Chapter 11: Picturing

Orihime woke up with no memory of her dream.

"Tatsuki! I made the American pancakes you like!"

The karate girl opened her eyes slowly, blinking back to reality. She had been dreaming peacefully, despite the night's intensity, about kicking another boy's ass at a competition. One punch and he was down for the count, and that was all she wrote! She had barely hit the boy with a softy, but apparently he had a bruise at the center of his stomach, because he had been down just like that.

"Tatsuki! Japan to Tatsuki!" Orihime waved a hand in front of her friend's face, giggling. "You space out worse than I do in the morning!"

Tatsuki groaned, sitting up, and then slowly stretched until she was standing. "Yeah, guess so. What did you put in the pancakes?"

The black-haired girl felt her spirits drop under the influence of Orihime's delighted smile. That smile could only mean one thing. "Wasabi!"

She felt herself go green. "Oh. Heh-heh… that's okay, Orihime, I-"

"I left some plain, boring, tasteless ones for you." She laughed, waving off the other girl's concern. "Don't worry!"

"Oh. Thanks, Orihime."

They sat down and began to eat, Orihime hopping up once to get some tomato sauce to add to her wasabi pancakes. All the while she chattered, happily going on about her food. "I mean, can you just imagine life without wasabi? How would anyone eat oranges? Or worse, ice cream?! Can you imagine ether of those without wasabi?"

"Yeah, actually, I sort of can…"

"Well I think it would be horrible." Orihime laughed. She suddenly turned sort of serous, looking on with a furrowed brow. "What if there is someone out there who's never had wasabi, Tatsuki? How could they even stand to eat? Do you know how sad someone would be without wasabi?"

Tatsuki laughed. "Uh, yeah, Orihime-" But then stopped upon seeing the girl blinking in confusion, head tilted to the side.

"You've never had wasabi?" She said quietly, staring off in to space. She scrunched her brow up, looking down at her food in confusion. "Who have I said that to before…?"

Seeing another disaster in the form of memory loss just ahead, Tatsuki quickly changed the subject. "So, Orihime, did you get this weekend's homework done?" What is the homework anyway…"

"Oh! I almost forgot about that!" She excitedly jumped up, hoping just a couple feet away to were her bag hung by the door. She grabbed it and brought it back, producing two pieces of large, thick, paper. "Art homework!"

Oops. Not a good place to go. "Oh... yeah."

"Speaking of art, have I shown you some of my new drawings? I think I'm getting a lot better! I drew…" And then she looked a little sad again. "Well, actually, that's something else weird. I've been drawing things I don't even know lately. In fact… I kind of want to draw this palace I keep thinking up in my mind. But it's not pretty… everything is so white."

Trying to get her off the topic, to spare her any pain that could be held off until later on, she went on. "Huh. Well, anyway, we might as well get the school project done, right?"

She smiled all bubbly again. "Yeah! No sense in putting it off!"

About an hour or two later, Orihime looked down at her drawings in slight confusion. Tatsuki and she had both gotten caught up in their work, not noticing the time flying by so quickly. Orihime had finished before Tatsuki, though the other girl didn't seem to notice yet. And to be honest, Orihime's work frightened her a little.

Her happy picture had been easy enough. Everything made her happy. Lately, her pure freedom had made her happy, just walking around outside and breathing in the air. She had intended to draw herself lying in an open park, bathing in the sunlight, but is had come out a little differently than she had intended. The grass's color was a little off, as were the leaves, and that green took up nearly the whole picture. You could see the top of her head at the bottom of the page, her Shun Shun Rika glistening on the sides of her head, as her hair spilled out in bright orange tendrils. The sunlight made everything a little brighter. Overall, the whole picture was just… happy.

Her picture of sorrow… had come out a lot different. At first she had meant to do something she had drawn before- the lone moon hanging in a black sky, seen from behind bars. But she had begun to draw that, the window small and not the focus of the page. Slowly, a room had come to life. One that was much too familiar, and yet she didn't know it. This room took up a small corner of the page, off to the side, not the center focus. On the couch she had drawn a small silver platter, topped with bland white food, and then off to the side of the room a door opening to let a huge brown fox and a silver snake into the room, the fox holding a cube with a blue-purple orb in its center between sharp teeth. Behind them she could see a couple pale hands reaching out, as if hoping to catch up to the fox and the snake, all with white sleeves. The fox had bloody foot prints behind it, a bit of the red dripping from its maw, and the snake had a barely seen blond colored chain wrapped around its neck and leading out of the open door. In all honesty, she didn't really know what any of it meant.

The other side of the page she had drawn a desolate scene. She had drawn a pale desert, with white sands and a blackened sky, expanding endlessly. She knew what this meant in her mind- her, all alone.

But the center of the page, the main focus, were two hands reaching out to one another, their owners unseen. She guessed one hand might have been her own, but the other looked like it belonged to a demon. While Orihime's own hand was intact, the edges of the other hand were clearly crumbling, turning to ash.

Separating the images were two green tear streaks, dividing the page into three uneven sections.

She wasn't sure whether she loved or hated her artwork.

"Ha! Finished!"

Orihime looked up to see Tatsuki's finished art. Her friend had drawn two amazing pieces, as Orihime guessed she would. One was of her standing in the middle of the dojo, boys laying defeated all around her, as she grinned fiercely. The other was of two faces, neither of which was easy to see. All that was seen was the neck and chin of each person, both of whom were facing one another, as tears dripped off of each chin. The drawings were very much what Orihime expected of Tatsuki.

From Tatsuki's expression, hers weren't exactly what were expected at all.

Still, the tomboy just looked up her and smiled. "Looks great, Orihime."

"Thanks."

"Yeah. Anyway, I have some things I need to get done." The girl rose, rolling up her pictures and stashing them away in her backpack. "I'd love to stay longer, but you know how it is."

Orihime nodded, smiling. "I'll get you some clothes to wear home."

"Oh, it's fine, Orihime. I can just wear my uniform. Besides," she added with a laugh, "Your clothes are too big for me."

"I'll get one of my old dresses, then." Orihime said happily, hopping up herself. "I'll be right back!" She raced to her room, happily sliding open her closet. She looked through her dresses, trying to find one that the tom boy wouldn't mind too much, as slowly she delved deep into the back of the closet. She finally found a dark blue one that buttoned half of the way up, and had a collar. It looked kind of sporty, and was pretty small, so she imagined her friend wouldn't mind it too much. She was about to pull it out and close the closet, when something white caught her eyes. Slowly dropping her hand from the blue garment in front of her, she stretched out her arm until she took hold of the white.

"What's this?" She asked herself, about to pull it out.

"Orihime, someone's at the door!"

She pulled her hand back from the white garment, looking back over her shoulder. She quickly grabbed the blue dress for Tatsuki and then closed the closet, running out into the main room. "Coming!"

She gave the dress to Tatsuki, just to wear until she could change at home, just before answering the door to find it was her neighbor, looking for her lost cat again. Orihime politly explained that she hadn't seen the cat, and promised to keep an eye out, just before Tatsuki was ready to leave. She said goodbye to her dear friend, and then was alone before she knew it.

"Now… what was it that I was supposed to do?" She thought out loud, knowing she had been about to do something before answering the door. "Oh yeah! I need to clean!" She said, though it didn't feel like it was what she had been about to do, it was true.

So she happily set to work, starting with the windows, oblivious to her friend making her way to the Kurosaki residence somewhere off in Karakura town. Already forgetting about the white dress she had barely caught sight of in her closet.