It was a very trying morning aboard Serenity.
They were dirtside and a sudden storm late the previous afternoon had forced most of the crew to take shelter in town. So with Kaylee unexpectedly away for the night, Simon was already on edge.
Added to that, River was having a bad day. And it had started very early. She wasn't near to doing harm to anyone but she was behaving a bit erratically, and it seemed her mood was affecting her daughter. The normally happy eighteen month old was fussy and couldn't be consoled. Simon and Mal fighting over what was best for her with her mother out of sorts only made it worse, and so she pushed them away while declaring, screaming, snapping, and howling her first word - no.
Simon felt two things about this. It was his niece's first word and she very clearly knew it's meaning and when to use it- very impressive. He had always figured his niece was just choosing not to speak, being so bright and perfectly able to communicate otherwise. But his overwhelming first feeling was longing that she would never utter another word again.
After tiring of fighting with both the toddler and her mother, Mal stalked off to the bridge and Simon let them both be, allowing River to hide away somewhere in the ship where no one was after her with needles and Meadow to sit in the middle of the lounge - he watched her from the couch, he was annoyed not an idiot.
After an hour of sitting, Meadow hoisted herself to her feet and toddled over to the coffee table. She saw Simon watching her and she wrinkled her face at him as she grabbed a book out of the pile of colorful story books Kaylee kept there. She the returned precisely to the spot she'd been sitting before, her back almost decidedly toward Simon.
"Girls are back," Mal said, not long before they heard them in the hold, pulling their purchases off the mule.
"Hey there, bao bei!" Kalyee cooed, then looking curiously at Simon when the girl didn't so much as look up.
"River's in a mood… and so is Meadow," he said tiredly.
"Poor little girl," Kaylee said sympathetically, not noticing the strangled looks that briefly passed over both Simon and Mal's faces. "I'm gonna help Nara with her things, then I'll show ya what I bought," she said, winking at Simon. He only raised an eyebrow at her, which made her giggle as she disappeared on her way to Inara's shuttle.
Simon sighed, his hope that Kaylee and Inara being back would brighten up Meadow at least a little now crushed.
"Hey, you get those things I asked ya?" Mal called out, not waiting for Zoe to actually appear.
"You askin' 'cause I'm so untrustworthy, sir?" Zoe demanded a bit of smile in her voice.
The second Zoe appeared at the top of the stairs, Meadow smiled and raised her arms up, happily ordering, "Niang, up!" She scooped the baby up and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. She wrapped her arms around Zoe's neck and snuggled down like there had been no one else to be nice to her all day. Zoe shifted the weight of the groceries in her free hand and made her way back to the kitchen.
Mal looked over at Simon and asked, "Do you kinda hate her right now?"
"That's ridiculous, she's my niece, I love her," he replied with very little inflection. They looked over their shoulders as they heard Meadow clap her little hands and happily call out, "Bao!" And Simon added, "Of course I'm sure she'd do very well if we left her with some family in town for a few weeks."