Deeper Than the Knife

Chapter 6- Good Talk

I woke up to the sounds of laughter coming from the T.V. I slowly sat up in bed, my hair was probably a mess, and rubbed my eyes to hopefully tub away the sleepiness. It didn't work, still sleepy. But I did manage to actually open my eyes to be greeted with the view of Yarah sitting on the foot of my bed, watching some weird kids network- with its really bad acting- playing on the T.V.

She must've noticed the stir of the covers, since she turned around and gave me a big, adorable smile. Honestly, she was so cute I was going to die. 

"Good morning mama!"  She said cheerfully. She was like a ray of sunshine, especially since we didn't have any damn windows to let in the sunshine. Seriously, who designed this place without any windows? 

"Morning." I yawned as I pushed the covers off myself. "What time is it?" I asked, it was hard to tell what time it was without any freaking windows. Is my bitterness clear enough?

"Morning!" Yarah announced.

Okay, was I really surprised by that answer? No. Did I really except an actual answer from a 6 year old? Also no. Did I still have it adorable as hell? Yes.

"But mommy might know, she's in the kitchen." Yarah pointed at the open door that led into our little kitchen. Yarah had decided that I was to be known as 'mama' and Yukino as 'mommy'. At first she protested the name, saying that I should be 'mommy', but one puppy-dog eyes look from Yarah, and she accepted her fate.  I spent that whole conversation trying not to laugh.

"Thanks kiddo." I said getting up from my bed and walked towards the kitchen, ruffling Yarah's hair on the way. I had the motherly urge to kiss the top of her forehead, but I resisted it. One step at a time. 

When I entered the kitchen/dinning room, Yukino was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee in her hands, she was staring at our framed picture of Rio that was hanging on the wall. 

I sat across from her, the wooden chair creaking under my weight. Yukino had on regular PJ's- in the whole 24+ hours that I've known her, I've never seen her in plain clothes. This moment has to be celebrated. 

She slid a second cup of coffee- where did she get that from?- across the table. "You look tired, drink some coffee."

I took a sip of the coffee, it didn't have any cream or sugar in it, just the way I liked it. But I doubted Yukino knew that, she probably just kept it black because she didn't know how I took my coffee. 

"Thanks." I said. 

She just nodded before taking a sip of her own coffee.

"How long have I been out?" I asked, I was really hoping it wasn't the middle of the night right now. I wasn't in the mood to become nocturnal.

"About 15 hours." She said like it was no big deal.

I almost choked on my coffee. "15 hours?!" I asked after making sure I wouldn't choke on the coffee. Or air. 

Yukino nodded, "yes, it's about 8 am right now."

Damn, I was out for a long time. Wait, 8 am was breakfast time. I looked around but didn't see anything to indicate there was any serving of food. And Yarah was in the bedroom watching T.V...

"Did Yarah eat breakfast before she started watching T.V?" I asked. I'm not sure how I felt about these newly acquired motherly instincts. But hell, Yarah has to eat breakfast before being able to watch any T.V, and what she watches has to be age appropriate.

"Yes, we only had cereal so she had a bowl of that with a glass of almond milk." Yukino said.

 "Is she lactose intolerant?" I asked. I felt ashamed that I didn't know very important things about my own child, like if she had a life threatening allergy.