"Uh maybe? I've been camping before years ago but I don't remember if I participated in setting up tents, so probably assume I haven't? I'm willing to learn though!" 

"There's a pack of folding aluminum poles there —" Eva points. " — that snap together into an X; try and get them put together into that X while I get the solar charger set up."

"Okay!" Phee will 

take Eva's long hard pole

You forgot the "s"

Phee will take Eva's long hard poles

And after an embarassingly long definitely reasonable amount of time, manage to snap them together into an "X" shape.

Eva comes over and unrolls the base plate of the tent. 

"Now we just need to gently bend the X so the four corners go through the four holes in this base plate. Then the shell goes overtop of that." 

"Alright!" Phee will eventually, manage to get the poles into the holes.

And Eva throws the shell over and clips it into place. 

It's a two-person tent; Eva had wanted something with some space to move in. She gets out a pair of inflatable cushions from her pack, as well as a few books, and tosses them into the tent. 

"There we go. I'm out of propane for my camp stove, but it's okay; I do most of my cooking in the cavern world these days anyway. I don't plan to sleep here, so no need for the air mattress or my sleeping bag." 

She looks over at Phee. "You've got to stay alert out here, just in case, but I can teleport and you can stay in my cavern, so we're both relatively safe. The biggest danger is that something might ruin my tent or my solar charger, really. I have a big breakfast in the morning and a big supper in the evening most days, and munch on gorp and snack bars to substitute for lunch. Usually I use up my water from my cavern by noon, and I tried dipping in for a lunch break but my planar balance hated it long-term. So I end up using native water for the back half of the day. That usually gets me in the frame of mind to sculpt, so I do that in the afternoon and evening. Or have sex with Erokami that I need to for practical reasons." 

She shrugs and smiles. "It's not much. Mostly I read and play offline phone games I downloaded on Earth. But it's not terrible, either. I wouldn't sleep out here but during the day it's generally safe enough." 

Phee will down on and thank Eva for one of the inflatable cushions, and nod along as she talks.

"Understood! May I ask what sculpting is like? And um, would you like a hug? It's of course if no to either or both!"

"... I would appreciate a hug, yeah. And sculpting is... It's an art but it's also masturbation, let's put it that way. It's like if you could make something beautiful by, ah..." She rubs the back of her head. "You know."

Hug!

”O-oh, I probably should’ve expected it’d be something like that considering everything about this world…”

"I mean, it's like you're sculpting clay except the clay is also your dick. It's... like that." 

Eva chuckles and passes Phee a romance novel. "Anyway, that's not going to happen today. I did extra runs to the cavern so I can do water and so on."

"So, like, who are you? How'd you end up in this situation? What was it like for you? Did you have a good life on Earth, or is it better for you to live out here? Inquiring minds want to know."

Phee will accept the novel and then ramble, attempting to answer Eva.

"Gaining powers for me was kind of a gradual thing at first, I think? At first instead of the usual stuff, I'd dream about I started having dreams that were alot more detailed and which I remembered much vividly then I usually would when I'd wake up, and in hindsight they were probably dreams of the worlds I'm connected to? As some of them were clearly about the Pink Desert, and some were about Earth or my cavern, so I'm presuming the other three varieties were about other worlds as well.

And then I started gaining powers gradually I think? Though initially they were all just subtle things that I just chalked up to other stuff when they happened, like instead of noticing I had gained the prettiness power I had just assumed estrogen was being alot more effective for me then it was. Or they were stuff that would require entering conditions which I didn't have encounter, or were stuff that would require being like actively activated, which I didn't think to do until much later, though I'm kinda assuming the powers in the later two categories also came in gradually? As i didn't in fact notice when I initially got them.

Anyway eventually I got a power with blatant enough passive effects that it prompted to me wonder if I had other powers as well now, and wondering on that prompted? triggered? activated? the feedbacky parts of my other powers into providing visions of using them slash what they could be used for.

And after that I'd started writing down a list of what the different powers were, and after consulting it and deciding which to test first, I tried plane shifting into my cavern, and only partially succeeded as I only sent my vision across, but on my second attempt I managed to get across. And then I decided to try finding a spot I could enter the desert from because some of my powers felt like I needed to visit it to use, and after that doing I met you."

And then she's gonna take a brief break from speaking because she just said a lot of words.

"Gosh, you really are new then, aren't you? I'm glad you ran into me, working together on this stuff is much better than going it alone." 

Eva smiles and reaches over and lightly pats the Phee. 

"Do you have any hobbies? I write when I can, though it's been harder lately. I guess you could say I've developed a hobby of making glasswork too. I've always been kind of an artistic person, I guess." 

"I guess I am? And I'm glad I met you too!" Phee lightly nuzzles into the pats, and shrugs.

"I-not really? I mostly spent my time split between reading, listening to music and playing video games, not really anything productive aside from arguably the occasional youtube math video. And it's cool that you write! A-and I'd be interested in seeing if there was any art, whether writing or glasswork you'd wanna share? And um I've tried writing myself before but always ended up stalled within the first few words." 

"Aww. Well, maybe we can try and write together at some point. I wasn't any good at it before coming out here gave me a lot of time to think. I've been practicing. I don't know if I'm still any good though." 

She smiles. "Any books you particularly liked? What kinds of music and video games?"

"Quite a few but I'm not sure how to explicate what I liked about them beyond that gay girls good, or time loops fun, albeit horrifying. And in terms of music, alot of videogame and anime soundtracks, miscellaneous stuff, rock, metal, symphonic rock, other things i don't know the terms for. and like for videogames, lots of 2d platformers, lots of origami-maria[1]-likes, particularly the ones with a focus platforming and being able to get the various abilities in a lot of different orders? Also pretty games in general are good. Also occasionally and complicatedly puzzle games as they can be really satisfying to solve, but also more often drive me mad with frustration, or sometimes both."

[1] In this Phee's Earth, Mario is instead a girl named Maria, the first few paper mario games were called origami maria, and eventually evolved into and inspired a genre like what OTL knows as metroidvanias.

"Origami-maria-likes?"

"I definitely agree that gay girls good though. Did you ever see that one show, what was it, 'Getting To Know Grace'? It was huge in Korea." 

Nodnod. "They really are! And I haven't heard of that, I don't really watch shows much, which website could be it watched on? And Origami-Maria-likes were well, to explain that I'd first need to explain the original Origami-Maria which itself a spinoff of the ever popular Hyper Maria Sisters-"

"I don't recall, there's so many streaming services these days. I think maybe Kintube? But go on."