The "cozy place" turned out to be a crevice in the mountain face, barely wide enough for both of them to sit across from each other. Cozy indeed.

But not even the dripping ceiling could dampen Tiana's spirits. She spent the next hour gathering scraggly shrubs from the mountain face. It was Crimson's job to pick out the hard yellow berries, then use the shrubs to start preparing a fire.

She came back when night started to fall. She immediately redid his work, arranging the pile into a looser formation. Then she sat back on her heels and pulled a long necklace from under her tunic. From the chain hung a flat white stone, well-worn and scratched.

Holding the necklace away from her with one hand, she used the other to pluck a dagger from her belt. With a swift motion, she struck the blade against the stone. "Flara."

Colors flickered across the stone's surface (red, yellow, orange, white) as sparks flew off of it and onto the kindling.

Crimson raised an eyebrow. Magic? Sure, people from his world could fly and teleport and had all kinds of powers. But magic, fantasy-book magic like this, didn't exist.

The sparks ate the kindling with hungry ferocity. It wasn’t long before a moderate fire blazed in the space. Tiana leaned back against the cave wall with a contented sigh, popping some of the berries in her mouth.

"They taste like bitter bark," she said, crunching audibly. "Kinda the same texture too. But they'll fill you up till morning or longer. We call them mealberries."

"Very imaginative name," Crimson grunted. Curiosity, and hunger and fatigue, got to him though. Cautiously, he put one in his mouth.

They were more nut than berry. It was like eating a spherical seed. Eating five of them was an unpleasant experience, to say the least, but afterward he did feel as full as if he’d eaten a three course meal.

As soon as I get home, I'm gonna have a Four Boys double cheeseburger. With a milkshake. And extra fries.

He did his best to get comfortable. The walls sloped inwards so he was stuck in an awkward, forward-leaning position. He decided to try lying down instead, tucking into an awkward ball as he curled on his side.

In contrast, Tiana looked perfectly at ease. She was sitting up against the ogre head as if it was a lumbar pillow. One hand was in her lap while the other was in her mouth, trying to pick something out of her teeth.

Now that they weren't struggling up a mountainside, his silence felt weird. Tiana had completely stopped talking, as if now waiting for him to say something. But what was he supposed to say? Conversation was his kryptonite.

"So, uh, looks like that was a pretty solid decapitation job. Did you do that with a short sword?" Nice small talk, dork.

"Nah couldn't get it out in time. I did this one with a dagger."

Crimson raised an eyebrow again. Given the size of that head, and the size of that dagger, it should have taken a solid half hour of cutting to finish the job.

By now, he realized that Tiana was someone to be reckoned with. Crimson knew plenty of small, powerful people. Any person was capable of remarkable things. But Tiana seemed superhumanly capable. She reminded him of an ant. Robust, agile, strong, relentless. Probably hard to kill, too.

And, looking at her now, he had to admit she was even pretty. Although pretty was the wrong word for it. It would be like calling a galaxy pretty, or a forest fire. Massive forces of nature weren’t pretty.

“Hey lemme see that painting you have,” she said, snapping Crimson out of his reverie. 

“Painting?”

“You know, the one of the woman.”

Photography must not exist in this world. His suit was one thing; it was close enough to leather to be passable. But how many people had he shown the photo to? He was such a fool. Spectre might be on to him already.

Putting that worry aside for now, he pulled out the photo and passed it to Tiana.