Rex was the first to arrive, and he looked just like he always did in the morning: perfectly fine and not at all like soone who had spent most of the night doing sothing apart from sleeping.
Diana was the last to follow, wearing an expression that suggested she was present but not fully engaged ntally. The morning air had failed to bring a healthy glow to her skin.
She glanced at Rex, then at Lily, before turning to Diana.
Her gaze returned to Rex.
Mara paused in her movents with the cloth. "I was keeping an eye out for the three of you, but it appears that... you three have been wasting quite a bit of ti."
Rex pulled out a chair and sat down. "Good morning to you too, Mara."
"I noticed," Rex said. "But... it’s not too late to say it again."
"So tiring~!" Diana exclaid with a sense of weariness.
"You’re saying that because you’re already accustod to it, aren’t you?"
Mara pressed her lips together and made a sound that was sowhere between a laugh she was suppressing and a sigh she wasn’t. "You’re leaving on a three-day expedition this morning."
"And this is how you prepared," she said.
Lily made a sound against the table surface that resembled a word but was not quite intelligible.
Mara looked at all three of them for one more mont, and then she shook her head slowly, the way soone shook their head when the situation was too specific to assign bla in any clean direction.
"I’ll get your coffee," she said to Rex. "And bread. And sothing for those two before they fall asleep at my table."
"Extrely," Diana said, without lifting her chin from her hand.
"You’re looking quite obvious there." Diana said.
"W-What...?!" Diana exclaid, taken aback by this revelation.
"It’s not important," Rex stated, shaking his head. "And that’s enough, no more questions."
...
He drank all of his coffee.
"Yep," Rex said.
It had the weight and shape of food prepared for travel, and the wrapping was the Silver Rest’s specific quality, the kind that kept things intact for the duration of a full day in the field.
Rex looked at her. "The road is three days," he said.
She pulled the other three out of her apron like soone who had been carrying them and was waiting for the right ti.
Rex saw that both Diana and Lily were also holding small packages under the table. Diana and Lily took out their small packages at the sa ti, as they had apparently agreed to do so sowhere between the stairs and the coffee.
"Holy shit, you girls," Rex said. "This is too much."
"I need a bigger pack."
Mara touched his arm, and the way she did it was not the way she touched most things; it was the particular warmth she reserved for monts she had decided mattered.
Rex looked at them both.
"I’ll be back," he said. "Don’t stress over it."
"That’s my version of a fact," Rex said. "There’s a difference."
"Exactly," Rex said, and the corner of his mouth moved in the way it moved when sothing was true and he was fine with it being visible.
"All four of those better be gone when you get back," she said.
Rex stood and picked up the pack that had been sitting by the door since he ca downstairs, adjusted the strap once, and looked back at the table.
"I’ll see you in three days," Rex said.
"Yeah, yeah, I get it..." Rex walked out the door with Lily and Diana, both of whom noticed that Mara and Marceline were smiling as they caressed their stomachs with a sense of pride.
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