If a dream is a wish your heart makes, what is a nightmare?
River was the consciousness of the bookshelf. She smugly gave people the information she decided that they needed with no regard to what they asked for or wanted.
Until her viewpoint shifted and she stood in the rec room with an axe. The meddlesome thing needed to be destroyed, for the safety of everyone on the island. She swung the axe and buried it in the wood...
and felt it in her own flesh.
And yet she could not stop until the evil thing was a pile of splinters. She felt every blow herself, until she was covered in blood mixed with sawdust and bits of pages.
She woke screaming.
"If no one hears your nightmare, do you ever really wake up?" she asked herself when no one came to investigate her screams. None of the crew must be around on Serenity, or maybe she hadn't really screamed aloud. Either way, she was alone.
Alone with the books again. Innocuous fiction she'd taken from the compound that now had titles like Treating the Paranoid Schizophrenic, Mental Conditioning, and, most hated, The Art of War.
She started a small fire on the beach just a little way from Serenity and sat beside it. She started on page one of Reaching a Target Through Subliminal Messaging. She ripped the page from the book, and then tore it into very small pieces. Each small piece was then fed to the fire, where she watched them catch and then turn to ash.
"No meddling with people's brains."
Page two she tore in half and crumpled into two small balls before feeding to the flames.
River was beginning to feel, to use Leoben's phrase, frakked with by the island that she had come to love, even if it wouldn't let Serenity fly.
She let page three burn whole.
[Summary: River has a nightmare and wakes to find that books from the rec room shelf have changed from fiction into things that remind her of what was done to her by the Alliance. She takes measures to rid the island of these books by fire. She meets Veronica Mars, who goes into detective mode when faced with the mystery of the changing books. Tiffany Aching comes by and they discuss the breeding of books and the making of cheese. Jim Halpert is concerned and sweet, and River tells him some of her history. She is comforted by Simon, who assures her that no one is going to meddle with her brain.]
Until her viewpoint shifted and she stood in the rec room with an axe. The meddlesome thing needed to be destroyed, for the safety of everyone on the island. She swung the axe and buried it in the wood...
and felt it in her own flesh.
And yet she could not stop until the evil thing was a pile of splinters. She felt every blow herself, until she was covered in blood mixed with sawdust and bits of pages.
She woke screaming.
"If no one hears your nightmare, do you ever really wake up?" she asked herself when no one came to investigate her screams. None of the crew must be around on Serenity, or maybe she hadn't really screamed aloud. Either way, she was alone.
Alone with the books again. Innocuous fiction she'd taken from the compound that now had titles like Treating the Paranoid Schizophrenic, Mental Conditioning, and, most hated, The Art of War.
She started a small fire on the beach just a little way from Serenity and sat beside it. She started on page one of Reaching a Target Through Subliminal Messaging. She ripped the page from the book, and then tore it into very small pieces. Each small piece was then fed to the fire, where she watched them catch and then turn to ash.
"No meddling with people's brains."
Page two she tore in half and crumpled into two small balls before feeding to the flames.
River was beginning to feel, to use Leoben's phrase, frakked with by the island that she had come to love, even if it wouldn't let Serenity fly.
She let page three burn whole.
[Summary: River has a nightmare and wakes to find that books from the rec room shelf have changed from fiction into things that remind her of what was done to her by the Alliance. She takes measures to rid the island of these books by fire. She meets Veronica Mars, who goes into detective mode when faced with the mystery of the changing books. Tiffany Aching comes by and they discuss the breeding of books and the making of cheese. Jim Halpert is concerned and sweet, and River tells him some of her history. She is comforted by Simon, who assures her that no one is going to meddle with her brain.]