If Jun didn't wake up to the dull, otherwise unremarkable surface that was the sunlit "cave" wall opposite to him, he would have been perfectly well assuming the previous day's events were merely a dream. After all, the Jun yesterday was unstable, proactive, and surprisingly good at batting monsters under pressure; not at all like Jun knew himself to be. But it was indeed a rock wall that greeted him, along with the realization that he had in all likelihood died and somehow gotten better. He'd also made a friend, potentially.

"Sachiko?" he asked, groggy and already feeling sore from how he'd slept.

Part of him expected that that much had been a fiction. Yet, as soon as he'd called, a half-hearted "Over here," reponded in the characteristicly quiet fashion he'd come to associate with her. If he had to describe it, she sounded almost like she were far away; not squeaky or particularly magical like one would expect of fairies. Regardless, he looked to find her sitting on a rock opposite him, brown-blonde-head propped on her fists as she stared resolutely at the relatively distant ground.

"Didn't sleep well?" he asked, drawing himself up and turning his head to better face her. He stifled a yawn and palmed an eye, working away the lingering bleariness.

"No, 'slept fine. Just feeling like an idiot." she grumbled, her eyes flicking up towards him before returning to the ground. Idiot? This was news to Jun. What could she possibly have to feel stupid about?

"Wha-"

"So I was talking right? I noticed your breathing got a little deeper, but I thought you were just relaxed or something and just wanted to listen."

"Rig-" Jun was feeling more awake now, thanks in no small part to the rising feeling of alarm as the tiny woman ranted to the ground about something.

"So I kept talking. Venting, y'know, about the injustice of the world and all of that. I figured - you're still warm, so you're awake, right?"

This time, he was awake enough to keep his mouth shut. And what does being warm have to do with being awake?

He could see that she was blushing now, hard enough to be seen on her tiny face from across the 'room'. "So I keep talking like an idiot and it's not until sunrise that I figure: Jun's an alien right? He's not talking because his weirdo alien biology means he's just warm when he sleeps and I've been talking to myself for literal hours like one of those old windbags."

Ah. Jun cringed; he could empathize. He'd once made the mistake of spilling his guts to his crush while she was wearing headphones. Suffice it to say, his crush hadn't heard a word and that was the last time he had the courage to date.

Empathising, however, didn't exactly tell him what to say. So he went with the first thing he could: "It's okay? I mean, you don't look old."

Sachiko raised her head and looked at the giant, still not fully comprehending his words. No, did he really? Her eyes raced up, past his towering knees and towards the earnest, clueless face of a complete idiot. A big, dumb, but entirely harmless idiot. Sachiko couldn't help it; she laughed. An honest, full-bodied laugh broke through the frustration, the dread and confusion that had been clawing at her since she got here, melting them away in the warmth of something so utterly mundane.

Ever since she had woken up on a head of hair slightly larger than her bedroom, she'd known it wasn't a dream. That this was her life now. But, somehow, watching as Jun oscillated between bemusement and idignation, the fear of the unknown remained distant. Sure, he was an alien - but underneath all of that was something nostalgic.

Wiping a tear from her eye, she gave a heartfelt "thanks."

"You're welcome?" he said, although the way he said it, he might as well have been asking her. "Er,"

Sachiko watched as he stiffened and performed one of those awkward stretches where you roll your shoulders. She didn't know the term (if there even was one), but it was another familiar thing to cling to as she watched the thousand-tonne hulk casually get on his feet and look towards the cave entrance that barely cleared his head.

"We should probably figure out what we're going to do next," he said, gripping the cave edge as he presumably looked out into the golden afternoon.

Not particularly wanting to remain on the 'ground' despite being a good couple of meters above the cave floor, Sachiko pressed her palms against the rock and fanned out her wings in preparation for flight.

Ah, that. The moment her wings twitched, she felt the horribly familiar pain of yesterday's acheing wing muscles. Before, she'd been content to just leap off Jun's sleeping form, first to his shoulder and then to the floor, walking the rest of the way. But now? How could she hope to keep pace with him if she couldn't fly?

She knew how, but the embarassment would certainly kill her. Instead, she turned about on the rock and opted to speak loudly. Hopefully, this trend wouldn't result in losing her voice. "Well," she started, thinking back to her novels, "maybe we should take stock of what we have?"

Jun turned his head back to her and nodded. "Good idea. I guess I'll start since I've got the bag," he said, briefly patting the bag in question before smoothly shrugging it off and setting it down. Jun eased himself into a squat and opened the primary compartment. Stood as it was, Sachiko could not see inside as he rummaged around, and was forced to watch as he retrieved the contents one-by-one and set them in a pile.

Some of the artefacts were recognisable. In particular, there were a number of thin books that ranged in their major axis from a couple meters tall to over three times that. Some of these had nondescript covers, while others (especially one that Jun seemed embarrassed over) appeared to be the kind of books that were published - covered as they were in art (for the special book, it was of humans drawn in a cartoon style) and alien glyphs.

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There was a clear water bottle, a quarter full and big enough for her to fit inside if she were to somehow get past its narrow neck, that sparked a brief discussion. Jun was holding it, eyebrows furrowed in study when he said: "We'll need to find a water source."

Sachiko of course, knew nothing about this sort of thing. "Maybe we can find a river? And if it rains, we could try collecting some. What was the weather like out there, anyway?"

Jun hummed and set the bottle down. "Sunny," he said evenly, "A river would be good though; cities are usually built around them, so we could just walk along it until we find one."

Sachiko shrugged and took his word for it.

The rest of what he pulled out was decreasingly familiar: a smaller bag that held dull-looking scissors and strange utensils she could only assume to be for writing, a box that showed the signs of once having held food, as well as two sticks (???) and a mat. The rest, she could make no sense of.

