River glided gracefully into the mess towards Jayne and silently positioned herself behind him. The mercenary sat oblivious to her at the bench, polishing his most prized possession: an impressive-looking gun that he had named 'Vera'.
He wore a brown, sleeveless shirt with the Chinese characters for 'Blue Sun' written across the front. It was perhaps, the shirt that River disliked the most and a glint of hatred flashed through the girls' eye momentarily before instantaneously disappearing as if it had never been there.
River herself was wearing a red dress with an off-white shawl draped over her shoulders. The dress flowed around her small frame as she moved and gave off an air of elegance in its most raw form. In her left hand, she carried a heavy silver knife although the expression on her face showed no sign that she knew of its existence. In fact, she seemed oblivious to it.
Smiling softly at Jayne's unawareness, River, dreamlike, lifted the knife in the air. Just as she was about to bring it down, footsteps sounded in the hall alerting her to another presence and she let the weapon fall. It clattered loudly onto the floor, startling Jayne out of his quieter state.
"What the guay -?" He jumped from his seat, turning in time to see the edges of Rivers' dress disappear into the hall. "Moonbrained girl!" Jayne cussed loudly and bent over to retrieve the knife. "More trouble than she's gorram worth!" Muttering to himself, Jayne slammed the knife down onto the bench, picked up Vera and his polishing cloth and stomped towards his bunk.
In the hall, Wash jumped aside alarmed as River hurtled past him in a flurry of brown and red. He shook his head once, coming to the conclusion that she was either having another one of her episodes – lately her lucid moments were few and far between – or she was doing better and playing with Kaylee again.
Just as Wash had gathered his thoughts and taken another step towards the mess, Jayne barged through, pushing him to the side angrily.
"Hey! Watch it!" Wash shouted at the mercenary's retreating back. He pulled himself off the wall and rubbed at his side where he was, no doubt, going to bruise. "Ow!"
Wash continued on down the hall, cautiously watching out for more potential crashes. Making it to the mess with no further incident, he dropped into the first chair he came to, grateful that it had only been River and Jayne. If there had been anyone else, he'd be needing the doctor!