First line drabble. (i.e. Dyan wrote the first line, I wrote the rest.)

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The sleeping prince was helpless. He was trapped in a box, just as she had been once. But he wasn't dead yet. He was just waiting for his magic kiss.

No, wait, that wasn't right. Sometimes time was just too linear, and River had always loved walking backwards, balancing precariously on her tip toes.

The sleeping prince was laying on the ground, coloring Serenity's deck plates in shades of crimson. Mal (means bad in the Latin) was holding a smoking gun and Kaylee was cryingcryingcrying. Zoe was, too, but her tears were on the inside.

Or was that still to come? River got confused sometimes. It was so hard to keep track of it all.

The sleeping prince was not asleep at all. He was smiling and everybody was smiling and River wanted to freeze time to that moment. But she wasn't a real princess, she was just a little girl, and some things even she couldn't do.

The sleeping prince was asleep and his blanket was made of six feet of dirt and his mama's tears. And there was no magic kiss to bring him back again.