When Sachiko's wits returned, it was in recognition of darkness. The light, easy feeling of having just awoken from a dream covered her like a blanket. She felt like she could stay there forever; warm, dry and empty of everything but this singular moment. At the edges of her awareness, there was something, strangely familiar and not entirely welcome. Unease crept its way into her oblivion until with a touch like ice, Sachiko was forced gasping into wakefulness.

Rumbling. It was rumbling just like before. She could feel herself hyperventilating, phantom chills racing across her body as she remembered everything. Had it not been a dream? How was she alive?! She had di-

A crack of lightening, and with it, a monstrous cry that together drowned out any sound she herself might've made. Sachiko's eyes flew open, wild and panicked as she took in the world around her. Trees. The unmistakable form of trees, coloured blue-grey by the light of the setting sun through a hauntingly familiar cloudscape, jutted mighily from the earth like the pillars of some great hall. Was she... was she on Earth? The strangeness of it made her falter, slouching back into the abrasive embrace of what could only be another tree.

It was like finding someone juggling at a murder scene - every sensible notion insisted she had to still be dreaming, that none of this was real. She was cut adrift.

In the distance, she could hear laboured panting. Right, someone needed help. How someone could make a noise like that eluded her. Even now, the quality spoke of it being impossibly distant, but the impulse to help, to distract from what she couldn't understand, won over any hesitation. Clumsily, Sachiko made to stand up on wobbling legs, steadying herself with an arm pressed against the bark. She felt heavier, as if she were in sim-grav. Was this what Earth gravity felt like? she asked herself.

Sachiko's wings twitched. If this was Earth, then she could fly - fly properly, that was. She gulped, anticipation warring with nervousness. Tentatively, she let her wings flutter, chasing a breeze about her feet and feeling the sense of lightness that came with it before stilling them. Again, faster this time, she rose. A meter, two meters, five.

She was flying. Not bobbing around awkwardly in one-three gee, but steady, secure in the power of her own. Sachiko almost wanted to laugh. Instinctually, she adjusted the pattern her wings danced, tilting her body into the vortex they wove and flew towards the quieting sounds that called her to take wing in the first place. Unhurriedly, for she did not have the confidence quite yet to race, she wove between the trees in lazy arcs mindful of nothing but the delicate balancing act between her and gravity.

That was, until she came to see the source of all that noise.

A person. No, maybe a person. It had the familiar shape: two arms, two legs — short black hair and the face of a man. He was wearing strange clothes; a white button-up shirt loosely tucked into a pair of sleek black trousers with short, shiny shoes at the end. There was even a messenger bag, loosely slung over his shoulder. In any other situation, she would have percieved him merely as a foreigner. And yet, it was obvious he would stand at least twenty meters tall — tall enough to be comparable with the tree he was slumped against.

He was also mumbling, head cradled in his hands as he stared at the ground between his legs. Accented kokuren, indistinct and with uneasy cadence, spilled from his lips — the only words of which she could make out being "truck" and "died".

"H-hey," Sachiko called out, unsure of the strength of her voice against the distance between them.

The man's head whipped up. Wide, disbelieving eyes stared at her with a terrifying intensity. "A fairy," he breathed, "an actual fairy." before something resembling a strangled laugh escaped his throat. He shook his head, whispering "I'm not even Japanese," before once again cradling it in his arms. This time, they looked more to be covering his head rather than supporting it.

Sachiko hovered there for a while, at loss for what to do. In what way did she resemble a fairy? Why was that apparently enough for him to have a mental breakdown? It all seemed so surreal. Part of her wanted to leave him, to do anything other than remain in the presence of a mentally unstable giant. But something in her heart begged her to remain; she didn't know what a truck was, but the word "died" was unambiguous in its implication.

She decided. Slowly, Sachiko inched towards his face, taking in the details she had missed as it consumed her field of view. Suffice it to say, but it was disgusting. This close, she could make out the pores and imperfections on his skin as grotesque pits and growths covered in oil and great beads of water. Over the drone of her own wings, she could almost hear the squelching, organic sounds of his blinking eyes and restless mouth as it danced wordlessly. Still, she persisted until she was within arm's reach. The instinctive, primordial parts of her brain were screaming at her to run, barraging her with visions of all the terrible things he could do to her while the civilised part worked itself into fits over the consequences if he should be her elder.

Sachiko ignored it all, and slapped. It was a pathetic sound, even to her ears, but it sent a message that no words could. She watched, extremities tingling with the anticipation, as his dilated eyes slowly contracted before being hidden by a series of squishy blinking. Faster than she would have expected, his head rose away from her.

Satisfied and too eager to leave, Sachiko was quick to lean back into a retreat. "Wait!" she heard him say. Teeth-grittingly loud, but earnest in a way that almost made her feel guilty. "Don't go."

She stayed in place, half his reach away from him. "I'm not going to," she replied. This seemed to surprise him, more than merely not leaving suggested — although she couldn't figure why. He let out a breath.

"Am- am I dead?" he was quieter this time. Timid.

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Sachiko grimaced, wrapping her arms around herself. "I don't know. I think-" she hesitated, unwilling to admit the insanity of the whole situation, "I think we died. But..." The rest was left unsaid.

That seemed enough, as he nodded before glancing away. Branches creaked as the wind played through them. The sound of thunder sent a shiver of fear through her.

"What's your name?" The question almost seemed to get lost in the ambience, but the return of his gaze carried it through.

"Sachiko," she answered.

"Sachiko," he whispered, nodding and returning his eyes as if to taste the name in private. She waited a few moments.

"And you?" This seemed to surprise him, and he looked almost guilty when he met her eyes again.

