"I... I..." is all I manage to stammer, my voice uncharacteristically thick.
I clear my throat and try to recover my lost dignity
"I was just... examining it."
The lie tastes as foreign in my mouth as the hair, though decidedly less pleasant.
Kira stares at me, her expression a mixture of disgust and amusement.
"Examining it by eating it?" she deadpans.
Heat creeps over my chest and I don't know how to get her to focus elsewhere, let alone explain what I was doing and why.
"It... smelled pleasant," I mumble, feeling a small prickle of unpleasant emotion, but becoming more confident.
I've decided it was definitely an excellent idea all along by the time Kira snatches the remaining strands of hair from my grasp.
She scowls with an intensity that could curdle a vat of energon sludge, using the tip of her knife to dig a shallow hole in the earth. The implement isn't designed for such ill use, the metal groaning in protest as she pries loose clumps of dirt.
Finally, with a triumphant grunt, she deposits the hair into the makeshift grave and buries it with a flurry of displaced soil.
"That was a perfectly good snack you're wasting there," I rumble.
She doesn't seem to be fooled by yet another one of my foul-tasting lies.
Kira's face contorts in a look of disgust that threatens to curdle my insides.
"Good snack?" she chokes out, the single word punctuated by a series of dry heaves.
Her glare is sharp enough to pierce through my thick hide, making me instinctively shrink back.
I clear my throat. "All the best snacks are stolen ones."
"Stolen hair snacks?"
The silence stretches, thick and uncomfortable.
My attempt at humor backfires spectacularly, leaving us both floundering. Kira seems to be wrestling with herself, her mouthopening and closing like a fish gasping for air. Finally, she gives up the fight with a frustrated sigh that sends a stray strand of her newly shorn hair fluttering from her cheek.
"I don't have a response for that."
Then she simply gets up, stalking toward where the dead genali is lying in its own blood. I move to join her, coming close just as she finishes stripping the puddle of anything useful.
Then she walks off, continuing in the direction we were headed before, I hurry to catch up. When I get to her, she takes a long breath, clearly ready to speak.
Hopefully not about hair snacks.
"Look," she begins, her voice laced with weariness, "There's something you need to know..."
Her words trail off, and she squeezes her eyes shut, rubbing at them with her small hands for a moment as she moves.
The awkwardness presses down on me, suffocating. Part of me, a basic, drak instinct, urges me to break the silence with some witty retort, some display of dominance. Another, quieter part urges caution.
This human, this Kira, is different. There's a vulnerability beneath her bravado, a flicker of fear that resonates deep within me.
Finally, after what feels like an age, Kira speaks again, her gaze settling on the forest floor. "We don't know where this 'dropzone' is," she says, her voice barely a whisper. "And until we do, we need to..." She trails off again, searching for the right words.
"Need to do what?" I prompt gently, the rumble in my chest softer than usual.
