A day passed. And another, and another.
Each time Keith was minding his own business, Avati would try to stay with him, and he would walk a few steps away from her. No word but distance still had meaning to her and she would stop trying to talk with him.
But as a young child, she wanted to expand her vocabulary by any mean and so she almost harassed him.
"Are you my brother now? Why do you look sad?"
He never answered.
Reis and his wife had more patience, even though most talk was about fishing at dinner.
There was almost nothing that could add flavour to Keith's senses, cooked fish and fish soup wasn't that bad. He was glad when he could crunch on some forgotten fish bone.
One night he decided to walk to the trash outside and sort out what he preferred.
He could hardly distinct their traits, most meat was gone in a plate and their skeleton were all mixed together. The trash was closed by an old wooden lid that could let the insect go rampage. Each time he grabbed something, larvae would crawl on his hands.
Every day's warmth would offer auspicious proliferation conditions, smelly and rotten food that would satisfy any kind of vermin.
The sight wasn't something appetizing at all, it was quite repulsive. But the strong smell missing, it was just easy-to-break food with sticking sensation in Keith's hands.
The more he ate, the more he could see silver linings. The army of a thousand necrophagous vermin surrounded him. They orbited around him, touching time to time his food and bumping on every surfaces.
Soon there was a whirlwind of lines around him. It distracted him from his dinner and he ate a few insects by accident.
At first he thought it became better. But the texture was so different he double checked.
Show didn't comment on Keith's doing at all, he was simply studying the kid, taken in wonders of what he could possibly feel despite his blank attitude.
'You are looking for the beetle perhaps. The one with orange dots on their back, that's the one you just had.'
Keith shoved three of them at once in his mouth. Licking his teeth to get everything down his throat properly.
He liked insects. The slight smile on his face confirmed Show's hypothesis.
When Keith's stomach ceased grumbling, he went back to bed.
As the previous morning, before sunlight hit his head, he was already going toward the river with Reis. The man wore a frown unlike usual.
Once on the bank of the river, Reis asked.
"Have you ever learnt how to swim?"
Keith shook his head.
"Then I will go get you. I apologize."
Reis grabbed Keith's shirt and pant and threw him to the deepest area of the river. Keith could barely recognise the gesture Reis used to throw his old net, he wasn't touching the ground at all and it felt very weird.
He hit the surface of the water and then struggled to go back to the surface. He found the bottom of the stream and propelled himself up. Then Keith kept moving randomly, to keep his head above water level when he was pulled out of it.
"Man, I where did you get this stinky? Thank the wind it pushed your smell away from me on our way up here! I could barely breath."
Reis said, almost laughing.
"I would have accepted to bathe here, it wasn't necessary to throw me in. It was unpleasant."
Keith's serious once more surprised Reis, he wanted to joke a little.
"No fish is dangerous around here, and I'm here to retrieve you, you shouldn't have worried."
"You know how to swim? What do you call a dangerous fish?"
Keith hoped to learn this someday, it was less important than fishing but still very useful. He lived among rivers and lakes.
"I am taller than any point nearby! I can't drown. Also for your second question, gharials and piranhas... and pretty much anything that is bigger than you."
Keith had no idea fish could be bigger than an arm, he had never seen any. And he did not know that some could be dangerous. He always knew Kodra, his home and would believe his mother would always protect him, until she was gone.
He naturally became more curious to self raise his awareness.
"What is the difference between gharials and piranhas?"
He asked.
"Well, gharials are huge lizard and they actually eat fish. Piranhas are small orange headed fish, their shoal can make a corpse vanish but they shouldn't attack living being."
'What a waste.' Keith and Show thought in unison.
Reis gave an approximate size of the fish with his hands.
"This small? How come something this little can harm a human? Most small things are just cute."
'Do you like spiders, kid?'
"I don't mind eight-armed beings."
Keith answered out loud. But because it followed the subject of their conversation, Reis did not react at all.
"Such monsters do exist? I want to see them now, they can't possibly be this dangerous!"
His way of thinking began to drastically change after he began to talk with Show. He used to be shy, he was totally suppressed by his mother. But now that he had to find his father, he began to care less and less about speaking out loud to Show even though he understood long ago he could communicate in his head.
Until now, Show had brought hum only problems, but he was certain he'd be protected by this kind of danger.
'Could you alert me, next time I stink so much I have to take a forced bath? I don't want to look rude to Reis.'
The second voice snarled before answering.
'I can't smell things. To be honest I can barely tell colours apart. You could have looked just behind you, those lines were everywhere even though they were shorter than the one in the trash. You are the one not careful enough.'
Before heading to the village, they emptied and cleaned each of their catch. Keith found one with a smaller fish inside and exclaimed.
"This one was pregnant!"
Reis mocked him and said.
"They lay eggs, this one was eaten, and he is in the stomach."
The fish he had in his hand was very common, he wouldn't have thought what Reis said earlier was real.
"Fish can eat fish after all."
He said with a hint of happiness. After observing him for half a moon, Reis finally saw a slight smile hanging on the kid's face. He concluded the boy mistrusted adults. That was where his problem was.
When they both came back to the village, the kid looked everywhere. This day he learnt once more he had to be careful, he must be aware of his surrounding.
They displayed their catch on the usual stall and began to sell. From time to time, Reis would shout things to attract more people, just enough to arouse their curiosity.
At the end of the day, there was four fish left.
Reis' wife would cook or slice any leftover to have dried fish or easier to preserve bits. Making skewers with it time to time. Their merchandise sold very well most of the time and they weren't worried about waste. They had plenty of space in their belly anyway.
From the corner of his eye, he saw someone familiar. Tall and visibly annoyed. He had a beard that impinged from the middle of his neck to his eyes.
Their gaze met. His heart skipped a beat and he suddenly went under the counter. His conduct attracted Reis' eye but he stood unmoved.
A tall man with the fur of a beast on his back approached his stall and observed it carefully for a few seconds.
"Welcome back sir! What may satisfy you today?"
'That's the one! That's Ned! Did he saw me? What can I do? What can we do? '
A word that suddenly echoed his mind. 'We' it is. Keith was scared. Ned looked as healthy as ever, and there was barely a plank separating from him. He remembered deeply inside what happened back then. Any anger Keith had became fear, his courage had completely vanished. Ned was at least three times bigger than him.
Keith held his head in panic and looked at Reis who didn't stop looking at Ned right in the eye.
"I'll take all four you have here..."
His tone was calm, yet his sentence unfinished. He put both of his hands on the stall. His weight made it creak, then he tapped his index.
"And the one hidden under the counter."