When it was her turn, she felt the burning desire to look anywhere other than at Jun's face as she separated the seals along the heatsuit's back and slowly stepped out of it. When Sachiko looked back, she was almost certain Jun was the same shade of red she was. She tried not to think about it. Looking down at herself, Sachiko checked the pockets of her cargo shorts. Ah! Gripped in her hand was her trusty multi-tool; vibroknife, omniwrench, and universal screwdriver all packed into one convenient fist-sized package. She flipped out the knife and watched as its edges adopted the tell-tale sheen of hyper-frequency vibration that allowed the unassuming blade to cut through just about anything (assuming it didn't shatter instead).

Jun, at least, seemed impressed. "Looks sharp," he breathed. Sachiko could only nod before stuffing it back in her pocket.

Aside from the multi-tool, there was a sad looking nutrition bar and her trusty work gloves stuffed into her back pockets. There had been a little hope that she somehow had hidden her PDA under her heat suit and just couldn't feel it, but when she looked towards her right arm, there was only skin. She sighed and, feeling a little exposed, untied the light-blue blouse from around her waist and quickly put it on along with the heat suit.

"That's everything from me," she said, just a little morose. "So, in all, we've got what? Writing stuff, a knife that's only good for me, and some fabric for bandages?"

Jun grimaced, before relaxing in a moment of epiphany. "Oh! Almost forgot - I've got my phone," he said, retrieving a relatively thin rectangle from his pocket. Like most of his possessions, it rivalled her in height - and in his eagerness, she found him holding it not even a meter in front of her. "Here, it's got a flashlight. I used it last night to check the cave." Sachiko watched as Sachiko-length fingers danced across the screen, not unlike how her own fingers might if she still had her PDA.

A sigh. "No bars, and the GPS isn't working." Again, his fingers danced. "Compass seems to work, though."

"Wont it run out of energy?" she asked, curious; in almost every way, it appeared as a PDA, just burdensomely large and filled with distracting colours, images, and animations.

Jun shook his head, smiling. "It's got one of those transparent solar panels on the front."

Sachiko quirked an eyebrow. Maybe these giants were more advanced than humans; she'd never heard of transparent solar panels, and rarely of solar panels being remotely useful. It did beg the question why they didn't have a colony on their own "Mars".

"Well," she started, wanting to fill the air before coming to a realisation of her own, "if we've got a compass and paper, we could make a map."

"Good idea." Jun seemed lively now, packing up his things (except for a stylus and one of the plain books) back into the bag before shrugging it on and standing up again. "We should head out." Sachiko rose to her feet too, before- oh.

"Hey, can I, um," she started, meek voice catching Jun's attention. Already feeling the embarassment, Sachiko gritted her teeth and opted to fly instead. Just a short hop onto his head; there, at least, she could play it off as her being lazy.

All of one second into her flight, chest high to Jun, her wings seized up and she fell.

A meaty smacking sound reached her ears, along with the sensation of having landed on a particularly warm, twitchy waterbed. One that had apparently sprung a leak from abuse, given how the textured surface felt slightly damp and rubbery.

Sachiko opened her eyes to the weird-smelly surface and almost had a heart attack. Pink-red fingers curved into the air above her, intricately detailed with swirls along which tiny holes and an oily sheen made their appearance. She was in a hand.

"Are you o-" Jun might've said, but the ensuing scream from Sachiko left the words in his throat. She was kicking and rolling herself towards the edges. Sachiko needed to escape, but each time she tried to move, the platform rocked under her or undulated in an attempt to keep her in place.

It was when her wings began to buzz, slapping into his hands, that Jun reflexively dropped her onto the floor. Sachiko grunted with the impact, before whipping her head towards Jun.

"What the hell?!" she shouted. Her eyes darted over his crouched form, looming over her. A few passess over his concerned face and she began to calm.

"Holy shit, are you alright? You didn't break anything did you?" he asked, reaching for her and flinching as she smacked or kicked his fingers.

Sachiko panted, letting herself gulp before replying. "I-I'm fine. Sorry for freaking out. Just please stop trying to grab me," she said, each sentence between gasps.

Jun nodded, relenting. "What was that? You were flying and then you just fell."

Sachiko grimaced, cursing her own idiocy. With a more even voice she said, "My wings are sore. I-" Sachiko couldn't keep her eyes open as she forced the cursed words out of her mouth: "I can't fly. You'll have to carry me." Her next words came as a rushed "-but only for today! I'm sure I'll be fine by tomorrow I'm just really not used to flying so long," each word blending into eachother in a single breath.

Breathing in before slowly letting out another breath, Sachiko studied Jun's face for any sign of condescenscion. She found none. "Sure? Just don't freak out this time?" he said, absolutely bewildered by her antics.

Sachiko nodded, and got to her feet. Jun had moved his hand, palm up, in front of her. She studied it a moment, feeling her heart rate pick up again at the prospect of being caged like that.

"Turn your hand. I'll sit on the back," she ordered even as she hugged her own sides. In compliance, the hand rotated. Here, the back of the hand looked dryer, colder. By the outlined bones she could see, she knew he couldn't grab her like that.

Tentatively, she walked forward, putting a hand on the edge before sliding herself on. It was still weird and squishy, and she could feel the fat veins beneath her pulse and the 'fine' hairs around her tickle her legs, but it was bearable.

"Ok, just raise me to your head and I'll hop off," she said, a little too fast. Sachiko gripped as best she could the pliant skin, and as soon as she was able, she kicked off and scrambled up onto Jun's head.

She was on all-fours, fistfulls of giant-hair securing her to the unsteady surface. "Sorry," she choked.

"It's fine," he said, airily.