Prompt #15- Spirit
Sometimes people die. It's a fact of life. Good people die and bad people live.
Niska is alive somewhere in the verse while Wash lies buried in the dirt.
The Hands of Blue walk and talk but Book will never give another sermon.
And yet no matter who leaves the mortal coil, no matter the method of their departure no one walks the world and doesn't leave a footprint.
It's a song on the radio which makes Mal's hands clench tightly as he remembers dancing with a pretty green-eyed girl who wanted to call him husband; a slinky dress that Zoë can't bring herself to throw out; a book of broken myths and seeming paradoxes that River cherishes; a sweat cloth that was draped over friendly shoulders that Jayne remembers listening to him in half amusement; a prehistoric guardian that watches over Kaylee with it's tail hooked over the thermostat.
They are called memories, tokens, trifles, sentimental trash which are clung to in the vague hopes of clinging to a life that's ended, a presence that is long gone.
The hopes will be shattered when the memory fades and when you can't quite recall what he looks like, or can't quite remember what she smelt like, or can't quite hear the timbre of his voice, and then you know.
You know that they are gone.
Dead and gone.
But every time the song fills the air, every time the wardrobe is opened, every time the pages are turned, every time the towel is used, every time the guardian watches, they live just a little.
Just for a little while.
And that's enough.