Ha-neul had warmed back up by the tiny fire by the time the first of his companions had returned. Mebb was carrying a basket of mushrooms that were shaped like bells and purple. Ha-neul would have never dared to even consider putting those things anywhere near his mouth, even if he was starving. Tomatsu, on the other hand, had gone like half a day without food before trying his luck with those strange mushrooms. Ever since then it had been their only food source. There were slim pickings in an Undead, frozen castle. Hence why Ha-neul was so willing to swim in the mass grave for fresh meat.
Mebb almost dropped the basket when she saw him. She said, "you- you went back to the lake?"
He nodded.
She stormed to the other side of their camp, casting the mushrooms aside, and grabbing her slate tablet from beside her cot. She took it and a piece of charcoal and threw it down in front of Ha-neal. Then she put her hands on her hips and asked, "why?"
It had taken Ha-neul much too long to realize Mebb was deaf. I'm his defense, she had sort of been pretending not to be. For her to skip past failing to lipread complex ideas, and go straight to the slate spoke to how much this troubled her. He took the slate and wrote in charcoal, 'fish.' He spun it around and held it up to her.
She sat down against the well. "You promised you wouldn't go back there. Tomatsu told you to stay here and rest. You could have died!"
He sighed, "You've known me for three days. Why do you care if I die?" She had been looking away and hadn't even known he'd spoken. Part of him was glad she hadn't noticed. He wrote a long message on the board then wiped it away; staining his hand black. Instead he thought a moment longer and wrote, 'If we had a chance to escape this ruin, where would you go?'
By this time she had calmed down a little and was able to look at him again. She said, "I was frozen for two hundred years. I missed everything. My parents must be long dead, I missed that. I missed the fall of my homeland too. I don't know exactly what I'll do, but Tomatsu has something planned. I'm sure of it." She paused, and then in a softer tone added, "you can come with us."
Ha-neul had to write his next words down, which only made it more difficult then if he'd spoken them. He wasn't sure why he wrote it, only that he was drowned in guilt and shame. 'I am broken. There is nothing for me. I'm not sure I want to escape.'
"That's not true. Don't you have a sister?"
Ha-neul began writing, but then Mebb jumped up. She unpinned a brooch from her chest and dropped onto the board.
She said, "give this to your sister when you get back home and find her." And then she walked out of the camp, the way she had come.
Ha-neul stared at the brooch. It was a golden flower with four leaves and a series of increasingly smaller red gems in the middle. It glimmered in the fire light, the polished surface of the gems sparkling and dancing. He ducked into his bag, and then stared into the fire with his arms crossed. For some reason he had poured his heart out, and she hadn't understood him. He was frustrated at her ignoring everything except the one point she could almost argue against. Ha-neul had a sister. He hadn't seen her since she was a baby, and he had been five at the time. At some point there might have been a way to find her again, but since then an apocalypse had happened and now there was physically no way to locate her. Assuming she was still alive, and that he could make it back to Earth. Both of those were near zero chances, by the way. A billion people were lost in the Great dying, and 600 million more every year since. And this ruin was inescapable.
At the same time, even though he was frustrated, relief washed over him. He was desperately glad for her to not have understood. In fact, he felt compelled to wipe the slate clean and put it back exactly where it was before Mebb grabbed it before the other's got back. Then he sat back and stewed over his emotions for a while before jumping back up and washed the slate in a bucket of water, to remove any traces of his words.
He felt relief and anger and guilt all at once. He wasn't aware such a thing was possible. He sighed and looked back at the fish. He was going to have to have this conversation all over again when Tomatsu and Zalgoe came back. He almost considered tossing the fish down the well and pretending that this whole thing hadn't happened. He decided that it was a very stupid thing to do. And he wasn't sure why he even cared.
He found himself staring down the dark abyss of the well, holding the brooch. He scowled at it. Why did this girl have the right to assign value to this trinket and then force it onto him? How was he supposed to react? Was he supposed to give a f*ck about it? What's up with that? He sighed and then slowly lowered his hand. The brooch slipped from his fingers and rang on the stone floor. He made no attempt to pick it.
Had he really almost died for a fish? It amazed him how dumb he was sometimes. He was shockingly, earth shatteringly stupid. It was honestly embarrassing.
He sat with his thoughts for a long time.
A while later Tomatsu and Zalgoe returned. Ha-neul was sitting limply with his back against the well, the slightly wet slate was leaning against his leg and the brooch was resting in between his dead and blackened fingers.
Tomatsu came into the room first. "You went back to the lake?" He looked at the fish with his big, goofy grin. "Look at the size of that thing. It's a meter long! We'll have left overs after dinner."
He knelt by the fish. He spun the fish around, admiring from all angles. "How'd you manage to catch one this big?"
Ha-neul stood up, slipping the brooch into his bag, and walked over to the fish. He said, "Honestly, I didn't see exactly how big it was until I had already grabbed it. It took me for a bit of an underwater joyride before I managed to kill it."
"That's so metal. That lake scares me, I wouldn't go anywhere near it. But three weeks of purple mushrooms? Nuh-uh."
Ha-neul forced a smile, "what did you guys get up to?"
"We found a passageway that skips like half of the dungeons and puts us up in that wine cellar area. It cuts like thirty minutes off the trip. I think if we really hurried, we could reach the West peak tomorrow. Maybe we can see how far the Freeze extends. I'm really starting to feel like progress is being made, dude!"
"Alright, let's get to cooking this fish. Zalgoe do you want to help fillet it?"
Ha-neul turned around to look at Zalgoe. She was standing by the well, looking at the slate. She said, curtly, "Where's Mebb."
Ha-neul sighed, "she stormed off after seeing the fish."
Tomatsu, who had one leg on either side of the fish and holding a dagger, stared up at him. He dropped the fish with a forlorn sigh. "Should we look for her?"
Zalgoe shook her head, "no. She'll come back when she feels like it."
Ha-neul frowned. Did Zalgoe have some sort of demon powers that let her read the slate or something? He looked at her, but she now seemed fully preoccupied by the fish. Tomatsu had begun cutting one of its sides off, and the sight of guts brought in Zalgoe like a swarm of flies.