Indeed the person Mwana and Kia bumped into was Fury who seemed to have just woken up.
"It is past midday!"
Mwana exclaimed in an incredulous tone. In fact for a person like him who saw 4 hours of sleep as too much sleep, this was a huge shock to him. He kept repeating the sentence: “it is past midday,” over and over again out of pure shock but Fury just lazily scratched her stomach with an unperturbed look on her face.
"The journey was tiresome. I had to get that sleep in one way or another." Fury smacked Mwana on the mouth before continuing, "You know I don't compromise on rest."
“You hungry?” This time it was Kia who spoke.
“Of course I’m hungry.” Hearing Fury’s answer, Mwana pulled out the remaining snacks and even meat skewers he had picked up along the way. Even Kia handed Fury some of her own snacks and street food. There was bread, meat skewers, roast sweet potatoes, some fruits, and other strange things.
Even for the few snacks that Mwana did not hand over, Fury had already grabbed them herself as she started to wolf down on everything like a starving hyena. Earlier, when the Axum-obsessed boy bumped into Mwana, most of the snacks had fallen to the ground so Mwana and Kia were also starting to feel the hunger set in. Therefore, the three children were on their way to meet up for lunch with Jodenia, Vitali, and other children from the Jua village who had been on the same caravan as them
“Hey, will you even have room for lunch after this?”
Seeing Fury eat endlessly, Kia could not help but ask whether the former would even have space left in her stomach for an actual full meal.
“Of course, skewers aren't even food. It is just a snack, a snack.”
Seeing Fury eat, Mwana felt his stomach start to rumble. ‘The wait for lunch will be long, first we have to get there, then meet up with Jodenia and the others, then struggle against other eaters considering the time, then order, then wait for the order, all before we can eat. Will I even make it through all that?’ He was getting tired just from thinking of the entire process.
With this thinking, Mwana decided to a buy another snack. This time he got the Zig Zag Honey-dipped Meat Skewers.
“Here.”
“Thanks.”
Obviously, Mwana could not be selfish and bought some for Fury and Kia too. However, when he handed Fury the zig zag skewer she almost broke it causing the meat fall off. Luckily, Mwana was fast enough to catch it.
“Ai, why are you so clumsy with food?”
As she ate, Fury kept making random comments about the snacks and meat as if she was a chef judge, “Sweet chewy and soft…the flavors busting in your mouth…the taste of sweet honey and sour spices…the perfect texture…the scent of spring breeze…a triple threat of flavor, texture, and scent.”
As the 3 headed towards a restaurant to quell their hunger, Mwana sent a message to Jodenia through his Moon Bracelet. While the bracelets were not meant for communication, they could still send simple messages within a short distance. As Mwana had been to Milele before, he was the one to choose their lunch spot. It was an external restaurant named ‘Barbecue House’ so it obviously had barbecue as its main attraction.
When nearing the restaurant, the 3 children finally caught sight of Jodenia approaching them while sprinting. From a distance Mwana could see that Jodenia was rushing towards them with a look of excitement on his face. Others may not know but Mwana understood what was going through this fellow’s mind so he accelerated his eating speed and wiped out all his skewers. When Jodenia finally arrived, the only thing waiting for him was the sight of Mwana licking his fingers and the scent of honey-dipped roast meat.
“Aish! Mwas, greed does not pay. You couldn’t even leave me a piece?” Both Jodenia’s mouth and stomach grumbled at the same time.
Jua Jode or by his full name Jua Jodenia was one of Mwana’s classmates at White Rock Academy. He was almost a year older than Mwana and was already 11 years old. In terms of his physical appearance, Jodenia definitely could not be described as ordinary. Even for his age, he was already very tall, almost a head taller than Mwana. He had Mohawk locks, a thin triangular face, and very dark skin. In terms of accessories and dressing, he had white face paint around his eyes and part of his cheeks with black dots that looked like cowry shells distributed across the face paint.
Around his arms, Jodenia had multiple golden bangles covering his hands from the elbow to the wrist. Further he had a piece of brown animal fur around his neck that looked almost like a wreath. In terms of clothes, he was only dressed in a simple red shuka with white patterns of shields on it. While he was not dressed that fancily, his way of dress said, ‘this guy is going somewhere’ unlike Fury’s attire which screamed, ‘this fellow just got out of bed’.
While Jodenia and Mwana were not the best of friends, they had some close ‘collaborations’ here and there as ‘little businessmen’ like them liked to call it. In fact Jodenia had been Mwana's ‘spy’ who had been watching Uchoyo all along to help in Mwana’s ‘revenge plot’ against the bully. Jodenia’s family was neighbors with Uchoyo’s family so it was easy for the boy to keep tabs on the bully and inform Mwana. His payment for this business arrangement had been all kinds of sweets that Mwana could find. This was because Jodenia was actually a sweets aficionado. He could skip out on anything but never sweets.
In fact, the only reason this guy was here for the Magic Candy Battle was not to test his strength against other young magicians or show off his skill, he was here for the purest reason: the actual magic candy.
After Jodenia arrived, the other children from the Jua village also arrived one by one and by the time they met up with the last kid, the group had already arrived at the Barbecue House. The new arrivals were, Vitali, Teso, and Maisha who were all Mwana’s classmates. Vitali stood out among them for her unique way of dress that was different from how any tribe in Toro dressed. As previously mentioned, this girl was the daughter of immigrants from the Eastern lands across the seas. With Toro and Eastern Jin’s closeness to the Dream Ocean (Eastern Sea), both countries received many immigrants on a yearly basis. While would later leave, others settled for good and even had families.
As for the other two girls, one of them was Teso who actually had some history with Mwana. In fact, this girl once used to have a crush on Mwana but the two ended up falling out due to how she chose to express that. The girl had chosen to use the "bullying the one you love" tactics which Mwana could not tolerate especially as someone who had experienced bullying before at the hands of characters like the Majimaji cousins.
The other girl was Jua Maisha, a quiet and reserved girl who did not exude much of a presence. Just like everyone else, Maisha had come to the town for her own reasons. She came to Milele town to meet her mother. Maisha’s mother was actually an important big shot in the government as she was a high level provincial officer.
After the group arrived at the Barbecue House, Mwana’s worst fears were confirmed. The place was packed! By the time they were getting served, they had waited in line for almost an hour! Everyone was almost dying of hunger.
