Kuggi and Duggi could no longer hide it. The hunger was visible on their faces. And the desire to try it was even more obvious, especially after hearing the positive opinions.
"Let us try it."
Kuggi asked, his voice less aggressive than before. Almost... humble?
"No."
Hawke's answer was simple and direct.
"Why?!"
"You were hostile. Besides, you didn't share the food yesterday. Why should I share?"
"But Tairo ate with us yesterday and didn't share! And yet he still receives!"
Kuggi pointed indignantly. Duggi preferred to stay out of it, not wanting to challenge Hawke again.
It was true. Tairo hadn't shared the day before and yet he had won a portion now.
'My mistake.'
But honestly? Hawke didn't care if they had shared before or not. It was more personal than that. He realized that, despite thinking he was already part of the group, the men, except for Tairo, hadn't truly accepted him yet.
The silence that settled in was uncomfortable, even heavy.
Duggi and Kuggi exchanged a quick glance. For the first time, they seemed to measure their own actions. They reflected a little.
"We... overdid it."
Duggi murmured, without looking directly at Hawke. Looking at the ground.
Hawke let the request hang for a few seconds, assessing its sincerity. Then he took a small portion that was left over and divided it between the two.
They ate eagerly. They devoured even the leaves that served as plates, trying to capture every crumb of flavor. And in the end, they murmured that it was too little, but they were happy.
It was as delicious as they had said.
'Power.'
Hawke realized something important there.
The power in that situation didn't just come from physical strength, from being able to throw Duggi to the ceiling. It came from usefulness. From skill.
He had something the others didn't. And that was worth more than muscles.
Kaira moved closer, her eyes fixed on him.
"Can you do more of that?"
"I can, of course."
"Always?"
He raised an eyebrow.
"Whenever I have eggs, I guess."
She hesitated for only a second before smiling sideways, looking down shyly.
"If you do it all the time... I could even be your possession."
'Whoa.'
Yuka laughed, playing along, or maybe it wasn't a joke?
"Me too! I want to too!"
The old woman wiped her lips with the back of her hand and commented, without the slightest embarrassment:
"I don't see any problem with that. I'll be your possession too."
'NO. NOT THE OLD WOMAN.'
Even the men, realizing the direction the conversation was taking, tried to include themselves.
"We can too..." Kuggi began.
"Be your possession!" Duggi finished, excitedly.
"NO WAY, MEN TOO."
Hawke remained standing there, his eyebrow slightly raised, while everyone looked at him with that strange expectation in their eyes, the old woman, the girls, even the men offering themselves to be his "possession" for cooked food, which was absurd and bizarre, and he definitely wasn't going to respond to that with words because any response would be too problematic.
The silence stretched until it became awkward enough for everyone to give up and go back to tinkering with their own things, organizing the little they had for the trip.
The campfire was already dying down, the flames getting smaller, turning into orange embers that pulsed gently. The stone lid that had been used to fry the egg was lying beside it, blackened with soot, still releasing thin wisps of smoke as the last gasp of that makeshift stove.
"It's time," Tairo announced, looking at the sky outside through the cave entrance, assessing the sun's position. "We need to leave soon if we want to arrive fast."
No one said anything, but there was something in the air; A tension, a somewhat contained sadness that Hawke couldn't quite identify. They seemed reluctant, somewhat nostalgic, looking around the cave as if they were recording every detail in their memory.
'It must be difficult for them, I imagine. Changes. Leaving the place they call home, even if it's a damp cave full of bones.'
One by one, they began to approach the remains of the campfire. Kuggi was the first, crouching down and plunging his hands directly into the still-warm ashes and charcoal, staining his palms completely black. Then he stood up and walked to the cave wall.
And he struck his hand against the rock.
He left a mark. Thick, dark, a blur of fingers and palm imprinted on the stone.
Duggi did the same right after, striking his hand next to Kuggi's, leaving another wide and disorganized mark; more of an affirmation of strength than anything else, like "I was here, I exist, I am strong."
It wasn't something anyone had ordered or arranged. It simply happened. As if everyone instinctively felt they needed to leave their mark there before departing. A final proof that they had lived in that place, that those walls knew them, something they seemed to do almost always.
Tairo did it differently from the other men. He pressed his open palm carefully against the wall, fingers fully extended, and then slowly withdrew. The outline was perfect; five distinct fingers, the shape of the hand clear and defined. Simple and direct, but somehow more... personal.
Yuka crouched near the ashes, rubbed her hand, and went towards a wall, beginning to draw. Not just a hand; she used her dirty fingers to trace curved lines on the stone, something that resembled a sun or perhaps an animal with a round body and paws sticking out from the sides. Kaira watched attentively, studying the technique, and then tried to copy it on the other side of the wall. She got the proportions wrong, made the circle too crooked, grumbled to herself, and erased it with her own palm before trying again, her tongue sticking out in concentration.
Hawke looked at the marks accumulating on the wall and something stirred within him; a desire to be a part of it, to belong even though he remembered nothing before waking up in that stone tomb days ago.