Day 3.5: Confirmations

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Madison said with a smile as we entered her room. It was relatively simple, but scaled to Madison's size; a neatly made blue single bed the size of a small apartment sat on the far wall. A table made of polished plywood was propped under the window, where some papers were neatly stacked in a corner. What caught my eye, though, was a second table on the other side of the room where a tiny's building lay upon it; a relatively small to-scale bistro with living quarters on the second floor. It filled most of the table, but I noticed a crumpled, yellow scooter parked by its side.

Madison set me onto the window table, and eased herself into a chair. “I hope you'll forgive me, Sylvie and Katrina mean well, but they forget about your race's etiquette, sometimes,” Madison said. She looked away and blushed, “...I do, as well.”

I sat cross-legged on the table and leaned back. It took a full forty-five degree tilt to bring my vision comfortably to Madison's face. “It's 'kay,” I said with a shrug, “I enjoyed myself too, so no biggie. What did you mean by 'my race's etiquette', though?”

Madison bit her lower lip with a frown. She was trying to pick her words carefully around me. “Um...I hope I don't sound impertinent,” she said with some hesitation, “but tinies aren't generally so...friendly...around strangers they've just met?”

“It's fine, Madison,” I assured the worrywart, “You did introduce them to me...well, Sylvie introduced herself...but I was interested in knowing how you lived, so your talk and their antics weren't a bother at all.”

Madison heaved a sigh of relief as I finished, and brought her hands around me, “I know you expected tonight to be just the two of us,” Madison, still apologetic, “But we giantesses are so few in your cities, we can't help but be excited to have guests.”

Madison pointed to the opposite side of the room, where a variety of hats hung on a row of hooks on the wall, “Both Sylvie and Katrina have a set of headgear like that in their own rooms. Do you know why we wear hats, Eliot?” Madison asked me.

“Uh...to block out the sun?”

Madison gave a sad smile. “That's right, Eliot,” she continued, “You've ridden on my shoulder before; throughout the ride, you must have seen only the roofs of houses.”

Madison brought her head onto the desk under her arms, her cheeks right next to me, “There isn't a place for us to take shelter in the city, so we have to bring our own shade from the sun. Even with the giantess compound, there was no place for us here. Even if some tinies were friendly to us,” Madison looked distant. Her eyes were downcast as she said, “it felt as if the city didn't welcome us.”

I didn't know what to say to say to that. In spite of how happy Madison seemed whenever she walked the streets, her words held a hidden depth of sadness about her life. Our differences were just too obvious, it seemed. Even if we got along, the crushing realization that you didn't belong here was more than enough to drive a person into deep, binding loneliness.

I decided I need to say something to cheer her up, but when I looked into Madison's face again, I was surprised to find her with her gentle smile, looking lovingly at me. “But that was before I met you, Eliot,” Madison said, pulling her face up and resting her chin on the palm of her hand, “For once, to see someone earnestly reach out to me like that, I felt something build up in my chest.”

Madison curled her fingers behind me with her free hand, and began caressing my back and hair tenderly. “Whenever you're with me, Eliot, I feel as if my there's a spring in my step. When I walked the streets alone, I thought, 'Where could Eliot be?' For the first time in a long time, I looked forward to moving about the town.”

“For what it's worth,” Madison said as she picked me up again, “I do and truly love you, Eliot.”

I could feel my blood rush up to my ears. I feel like I've been waiting to hear those words for a long time now, that my crush wasn't as one-sided as I had feared. I stood up on the palm of Madison's hand, reached up (unsuccessfully) to her. “You're all I need, Madison,” I told her, “I'll make this relationship work, I promise.”

Madison grabbed my outstretched hand between her thumb and index finger. She leaned her face closer to me, and just as her lips were about to touch me, she held herself back, and said with a luminescent blush, “...May I?”

I nodded, and Madison bent all the way down to me, her soft, pink lips meeting my face. It was only a light peck, but for me, Madison's kiss filled my entire world. Her upper lip had taken my forehead, and my mouth and nose were against her lower lip. Between them, I felt the air draw in as her kiss produced a 'muack' sound, and darkness filled my vision only for a brief second, before being released back into the light of the room. My face was only slightly wet; a great feat considering that Madison's lips engulfed my whole face.

“That was my first kiss,” I said.

“While holding hands,” Madison said, giving my arm a little shake.

