02 || River Tam || Day 55

[enchangement]

The air tastes strange. [ River knows the video is on but she's not looking at it, allowing instead for the broadcast to show the hallway of house seventeen in the waning afternoon light.

An arm reaches out and a door swings open to a bedroom. Bed rumpled and several books scattered around but otherwise empty.

They took him and she doesn't know when. They took a note, the whole song is wrong now.

[ River sounds exhausted. ]

The air tastes strange. All the notes should be careful and keep themselves in tune.

Comments

[enchangement]

[ River nods, so it's good that Ned is asking rhetorical questions - the first pie is in the oven before she deigns to say anything at all.

Ned will find that River is an attentive assistant, but she does, at times, stop and allow Ned to verbally explain his reasons for doing this, that, or the other. River finds a lot of comfort in hearing other people talk about the things they care about deeply, even if she knows the words before they hit the air.

But she's kneeling on the floor, peering at the metal door with it's obscured window in to the pie, when she turns her head towards Ned and smiles. ]

You're a good brother.

[nedofpies]

[ As they bake, Ned isn't at all bothered by River's silence. He can fill the air with sound all on his own, talks to her steadily as they work, tells her all his little tricks, spins off into anecdotes about how he worked them out, and about disastrously failed pies, incidents at pastry school, the best pecan pie he'd ever made; until the pie is in the oven and River finally speaks up. ]

I used to want a little sister. When I was very young. [ He'd been desperate for siblings, before his mother had died. Of course, he remembers, he does have siblings. Technically. They just don't know he exists, and he likes it that way. But he remembers all that River told him about Simon and recognizes the compliment for what it is. ] Thank you.