"There we go!" said Ruby proudly as she returned to her team's campsite. She'd taken it upon herself to tie up tripwires surrounding the site. "Anything big and nasty comes this way, we'll get plenty of advanced warning."

"Is that… likely?" asked Weiss, her voice betraying how little the idea appealed.

"No, we're pretty close to the school," said Blake. "This area gets swept often enough just by students and teachers passing through. I think Ruby's taking plenty of precautions."

"That means a lot. You are the expert on outdoor survival!" Ruby said to Blake. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she felt like she'd made a mistake. With the fight at the docks still fresh in their minds, the team had collectively agreed not to broach the subject of (as Yang put it) the Ite-Whay Ang-Fay unless Blake did first. Bringing up outdoor survival came close to that line. Ruby scrambled to cover. "What I mean is, you have the highest Survival grades on the team!"

It seemed to work. Blake neither got riled up nor withdrew. She just nodded placidly at the observation. "I've got nothing on Ren and Nora, though."

"Well, that's different. They lived it, after all. N-not that you didn't, but…"

"Ready to start the campfire!" Yang called loudly. Good save, sis!

"About time, I'd like to stop carrying this food and start eating it," said Weiss.

"Me too," said Yang, nodding. "Hit me."

Weiss blinked in incomprehension, while Ruby face-palmed and moaned, "Yaaang..."

"It's the fastest and easiest way," said Yang, grinning roguishly. "You want to start a campfire? Unless you wanna spend the next half-hour banging rocks together, powering my semblance and setting me off is your shortcut. C'mon, princess, haven't you ever wanted to slap the smile off my face?"

"At least once a day, but that's not the point." Weiss grabbed for her hip, brought the hilt of Myrtenaster into her sight, and carefully drew out a pinch of fire Dust. She shot Blake a look. "You can start a controlled fire with this, right?"

"Easily," replied Blake. She took the Dust, seated it amongst the kindling, and with a brush of aura activated it. The kindling went up quickly, the logs caught, and in moments the fire was burning merrily.

"Pfft, I could have taken anything you could dish out," said Yang.

"Tools are what differentiate man from beast," said Weiss haughtily. "It's no surprise to me you're at that level, but the rest of us…"

"Weiss!"

"What, Ruby?"

Ruby glanced at Blake. The faunus had foregone her bow since the team expected privacy here in the wilds. Without it, her expressions, usually so guarded, were easier for Ruby to see and read.

She was pretty sure anyone could read how Blake's cat ears were flat to her skull. She seemed to be occupying half the space she usually did.

"What?" Weiss demanded again, apparently blind to her catastrophically poor turn of phrase. Heh… cat-astrophically… oh, fudge on a stick, now Ruby was doing it!

She realized that the whole team was staring at her.

"Uhhh… food!" she blurted out. "Right, food, that's important! What do we have, Weiss?"

Weiss held her gaze a moment longer, suspicious, but then gave in. "The finest rations that can be inexpensively mass produced and freeze-dried," she griped.

"I knew you taking that Logistics elective would pay off!"

"This isn't what we learn in… you know, never mind." Weiss slung her backpack off. It was more expensive than her teammates' and carried the mandatory Schnee snowflake, but it wasn't any smaller or lighter. She'd insisted (repeatedly) that she would carry her weight.

"Let's see what varieties we have," she said as she rifled through the rations packs. "Chicken stew…"

"Meat-like stuff and gummy noodles in generic sauce," Yang helpfully translated.

"…chili macaroni…"

"Meat-like stuff and gummy noodles in generic sauce."

"…and beef ravioli."

"Meat-like stuff inside of gummy noodles in generic sauce."

"Nothing resembling fish?" Blake said without much hope.

Yang just laughed. "Blakey, you wouldn't want to eat the fish they could stuff into these things."

She sighed. "Chicken stew, I guess."

"Chili mac for me!" cheered Ruby. "That one comes with peppermint sticks. Oh! Who wants to race?"

Blake and Weiss looked at Ruby without comprehension. "Race?"

"These rations packs have an entrée, a side, a dessert, and a condiments package," Ruby explained. "You rip open one of those, eat it as fast as possible, run fifteen yards and back, and eat the next thing. First person to eat everything in their rations pack wins."

"And you're out of the race if you puke," added Yang.

Weiss' expression was equal parts disgust and fascination. "How is this a thing? Is this something you did with each other?"

"Field day at Signal, actually," said Yang, becoming thoughtful. "You know, in hindsight, I think the instructors just liked watching us hurl."

