[Shieba]

Ailys watched Kami as well, hoping that the boy wouldn't stumble in the almost-darkness since there were quite a few twigs and branches lying around and not just on the piles. When Kaamil mentioned her own hatchlings, she drew a shaky breath, trying to not let her fears get to her too much.

"Yes...", she finally answered. "At least I hope so. And even then, I wonder...will they, surely being smaller than other hatchlings since they will be Placids, be able to carry any twigs of a size that can be of use? Or...or will they, on the contrary, have so much of my demon blood within them that they will drag branches twice their size behind them, scaring other hatchlings away and ending up with no one to play with, for their strength will be too great?" She sighed. "Even if all goes well and they will be healthy...there will probably be much heartache on their way through life because of their blood. It will be better here, on the islands, where no one hunts those of my blood, but they will still be different." Finally, she shook her head. "Forgive me. I know I'm too much of a pessimist for my own good. Hina would throw something at my head if she would hear me talking like that again." She really felt terrible, burdening her guest with such talk, but since Kaamil was different from normal humans as well, it felt strangely safe to tell him such things - as if he and Kami, too, would understand these things even better than Hina would, even though she barely knew the pair.

Ailys forced her smile back to her face when Kami returned. "Wonderful! Well, we don't really have a campfire spot, so we'll just place you far enough away from our nest that you won't burn it into the ground, but hopefully still near enough that we can talk. Thankfully, there's only little wind, so it should be fine to make a reasonably sized fire."

She led the two boys back to Hina, who was already waiting. "There you are! I was starting to worry! But I guess humans need some more time to fish than we Paragon do, huh?"

"They can't fly", Ailys agreed and then decided to quickly change the topic before Hina got the idea to ask how exactly Kaamil and Kami had fished their food. "Hina, those two are making a fire to cook their catch. Knowing you, you want to watch, right?"

"Oh yes!" Hina beamed and, after Ailys had set down her bundles, traded places with her in the nest. "Can I watch, you two? I'm interested to see how you do it since you obviously can't breathe fire. I'd also like to see how you cook that fish of yours - nice catch, by the way - since Paragon eat fish raw. I've never seen something like that! May I?" She looked back to Ailys. "Is that okay with you, too?"

Ailys laughed, enjoying to see her mate so excited. "Sure is! I'm fine here, go and watch and sit with them! Since I'm not eating any fruits anyway, you can enjoy your meal around the fire, I don't mind." She settled back, glancing at the eggs every now and then with slight worry, but forced herself to rather watch her cheerful mate instead.

[Kodai]

Kaamil couldn't help but feel a little sorry for Ailys, worrying over her as-yet unhatched children like this. His own perspective on life told him that her fears did have a solid basis, but even so, there wasn't much use in the Paragon troubling herself with these thoughts right now. The best thing she could do was figure out how she would react to these situations, so that she'd be prepared for them in the future. "…I understand…but try not to worry…" was all he was able to say before Kami returned and the trio went back to the nest where Hina was waiting. To their surprise, Hina actually wanted to watch them build the fire (although, thinking back, she did seem to be rather interested in how humans did certain things), and so they moved aside a bit to let the Paragon stand next to them.

"Of course you can watchss!" Kami smiled at her. "It'ss gonna take a little whiless, though." Having said that, the boy and his brother carefully put down what they had been carrying and got to work. Kami wandered about for a short while, picking up any rocks he could find and placing them in a wide circle. As he did that, Kaamil busied himself with pulling up some of the grass within the circle, placing it all within the center. Just as he had pulled up a decent amount, Kami finished with the rocks and brought over a few of the smaller twigs he had gathered, arranging them in a loose pile with the grass. Kaamil then went to where they had left their backpacks, pulling out a bit of flint and a piece of steel.

"…This is what we use to create the spark…" he explained to Hina, holding them out for her to see before going back over to the mound of flammable material. While he proceeded to light the fire, Kami carried over the rest of the sticks, waiting until the fire successfully caught before he placed more branches on it (this time in a conical shape).

"And that isss how it's doness!" Kami exclaimed happily, moving back from the heat a bit. "Nowss we just havess to cookss the fish."

"…I have to clean it first, however…" Kaamil said with a hint of uncertainty. "…That requires me to use a knife…" Although it was a simple kitchen utensil, he wasn't entirely sure the Paragon tribe would appreciate its use in their midst.

[Shieba]

Ailys watched how their two guests were preparing the fire and how her mate was trying her best to not stand in the way of the boys as they moved around when she obviously wanted to stand right next to them and stare at everything they did closely. It was pretty funny, actually - Hina waiting until Kami had gathered the stones and then sitting down right next to him as he arranged the smaller twigs to observe better. "Give him some space, Hina", she called from her observation point, trying to hide a laugh. "You're not a stalker!" She was really glad for the distraction, though with her eggs pressing against her, she couldn't quite forget what she was so worried about in the first place.

"I'm just curious!" Hina pouted slightly, but scooted away a bit, just to then examine the flint and the steel closely when Kaamil showed them to her. "How does that make fire? You can obviously hold it, so it's not hot?" Confused, Hina watched how Kaamil proceeded to light the fire and how it then successfully grew in size. She tried to figure out how exactly the boy had done this - magic, maybe? - but couldn't really figure it out. "How did you do that? Is there a spell on that thing?" Hina was tempted to ask if she could try it as well, but she was a bit too scared to accidently set something on fire to do that.

