Author's Email: jfaulkne@sas.upenn.edu

Author's Website: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jfaulkne/fan/

By Lysimache

Their spaces say a lot about people. A man who never turns on a light if he can be in the dark is either a miser who can't bear the expense of the light, or a miner who can't bear the light itself.

Yours here, in this noisy engine room, says that you are competent, as you fiddle with things knowingly. It says that you have a great capacity to care, for many things are mended rather than replaced, held together by a bit of faith and a dash of improvisation, a squirt of glue here and a patch of tape there. It says that you are perhaps a bit lonely, surrounded by machines and not people.

Perhaps you have never been much good with people.

You are terribly young still, and she must seem to you both old and remarkably exotic. You are a bit shy around her, never speaking much -- you are shy around many people.

How much more so then do you blush a little when looking at her, this Companion, a woman who is more beautiful than any other you know? Her eyes are dark and mysterious, and you wonder what it's like to look at the world through them. To be loved by so many, to have men sacrifice all their fortunes in return for a single smile, and yet to be so kind, too.

Her voice is soft and low, and its hum makes your cheeks grow warm, and you grin without quite meaning to, when she says your name.

"Hello, Inara," you say, wiping your hands on a towel, trying to clean off the grime of the engine room. You don't know that she doesn't care if your fingernails have decades of dirt under them.

You can't really offer her anywhere to sit down, and you aren't sure that a chair is the right thing, anyway. You don't want her to think your hospitality is lacking. You want her to feel welcome, and you hope a smile is enough.

She has practice reading people, and it is.

She asks you what you're working on, and you tell her, showing her the component you've been repairing again. It's one of the constancies of your life, that it breaks and you fix it. You tell Mal every time that it needs to be replaced, but your repairs keep it working well enough that the ship keeps on going, her engine turning.

Her tone conveys admiration for your work, and you feel absurdly pleased at her compliments. A brief thought crosses your mind, that you wish things would break more often so that she can praise your cleverness in fixing them. Of course, you don't wish any real damage to afflict the ship.

You don't know quite what you'd do without it.

She's standing quite near you now, leaning into your shoulder to look at the engine. Her scent is almost unbearably sweet, and you breathe deeply, dizzyingly. You think of oranges and spices whose names
you've never learned.

Her hand touches your hair gently, and you can't quite believe that she's telling you it's beautiful. You know it needs washed, and you're not sure you brushed it yet today. She laughs at you when you
insist it's just a boring brown, but you know it's nothing like hers, so rich and amazingly waved.

It's hard to disbelieve anything she says, though, when she's speaking like that, and looking at you like you're quite the prettiest girl she's ever seen.

Right this minute, you are.

She invites you to come visit her on her shuttle sometime. You aren't used to invitations, and you almost refuse out of habit, but this time, you agree. You're curious to see what her space is like, what it says about her. You're curious about her. You're curious to see something not quite like this engine room.

You want to maybe learn about something you don't yet know. Something about her, and maybe something about yourself, too.


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