bento box

"You've brought lunch?"

Mirania's spread is, as always, impeccable. Not only does she have a beautiful lunchbox with stackable interlocking components and an insulated compartment, she has coordinating wooden chopsticks, a spoon rest, a sauce dish...

She arrays all of it with such painstaking care on the table, space-efficient and time-sensitive in preparation for the meal that awaits. She has it down to a science, and yet she's never, ever rushed.

So it really is a bit of an odd question for Yurick to pose.

"Yes, I've brought lunch," she says, pouring the soy sauce. "We are alive and breathing." And that's maybe the precursor to a mealtime grace, but Yurick wouldn't know, because he mutters curses under his breath much more often than he's ever found a use for prayer. After all, he's not a healer. That's Mirania's type of incantation. The most he can do is flip an enemy's circle inside out, and even that's sort of...insidious.

Self-preservation. Group preservation. Optimism. Pragmatism.

All Mirania's skills, which you wouldn't assume from her unaffected and somewhat fatuous demeanor.

But she's brought lunch. They are alive and breathing.

"You didn't bring lunch for me," says Yurick, just to say it. In response, Mirania peers across the table at him, over the top of her tumbler, doe-soft eyes lidded.

Then she goes back to rearranging her condiments. Once the dumplings are ready, she dips one in sauce, gives an experimental heft for drips, and moves it to her mouth for a bite.

Eyes closed. Chew.

"Your choices are up to you, Yurick. If you don't tell me you want lunch, I won't bring you any. But I'd happily pack anything you wanted, if I'd be able to know."

I can't read your mind, she might as well have said, but Yurick knew that Mirania knew that everyone suspected she probably truly could do just that, when she wanted.

"It's...difficult."

"You're difficult." She takes her second bite, savors. "But we're still friends. You see?"