“Tell...Tell us about yourself, Miss Madison.”

We were in Madison’s room. ‘We’ being composed of Madison, myself and a journalist lady who wanted coverage about the coming festival between the North and South. We were on the rug in the center of the room, and the journalist sat down with her legs swept back, looking up at the giantess before her nervously. Madison sat patiently with her legs tucked beneath her, hands on her thighs and back straight in a formal position. I was invited to this interview mostly because the journalist requested for a ‘normal’ person to be here with her, and Madison picked me to escort the journalist here.

The journalist’s name was Michelle. She was a young career woman with short black hair, slightly tanned skin and a confident face, not far from how you’d expect a news anchor to look. Dressed like one, too, having proper beige and dull blue business dress with dark stockings and matching leather heels. Having come from a neighboring city, she was looking for the latest scoop when she stumbled upon news of our town’s plans. Normally, people here were used to giantesses, but for an outsider like Michelle, who had never even seen one in person before, was fidgeting skittishly in place, her normal confidence shaken by her proximity to someone who could easily crush her by accident.

Madison tried to be accommodating, keeping her hands where Michelle could see them and hiding her feet behind her, sitting just far enough for Michelle to be out of reach. She had offered to keep the journalist at eye level in her hand, but Michelle had declined, probably because she thought she’d feel safer than on the surface of a table or Madison’s palm with no exit.

“My name is Madison,” Madison said as non-threateningly as she could, “The current liaison officer of the South for Northern relations, and the main organizer of the upcoming festival for our town. I’ve also a gold urban giantess license, so I’m most qualified here to mediate any mixed-size interactions.”

“A-and tell us, Madison,” Michelle said, still unnerved from having to tilt her head so far up just to see her interviewee’s face, “What brought about t-the plans for the festival?”

“It’s been noted by the North,” Madison answered with practiced smoothness, “That the relations between not just North and South, but between we of the larger disposition and you of the smaller disposition, have been quite divisive as of late. We hoped that our festival would help relook and forward inter-size relations between us.”

“I...see,” Michelle stammered, a shaky hand scribbling down what Madison had just said in her notebook. She was feeling more and more cornered the longer she stayed in Madison’s shadow. She was starting to lose her objectivity. “T-then, what of your own opinion about inter-size relations?”

Madison blinked, unsure of what Michelle meant. “Pardon?” She asked.

Michelle tensed up, as if she was afraid Madison would punish her for not being clear. She managed a quavering response, “I-I-I mean, in your experience...um...do you think it is i-important to maintain relations with the...the smaller folk?”

“Oh!” Madison said, suddenly perking up and clasping her hands together, “Yes, I think it’s important that we see each other as people and not as different-sized, and I’ve made some friends here whom I cherish very much. I even have a tiny boyfriend, my dear Eliot here.”

My cheeks flushed as I felt Madison’s hand reaching up to brush my back. Michelle looked shocked, stunned even, at this revelation, and buried herself back in her notebook to scribble all of this down hurriedly. “I...um, I-I see…” She said uneasily. No doubt she was imagining all the implications of a tiny and a giantess being in love. She gave me a cursory glance, but quickly looked away. I couldn’t tell if she was intrigued or disgusted.

“Then,” Michelle continued, “Um, if...if I may ask, Miss Madison, w-what have you done a-as a differently sized couple? H-how do you, um, e-express yourselves to e-each other?”

Madison blinked again. She slowly lowered her hand away from me and assumed her original position with her hands on her thighs. “I’m afraid I can’t answer questions so personal,” Madison said a little flatly.

“Oh! Um, I-I…” Michelle said with fright. She went back to her notebook to erase the question, but the trembling of her hands only got greater, so much so that she dropped the notebook onto the floor. She bent forward to pick it up, but Madison’s giant fingers had moved down to claim the small book first. She offered it to the trembling journalist between pinched nails as big as Michelle’s head.

“Here,” Maddison said, holding the notebook before Michelle’s chest.

“I-I-...” Michelle continued muttering, reluctantly reaching out to take back her notebook. Something in her head snapped, however, and she pulled back her arm and threw her body onto ground, trembling fearfully with loud audible sobs. She curled into a scared, fetal position, hiding her head under her arms.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Michelle wailed, her words a mantra of fear and tears muffled by the rug, “‘M sho shorry, please don’t hurt me…”

Madison flinched, dropping the notebook in her grip and reeling her hand back from the broken Michelle. Not so long ago, she was confident and excited to meet Madison, but having come so close to the real deal, her subconscious had taken over. I was shocked myself; I had never seen anybody react so greatly to a giantess in town before. I couldn’t blame Madison if she didn’t know how to react to this.

