As soon as she'd left the hovel, Jun's "I'm going out for a bit!" rang out from behind her. Sachiko smiled, if only a little, and hovered in front of the door. She waited in the brisk evening air.

Coinciding with a spill of light and warmth from inside as Jun stepped out, Amardamu's gruff voice was sure to follow the isekaijin. "Be quick about ih'," he said, "th' stars don't look kindly upon mortals." And by the way he had said it, Sachiko could've sworn there was worry in his words.

Blank eyes swept to and fro as the giant searched for a needle in the night. Guided by the sound of her buzzing wings, Jun eventually noticed Sachiko and stepped forwards. She shook her head and motioned to follow. Jun jogged, easily keeping pace, to join her out of earshot.

A few kilometers out, Sachiko finally decided it was safe enough and set down on a nearby wall. Low as it was, she hesitated between sitting and standing, pulled between the futility of looking taller before a giant and her own pride. In the end she stood. First with straight back, and then with a slump as she remembered just what she wanted to talk about.

"I've run out of food," she admitted, casting her eyes away so as not to face any part of Jun. A futile effort, as the giant crouched down to meet her eyes from below.

"Jeez," he breathed, "Why didn't you say something earlier? I'll-" Sachiko tried to ignore the pang of hurt (and hunger for something solid) at having been excluded and continued.

"It's more than that. Remember what I said about sugar?" Jun opened his mouth to speak but she was faster to continue. "Well, I found something better. Your friend has honey. And..." she hugged herself, gathering the strength to say those wretched words: "I can't get it by myself."

Jun looked perplexed. "Ok, so you want me to ask him for some?" Sachiko wasn't sure whether to laugh or frown. Couldn't he see how hard this was?

Before she could reply, a voice rang out in the distance. "That you, Jun? Better not be shitting on Sheshkala's wall!" the man threatened in faux anger.

Rising, Jun gave a friendly laugh before shouting back "Good night to you too, Urbau!" Being so close, the shout left Sachiko's ears aching; she never appreciated just how hard he worked to speak softly in her presence. Just like how I've already gotten used to raising my voice, she thought.

A few moments passed and Satchiko watched the underside of Jun's head track the horizon. Once he was satisfied that Urbau had left, Jun eased back into his crouch to face her.

"No. Yes. Look - I need a straw," she admitted, "if I want to fill my suit back up. But I don't have any idea how I could make one. And I-"

"Alien thing, then," he mumbled to himself. Sachiko frowned. This was serious, and she told him as much.

After not even a moment's consideration he asked -with all the innocence in the world- "Why don't you use a reed?"

"A reed?" Whatever a reed was, it couldn't be this simple.

Shrugging, Jun walked over to a bank and plucked the stem of a plant that rose from the water. Twiddling it between his fingers, he checked either end of it before passing the three meter long specimen to Sachiko. Light but unwieldy, it had a certain scratchy feeling to its surface and a surprising stiffness. She could tell it was hollow. A bit large for a straw, but definitely useable.

"I'm an idiot," she moaned. Of course there was some bullshit plant that was just perfect for her needs. Maybe the Great Old Ones really were looking out for her, because this evening's events just didn't make sense otherwise.

Jun smiled reassuringly, and said: "It can't be helped."

Sachiko hoped he was referring to the lack of plants on Mars; there was only so much indignity -so much impossibility- she could stomach in one day.

"Let's just go back," she conceeded.

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The view of some wavy crevice between a warped shutter and its frame was becoming disturbingly familiar, Sachiko thought. But the anticipation of seeing the promised (as she felt she was pretty clear) food and the lack of anything better to do had her silently observing the two giants as they went about their meal. Food dwindled vegetable by vegetable, and by the end she couldn't withold an inkling of doubt towards her occasionally absent-minded companion.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Her stomach, for the first time in memory, rumbled. When the meal had finished, they talked and talked and eventually the topic of honey came up. Finally!

"Hey, um, Amardamu," came Jun's hesitant voice. What was there to be hesitant about? Just ask the question, she thought. "Would it be alright if I borrowed some honey? I'll pay you back if you need me to." Sachiko gawked at Jun's delivery; he couldn't have been more suspicious if he had tried!

Predictably, Amardamu's response was skeptical. "Honey? What might ya need that fer?"

