author note: This is really a lot of drabble-esque experimentation, so proceed at your own risk. It's more experiments in character voice than anything else.

we'll have to resort to cannibalism

-irishais-

i.

Inara always lined her eyes with coal-black, heavy on both lids, and it shouldn't have bothered him so damn much.

Coal-black.

Crazy says it's pretty, and even had Inara sit down and draw on her face, too, comin' round the corner later that night and damn near scaring what living hell there was left to scare out of him. He'd thought she was a ghost, with all that black around her eyes.

"Y'look like a whore," he muttered, when she asked him what he thought.

"Maybe I'll call myself Vera, then," she mused, and skipped away. When Jayne saw her later, River had washed her face clean and neat, and was playing jacks with Kaylee.

xx

"It's just makeup, Jayne," Inara said, her voice weary with patience stretched thin. "It isn't going to reach out and bite you."

"Makes no sense," he retorted, "drawin' all over your face with a pencil." But he righted the box anyway, grabbing up the sticks and putting them where he thought they might go. "Don't look natural."

They both winced at the crack when he shut the lid and half a black-tipped pencil fell out onto the floor of the shuttle.

"Maybe you should leave," Inara suggested.

Next time, he figured maybe he should talk to Kaylee instead.

xx

They hadn't landed in near on fourteen days, and the natives were getting restless.

Gorram, he was beginning to think like River, and decided that he'd rather shoot himself out of an airlock than ever admit that again.

There were too many damn womenfolk on this boat. Zoe didn't count.