravels so fast.

Her wings begin to melt and drip red like blood.

Blissful laughter turned into chilling screams.

The one who tried to call her back falls to his knees and grips the rock, crying out as she plummets to her death.

River screams her arms arch back from the weight of the wings.

The air rushes up against them and she buckles from the strain.

She scrunches her eyes, doesn't want to see the world coming closer and closer.

Blood. Black.

The voice returns, "You must leave this place now River."

The sea around her evaporates.

She's nothing but atoms in space again.

Light vacuum pulls everything back into order.

Forces her fear and her terror down and calms her.

Darkness dissipates.

The sounds of the waves, and the wind, and the screams subside.

River opens her eyes and her throat.

Tastes the sweet, spiciness of azaleas on her tongue again.

Children are volatile and fickle and the ultimate in pragmatism.

This child knows no fear of falling from great heights.

She's has already forgotten the nightmare in the bright morning hours before lunch.

River's climbing.

Branches are sturdy and dark brown, the leaves around her rustle as the breeze caresses them playfully. Below her stretches the grounds of the Tam Estate. An ocean of colourful blooms and painstakingly tended hedges, shrubs and a small forest of trees.

She's a girl again. Innocent and silly. Told her brother she could climb to the very top of the tallest tree in the garden and is determined to make him eat his words when he laughed at her and said she would chicken out.

She climbed to the highest branch she possibly could before she looked down and quaked a little at the height. Looked up, saw the blue sky through the gap in the branches and just kept climbing.

"River!"

Simon has come.

"River, get down!" She ignores her brother and just keeps climbing.

"You're going to hurt yourself!"

"Well," she replies with confidence she certainly isn't feeling, "Best you get some practice bandaging and splintering broken bones before you become a doctor!" she calls back down to him.

"If you don't get down I'm telling mum!"

Hardly a dangerous threat. It's not like mummy would take off her expensive high heels and come after River herself. Nothing short of that will stop her now.

"River – ow!" River stops and looks down quickly to see Simon sucking on his finger. He was never a climber like her.

Instead more shouting, "RIVER!"

"The Independents are using dinosaurs!" shouting something just to keep from thinking about looking down, "We've been cut off from out platoon!"

"River stop playing games!"

"No rations. We've gonna have to eat the men!"

"Okay!" Bargaining time because ultimately he knows the tree is not that high and his sister is so graceful and limber she's not likely to fall, but if she so much as grazes her knee, his parents are going to have his head, "Fine, I admit it okay! Girls can climb higher than boys - fine!"

"You admit it?"

"RIVER!" Warning, from an angry, protective older brother who loves her but still thinks she's a brat. Naturally.

"Your whole conclusions about..."

"River!"

"...my climbing abilities are..."

"River?"

"...entirely fallacious."

"River, wo ling ni xianzai qichuang!"

Wh...huh...Simon?

River opens her eyes and blinks into the darkness.

"Simon...?"

REVIEWS PLEASE!

Translations:

Wo ling ni xianzai qichuang – I order you to get up now: just FYI: my knowledge of mandarin is so minimal it's laughable so if this makes absolutely no sense to any native speaker readers I apologise profusely and hope you might be so kind as to tell me what the correct phrase would be.

Notes: "Lament of Icarus" by Herbert James Draper, 1898 (sometimes called the "Mourning for Icarus) - I can't link here for some reason, but you can find images at various sources on the net.