But to my surprise, Madison did know. Expertly, she slid herself a little further from Michelle to look less intimidating, and leaned forward to make up for the extra distance. She placed her hand palm up near the quivering form of the journalist, and said to her gently, “Michelle, if you can hear me, then please listen. This is my hand I’ve put down beside you. I promise you it won’t hurt you. If you’re uncomfortable with it being near you, then please do something to let me know.”

Michelle didn’t move. She just continued crying into the rug.

“Okay, Michelle,” Madison said calmly, “I’m going to tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to put my hand on top of you, then lift you from the ground with my fingers. You’ll feel them wrap around you in a moment. I’m taking you to somewhere where there’ll be no giantesses, and Eliot will attend to you. I promise that you won’t be hurt at all. Just sit still if you understand.”

Again, Michelle didn’t move from her spot. Listening to Madison seemed to have lessened her crying, too.

Slowly, Madison moved her hand from the rug to Michelle’s back. With a touch as gentle as a feather, her fingers brushed against the surface of Michelle’s dress suit, letting their weight sink slowly down atop her diminutive frame. When Michelle didn’t reject the gesture, Madison eased her fingers under her, cradling her prone form in her hand. With as little force as possible, Madison raised her into the air slowly, cupping her in both hands so she didn’t feel like she was being restrained. Michelle clung onto Madison’s thumb tightly, unconsciously afraid that she’d fall, prompting Madison to bring the digit closer to her cowering form.

Madison walked over to that life-sized dollhouse of hers on the table, popping the roof off and gently easing Michelle onto the bed of the master bedroom. Michelle didn’t react much, only maintaining her fetal position and sobbing, but didn’t look any worse than she did before. Madison reached for me this time, lowering me into the room so I could check on Michelle.

“Hey,” I tried asking, giving Michelle a few nudges to her shoulder, “You alright?”

Michelle was turned away from me, her sobbing momentarily stopping for words to form, “I...I’m...I’m s-sorry, I just can’t…”

“Okay,” I said, reeling my arms back from her body, “Just settle down here, and if you feel like you could get out on your own, there’s a little flight of stairs beside the house that leads back to the ground. Doors our size are installed next to every entrance in the house, so just go back the way we came in by. Madison’s really not here to hurt you, so just...uh...try to relax.”

Michelle said nothing more, still too paralyzed with fear to respond. Without anything more I could do, I climbed back onto Madison’s hand and the both of us left her bedroom.

There was nobody in the living room. Sylvie was out to work, and Kat was probably in her own room, left to her own devices. Madison sat on the floor next to the coffee table, letting me down onto the wooden surface. With nobody but ourselves to scrutinize us, Madison let out a labored sigh, dropping her head onto the table next to me. Her hand came up behind me and drew me closer to her face, slapping me lightly against her warm, rosy cheek. I took this chance to stroke it, saying some encouraging words, “It’s not your fault, babe.”

Madison let out another sigh. “I wish more people were like you, Eliot,” she said with resignation, “Seeing us giantesses as normal humans instead of monsters. I worked hard to convince our town the same, but we’re still dangerous to the rest of the South. I know that’s why we’re hosting the festival here, but I can’t help but feel nothing would change…”

“It’s a big change,” I said, trying to reassure her with small, meager brushes of my fingers against her long, flowing hair, “And big changes take time. They’ll come around eventually.”

Madison’s eyes looked distant, mulling over her worries in her head. “I don’t know, Eliot…” Madison said, defeated.

Not too long ago, Madison herself was in favor of dividing the countries in order to keep tinies safe, for my sake. The bruises along my body had vanished now, but somewhere in Madison’s heart, she still felt a small pang of guilt over it. It’s made our interactions to date more subdued, never letting herself do anything too taxing to me. It’s also made her rather cynical, if her disposition now was any indication.

“C’mon, Maddie, lighten up,” I urged, “You’ve gotta look forward to the road ahead. You can’t be defeated just as you’ve begun.”

“It’s not that simple,” Madison said with a frown, “They’re right to be afraid, even I’ve hurt somebody without meaning to; you, Tiffany-”

Madison stopped herself just there, and turned her head away from me, her long bangs washing acrossing me as she tilted the other way. “...Nevermind,” she said almost ruefully.

Oh. I only just remembered that Madison didn’t know that I had already met Tiffany. The one-legged doctor in the clinic who took care of me after Madison’s little accident with me. She’d told me everything about her relationship with Madison, and how she came to despise the North because of her. Tiffany also told me something interesting if I ever needed to convince Madison to forgive the North...

“Maddie,” I said, squirming out of Madison’s hold and coming around to face her directly, “I know you’re feeling pooped and seems hopeless and all, but I know you’ve got to be doing all this for some reason. I know you’re trying hard because you have something you want, something you wished for all along. I met Tiffany back in the North, and she told me. She told me you had a dream.”

