The comm. unit pinged.

Inara brushed aside the tapestry screening the cockpit from her 'work area' and leaned over the pilot's seat to answer it. "Yes?"

Wash's cheerful voice issued from the speaker. "Hey, 'Nara. Any more pressing engagements? we're ready to leave here."

Her perfectly groomed eyebrows rose. "Don't tell me we've got a cargo at last?"

"And a passenger."

Which provoked a frown. "Is that wise? River and Simon..."

"Seems to be okay, apparently the lady's an old friend of the Shepard's. An Athens scholar, though from what Mal says she sure don't look the part."

"Not just a job but a legal one! Be still my heart."

"Now, now, don't be nasty." Wash chided. "Are you ready to come home?"

"I was just screening another set of applicants." it had been a long layover. "Not a very promising lot."

"Nobody to light your fires huh?"

"Not a one." She slid into the pilot chair and started the warm up cycle. "I'll be back aboard within the hour."

"Shiny. See you then, Ambassador."

Once home Inara headed straight for the kitchen. This layover'd been so long she'd actually run short of green tea. If she'd taken another client she'd have had to send back to Serenity for more - they didn't have green on Comanchero, just some rot-gut black.

For all Wash's words about a new passenger it was still startling to see a stranger in the kitchen. Inara stopped in the hatch to study her.

The woman was neither tall nor slender but skillfully gave the impression of being both thanks to the long lines of her tabard and trouser suit and the wide orangy-gold sash around her middle. The tabard was patterned in a bold, brilliantly colored geometric pattern, the trousers trimmed with fringe. A thick, artistically tousled mane of silver streaked gray hair was confined by a wide striped band knotted at the back with a decorative spiral in front and two big golden disks on either side with chunky gold earings showing beneath. Wide rings decorated slender arms and drew attention to the deft, beautiful hands. Her makeup was subtle but highlighted her large eyes and small mouth.

She was making tea, green tea, on the dining table and the delicate precise grace of her movements no less the elegant if unconventional taste of her garb and expert highlighting of her best points and concealment of the worst all fairly screamed 'Companion' to Inara's experienced eye. But Wash had said she was a scholar...

The woman was, of course, perfectly aware of Inara's presence but finished the ritual of laying out before acknowledging her with a smile. "Would you care to join me?"

"Please." Inara returned the smile and took the seat opposite watching as the stranger expertly whisked the tea into a froth and then offered the cup two handed. Inara accepted it in the same manner, with a slight bow, and took a tiny, ceremonial sip.

The woman prepared her own cup, drank from it and said. "I see you're Devidasi. I'm Geiko."

That much had been obvious from her tea style. "You're a Companion?"

"Registered but not in practice."

"Wash said you were a scholar."

A smile. "That too. Dr. Margot Reyer of the Athenaeum's School of Anthropology and Ethnology. My Companion name is Shinjumi."

Of course! That explained everything. "I read your book in the training house. It was wonderful, it really caught the spirit of what it means to be a Companion."

Margot smiled. "Thank you." she gave a slight, histrionic shudder. "I remember how I trembled when I presented it to the Guild Mothers!"

Inara laughed. "Worse than final examinations?"

Margot considered. "In its way, yes."

"Remind me never to write a book. Once before the Mothers was quite enough!"

"Oh I do agree!"

The women shared a warm, sisterly smile of complete understanding.

Course was set and Comanchero rapidly shrinking behind them when Mal led Zoe and Wash into the dining area, and a gorram tea party.

"You think dulcimer's bad try samisen!" the elegant gray haired lady was saying. "I never did master it. Finally Mama Sensei gave up and trained me in flute instead."

Inara laughed. "Solving your voice problem too."

"Exactly. Can't sing while playing a flute, and I've got the hot air to do real well on wind instruments!" More laughter from both.

Zoe wriggled past her captain's frozen butt to extend a hand to the newcomer. "Dr. Reyer? I'm Zoe Washburn, Serenity's first officer."

"Call me Margot please," her glance slid over to Wash.

"Our pilot, my husband Hobban Washburn."

"Known to all as Wash." he said, frankly staring. "You don't look so wild and woolly to me whatever the Cap'n may say."

Margot's smiled deepened. "I've cleaned up a bit."

Mal picked his chin up off the floor and cleared his throat. "Mor'n a bit. Now I might believe you're a lady and a scholar."

"Thank you." her head tilted, kind of fetchingly. "I think."

"Tea?" Inara asked slyly.

"Not if it's that poisonous green stuff you drink." Mal headed for the kitchen and the coffee maker.

Zoe and Wash took their usual seats at table. "So, you girls getting along alright?" Wash asked brightly.

Like it wasn't obvious they were - and why did that annoy Mal so much?

"We've been trading horror stories from our training days." said Inara.

"Training days?" Zoe echoed.

