#firefly
FireflyfromShadowy Bliss
drabble: firefly - jayne & book, southdown abbey
It’s the quiet that’s hardest to get accustomed to, even three years into his time at the abbey; Jayne don’t mind the clothes so much, though at first his Shepherd’s collar scratched tight and stiff around his neck, and for a time he missed the scent of gun oil and the weighty heft of a weapon in his hands, but it’s the quiet that still gets at him at times, the stillness of the herb gardens in the noonday heat, the air so still that not a blade of grass dares to stir, or in the resonant silence after the vesper bells finish ringing.
Jayne’s used to filling up the empty air with loud talk, bragging on old heists or the planning of new ones, but the longer he spends in his Shepherd’s robes, the more he grows accustomed to the quietness where words used to be, the easier he finds to hold a silence of his own.
They’ve been pulling weeds among the turnips and potatoes for hours, and not a word has passed between them until Shepherd Book glances his way, saying in that grave voice of his, “You’re awfully quiet today, Jayne.”
Jayne leans back, brushes clover and soil off his robes. “Can’t hardly believe I made it here sometimes,” he confesses. “I’ve done all manner of terrible things—sure ‘nough committed my share of violent crimes and the like. I’ve been a black sheep, Shepherd, maybe the blackest one a man coulda been. Don’t know why you folks so much as let me walk through them gates.”
But the Shepherd just throws his head back and laughs. “Ah, well, Jayne,” he says, squinting up towards the sun, “surely you must know by now that a black sheep is the rarest and most precious lamb of any shepherd’s flock.”