Madison looked surprised. “You met Tiffany?” She said in astonishment.

“Yeah,” I said, “She said it wasn’t the right time to see you yet, so she kept me quiet. But she told me all about you. Sorry Maddie, but I heard about why you didn’t like the North, too. How somebody up North hurt Tiffany, so you ran here to the South. But this anxiety you’re feeling, this isn’t you. Haven’t you forgotten something else? Something you’ve wanted all along?”

I huffed a large breath of air, sitting down before Madison’s downcast face. “Tell me about your dream,” I said.

Madison’s eyes averted from me for a moment, trying to decide what to do. They turned back to me eventually, though, and Madison said with a light blush, “Since I was little, I really liked the idea of having tiny friends. So for the longest time, I thought I’d make my own city filled with them. But not a city where there were clear divisions where tinies and giantesses should reside in, but a large, communal area where anybody could go anywhere regardless of size. I wanted my own Garden, without the rules of the North or the fear of the South. Just people at my feet and friends by my side, living together in harmony.”

“I had forgotten that dream after Tiffany was hurt,” Madison continued. She had a sad look at first, but a small smile began to creep past her face, “But you’re right, Eliot. I had a dream, and it was always my dream to raise my own Garden. A place where people could mingle and laugh together, where anywhere a giantess could walk, there’d be a tiny or two to talk to. We’d talk about our day, have a walk, and I could carry them on my shoulder and my friends would let me taste the small morsel they packed for lunch today. Everybody was everybody else’s friendly neighbor, and there’d be mixed-sized beds for sleepovers, schools which catered classes for both tinies and giantesses, and…”

Madison went unendingly on with the details. Her Garden was a little paradise which didn’t differentiate between the tall and the small, but rather, aimed to treat and accommodate them as if both sizes were equal. I smiled at how passionately she recited her plans, at the shared cafes on the third floor, at the catwalks for mixed-sized friends to walk home together at eye-level, at the many contraptions and systems that would have facilitated all those giantess-tiny interactions. At the end of the day, I thought, Madison just wanted everybody to be part of the same undivided society.

“Well, Maddie,” I said, cutting into Madison’s long colloquy, “You know I think you’ve got part of your wish already.”

“I do?” Madison said in confusion.

“Yeah,” I said, beckoning for Madison to lift me up. She offered me an open palm which I scrambled onto quickly, and pointed for her to move to the nearby window. Outside, instead of the untouched plains which surrounded the giantess district, there was a healthy hubbub of commotion as workers big and small hurried about, laying down floorings and raising tents of long tapestries like the ones I saw in the Garden in the North. The giantesses were from the North, too, driving long poles into the ground to form spires about six floors tall to hang the long cloth from, forming loose, cylindrical tents where giantess visitors from the North could stay during the festival. Tiny workers helped pin the cloth to the ground, and their trucks held concrete and wooden plates for which the tents were furnished with to make for solid ground. There was some interaction between the workers, too, a giantess holding up a tiny to the tent pole to attach some electric lights to the shaft, a manager briefing both small and large builders about the next site to build on, and just some general banter as a few Southern workers had their break seated atop the thigh of a Northern worker.

“See,” I said, pointing to the ongoing construction, "Even though they've only just met for a few days, the North and the South are getting along pretty well. All it took was a common goal, and they can gel like putty in a can."

Madison didn't say anything for a long while, just stood there and stared mesmerized as the tiny and giantess worked hand in hand (sometimes literally), undaunted by one another's size. Maybe it was because the Southern construction workers were already used to being around big machinery and tall places, but none were afraid to stand close even as the colossal Northerners romped about with feet large enough to trample them underfoot. Danger was part of the job, after all.

"I..." Madison began, but bit her lower lip as she thought otherwise than to speak.

"You know, you could just go over yourself," I suggested, "You did organize all this, so who's to tell you the organizer’s not allowed a surprise visit?"

Madison looked hesitant for a moment. She turned to me and said, "But Miss Michelle is still-"

"Just tell her we'll be away for a bit," I said, "She needs some time to get her nerves back anyway."

Madison had a guilty look, but nodded and returned to her room, standing just outside the life-sized dollhouse on the table. Without opening the lid, Madison said as softly as she could, "Eliot and I shall be out for a while. If there's anything you need, you have Eliot's number. Please just rest for the time being."

No response. Madison took it that Michelle had heard her and quietly left the room, not wanting to overstay her visit.

With that done, Madison brought us to the front door. With my small body still seated in her hand, Madison grabbed her Sunday hat whilst still looking lovingly at me and said, "Shall we?"