Inara uses ritual. Tea that steeps in ersatz porcelain, silk that rustles and clings, massages that relax, then arouse: ritual is more than a sequence of steps.
The trick to companionship, the one thing that the Academy cannot teach, is believing in your own grace. *That* either happens or it does not; if the latter, girls can fake it, and most clients will never know the difference.
Inara believes. She must.
Her faith came one day, late in her training, between a viola lesson and a poetry recital. She crouched at the temple's side wall, watching the monks who never looked at her, when a Sihnonian sparrow with a broken wing began to sing. It was a muddy, sad little thing, its wing folded awkwardly back, more like a cricket's than anything avian, but when she held out some crumbs from her lunch, fruit and a bun, it hopped forward and sang.
It wasn't hungry, and it didn't have a reason in the 'verse to sing, but its tiny beak opened like a toy's and the song piped out.
Companions do not, as a rule, experience epiphanies. Rather, they recite the wisdom of others in a pleasing tone.
Inara, however, had never quite been like her peers, and this afternoon was no different.
Beauty, she learned then, is nothing taught and very little practiced.
Girls come in, ladies go out, to and fro, labor and woe: River is singing again, telling her secrets, laying everything bare and broken before Inara. Her hair is being plaited—so much hair, and light as dwindling atmo, flowing in Inara's hands—and she has her knees drawn up to her chest, her arms encircling them, like an ordinary factory-girl waiting for a day job, piecework or catering. She's fiddling with the laces on her boots and singing to herself.
River is not crew. River is not human. River is nothing but bundles of nerves, unfiltered and open, and she'll climb onto Inara's lap, kiss her like she's tasting unfamiliar noodles, then lower her eyes and mimic the best in Companion-training.
You have pretty lips, she says, touching Inara's mouth, her chin, one cheek, with rough fingers small as twigs. This union is a holy thing.
Lies lift from River's mouth, lies and truths and song, nonsense that makes Inara's head swim faster than cheap incense. Her hands go over Inara's chest, between her legs and over her hair, and she is seductive, rough, impure and captivating.
"Honey," Inara says now, grasping River by the hips and lifting her from her lap. "Mei-mei." She waits for River's attention to flicker back to her. "Let me finish your hair."
In the room, River says, kissing her forehead, sending her to that warm, remembered place of mother's arms and siblings three to a bed, the women come and go.
"Talking of Michelangelo?"
River laughs and shakes out her hair, wind lifting wings and song rising. That, too.
River has no filter—amygdala, Simon says; sadness, Kaylee says—and she sees through everything. Epiphanies come to her easy as birds and Inara's training is never done.