Honeycomb Hearts

Dinner, a la Memory

Later that night, Yang and Ruby left Nora's house, bellies full of food and faces wide with smiles. The moon had risen faster than the two girls had expected, shining brightly behind the patchy cloud coverage above their heads. They began to make their way back to their house, waving goodbye to Nora, with Yang making a joke about how she'd need Ruby to roll her home, with her being as full as she was.

"Yang, you're walking perfectly fine!" Ruby said, giving Yang a playful punch on the shoulder. Their laughs echoed off the cobblestone beneath their feet, which soon gave way to the familiar dirt pathway with sparse patches of grass dotting the way. "That was fun, though – we should do that every week!"

"Jeez, maybe with your metabolism you could do it. I'm getting older, I'd need to run miles every day if I ate like that every week!" Yang sighed, rubbing her slightly aching stomach with her prosthetic hand.

"Meta-what now?" Ruby tilted her head, "Stop making up words!"

"Oh come on Ruby, high school biology! You're young so you can eat all the sugar you want and stay skinny!"

"You're two years older Yang, plus look at Blake! She's a year older than you, isn't she? She's still slim and fit!" Ruby said, "You'll be fine – Ren did say he was getting good at cooking healthier food."

Yang thought back to the dinner she'd just finished – bibimbap, a food she'd never heard of, wasn't unhealthy so to speak – it was basically ground beef and rice with tons of vegetables in a bowl, from what she understood. Ren said it was his family's specialty, though she wasn't quite sure how valid his claim was. Her mind then drifted to Blake. Ruby was right, Blake was pretty slim and fit – Yang had no doubt in her mind that Blake could climb a tree easily, but getting down...

"Yang? Why are you blushing?" Ruby asked, bending to look her sister face-to-face. "Did you somehow get drunk off of rice?"

Yang jolted and cleared her throat. "You know how I feel about alcohol," Yang said, "and no, I was just... thinking about something that happened earlier. Nothing big."

"Whatever you say sis." Ruby said. They continued the rest of the walk in silence, sans the various crickets that surrounded them for seemingly miles around. Ruby's head was filled with thoughts of food and her newly made friends, while Yang was preoccupied with thoughts of the day. They walked up the porch to their door and entered swiftly, closing the chilled breeze out.

"I'm so tired, how is it only eight o' clock?" Ruby said, checking her scroll.

"Maybe because I woke us up so early this morning?" The two sat in silence for a second, remembering how Yang freaked out and woke Ruby up, thinking another earthquake was coming. "I'm still sorry about that."

"Yang, don't be sorry," Ruby said, "It's probably normal to still be anxious about that kind of thing. Like I said earlier, I'm here for you – if it means I have to wake up a little early some days to make sure you're happy, that's totally worth it."

Yang gave Ruby a warm smile, "Thanks Ruby. I love you, you know that?"

"You only tell me every week." Ruby said with a yawn, "I'm gonna sleep. Goodnight Yang."

"Goodnight Ruby."

With Ruby under her covers, Yang was alone on the couch, eyes tracing the cracks in the wooden ceiling above her. The day hadn't been long for just Ruby after all. Her and Ruby had started planting a garden, Nora had come over to fix the electricity, they shared a meal at Ren and Nora's house, which still sat uncomfortably in her stomach, and above all else...

She couldn't shake the vision of Blake, hunched over her, hair draped over her right shoulder – their eyes locked in shock. Yang thought about how she'd have passed out had Blake lingered just a second longer. Though maybe, Blake would try to revive her with a kiss-

"Wait - what the hell am I thinking about?" Yang thought. She shook her head and sighed before laying back against the pillow which was gonna go through much turmoil these next few weeks with how much she tossed and turned. Despite her efforts, she couldn't stop thinking about Blake, though she did eventually drift off to sleep.