[h3][color=c92c65]Amaranthe Foreste[/color][/h3][hr][hr]Her eyes began to flutter open, and Ami let them. She had never been a morning person, and she had learned that the best way to deal with getting up early was just to rip the bandaid off and do it. She grabbed her phone without looking and checked the time: 06:15. Yeah, no time to go back to sleep.

The apartment--and the city around her--was still quiet at this early hour, and as she got ready for the day, Ami's movements did as little as possible to disturb that near-silence. She slipped out of her bed and into a worn pair of jeans with the belt already in them, pulled on a thick work shirt, and with that still hanging loose padded out of the small room. 

Ami watched herself in the mirror as she brushed her teeth. Sleep was slowly releasing its grip on her, and as she powered through to wakefulness, her mind started to put things in order.

[color=c92c65][b]To-Do[/b]
[list][*] Prep lunch for me and Tony 
[*] Put in time-off request at work
[*] Pick up Tony's meds
[*] [s]Survive the apocalypse[/s]
[*] Wait, what?
[/list][/color]

She coughed, choking for a second on her toothpaste, then rinsed. 

Ami finished buttoning up her shirt as she walked into the kitchen. Making a beeline for the fridge, she set out few containers of food on the counter, then twisted the top off of a jug of orange juice. She drank heavily from that as she busied herself preparing two lunchboxes with leftovers. 

As she put the food away, a piece of paper fell off of the fridge; Amaranthe bent down and found the printed schedule for her mother's new job. She had been set to work overnight; her shift didn't end for another couple of hours. 

She looked down the hall, saw her mother's door was closed. Looked over at the key rack, saw her mother's keys hanging there. 

Ami sighed, shook her head, and walked back over to her room. Against the opposite wall from where she slept, her brother still lay sleeping--a blonde, messy-haired teenager, wirier than his sister, but with a lot of filling out left to do. She smacked her hand hard against his headboard a couple of times; he started awake, groaned, and rolled over.

[color=c92c65]"Time to get up, Tony. Your lunch is packed, if you miss the bus it's your problem."[/color]

Another groan.

She walked out of the room--stopped at the door--turned around and looked at her brother. She started to say something, then turned and left.

(She grabbed her mother's keys on the way out, took the car key off of them.)

As she nosed the old Toyota out of the parking lot, Ami spotted the pack of cigarettes sitting in the cupholder. [color=c92c65]"Ah, fuck it."[/color] She took one, found her mother's lighter in the console, and lit it as she pulled onto the main road.