"Jun. Hajimore Jun." His voice seemed stronger, repeating something that must be so familiar to him; it was definitely familiar to her. A name like that almost seemed pedestrian were it not from the mouth of a giant. That was a thought...

"Do you know why we're on Earth? Why you're so big?" It was a longshot, but she figured it didn't hurt to ask.

Or not. If he had been expecting her to ask a question, the look of plain confusion on his face told her that neither of them were it; as if she had asked whether the sky was green or not. She watched as his eyes glanced around before returning to her. "I'm pretty sure I'm the same height I was." He then shook his head forcefully before continuing continuing with: "And where else would we be?"

A pit of unease took root in Sachiko's stomach. Unconsciously, she tilted away from him, sliding some meters back. "You're kidding, right? You're like, twenty meters tall." She forced laugh. "A-and before I woke up, I was on Mars."

Jun gulped and gave an insincere grin. "You're a martian? An alien?"

Why would a martian be an alien? Just because she was born on another planet didn't mean she wasn't human, that she wasn't the descendant of Earthlings. "Y-you are human, right?" she asked. He had to be. Maybe his memory got lost during whatever it was that happened.

"Of course I am!" His statement had an edge to it, but he didn't seem so certain, not anymore.

"What was that water doing on your face, earlier?" she asked. Hoping against hope he would have a normal explanation.

"What, you mean sweat?"

Sachiko felt like her vortex had fallen out from under her, like she was falling even as she flew. What the hell was that sweat? Humans didn't sweat — not really. Not enough to be visible. Not like that.

Whatever story her face told, it was apprently enough for Jun to reach his own revelation. "Ok, ok. Let's back up," he said, holding his hands out as if he were warding Sachiko off before returning them to his lap. "Hello, my name is Jun. I'm a human born on Earth, and this is how we normally look like."

Sachiko gulped and followed his lead. "I'm Sachiko. I'm a human from Mars and... you don't have wings, do you?"

He shook his head before sighing. Letting a moment pass, he said "Ok, hear me out. I think —I know it's stupid— I think that we're from parallel universes, or something. That is, humans come from Earth, right?"

She gave a slow nod, of course they di- it made sense. Too much sense. Sachiko's eyes widened. "So what, you're from an alternate universe where we evolved into giants?" Her words were laced with sarcasm, but even as she spoke, her mind's eye was filled with pictures of fossils she had studied during general ed; while her ancestors had gotten smaller with every generation, there were other branches of the tree that never did. They were extinct, long so, but it wasn't out of the realm of possibility for one of them to have won the evolutionary "competition".

"Holy shit," she muttered.

"Right. I guess — I'm not sure I'd call us giant but-" He shook his head. "Ok, nevermind. That's one mystery solved." He seemed to be picking up confidence even as Sachiko wrestled with the revelation.

"Next, then, is why we're here. You said 'we' died, right? And you were on Mars?" Each question was given with the temerity of a student before a skeptical teacher, as if he could barely believe the words that were coming out of his mouth.

Sachiko nodded.

Jun gave a clipped laugh, a short "hah" like the universe was playing some cosmic joke on him as he shook his head with disbelief. "So it really is like that," he muttered. Another laugh. "I think, I think this isn't Earth, either. I think we've been reincarnated, or transported or something." Sachiko watched in concern as his tone assumed a dangerous quality. "Like, this is how every shitty isekai starts, right?" What the hell did he mean by isekai? "Some average Nihonjin gets-" he cringed, "gets run over by a truck and, and has a fricking fairy appear first thing when he wakes up. Tell me you don't see the parallels."

It was like he was speaking another language. Whatever point he might have had was lost in the hysteric tone of his too-raised voice that sent Sachiko's heart racing with fear. "Snap out of it! I don't know what any of that means," she groused — or attempted to grouse as she really didn't want to show just how much he intimidated her.

"Ah-" Just as soon as he started, he deflated with a sigh. "I'm sorry. I'm just- I'm at the end of my rope, y'know?" Sachiko didn't, but the meaning of the metaphor was obvious enough.

Sachiko wanted to escape, but the need to be around others —even as terrifying as Jun— was stronger than the fear of the unknown surrounding them. "Let's," she felt reluctant, but when she looked to the sky, she knew two things, "let's find shelter. We can figure this out later." At least he can't fly.

If Jun was hurt by the distance that had grown between them, he did well to hide it. Instead, he glanced up. "You're right. Isekai or not…" He shook his head. "Any suggestions for where to go? Could you," he paused, an idea coming to mind, "could you maybe fly up there and have a look?"

It was a good idea, Sachiko had to agree, but something in the back of her mind was screaming at her that this could somehow be dangerous. The wind? The canopy was mostly still, and between the high gravity and thick atmosphere, she felt more secure in her flight than back… back then. "Sure," she offered, letting only a hint of reservation through before cautiously rising. Slowly, avoiding the scraggly, barren branches that wove into each other she traversed and eventually breached the canopy, fifty-odd meters high. Thankfully, the wind up there was as gentle as the trees suggested — even if the view itself was underwhelming. Sunlight (if sunlight could be so bright) filtered through the brewing sky. As she continued to rise, she saw that all around them was unbroken forest. Higher still where the wind began to pick up, she took in the supreme flatness of the woods until something resembling a crease caught her attention. A couple hundred kilometers distant, there was a noticeable discontinuity that suggested a cliff or something to that effect. It wasn't much, but a cliff at least held the possibility of caves.

Afraid that lingering would lead to her drifting from his location, Sachiko carefully made her way back down and relayed the news. "It's not much, but at least it'll cover from some of the rain." Jun seemed pleased by this, although there was a distinct look of worry. She could figure why: unlike her, he wasn't wearing anything that'd protect against the rain and cold combined. If they both went torpid, it was unlikely anyone would rescue them so far out.