It's not much - but under the circumstances, it's about all the teenage girl could pull off. The fish were at least freshly caught and baked, even if sickly, and its with a great amount of nervousness that Kirie presented the hunter with the smaller plate. "I know it's not much but..." her eyes shifted downwards as she spoke, unable to keep them at the neutral level of his shoulders. "I wanted to thank you. For helping and well.." she gave chuckle "Being patient with /her/."
All that struggle for one girl.
Henry had no expression, turning his gaze from the offered dash to that very girl, with her shiny reddish-brown hair and dark eyes that refuse to meet his own, who withered under his gaze. Even bedridden, tubes and needles sticking him with drips of slow ministration, there’s some horror hidden behind his skin, a spiral waiting to wind out from behind his eyes that only she could see. Kirie lies in her own way, he thought, but decided not to confront her. He was very tired from dealing with one liar.
He took the plate with his good arm (the other was an act of surgical prowess to paste back together– the talent of the Healing Church at work), and, without bothering with a request for even a fork, annihilated a fish’s head with a single bite. Those incisors could do more work than most knives with force alone, the clean crescent though that fish’s body a testament to that. Henry focused on the food in his mouth, contemplating the taste.
There was a certain delicateness to the flavor that he could discern, buttery and lean, before that fish-meat flavor kicked in and turned into something vile, mixing with the metallic tang of blood stuck between his teeth. It awoke a mote of feral mindlessness within him, the sensation similar to what he’d feel when a beast’s blood would dribble down through his facemask and into his mouth. Spread flat across his tastebuds, that foul, intoxicating flavor…
Henry ignored whatever protest Kirie made and polished the plate, even as it repulsed him to his core. After all, it was an honest gift to him, and he isn’t so weak he can’t deal with a disgusting meal– he needs to keep up his energy, he tells himself. He was a bit more green looking than when she arrived, though, and maybe a little less tough that he thought. He focused his eyes on her again for a moment, sharp and cold mirrors of her own, before he handed the plate off to her.
There was a moment of sheer quiet, with Henry’s gaze cast into the wall as though it might bore through it, long enough to almost be mistaken for dismissal.
“I did my work. Sometimes I do more than I expect to.”
He chewed his words in thought for a beat or two.
“She’s a brat. Tomie. But she can be more than that. Thank her.”