Gil lays awake in his pitch black tent. Cold wind and sand blow across his body, flow­ing freely under the gaps in the violently-flapping can­vass.

His head aches, and the wind makes sleep­ing nearly impossible—for him, at least. Kiddu, on the other hand is snor­ing bliss­fully.

He pushes him­self up, slowly and care­fully. He has to fum­ble around feel­ing for it in the dark­ness, but finally his hand grasps what he was look­ing for—the honey jar.

He tip­toes over to Kiddu’s shad­owy form, care­ful not to step on the girl. Some­how her snores resound over the howl­ing wind. He tri­an­gu­lates the source of the snor­ing noise to her head and kneels low. Gin­gerly, he flut­ters his fin­gers in front of him, feel­ing for her hair.

Then he scrapes the honey traces from the pot onto the end of a thick dread­lock. He folds more locks over the honey-smeared one and gives them a twist.

Kiddu snores a honk­ing snore and twitches in her sleep. He wipes his sticky, honey-coated hand on a puffed fold of her ban­dana. Then he tip­toes back to his spot on the ground and lays down, grin­ning madly to him­self.

Gil
Now we’re even.

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