"It's," Jun hesitated. Again! "An offering, I guess. To a spirit." An offering! As if that would wor-

If there had been any tension in the room, it evaporated with Amardamu's sagely nod. "Ah, ya needn't say more. The gods'cn be demandin' like that."

Sachiko let out an astonished breath. Seriously? Just like that? For a mere god, even! Sachiko could hardly wrap her mind around it. Maybe her body had gotten desperate enough to start digesting her brain.

Apparently finished with his moment, Amardamu returned to his usual style. "How d'ya want it?" he asked, gruffly.

There was a moment as Jun considered his options, before retrieving the bottle from his bag and unscrewing the lid. "Thanks," he said, passing it over. Nodding, the larger man took the bottlecap and after lumbering away to the "kitchen", returned it full of honey. Not a drop or two - but filled right up to the brim. Did they not know how much money a single liter of the lost substance was worth? A single drop could set her up for decades!

Conversation resumed as if nothing had happened, and Sachiko was left to her thoughts until Amardamu eventually retired to sleep. This night, one could tell he was asleep by the fact that he was snoring, snug in his pile of furs, fabrics, and "pillow" that could generously be called a bed. With how soft some of the furs looked, Sachiko couldn't say she wasn't curious to nab some of her own to try out.

Instead of committing petty larceny, Sachiko landed herself in front of Jun who -even sitting- looked like some strange edifice, crossed-leggs in the impression of a knot. Stood as she was, her head barely came up to his jutting knees, each wide enough to comfotably sit on. On either side of him, threaded through his legs, were two wall-like sections of previously unseen cloth. Socks? Sachiko's wings twitched and she eyed the window ledge with a grimace.

"Here," Jun said, bringing her eyes back to him. Pinched between his fingers was a chunk of unknown vegetable about the size of her head, gravy bowed slightly in the beginnings of a drip. The fingers approached, and in short order they stopped to hover half a meter away from her.

"Thanks," she said. At least he'd managed not to forget. They stayed like that for a bit, Sachiko eyeing the messy serving and the way the pads of Jun's fingers conformed around it. Well, it's not like I'm going to find cutlery my size, here, she thought. And with a careless shrug, she reached out to the chunk and wrenched it from his grip with both hands.

Commited, she brought it to her mouth and bit, drenching her nose and chin in the oily juices. It was... something else. Perhaps Sachiko was simply biased towards her own cuisine, or perhaps the meal didn't work well on her scale. Whatever the reason, it was in no way bad; just not the best she had tasted, either. Sachiko took another bite regardless.

There was about a third left of the original mass when she finished, and Sachiko eyed Jun who had clearly been staring throughout the whole meal. She was sticky, and messy, but her foremost concern was what to do with the scraps. Just letting it rot felt wrong.

Jun seemed to catch on to this, and with an indomitable grip that she doubted he even realised, he plucked it from her hands and pressed it through his lips. Sachiko shuddered. It wasn't even a morsel to him, and the mental image of how small she would look compared with their meal refused to leave her mind's eye. She wasn't even a sn-

Water splashed nearby, the touch of mist on her face shaking her back to reality. Jun was pressing his bottle into the tartan fabric that they had cut into earlier, wetting a corner against his palm. "You looked a little messy," is all he said, presenting the dampened corner to her.

Sachiko smiled. Jun wasn't a man-eating giant, so it didn't matter in the least how easily he could eat her. He wouldn't, and that was that. Sachiko dabbed the cloth around her face, feeling the refreshment of the closest thing to a bath she'd had since she got here. As she took to cleaning her suit, over which the gravy had run on its course down her arms and to her chest, she pondered how she might rig one up. Someday, she sighed.

After she finished wiping her suit clean, they worked on Jun's spear - Sachiko sharpening the scissor-half and Jun affixing it to the finished pole. When it came time for him to yawn, he asked, nodding to the honey, "I just realised - how are you going to get that to wherever you're sleeping?"

"I'll carry it?" she responded, and to his amazement, hefted the roughly twenty-kilogram tub with ease.

"Nevermind," he muttered, trailing off as Sachiko rose into a hover and went to the window. Absently, he stood up and opened it for her. They bid each other goodnight.

Sachiko spent the rest of the night tediously transferring the honey into her suit. She had underestimated just how viscous it was, and by the end of it her cheeks were burning from the effort of adding only a few liters to the bladders. The bottlecap sat there, tauntingly full.