"All boarding for: Earth System, Luna."
"Why d'you have to go?" a child cried, clutching the back of her mother's cheongsam as she hugged the tall woman over her shoulder. Snot ran freely down the child's face, threatening to drip onto the neck of the star-speckled dress. Tsukino Usagi reached up and petted the messy, blonde-brown hair of her youngest daughter with a wan smile.
"You know why: the clan needs me on Luna more than it does on Mars," she cooed. Delicately, she cupped her child's face, staring into those puffy red eyes, and told her: "You're ten now. You're more than old enough to take care of yourself."
"B-but I'll miss you," Sachiko blabbered, her young mind searching for even the smallest reason for the only parent she'd ever known to stay with her.
"No one loves their family that much. In a couple decades, I'm sure you'll feel the same."
&
Was it possible to feel confined in an arcology? Sachiko felt like it was. Every day, another door refused to open. Day by day, month by month, year by year, the arcology shrank until all that was left was the forgotten places. The stasis vaults, the cultivation domes, the caverns and the interstitial spaces they couldn't deny her.
The only exception was when her job had her on a leash, scurrying from one electrical cabinet to the next, multimeter in hand, to test the never-ending array of "non-critical" components that "needed testing yesterday." Suffice it to say, no matter how quickly she worked, it was never enough for her supervisor.
Not that she cared, anymore. "I'm sorry, but with your projected salary, the earliest you can expect to have sufficient collateral is in seven years, assuming a reduction of annual expenses to 300¥," she had said - without the faintest hint of empathy.
Three hundred yaun?! Her rent alone was many times more than that. Where would she sleep, if not the cheapest apartment she could find?
"I'm sure someone as bright as you could think of something," the secretary said, smiling. "You could also try your hand at investing. As a Mars native, I'm sure you'd do very well on our markets," she offered. Her smile no longer appeared benign, but sharp - predatory.
Sachiko declined.
&
It had taken the better part of a year, but by the end of it, Sachiko was EVA-qualified. Apparently, she was one of the youngest non-vocational recipients of the certification. Not that it meant much; somewhere along the line, Sachiko had stopped identifying with the people around her.
No, that was the wrong way to put it; there had never been anything to identify with in the first place, and no amount of wishing things were different would change that.
The days blurred into eachother, indistinct. Books took the place of forced attempts at interaction, and the Martian desert became her refuge. What little longing remained, was drowned in her studies. "Work'll cure that for ya," her supervisor had said. And maybe he was right.
The dim sun set, and clouds started to gather and-
&
Sachiko gasped, distressed. She'd been run over by a truck and- She couldn't bare to think it. Somehow, she was alive, sitting in the shade of a tree while the sky rumbled angrily overhead. Buzzing. She looked, and there was a person -flying!- roughly the size of her finger. She was clad in a shimmering suit of silver, and piercing green eyes filled with worry and melancholy bore into her.
Sachiko's heart ached. Didn't this person know how dangerous it was for someone her size? She could get eaten by a յ̵̱̼̼̻̭͊̒̅͗́բ̴̝̠̕բ̶̳̙͔͍̠̉̿͘ե̵̰͓̙̺̣̂͋͂̓ͅն̸̝̹̜̦̋̽̊͆̑ or a bird! I need to protect her. She reached out a hand towards the terrified fairy whose wings were buzzing so loud as she tried to get away-
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Sachiko shuddered into wakefulness. Buzzing. She blinked, taking in the sensation of her wings pressing into the cool fabric of her heat suit. Buzzing, but not her own. She blinked again, and looked out between the towering pots.
The honey! Swarming around the bottlecap was a number of insects, mandibles and proboscises alike dipping into the treasured substance when they could, and those that couldn't bit and stung eachother to capture it for themselves.
Sachiko grabbed her spear and waved it at them. "Shoo!" she shouted, going as far as whacking the persistent ones for all the good it did. Like the beetle yesterday, they knew that she was harmless - insignificant.
Right until one fell to the ground, sliced cleanly in half. A new buzzing, that of a vibroknife, rose to challenge the cacophony. Sachiko yelled and swung again, this time only separating a wing and leaving the victim squirming to right itself.
She was not insignificant. She would not be ignored. If Jun could hunt fish, then Sachiko could look the would-be cattle in their soul-less, compound eyes and kill them for their insolence.
