Gilded Ashes: When Shadows Reign

They finished one by one.

Keahi was first. She set her bowl in the sink, ran a wash cloth across her hands, and disappeared toward Kori's room – the only room besides the living and kitchen – that this house had. When she came back she was wearing an old set of garden overalls, paired with a thin grey shirt that she had clearly chosen for its tolerance for dirt rather than its cut. The overalls were too long in the leg and she had rolled the cuffs twice. They were a little loose at the chest, and yet - somehow, against all the practical sloppiness of the assembly - the way the strap sat at her shoulder and the way the waist gathered at the buckle made the whole outfit look weirdly intentional, as if she had picked it deliberately to highlight a silhouette she was usually careful to hide under baggier clothes.

Arashi stared at her for a full two seconds.

"Don't," Keahi said.

"I wasn't going to -"

"You were."

"I was going to say it's… Intimidating, Keahi."

"Mm-hm."

"It inspires confidence."

"Yes, thank you."

"It really commits."

"Stop."

He grinned at her and went back to his cheese – he still couldn't get himself to finish it.

Raizen, watching this from the other side of the table, noticed that Arashi was still wearing what he had been wearing all this time: Plain shorts, plain shirt. Not a garden outfit by any reasonable standard.

"You're not changing?"

"I'm not changing."

"You're going to work in the back garden in those…?"

"I'm going to supervise in these."

"Go before Kori whoops you with her healthy hand-"

"I'm going to oversee. I'm going to use my hands minimally and strategically. I'm going to bring brain energy to the team! Other people will bring leg energy."

Kori, from her seat, did not look up. "You're going to dig, Arashi."

"I'm going to dig with grace, reall careful not to stain this wonderful attire."

"You're going to dig with a shovel."

"With graceful use of a shovel. My shorts will remain in pristine condition. I will return to this kitchen exactly as clean as I left it."

"If you don't, you owe me thirty coins."

"This is a personal commitment I'm making to my own wardrobe."

"Your "own" wardrobe is mostly from my budget, as far as I remember."

"Then fine, twenty-five coins it is."

"Thirty, and you'll be brown to the elbows in an hour."

"I will not."

"You will."

"Kori, I refuse to participate in your prediction."

"As I said, we'll see. Where you'll get those thirty coins, though? We'll see that too."

Arashi crossed his arms across his chest with offended, and Kori - without ever quite raising her eyes from her untouched porridge - let her mouth twitch upward at one corner.

Hikari finished her food.

She stood up, gathered the plates and silverware, and then - without anyone asking - collected Arashi's plate, Kori's untouched bowl, and the small dish that once had a few vegetables in the middle of the table. The stack was precarious, yet she balanced it perfectly, carrying to the sink.

She moved past Raizen on the way.

She paused - half a second, no more - and her shoulder brushed his back as she leaned slightly down, her voice dropped to a volume only he could catch.

"I left it in your blanket, with a small note telling it not to disappear anywhere."

He turned his head.

She was already continuing toward the sink, the dishes balanced in her hands, her face entirely casual.

He reached out without thinking and caught her wrist gently between his fingers. He guided her down half a step - not far, just enough to bring her ear close to his mouth - and his own voice dropped to the same low volume.

"Are we sure it can read…?"

Hikari shrugged, her shoulder bumped his.

"It's not like it wants to do anything but sleep, anyway."

She straightened, Raizen freed her wrist, and crossed back to the sink with the dishes. Kori, at the head of the table, did not look up from her bowl. Whether she had noticed the exchange - and Raizen had absolutely no doubt that she had - she did not give any sign of it.

Hikari finished at the sink.

She wiped her hands on the small towel by the basin, turned, and stopped.

She looked around the kitchen.

The dishes were washed. The table was cleared. There was nothing else, in the immediate visible field of her morning, that she could do. She glanced down at herself - the grey jacket, the polished boots, the trousers - and the careful effort of her outfit became suddenly the most prominent thing in the room.

Kori finally looked up from her porridge.

"Hikari."

"Mm?"

"I have stuff in my room, top left closet."

"...What?"

"Top left closet. Take whatever you want from it."

Hikari blinked.

"...For the garden?"

"For the garden."

"You have garden clothes in your top left closet."

"I have a lot of things in my top left closet. Don't ask questions about anything you find in there, but I'm sure you'll find something."

Hikari nodded slowly, and walked out of the kitchen toward Kori's room.

The kitchen became strangely quiet.

Keahi went out the back door. Arashi followed her, still in his shorts, still loudly committing to the cleanliness project he was certainly not about to fail. Their voices receded into the back garden, dimming into the low murmur of two unrelated siblings figuring out which tools to drag out first.

Raizen and Kori were alone.

She was still sitting at the head of the table, her good hand resting beside the bowl, the bandaged one now flat on her lap. The porridge had cooled to a temperature it was no longer going to recover from. Her eyes had returned to their weird state - slightly distant, slightly weighted, but In a faraway place.

He cleared his throat.

"Kori."

"Yes"

"I don't have garden clothes either. Mine - the ones I had before coming to the Academy - are still down in the Underworks. Obi lent me most of what I was wearing, and they're still at his place. I can run home and grab what I can but it'll -"

"Don't worry about it."

"...What?"

"Obi the smith, huh," she said. Her voice was quiet now. "You mentioned Obi last night, on the roof, while I was downstairs. The walls of this house are thinner than you think, I'm pretty sure I heard some parts of of it."

He didn't say anything. There wasn't even anything appropriate to say.

"You don't need to change." Kori continued.

"But I'm not Arashi, I'm going to be -"

"You're not working in the garden."

He stopped. "Huh?"

"Don't worry about it" Kori let out a loud exhale.

"I wasn't going to put you to work anyway."

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