#19~

Some days she wonders what her life would have been like if Mal had survived. 

She would have stayed with him, of course—there never was any question of that. But would they have been like the pieces of the dish she had Irina repair, melded into something beautiful and new? Or would they have been like the shards of that broken blue cup—unintentionally cutting each other with jagged edges that no longer fit together?

She’ll never know. 

(That’s the hardest part, the not-knowing. The aching, empty permanence of it.)

—I’ll tell you how the sun rose (a ribbon at a time)