"They're so distracted! ATTACK!" Tairo screamed.
Hawke grabbed the black club he had left lying beside him and ran closer to the fire, intercepting the insects that passed near him with brutal and precise blows. One by one he reduced their numbers, heads crushed, wings torn off, bodies broken. With the help of the others, it didn't take long to eliminate them all, about fifteen insects in total.
"THAT'S IT! We got them all!"
Kuggi celebrated, raising his club, his breathing heavy with exhaustion.
"We have plenty of food now!" Duggi smiled contentedly, looking at the scattered bodies.
"The fire is a good trap!" Tairo spun his club, happy with his discovery. "It attracted a lot of easy food!"
"NO."
Hawke intervened quickly, his voice firm.
"It will attract MORE. We have to put out the fire, fast."
"But wouldn't it be good if it attracted more food?" Kaira asked distantly, still holding Yuka close because of the recent fright.
"Not at all," Hawke replied, looking at the surrounding darkness where things might be watching. "It might attract things WORSE than insects. We were lucky this time, you understand? The next one might not be a harmless insect. It could be something that attacks us."
A momentary silence fell in the air, a sign that everyone had understood.
Hawke and the men began to extinguish the fire hurriedly. They threw damp, green branches on top, smothering them. They collected water from nearby tree hollows and threw it on the embers, which hissed violently. It didn't take long, about five minutes of coordinated effort, until the large bonfire turned into just smoldering ashes and pieces of charred wood.
Darkness returned like a heavy blanket falling over everyone. And with the darkness, the cold. The penetrating cold of the night that warms up quickly without the protection of the fire.
"Shit," Kuggi murmured, rubbing his arms. "Now we're going to freeze."
"We have to sleep together again," Tairo decided, looking at the hollow log. "There's no other option."
The men began to protest automatically; it was against the rules, men and women together, but Hawke quickly gave in before it turned into an argument.
"Alright. Let's all go to the log. Rules are rules, but survival comes first."
The men seemed genuinely shaken or saddened by having to extinguish the fire that kept them warm, but they understood the logic, they understood the danger. The women, Yuka, Kaira, and the old woman who had woken up in the middle of the commotion, went to the back of the hollow log, to the innermost and most protected part.
Hawke, Tairo, Kuggi, and Duggi huddled together at the entrance, forming a sort of human doorway, a barrier of flesh between the outside and the women inside. At first, Hawke's masculinity, that strange, forgotten notion that men shouldn't sleep clinging to each other, bothered him, made him uncomfortable. But it was better than being cold all night. He couldn't break the rule again, create friction in the group, make the men angry. On a dangerous trip like this, harmony was crucial.
So he resigned himself to the situation. It wasn't so bad. Their bodies exchanged heat naturally, the cold no longer bothered them. And to his relief, there were no wandering hands; the men slept like stones, completely still, only passively generating heat.
Hawke knew that the correct thing to do would be for one of them to be on watch, taking turns. But when he suggested this, none of the men agreed.
"That's not the way to act," Tairo explained simply. "When it's time to sleep, everyone sleeps."
Yuka and Kaira even volunteered to stay up all night on guard, which surprised Hawke. But he wouldn't allow it.
"Rest. You need it."
He mentally decided that he would do it alone for all of them, stay awake, on watch, making sure nothing came near. But the tiredness from the walk, the warmth of the bodies around him, the comfortable darkness... Gradually his eyes grew heavy.
'I'll just... I'll just close them for a second...'
And he succumbed to a deep, dreamless sleep. The night went on, full of distant sounds and shadows that moved where the light no longer reached.
Hawke woke up stretching, every muscle in his body seemed to relax in a way he hadn't felt in a long time. It had been an incredibly good night's sleep, the kind that leaves you a little dazed from being so rested, without waking up in the middle of the night from cold or strange noises or disturbing thoughts. He yawned, opening his mouth until his jaw clicked slightly, his eyes still half-closed as he enjoyed that delicious and rare sensation of being completely refreshed.
The day seemed peaceful through the irregular opening of the hollow trunk where they had taken refuge. Soft, golden light filtered in in thin rays, melodious sounds of birds singing in the distant treetops of the giant trees, a light breeze carrying the scent of damp earth and leaves.
But as consciousness fully returned, penetrating that pleasant mist of deep sleep, something strange began to touch his mind; a feeling that something was wrong, out of place.
Silence.
Not the normal silence of the morning in the forest, but the silence of human absence, the absence of his companions; They were too noisy for the place to be so quiet; even while sleeping, they made noises by snoring.
He opened his eyes completely, blinking to clear his blurry vision, and looked around the inside of the trunk with increasing attention.
It was completely empty.
There was no one else there—not the men who had slept huddled together, forming that human barrier at the entrance, nor the women who were settled further back, more protected and darkened. No sound of breathing, no movement, no body heat other than his own.
There was absolutely no one.
'They... abandoned me?'
The thought came as cold as the nights of this world, heavy and impossible to process properly.
'This can't be true; would they have the courage to do such a thing? Kaira? Yuka? No way. I carried that stubborn old woman on my back for hours, saved her from dying alone in the cave! And he repaid me by abandoning me?'
She tried to comfort herself by forcing logic into the situation, searching for rational explanations that made more sense than the cruel abandonment.
'Calm down, breathe - maybe they just went out to hunt something for breakfast and stuff, that makes sense, right? That's it, it must be exactly that and nothing more - they woke up early because they're used to it, they didn't want to wake me up because I was sleeping soundly, they went to look for food or water and they'll be right back.'
But then she heard something that completely destroyed that fragile comfort she was trying to build.
A scream.