To Megan:
Merry Christmas! It didn't turn out as funny as I'd hoped. Oh well. It's Christmas-themed, anyway.
Firefly, funny.


There was a tree on his ship.
There was a gorram tree on his gorram ship.
Malcolm Reynolds stared at the tree and tried to force it to make any sort of sense. It refused.
Some enterprising soul had stuck an ornament on its branches; the sapling was bent nearly parallel to the floor under the weight. He supposed it could have been a Christmas tree, then, but it was all wrong for that. The general shape was right, but it had ring-sized, flat green leaves instead of the long, spiky needles Christmas trees were supposed to have.
“What in the sphincter of hell is a tree doing on my gorram ship?” he asked, aloud.
“Looks kinda cheerful, don’t it?” Kaylee piped up, from behind him. Mal wasn’t sure when she’d come in the room, but she was one of his prime suspects for the tree; her or the crazy girl. Could’ve been either. He rounded on her.
“Is this yours?” he demanded.
Kaylee shook her head. “Nope, but the star’s mine.” She pointed at the ornament. “It just looked so lonely without anything on it.”
“Kaylee,” Mal said, patiently, “it’s a tree. It doesn’t belong on my ship.”
She shrugged. “I dunno who put it there, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said. “But don’t it look nice?”
Mal looked at the tree again. Bent over, stuck in a pot, totally out of place among the machinery... “No,” he said, flatly. “Looks kinda pathetic.”
“Oh, Captain.” Kaylee shook her head, with a pitying expression on her face, and went back to whatever she’d been doing.
He questioned the entire crew over the course of the day, working his way from River (“It’s a figment of your imagination. Trees don’t belong in space. They don’t like pots and walls and metal”) to Jayne (“There’s a gorram tree on the ship?”) to Book (“It’s a wonderful expression of faith, and I didn’t put it there”), without result. He’d missed Wash, and Zoe, but honestly, he couldn’t imagine either one of them with a tree. Dinosaurs, or a particularly lovely painting, yes, but not a tree.
Evening found Mal standing in the crew’s lounge again, staring at the tree. It didn’t belong there. It ought to be planted somewhere on some little world, not taking up space on a Firefly-class smuggler headed out to the depths of the Black. Who the hell would...
Wait. He’d missed the little tag on his first look at it. Either that, or the ornament had hidden it from view. Mal leaned down and picked up the tag, the better to read the tiny, flowing writing on it.
Reminded me of you, the tag read. Won’t bend and looks like a giant middle finger. Love, Mom.
It was unkind to swear at presents from one’s mother. Probably uncouth, too. Of course, being uncouth had never stopped him before.