Herbalists' Cache millidelphia

She came slowly towards him while Mal stood like the dumb rock he kind of was.  He still wasn't entirely sure she was more than a ghost.  She might just poof right in front of him and he would wake up having eaten something that had gone bad -- maybe a mouse that ate something weird.  He'd believe it in a heartbeat.  Did he want to find out that it was a dream?  Not really.

And for all he knew, she thought he was a ghost too.  It wasn't like the pack had left a forwarding address back at the old territory.  It probably looked like everyone had been wiped off the face of the planet.  He took her second bit of confusion as a stutter, her downcast look maybe as some disappointment that she'd abandoned them.  That was what he wanted to see, at least.  Nobody had otherwise proven to care about him.  For someone who knew a reasonable amount of answers, he sure sounded like he was making it up on the fly, Just Mal, now.  Because that's what he'd decided.  He wasn't particularly creative about names, but he'd wanted a change, so there you go.  You're... back? A ghost?  A zombie?  A figment of his imagination?  Leaving again?