Another slash, and the swarm had become agitated. Some began to retreat, others circled in interest, and a dangerous few turned their 3cm stingers on her.
It didn't matter. The instant one of them came close enough to hit, Sachiko would whip around and end it just as soon. She didn't think; thinking was slow. Blood pounded in her ears like a wardrum - a savage metronome to which she hacked and slashed until all that remained was a pile of slowly emptying carcasses.
The hawkers were gone. It took a moment for her to notice, but the only living creatures in sight were those still-struggling unfortunates that had become ensnared in the honey. She'd won.
Sachiko fell to her knees, dropping the spear. Relief and self-loathing alike tore through her. She'd been an idiot. She'd been stupid enough to think food left out in the open wouldn't attract animals - stupid enough to think provoking them was a good idea. Sachiko looked to a severed head, tracing the curves of its serrated mandibles with her eyes. She could have died. One lucky bite, a single sting, and Jun would've been left wondering what had happened to her.
Jun. If she had called on him, he could have just lifted the bottlecap away. Bites that would lacerate her and poison that had every possibility of leaving her foaming at the mouth would've merely annoyed him.
Honey wasn't worth that.
Stolen novel; please report.
But pride was. Sachiko had held her own. Sure, they were just insects, simple and unthinking. But the twitching corpses around her was proof that she wasn't insignificant, that she wasn't entirely helpless. She could protect herself.
Sachiko picked herself up, gripping her spear and marching towards the tub of honey. Systematically, she plunged her hand into the reticient liquid and flung away the gnats and mites that had become mired in it. When she was done, she admired how it sparkled in the sunlight and raised her coated hand to her face.
Thick sheets and strands oozed languidly between her fingers, trying their best to glue them in place. Sachiko shrugged, popping a finger in her mouth. The taste was sweet, rich in flavour like nothing she'd ever eaten before. However, it was also gummy enough that she felt compelled to chew it and consequently suffer as the honey did everything in its power to glue her jaws shut.
Lesson learned: let it dissolve in your saliva first, she thought. Not wanting to spend all day trying to lick the honey off, Sachiko grabbed the tub and took to the air. A quick look around and she decided on the canal, figuring the fountain to be too dangerous.
Loam crunched under her boots as she stepped towards the mostly-clear water. Squatting down, she dipped her hands into the water and idly scrubbed. Around her towered the "reeds", under which grasses and smaller herbivores lived. A rock glinted in the water with the passing of a cloud.
There was an idea... Sachiko lifted her hands and shook off the lingering film of water from them. Picking a particularly flat looking rock, She heaved it into the water and started scrubbing away the loose dirt. Satisfied, Sachiko set it atop the bottlecap.
A perfect fit. She beamed and gathered the stack, wincing a little as the added weight strained her wings. Not willing to back down, Sachiko bobbed her way back towards Amardamu's roof.
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Having flown past it several times, the draw of the Big House was undeniable to Sachiko; it was obvious that someone important lived there. Whereas she had little doubt that the other hovels would be just like Amardamu's, important people tended to keep interesting things in their posession. What could be valuable to people who lived in buildings that Sachiko suspected were made of mud? Sachiko had to find out.
This, of course, meant sneaking in. An easy task for her, but one that would yet again put her beneath the giants; people didn't crawl through windows to hide in dusty corners and scurry at the sound of footsteps. Not that it mattered, though. She was never going to be equal to them. So why limit herself as if she were? She would find her own strength.
The window was a tighter squeeze. The wood was finer, smoother, and fit very closely to the frame. It was enough that Sachiko had to put her whole body into pushing - but when she did, the view inside was worth it.
Vibrantly patterned fabrics hung from the wall, while most of the rough, stone floor was covered in an elaborate rug. Shelved alcoves lined the room, each carrying not only the usual assortment of clay pots and stone tools, but things made of metal as well. There was also a desk and chair, both humbly carved but impressive compared to all the other woodwork she'd seen so far.
The chair wasn't empty.
Immediately, she could tell that it was a child. Not only a child, but the kind of child that hadn't finished growing. Sachiko knew in the back of her mind that the giants aught to have children like any other organism, but she'd never spent the time to think about it.
It was a child, fifteen meters tall.
Sachiko was horrified. There, sitting at a desk, was someone with the power to kill and all the wisdom that could be expected of a seven-year-old.