"It does get pretty rough trying to choke down the condiments package," Ruby admitted. "All those little baggies of salt and pepper and chewing gum…"

"Some of them come with hot sauce."

"And if you get a pack with coffee grounds in it, you might as well concede."

"Hey, remember when Niels accidentally tried to eat the chemical heater?"

Blake had one hand over her eyes and another over her stomach. Weiss tried for dignity and failed. "If my actual survival didn't depend on me having enough food to function, I would skip dinner altogether. You two have killed my appetite."

"Rest in peace, Weiss' appetite," Ruby said solemnly.

"You never had a chance," Yang added.

Weiss sighed.

An hour or so later (who was counting?) the food was begrudgingly eaten, the packaging either disposed of or returned to Weiss' backpack, the bedrolls out, the students in their bedrolls, the sun down, and the stars starting to appear.

"And that's that!" said Ruby. "We've got a little time until the fire's out and we're ready to sleep. Who has a story?"

(On Remnant, as on other worlds, telling stories by campfire is a grand old tradition. Most worlds favor ghost stories when flickering lights and deep shadows raise all manner of spooky possibilities. Not on Remnant. Out in Remnant's wilds, telling stories about fictional monsters was a great way to ensure factual monsters came calling.)

"I know a lot of stories about my grandfather," offered Weiss. "He did a lot of exploring and ran into plenty of interesting people and situations."

Ruby wanted to face-palm. Was Weiss really going to stumble into every one of Blake's raw nerves? "Any others?" she asked.

"Those are the best ones I know," said Weiss, before she looked down. "And… also the only ones I know."

Ruby went from feeling bad for Blake to feeling bad for Weiss in the span of a heartbeat.

"We weren't much for fiction back home," Weiss explained, voice unusually quiet. "'Get your head out of the clouds, think about things that are real'. 'Dreamers are paupers.' That was the attitude."

Now Ruby ached and she didn't know what to…

"Oh, hey, there's Martella."

Yang with the save again! Ruby wanted to hug her sister, but that would have meant getting out of her bedroll, which was feeling pretty cozy. "Oh, is she out already?"

"Yeah, there she is," said Yang, pointing to the sky.

Ruby peered closely. "You're right! I see her now. I almost couldn't make her out."

"What are you talking about?" demanded Weiss.

"Martella the Hammer," said Ruby. "Up there."

Weiss gave Ruby a suspicious look, glanced upwards, and repeated, "What are you talking about?"

"She is hard to see right now," Ruby granted, "but there she is, right over there." She pointed into the sky. "We're still kinda close to Vale, so there's light pollution, and it hasn't been too long since the sun went down. Give it an hour and you'll see her in all her glory!"

Weiss huffed. "Seriously, when will you start talking sense?"

Ruby blinked. "Do you not know the constellations?"

"The what?"

Yang laughed. "Oh, boy. Here we go."

"The constellations!" Ruby said, almost clapping to herself in her eagerness. "The pictures in the sky that tell the old stories!"

"I just said I don't know any stories, Ruby," said Weiss petulantly.

"Well, I'm glad we're doing this, then," said Ruby, unperturbed by Weiss' attitude. "We'll start with Martella, and as the evening goes on we'll be able to see more of the constellations and tell their stories and this'll be great!"

With effort, Ruby scooted her bedroll closer to Weiss' and pointed upwards. "See there? Those three stars look like a face, those three look like the haft of a hammer, and those two are the hammer head."

"I don't see it," said Weiss flatly.

"It's fine if you don't at first," said Ruby confidently. "Just keep your eyes on them while I tell the story. Ahem." Ruby closed her eyes and took several deep breaths.

"Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there was a blacksmith's daughter named Martella…"

"…She split the Grimm's skull with one last, mighty blow," Ruby said with a flourish. "With that, the battle ended. Martella went home with all the stolen goods and returned them to their rightful owners. For her reward, she took her father's place at the forge, and made weapons the rest of her days."

"And you've lost me for the fourth time," said Weiss. "Her 'reward' was more manual labor?"

"Because she liked making weapons," Ruby explained. "If she were just some ordinary blacksmith she'd also have to make, I don't know, horseshoes and things? And nails, and belt buckles, and stuff like that. But as a heroine blacksmith, everyone knew not to waste her time with that sort of thing. She got to stick with the cool stuff!"

Weiss' expression, still visible to Blake in the smoldering ashes of their fire, was a dubious one. "It just doesn't seem like she got that much out of it, considering all she went through."

"Well, for some people, the adventure is the reward," said Ruby. "Right, Yang?"

"Huh? Oh, right."

