Trestle awoke to the alarm sounding in her helmet. It was the minimal oxygen alert. She was in motion and tried to look around, but the surroundings were nothing but fog.

“Breathe” she thought to herself. It was difficult and laborious to breathe, a moment later and the suits supplementary system kicked in, allowing her to have a greater clarity of thought. “Keylin!” Her suit was damaged and helmet broken, it would be better for her to stay unconscious than to wake up and hyperventilate. Their cage seemed to be made out of various parts of her ship. The manimal must be freakishly strong to be able to break the composite materials. They were in a bad situation, it was time to think. Keylin needed more oxygen, they must be going back up that mountain, and by the looks of things, they were at the cloud line. The manimal had shown remarkable ingenuity and tool use, would it be capable of speech?

"Hey! hello? Hi there…you" said Tressile. The movement stopped, and the manimal came back and looked into the small window.

"WHO ARE YOU?" bellowed the manimal, his voice was so low, it sounded more like a cello than a voice. The speech question answered, it was now time to negotiate, what would it want? The manimal is a tribal protohuman, it's primary concerns would be food, shelter and reproduction. Culture, arts or knowledge exchanges would be of no interest. Tressile herself had no interest in his food, shelter, or reproduction. None of her classes covered negotiations with tribal cultures. She would have to rely on historical entertainment shows.

"Hey cutie pie, my name is Tressile, and you must be cute!" she tried to flutter her eyes to enhance the effect. There was another long pause before he spoke.

"You have something in your eye?" asked the giant. Tressile rubbed her temples, hoping to soothe the incoming migraine. Unsubtle flirting won’t work.

"If you take us any higher, my friend will die. Do you intend to kill us?" asked Tressile. The manimal waited an inordinate amount of time before turning his face to the sky, and spreading his wings. Tressile gasped. Those were the kings wings, back when Luna had royalty. Only one set had ever been made, there were still a few statues around the capitol of King Pythagoras and his complete waste of resources. The original idea was to have the wings mass produced, but the prototype became so expensive they could only produce one working set. The wings were literally made for the king, useable by only the king, and if he hadn't died in the fire, they might have been able to replicate them. How did they get here?

The giant relaxed a little and felt the cool breeze. A crow landed on his shoulder, they knew each other it seemed. Then the giant stared straight at Tressile, and she felt herself wilt inside. His face was completely unreadable but his eyes were old, like they had stared into the darkest abyss, and the abyss blinked.

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"Is this true? You cannot breathe?" asked the giant.

"Yes. Look, she does not wake up and I am only conscious because of my suit. Please, if you do not wish us to die, bring us back down." After another long stare the giant nodded, and ripped the lid off of the cage. He held out his massive hand.

"I will take you and the other back down, but you must promise to stay and talk to me"

"Deal" Tressile took the massive hand and he pulled her close to his side. Even through her suit she could feel his warmth. Did the man have a reactor for a heart? He pulled Keylin to his other side and spread his wings. In little more than three steps, he had jumped off of the nearby cliff.

Tressile envied Keylin's unconsciousness. The sensation of flight, was completely different from spaceflight. Zero G was a controlled chaos, and the gravity plates on the ships kept flight in little more than gentle curves, but flight… had it's own rules. The conservation of energy, momentum, and the air, there was no true moment of total control. Flight like this was teamwork with the air and hopes that the air didn't betray you. It was terrifying.

"Do you have a name?" yelled Trestle

"I am Stone" he replied.

"Stones don't fly, what do people call you?

"Stone" .

"That name does not suit you. What about Eagle or Summer Wind?" She asked. Tressile felt the need to assert dominance as soon as possible. Unfortunately ‘Stone’ started to laugh

"You think me a girl? Those are women's names!" said Stone, revealing a smile that only appeared on the edges of his eyes. Tressile had no choice but to study his face, the only other option was looking down, and despite the relative smoothness of the flight now, the motion was not playing nice with her stomach. Looking down made the churning worse.

His face was not unpleasant to look at, a wide flattened nose that may have been broken multiple times, long black curly hair, high cheekbones and wide grey eyes that had a tendency to pierce the soul. He would win no beauty contests on Luna, the men there had refined beauty down to the smallest detail. Had they been successful and taken him back home, likely they would adjust his face so he wouldn't be quite so homely. Trestle took the thought further and imagined him back on Luna. Likely he wouldn't care about beauty at all, it was a radical thought since until recently, there was little else to worry about.

"What makes them women's names?" asked Tressile.

"Girl's are named after things you cannot fully touch or contain, like wind, a Summer, or Eagle. Boy's names, are solid things, like Anvil, Hammer, or Stone"

"I can fully touch an Eagle" said Tresille. Not really, she had never seen one in real life, but the videos had shown men holding birds and petting them. His explanation didn't make sense.

"l would like to see you touch and eagle and live" Stone replied. "You could not contain one, the mountain law does not permit caging animals." Gendered naming conventions had long disappeared on Luna, there was no need for it, though Tresille couldn't help but like Stone's village. The idea of women being a bit mysterious was appealing.

"If there were an Eagle, I could touch it" Said Tressile. She felt the need to challenge him. He spoke so resolutely, like what he said was some kind of law, it bothered her. To her chagrin, Stone simply nodded, and dropped Keylin. Tressile couldn't blame Stone, he would have dropped her too had she not immediately clawed onto his shirt when his arms went limp.