"As Companions." Inara explained.

"Each of us is trying to convince the other her school is the harder." Margot finished.

Zoe turned to her, confused. "I thought you were some kind of professor?"

"I am." Margot answered. "But I did my doctoral thesis on the Companions."

"You wrote a paper on whoring?" Mal sputtered, collecting a glare from Inara and a 'I give up' look from Zoe.

"As you can see our Captain is a master of tact and diplomacy." she said dryly.

"Yeah, Mal. Don't go making us look bad in front of the company." Wash chimed in.

Margot turned in her seat to give him a once-over, her eyes a sort of cloudy green, then glanced over her shoulder at Inara. "One of those, eh?"

"And how!"

"One of what?" he demanded defensively.

"One of those who doesn't know the difference between a Companion and a Whore." Margot returned calmly.

"He should read your book." Inara said to her, adding; "You do read don't you Captain Reynolds?"

Mal picked up the coffee pot in one hand, hooked three mugs with the other and brought them to the table. "Not that kind of book I don't." he smirked. "I'm an officer and a gentleman."

"I assure you my book contains nothing to offend the most delicate sensibilities." Margot assured him, unruffled. "It's on the Cortex; 'A Cult of Beauty' by 'Shinjumi'. Look it up, Captain, if nothing else it may serve to give you a good night's sleep."

Wash was scribbling on the back of his hand with a pencil stub. "Is that a 'g' or a 'j' in 'Shinjumi'?"

"J."

"Does it have illustrations?" he asked hopefully.

Margot laughed.

"Didn't you hear what the lady said about inoffensive?" Zoe demanded. Wash's face fell.

"I'm afraid 'Cult's' more about the training and philosophy of Companionship than its sensual practices." Margot apologized.

"I've got enough 'sensual practices' to keep my husband too busy to read." Zoe told her. Wash brightened up.

Mal pushed a couple of full cups over to the Washburns trying to think of a way to get off this subject. Kaylee and Jayne's coming in from the aft passage and Shepard and the rest climbing up from below did the job for him.

All except Book and River stopped in their tracks to stare stunned at their transformed passenger. Shepard went to the kitchen for more cups, River sat herself down at the end of the table and looked at her hands.

"Margot is that you?" Kaylee demanded wonderingly.

"Gorramit, woman, what you done to yourself?" Jayne demanded.

Mal smirked. And they called him tactless!

Didn't seem to bother Margot a bit. She gave Kaylee a smile Jayne and a wink. "Clean up good, do I?"

"Not bad." Jayne pulled out the chair next her. "Right fanciable if a bit long in the tooth."

"Jayne!" Kaylee cried, scandalized. The rest of the women looked just as indignant, standing by one of their own the way females do.

Simon winced. So did Wash. Mal just smirked some more.

"What?" Jayne demanded. "Think she don't know she's old?"

This time Mal winced too. Even out here a smart man didn't call a lady 'old' to her face.

But Margot didn't turn a gray hair. "Age and experience have their advantages." she shrugged. "I couldn't have coped with the Free Folk in my shiny youth."

Inara changed the subject back to the one Mal'd been anxious to get off of. "Speaking of age you were pretty old for Companion training weren't you? Yet you passed the exams."

"Barely in some subjects." Margot said wryly. "I was well grounded though. I'd had ballet as a girl so I knew how to move. And my Sister training in deportment and manners and meditation was a big help too."

"Sister?" Mal echoed disbelieving. "You were a nun."

"Not exactly. I did my master's thesis on the religious life."

"Guess that's when you met Shepard Book." Kaylee chirped.

Book and Margot exchanged a look Mal couldn't quite read. "Not that far back." said the Shepard.

Mal's mind ran on other things. "You went from nun to whore?"

"All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players." Margot quoted. "I've played a lot of parts in my time, Captain."

"I can attest to that." said Book.

"You too." she smiled. He didn't smile back.

"So first you pretend to be a nun and then a whore." Mal said, still disbelieving.

"Not 'pretend', Captain." suddenly Margot was dead serious. "Pretending' to be a Free Folk raider would have been fatal. I was one. And a Nun and a Companion too, in their times."

"She's a mirror." River said suddenly to her hands, then looked up at all of them through her hair. "She reflects what's around her."

Margot nodded. "A very pretty way of putting it. Thank you River." then continued to Mal. "A good anthropologist doesn't study cultures from the outside but the inside. I pride myself on being a very good anthropologist."

Note: Companions are divided into several 'schools' rooted in various 'Earth that was' cultures. Inara's 'Devidasi' draw on Hindu religious and sensual practices, Geiko on the traditions of the Japanese Geisha. The tea and incense ceremonies are common to all but the styles are distinctive enough for an informed observer such as Inara to deduce which school a Guild Sister belongs to on sight.