Blake keyed on Yang. The older sister seemed distracted, like she wasn't paying attention.

"Yang's the one who told me these stories some nights in Patch," Ruby went on proudly. "She knows aaaaaall about them."

Or maybe, Blake reconsidered, Yang was avoiding the conversation. The sounds of her shifting in her bed roll weren't much, but Blake still picked them up.

"And now you can see them better," Ruby enthused, not seeming to notice Yang. "Look! You can see Martella really well now, and there's Diana the Archer- they didn't have guns when they were making these stories, can you believe it? See the curve, that's the bow."

"It's just dots, Ruby," Weiss protested.

"You have no romance in your soul," Ruby said, and though it was a mild rebuke it sent Weiss to stuttering.

"Excuse me? Well, now I know why no one ever bothered to tell me these stories! If I have to be delusional to appreciate them, they're not worth my time!"

"People cared enough to pass them down, so they're worth someone's time," Ruby countered. "They're worth my time, anyway."

"And, as I said before, you excel at wasting time."

"Oh! Do you know who you remind me of?" said Ruby.

"Who?" said Weiss suspiciously.

"Olga the Brat."

"Now I know you're making these up," Weiss fumed.

"Am not! Look, see that zigzag? Doesn't it look like someone throwing a tantrum?"

"It does not either!"

"Sure it does! That's Olga the Brat. Let me tell you her story…"

Weiss' voice was pained. "The abbreviated version, please?"

Ruby seemed unsure. "Like, with the writing marks?"

Weiss sighed. "As smart as you are, you have the vocabulary of a five-year-old… the short version, you dunce!"

"Oh! Right! I knew that. Uh, well, Olga… was a brat."

"You don't say."

"And one day she was riding in a carriage, and it broke down, and she threw a big fit about how everyone was wasting her time, and the fit attracted a grimm. If Diana hadn't come along, Olga would have been chow for the Dunder!"

"I don't know what's more insulting: that you compared me to Olga, or that the grimm's name is "the Dunder"."

"If you saw it you wouldn't care what it was called," Ruby said with a shudder. "See those stars that make an angle? That's its mouth. And it's supported by three claws and… um…" She frowned. "Hey, Yang, how many legs does the Dunder have?"

The air was thick with Yang's lack of reply. When she finally made a sound, it was nothing but an "um".

"Oh, yeah, five!" said Ruby, and Blake didn't know if her leader didn't notice or didn't care about Yang's odd responses. "Look, Weiss, you can see them. One, two, three…"

"They're just dots," Weiss insisted.

Ruby let her hand flop down to her side. She was quiet for a time. The forest, to Blake, seemed larger and darker without Ruby's voice.

After even Blake, who normally appreciated quiet, started to feel uncomfortable, Ruby spoke. "Why are you being stubborn about this?"

"Have you met Weiss?" The words were out of Blake's mouth before she realized she'd spoken.

Yang called "Nice one!" and Weiss gave her usual indignant "Hey!" Blake barely noticed either. Her ears went flat as she hid her face.

She didn't want to blow up again. She didn't want to make being a faunus a thing again. She didn't want every conversation with Weiss to come down to Schnees versus Faunus, even if Weiss made such callous remarks that were like yanking on Blake's…

"We should ask Blake."

And now she was completely disoriented and they were staring at her expectantly and was there any chance she could semblance out of answering?

Ruby's eyes promised that the answer was no.

"Ask me about what?" she said, cringing under the scrutiny. She felt the urgent itch to sink under her sleeping bag and disappear; it was so intense she barely heard the others continue their bickering.

"If it matters at all if we imagine little pictures in the sky at night," Weiss said with thinly-veiled contempt.

"I think so, and Yang thinks so or she wouldn't have told me all those stories," Ruby said. "Weiss disagrees, and she thinks if you side with her she can at least scrape a draw."

Weiss depending on Blake? That was… different.

"People like different things," Blake said evasively. "If Ruby likes it, what's the harm?"

As Ruby cheered, Weiss pouted. "That's not the point," the heiress insisted. "Do you care about constellations?"

Run away. Run away.

Blake's instincts thrummed with the need to escape before this got ugly. She pushed it down. She'd come to Beacon because she was done with running. She had to gather herself first, but she managed a response. "Actually, I do like the constellations. I've always liked stories, and I was amazed at how different the stars look in different places."

Weiss gave a 'humph' noise as Ruby raised her hands in victory. "Which one's your favorite?" Ruby asked excitedly. "Is it Diana? Martella? Say it's Martella!"