"It has something to do with friction and warmth, I think", Ailys called to her. It seemed odd to her that even natural concepts like that were sometimes lost on the Paragon of the tribe, but then again, when most of the population could breathe fire, there was probably little use to know such things to begin with.

Hina indeed didn't know much about that, but was already distracted by Kaamil's question. "A knife? That's a weapon, right? We don't want things like that here. Is that really necessary?"

A bit nervous, Ailys was tempted to get up and walk over to them, but forced herself to stay in the nest. Hina would accept the knife, that much was sure, but they were in possible hearing range of other Paragon, after all. "Humans can't eat all parts of the fish and they have no claws that can help them to cut it into pieces, so they use knifes, even though they are weapons, for everyday things like that, too", she explained, trying to think about a way to avoid the problem, but couldn't really figure something out. "We could ask a male Paragon with sharp claws to do it, but most males are too huge to be able to do something like that with precision, especially since no one here has ever cleaned a fish before."

"I see..." Hina nodded slowly. "That makes a lot of sense. But damn, we can get in trouble if this gets out, especially me. But if it can't be avoided..." She sighed. "Well, no way around this then, I guess. Be quick, though. I'll walk around the fire and make sure no other Paragon is heading this way right now and sees you doing that."

"Need help? I can probably come up with a better excuse if we have to send someone away since I know humans more", Ailys offered and was ready to get up.

Hina shook her head. "No, you stay there. I have more authority and even though I trust those two, we shouldn't leave the nest empty while someone is having a weapon out. Imagine if someone learns about that - what bad mothers we would be then!" She looked around - no one was in sight and it was already dark, but the shine of the fire, something that really only happened when travellers stayed with the tribe, could possibly attract someone to check out what was going on. "I'll be right back, send some aura if you hear someone approaching from the other side!" She quickly hurried into the direction of the main amount of nests.

"Alright, you two. Please hurry up and stay silent so that I can use my demon hearing better to figure out if someone heads our way." Ailys settled back down, listening closely, hoping that the boys went camping often enough to clean the fish quickly.

[Kodai]

Kami couldn't help but giggle good-naturedly at Hina's confusion about the fire. "No, there'ss no magicss. Just science. Um… physicss, Iss thinkss?" He tried to remember, but maths and science were more Kaamil's strengths than his own. "Miss Ailys isss rightss; it'ss somethingss about the frictionss of the two materialss creating sparkss that can light the firess…" That was all he could really say on the subject. If she wanted to go farther in-depth about how the process worked, she'd have to ask his brother.

However, Kaamil was occupied at the moment with Hina's concern over the knife. Ailys managed to explain the situation rather well, luckily, saying how humans couldn't eat all of a fish and had no other means to help them get at the parts they could eat. He simply nodded when Hina told him to be quick, edging away from the fire's light a little so that he was a bit more well-hidden. Pulling an average-sized knife from his pack, he swiftly went to work, scraping off the scales before actually cutting into the fish. Silently he wondered how much of a waste the Paragon thought this meal would be, since the only sections he and Kami could eat were the sides -- they'd have to discard the head, spine, tail, and innards. Perhaps their hatchlings would be able to have them later as a first meal, if they had the capability to eat solid meat and the parts didn't spoil.

Although he was following Ailys's prompt to stay silent, Kami didn't remain still. The boy watched what his brother was doing very closely, offering him water from their supply whenever something needed to be rinsed. In this way, the pair quickly finished the task, setting aside the offal for now so that they could focus on cooking their meal. As Kami set up a few more sticks so that the strips of fish meat would be able to hang over the fire, Kaamil cleaned off the knife and put it away.

"…It's done…" he announced to the two Paragon. "…I do apologize, Hina, but as Ailys explained, it is the only way we can properly prepare our food…Humans are not well-equipped to handle raw meat, and so we must use tools to help us…"

[Shieba]

Ailys remained silent to hear better, watching the two boys from her position in her nest. She was glad that they worked quick and efficiently and breathed a sigh of relief once Kaamil put the knife away, though she didn't look forward to having to go through that process every evening now for as long as the boys stayed on the island. "Hey, you two? Do you think I can somehow convince you to go on a fruit-diet when the hatchlings have hatched? I'm willing to put up with this as long as they are in the eggs, but once they're out, they'll probably run around a lot and most other females love to look especially at the newborns of first-time mothers a few times a day, offering help. So when the hatchlings are there, the threat of others coming here and discovering the knife rises a lot, which is why I would ask you to stop using it then or preparing the fish directly where you catch it." It felt weird to think further than the hatching of the eggs; to imagine that everything would turn out alright and that the closeness of a knife was the biggest problem they would be facing.

"Ailys is right." Hina returned from her post. "I understand that you guys have no choice, but I really don't want to risk discovery or have a weapon around my hatchlings." She looked at the pile of what had remained of the fish. "Why are you throwing away all of that?"

"They can't eat it, Hina. Humans can't eat all the parts of the animals they use for food." Ailys smiled gently at Hina, guessing that the meal alone showed her mate so many weird human customs that she was probably confused.

"You humans don't have it easy, huh? You can't prepare your meals without tools, you can't eat half of it...how did your race manage to become so widely spread when you have such problems?" Hina sighed. "What a waste. You probably should burn what remains of the fish then or it'll just rot and attract insects or other Paragon when it starts to smell. It's too little to offer to one of the others as a meal and since I only eat fruits and plants, there's really no use for it." She sat down next to the fire, watching the fish. "I've never seen something like that done to a fish. It's so odd and weird!"

Ailys chuckled. Hopefully, the two boys weren't all that annoyed with Hina and her endless curiosity.