How to Make a Sinner Sleep

119 | impossible; scattering papers

"We need to overthrow Reed."

The five words hung in the air in foreboding, weighing down the atmosphere in its murky meaning. The group of people, minus the elder who had been unwillingly kicked out of her cave by a certain, frightening dragon, sat in a circle.

Niklas sighed loudly into his hands, fiddling with the white bones before tossing them away with disgust. "Seriously. We're getting right into it?"

"You told me to trust and rely on you," said Kaden bluntly, staring at him. "I wasn't aware that relying on you was a part-time thing."

"Hey now, it's not. I'm trustworthy at all hours of the day! I just mean, I haven't even eaten—"

Kaden had turned around at some point, fumbling at the ground. When his body twisted again, he held the matted and half-eaten body of a rodent.

Niklas let out an unseemly screech, leaping backward as Kaden neared him, palms innocently spread in offering.

"Are you seriously offering that for me to eat?"

Kaden stared at him solemnly. "I've eaten similar things before."

Nilkas faltered, unable to respond as his body trembled. He couldn't say anything, knowing that sometimes, in the slums, one became desperate for food.

To the point they would eat anything.

He swung his head to Noah pleadingly, blinking his blue eyes furiously. The dragon was staring at Kaden, but feeling an intense stare, indifferently glanced sideways.

"Come on! Diseases, Noah, diseases! You aren't going to stop him from touching that?"

"The elder is particular about hygiene," replied the dragon coldly, nodding at the cleanly picked bones around them. "She would not eat a diseased animal, and cleans them before she eats. I knew of her when I was young."

"Wow. You. Know. So. Much!" gritted Niklas, waving his hand. "I don't care if it isn't diseased, throw it back!"

Kaden frowned, leisurely tossing it back into the corner. "There's several around you. What're you panicking over just this one?"

"...Several?"

Niklas didn't dare twist his head, scurrying to sit back in the circle with a straight back. He refused to even stretch his neck. His entire face was white and horrified.

"Pfft—" Kaden turned his head, coughing.

Niklas turned his head so slowly they could hear it creaking. "...are you laughing at me?"

Holly giggled, wrinkling her nose in between disgust and amusement. "You look like you're about to pi—" She paused, thinking of a more elegant wording. "Expel a certain liquid."

"...I appreciate the effort to not sound crude, but that really isn't your best vocabulary choice, Holly."

She shrugged. "It's impossible. Anyway, haha, there's nothing around you. There are two in that corner over there where Kaden was looking, but stop looking so miserably terrified." She snickered again.

"T-then. Kaden, did you really eat—"

"I did not," the pink-haired man said coolly, although amusement crinkled his eyes. "I did consider it. But there were enough fruit and bread scraps in the dumpsters for emergencies."

Noah's eyelashes fluttered, turning downcast at the words.

He contemplated, as thinkers did, the life Kaden had lived. No amount of description would be able to describe the things he'd experienced and seen through his young eyes.