Blake squirmed. "I… don't know how to say this…"

"Say what?"

Blake made the mistake of looking at Ruby. The younger girl's eyes were wide and shining brightly in the reflected fire light. Jacques Schnee himself would have faltered beneath that gaze. Her expression was expectant, gleeful, almost giddy.

It was so unfair.

"I don't know any of those constellations," Blake said quietly.

Ruby blinked, uncomprehending. "Huh?"

"I've never heard of Martella the Hammer, or Diana the Archer, or anything like the Dunder," Blake said, still in undertones. She felt her ears lying tight to her skull. "I heard of different ones. The Wizard. The Tower. The Sisters."

Every time she said a constellation's name, Ruby's puzzlement grew, and Blake's awkwardness grew with it. "I've never heard of those," Ruby said.

"Well, that's my fault."

All heads, Blake's included, jerked to look at Yang. "What does that mean?" asked Weiss.

Yang hesitated, and Blake almost gasped. She'd never seen Yang look, well, anything less than totally self-assured. There was no grin, just a sort of uncomfortable grimace.

Blake had to wonder how many people, on all of Remnant, had seen Yang Xiao Long off her game.

The idea made Blake feel… warm, she decided. Like they were sharing their warmth despite being in different bedrolls. They were letting their guards down around each other. This was something new and precious.

So wrapped up was Blake in this feeling that she almost missed what Yang was saying. "It's not like we had books on that stuff. I knew constellations were a thing, but I didn't know what they were. So I… I made them up."

Ruby's jaw dropped. "You made them up? Martella isn't real?!"

To their collective amazement, it was Weiss who answered this question. "Of course it was a real story. It was real to you. How much more real does a story get?"

Blake was stunned by this, and, by the silence from the sisters, so were they.

"What?" Weiss demanded.

"I don't know what's more surprising," said Yang. "You trying to make Ruby feel better, or you defending something I did."

"What, you're saying I'm not allowed to support my teammates?" Weiss challenged.

"Oh, sure, you're allowed, I just didn't expect you to do it," Yang replied. Before Weiss could fire off an angry retort, Yang plowed on. "It's a good look for you. Keep it up."

Weiss' mouth was open, as if dying to unleash a caustic comment, but Yang had cut the ground out from under her. She managed a dignified, "Thank you."

"That was sweet, sis," said Ruby with a hard gleam in her eye. "Almost sweet enough to make me forget that you made up everything you told me about the constellations!"

"You liked them, didn't you?" Yang countered.

"Well, yeah, I suppose."

Blake laughed as something clicked into place. "Ruby, was it never suspicious to you that there was a character whose happily ever after was making weapons?"

Yang did finger guns at Blake. "Someone just connected the dots," she said, grinning incorrigibly.

A round of groans answered her.

"And I made up Olga the Brat on a day you were being obnoxious," Yang went on. "Most of the others, like Diana, came from me riffing on the other stories I read to you."

"That's actually kind of impressive," said Weiss.

"Whoa, two nice Weiss comments in one day! I was not emotionally ready for that."

Weiss pouted. "It's like you don't want me to be kind."

Ruby had a serious expression on her face. It made Blake nervous. As if coming to a decision, Ruby nodded, and smiled at Yang. "You know what, sis? It's okay. You were doing your best, and the stories were a lot of fun."

Yang looked for a moment like she was expecting a "but…." When none came, her face lit up in a smile bright as the campfire. "Thanks, Ruby!"

And then the silver eyes swiveled to Blake, and the panic rose again. "Which means now it's Blake's turn!"

"Excuse me?" said Blake, wilting as the team's eyes turned to her again.

"I never heard the stories of the Wizard or the Tower," Ruby said. "But I wanna."

It was like Blake's mouth was full of glue. The silver eyes compelled her… but the words wouldn't come out. Her head felt fuzzy as she tried to work through why. "You do?" she asked.

"Of course!" said Ruby. "I love stories, I told you that the first night we met. I know you do, too. That's why you read so much. Why don't we share something we both enjoy?"

It seemed so simple when Ruby said it, but…

Blake's eyes flicked over to Weiss. Ruby didn't seem to notice, but Yang did, and Blake could see the blonde realize something. "Are you worried that we'll think they're just some faunus stories?"

Blake gasped. She hadn't been able to put it to words, but when Yang said it, it was as if Blake had. Every anxiety that Blake had been carrying since outing herself as a faunus, every hit to her nerves Weiss had delivered tonight, somehow it had all got wrapped up in this dumb little story swap. "Yes," she said breathlessly. "That's my worry."

