"A-aaahhh!"
It was like this every time — Koto clung to him for dear life, her nails pressing meager dents into his skin and thighs clenching his waist as they ascended higher and higher from the ground.
Oh god, they were so far from the ground.
She shut her eyes again, her heart thumping in her chest as she attempted to regain some sense of calm, running reassuring phrases through her mind like a broken record: Jin won't drop me, he won't drop me, he won't.
"Ya alright?" his voice piped, and she clung to the sound — it was close and familiar.
Then she exhaled.
She had intended to reply, but she realized suddenly that her face was pressed against the back of his head, and she was having a hard time bringing herself to move it away. She noticed that he smelled nice.
"I'm fine," she muttered sheepishly into the fluff of his hair.
She cracked her eyes open only to have her vision swallowed up by an expanse of powder blue, the only other colors the wind-fluttered red of his hair and the peachy twitch of one of his ears. "'S not far, so we can go slow as ya like." She could hear the laugh in his voice, even if she couldn't see it in his eyes.
She managed to nod without pulling her face away, laughing a little herself in the hopes that she would relax. "Thanks."
He only grunted cheerfully in return, and then they were soaring off again.