It hadn't been something she wanted to think about, but if she ever found her way home it was likely to be with the help of the giants. Where they could help her, they could help themselves. Sachiko didn't doubt her people could hold their own; missiles didn't care how big you were and anyone who trespassed would know what they were getting into. It would be bloody, but at least it would be fair. But children? Children would make it into a tragedy.
So deep was her contemplation, that she didn't even realise she'd been seen until the rough sound of wood scraping against stone caught her attention. Two brown eyes, wide with wonder drank in her every detail with rapt attention.
Her wings had already spread, twitching. She backed up against the hole, wishing desperately she'd had the foresight to look before entering. Maybe the ceiling...
"Wait!" he called. Desperation, but also hurt. She was reminded of that first day in this world, of another giant lost and alone. Sachiko hesitated.
"Please don't go," he said, voice dropped to a whisper. Sachiko had never met someone younger than her. Population control was strict, and on Mars it was ironclad. The sight of someone so innocent, so vulnerable despite their overwhelming power, melted Sachiko's unguarded heart.
"I won't," she breathed, already regretting her decision. "Just don't come any closer, okay?"
Just like then, this apparently wasn't the answer he'd been expecting. "You can talk?" the boy asked in astonishment, getting up from his chair anyway. "I thought forest spirits couldn't talk."
That was interesting to know. "I guess I'm special? What do they usually do?"
"Growl, run. And get killed, I guess," the boy lamented, looking down at his feet. "But you didn't!" Just as quickly as he had fallen into melancholy, a hopeful cheer rose in his voice. He stepped closer.
"I didn't," Sachiko echoed, not sure how to feel about this course of events.
"I'm Eulli. What kind of spirit are you that you can talk? Are you here to be my friend?" he asked, stepping closer with each word. When he was about ten meters away, Sachiko rose into the air and up towards a ceiling corner.
"I'm Sachiko," she answered, unsure of how to respond to the other questions. Would he understand that they both called themselves human? Should she break it to him that she was just an idiot sneak, and that this was all an accident?
It seemed he didn't really care about the answer, as just like Jun, he was surprised to hear that she had a name. Brimming with excitement, he began to ramble at a breakneck pace about some topic that Sachiko was certain she didn't have the context to.
With every word, the tension in her body eased. The kid, like Jun, was harmless. If anything, he seemed almost pitiful in his mannerisms. Still, she kept to the air, a wary distance from him.
"Come on, I'll show you," he said, and with surprising speed, reached up for her, fingers outstretched.
"Hey! Don't grab me!" Sachiko yelled, dropping under his arm and darting along the wall, deeper into the room. This seemed not to bother Eulli, as he walked past her and sat down at the desk as if he had meant for her to hover over it.
Catching on to his intentions, Sachiko looked down and studied the cluttered surface. Two piles of clay slabs, both covered in fine (this being hand-sized to her) markings that resembled nails in shape, sat to Eulli's left. On his right, there was a number of pots and what could ungenerously be called a box of mud on which larger, cruder marks had been impressed. Twiddled between his fingers was a stylus ending in a flat triangle.
Sachiko tentatively landed on the far end of the table. The sight was nothing other than surreal. The familiar trappings of a desk rose about her like the pilings of a storage room, while the humble stylus could well have been a decorative pillar broken loose. Most disturbingly, the looming form of Eulli made her feel like she was just another piece of that pile, no different than an artist's mannequin.
She was back in the air before she knew it, breathing heavily.
Eulli didn't seem to notice, instead pointing to each of the symbols in the box and explaining what they meant. He talked about how he was learning to write by copying the words from The Poor Man of Nippur, a book his father kept. With each enthusiastic word about how the titular protagonist cheated his way to riches, Sachiko gradually relaxed and listened.
The story was typical, something she could've read back home, and her hesitant questions about their writing system soon grew into an entire lesson on how to read. Eulli was eager to impress her with his studies, and by the time it got dark, she had attained a basic understanding.
To her surprise, the angular markings didn't merely represent sounds like she had expected from such a primitive culture, but also ideas of varying abstraction. Depending on the precise clustering and orientation of the mostly-identical strokes, or its position within a sentence, a character could take on different meanings. It was enough like her own script in that regard that she wondered if they practiced polysemy - Eulli simply being too young to parse the obscured meanings in his book.
When it came time for her to leave, Eulli opened the window for her, and Sachiko returned to the hovel to watch Jun and Amardamu eat. Maybe, just maybe, she could contribute more than simply scouting and carving.