Our Colours

3rd Chapter: Dinner

Question at the beginning!!!
Whose Point of View shall I write next? (Connor, Alex, Mike, Anouk and Sarah are the ones that I haven't used yet.) You decide! Also, some new characters are to come in the next chapter.

Carefully Ruby scratched the pencil over the white paper. She was working on lineart for a new piece and the new girl, Iris, had kind of inspired her already. She had started drawing very early, as she couldn't speak. She needed another way to express herself and so she started drawing.

Iris seemed really nice. Though her handwriting was nearly unreadable. Not like Clover's writing, Clover's words were unreadable due to her spelling disorder, but Iris had a crazy handwriting, it looked more like art than like words.

Ruby really liked "talking" to her, but just hoped that her voice didn't come over as annoying or too childish. Sometimes she really wanted to hear her voice herself so she knew what it sounded like. But the hearing aids she was given didn't help much.

She was able to hear voices, but only quiet and she couldn't understand what they said. Also she was able to hear melodies, but again, only quiet and without vocals. Sometimes she connected her hearing aids to her phone and listened to some quiet instrumental music while drawing. She could hear it on full volume and it wouldn't bother anyone because the rooms were sound isolated. That helped a lot.

Ruby glanced over at her clock. It said 7:24 pm. Dinner would be done in six minutes. Maybe she should head downstairs already? Ruby put her pencil away and stood up. She didn't want to be late.

As she opened the door, she saw Connor coming out of his door as well. His facial expression was moody, but if he was able to get up again, that was a good sign. He looked over to Ruby quickly and made a quick hand gesture. Ruby repeated the gesture and formed a silent "Hi" with her mouth.

Every saturday at 5 pm the inhabitants of the Rainbow Home were given sign language lessons. Some, like Clover and Mike, who were there ever since Ruby arrived, were pretty advanced at sign language and able to hold normal conversations with Ruby. Connor and Alex were also pretty good, but they still needed practice in some areas. And Ruby didn't know about Iris. She seemed not to be knowing anything about sign language. Hopefully she was a fast learner.

Ruby closed her door behind her and went down the stairs. She saw Anouk standing in front of the kitchen and assumed that some were already inside. When she entered the kitchen, she saw Clover sleeping on her armchair, while Mike was rolling around in his wheelchair, placing plates on the table.

She walked over to him and gestured "Can I help you?" with her hands, while moving her mouth to it. Mike nodded thankfully and pointed to the drawer with the silverware. "You can put these on the table" he gestured. Ruby nodded and walked over to the drawer to get the silverware.

While she took as much as they needed, she saw Iris walking in. Ruby put the silverware on the table and silently observed her. Iris went to Anouk and said something to them, then she came over to Ruby. Ruby smiled at her and moved her hands a bit to say "Do you know sign language?" Iris looked a bit confused and turned to Anouk, who then went over to her and said something to her, probably translating the sign language. Iris' face lightened up, but then she shook her head, to show Ruby she didn't know sign language. Ruby sighed and turned to Anouk. "She will be learning sign language too, won't she?" She gestured. Anouk nodded and said something to Iris again. Iris then answered. Ruby had difficulties trying to read her lip movements, so she had no clue about what Iris said. But judging by Anouk's face, it was something really positive, maybe an idea. Anouk turned to Ruby and then moved their hands. "Iris suggested you might use a text-to-speech app! What do you think of that?"