"That's stupid," Weiss said. Blake felt herself shrinking, saw Yang's eyes changing colors… "I'm sure your stories are fine. They came from a book. Whoever wrote it, they've got to be better than Yang's nonsense."

After a beat, Yang laughed, though it sounded strained. "I guess there's some upside to you being an insensitive jerk, huh?"

Blake could see Weiss itching to fire back, but she restrained herself and looked at Blake instead. "Please, Blake? If you don't, Ruby won't shut up about it."

"Yes I would!" the younger girl insisted. "If it really made Blake that uncomfortable, I mean…"

"Besides," Weiss plowed on, "it sounds like you know the right versions. If I'm going to have garbage in my head about constellations, I want it to be the right garbage."

It was so absurd that Blake, despite herself, felt a smile emerging. "My stories must be the 'right garbage' because they're from a book?"

"That's a pretty Weiss take for ya," Yang said lightly.

Blake's smile died as quickly as it had come. "I don't remember who the author was," she said. Judging from their expressions, Blake knew her teammates understood the subtext. She didn't know what the author was.

"Does it matter?" Weiss said.

Blake looked carefully at Weiss. Weiss had transitioned, at some point, to sitting up. Her posture, clearly the result of training, was erect and proper. Her face was challenging, haughty. It was like she was daring everyone else to be the person to say 'yes'.

It was so absurd Blake almost laughed. She'd seen that expression and posture many times before—but always in service to the opposite idea. She'd seen it on cops, on counter-protestors, on proprietors baldly pointing at "No Faunus" signs. Seeing it on a Schnee fit her expectations. Seeing it on a Schnee disavowing racism…

That was brain-breaking.

But was that Weiss' fault? Or all those other people's, for warping Blake's expectations so badly?

A spark of hope flickered inside her chest. "It doesn't matter to me," she said.

"Then it doesn't matter to me, either," said Weiss in this-discussion-is-over tones. "Start talking before Ruby pops."

Blake's eyes flicked to Ruby. Far from looking like she might 'pop', Ruby was looking back and forth between Blake and Weiss, looking concerned. She really cared about…

…about their feelings. About Blake's feelings.

"You don't have to if you don't want to," Ruby said, "but I would like to hear your stories." Blake met her leader's eyes and knew there was nothing but sincerity behind them.

Blake felt her shoulders relax, like tension she hadn't known she'd been carrying had lifted. Maybe this would be okay. Not fixed, the wounds were far too deep for that, but okay for now. "On one condition," she said, mouth almost bypassing her brain.

"Name it," said Ruby.

Blake looked to Weiss. "Don't talk about 'what separates man from beast'."

Weiss couldn't pale any further, but her face did tighten as realization came upon her. "Ah. I can see how that language was… indelicate."

"Do you?"

"Yes. It won't happen again." Weiss nodded decisively, then lay back down in her sleeping bag. "Can we start with the Tower? That sounded less boring than the rest."

Ruby gave Blake a smile. Blake looked at Yang. Yang was smiling, too, but it was a wholly different kind of smile than Ruby's. Yang's smile felt like the campfire, warm and enveloping. Even Weiss was being as companionable as she knew how.

Blake looked up. She found the string of stars that made up the Tower. She thought back to the book, to the hum of the engines on the ship she'd been aboard while she read and looked and put book to sky, out in the great seas where "light pollution" was a foreign concept and a million million stars twinkled back at her.

"Once upon a time, there was a woman in a tower…"

"…And?"

Blake blinked. "And what?"

"And did she live happily ever after?" said Ruby, with a sort of expectant demand in her voice, the kind that implies the receiver knows the right answer and had better deliver it.

"I… guess? I don't know the rest of the story. If there even is a rest of the story after that…"

Ruby gave her the look again.

Blake folded. "And she lived happily ever after."

"Hooray!" Ruby cheered, and flopped back into her sleeping bag. "I love a good story."

Blake looked at Yang. The elder sister's expression of indulgence suggested that this was normal for them.

A new quiet spread amongst the team, this one as warm and comforting as the flickering campfire.

"I never knew there were so many stars," said Weiss.

Blake looked. Even Ruby seemed to understand this was a moment for quiet.

"You can't see them in Atlas," Weiss went on. "You can't see hardly any stars. The city lights drown them out."

"Hope we never end up there," Ruby muttered, unable to help herself. Blake silently agreed, albeit for different reasons.

"But I am glad I saw them now," Weiss continued. "They're… nice."

"And the stories are, too?" Ruby said hopefully.

"Don't push your luck."

"Aww."

End.