We laughed to ourselves together, Madison with her refined, mild chuckling, and me with my unrestrained chortle. She took a blanket-sized kerchief from her pocket, and wiped my face down for me. “Thank you, Eliot,” Madison said, her blush intensify suddenly, “I...um...I actually wanted to do this for a long time, now.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Actually!” Madison said, her usual politeness shedding for a more honest, open persona, “Ever since I was little, I dreamed of living with tinies. I'd walk around with them, go shopping, hold hands, make friends, and...”

Madison stopped, only for her already reddened face to brighten even more, “I...I always imagined what it would be like to have one as my...um...” Madison was desperately racing through her vocabulary for a less embarrassing word, “...my significant other.”

Her embarrassment grew too much for her, and Madison turned her glowing face away from me. With a tilt, she slid me back down onto the table, and turned her whole body away from me. It was cute watching her panic like this, making embarrassed little sounds as she tried to calm herself down. But I suppose I needed to ease her mind for her.

I walked over to the edge of the table and looked down. Madison's legs were below, clutched closely together. Her dress was stretched out between them, making a springy, trampoline-like area I could jump onto. It was a two-storey drop, but I was confident her dress would cushion my fall.

I leapt down, and bounced hard onto Madison's dress. The tension sprang me up one more time, before landing onto Madison's right thigh. Madison, surprised by the sudden bump in her lap, looked down in surprise. “Ah...! Eliot...!”

I crawled up to a nice, even bit of Madison's thigh and got up, looking up to her. “Madison, relax,” I said, “We're going out with each other, so calling each other what we are is fine. I'm your boyfriend now, right?”

“Boy...” Madison mouthed the word, hesitated for a moment, but tried again, “Boyfriend...”

“And you're the biggest, bestest girlfriend I ever had,” I said, walking to her belly, wrapping my arms around as much of it as I could, “So we don't need to be shy around each other, alright?”

I could feel Madison draw deeper breaths when I embraced her, but her breathing slowly normalized, until she was back to normal again. Composed, Madison wrapped her fingers around me, returning the embrace, and said, “Alright...”

We smiled at each other, and Madison pulled me back onto the table. We shared a loving stare with each other, before Madison said, “So, Mr. Boyfriend, what would you like to do for the rest of the night?”

I weighed my options carefully, and said, “Wanna sleep together?”

I should have weighed my words more carefully. The resulting sentence sent Madison into a mad scramble again, and she clutched her face in embarrassment once more.

“Er, no!” I shouted, “I was just a little tired; it's 3am already, so what I meant was, we should retire for the night...er...together.”

Madison peeked from behind her hands down at me, her shy gaze falling upon me, “...Oh,” she said timidly, “I-it's still too early for that, Eliot...but if you just wanted to sleep...”

Madison turned back to me again, and offered me her hand to ride on. I got on, and she got up from the table, and walked to the other side of the room. “Actually, there's something I wanted to show you.”

We were standing in front of the second table now, the one with the tiny-sized building on top of it. Madison placed me at the entrance, where a finely polished oak door led the way into a small but charming bistro. It was hard to see inside without the lights on, but it looked like a genuinely built building from the outset.

“I built it myself,” Madison proclaimed proudly, “And I ordered and arranged the furniture, too. I'll turn on the lights for you...”

With a click from under the table, the bistro lit up, and a soft yellow light filled the interior. I opened the door, finding myself in an Italian-style restaurant, with draped tables on the right and a counter on the left. There were even silver utensils laid neatly upon napkins at each seat. It felt exactly like the real thing, sans the people.

Behind was a stairway leading above. I came to the second floor to find a corridor, with living quarters behind every door I opened. Two bedrooms, a toilet and a recreation room, all furnished with appropriate furniture.

Suddenly, I felt the building rock, and the roof above me fell upward and away. Above was Madison's faced peeking into the house, the roof held aside in both her hands. It must have been detachable. “What do you think, Eliot?” Madison asked me.

“This is amazing,” I said, jumping onto a queen-sized bed, “It's almost like somebody's been living here before.”

“I made sure to put everything a normal tiny's house would have in,” Madison said proudly, “I had a genuine interior designer help me procure the furniture from town, and I've had previous guests rate the place.”

She pointed to a small booklet on the table in the room I was in, sized just right for a tiny. Inside, I saw as I flipped through it, was a guest list, with various comments like 'exuberant' or 'just like the real thing', and some flattering words for Madison. Most of them had an old man feel to their words; clients of Madison's job, perhaps, but the last few struck me as pretty youthful, and was signed by the same person.

“Who's Tiffany, Madison?” I asked.

Madison broke into a wide smile, clasping her hands together happily. “He he, that was my first tiny friend. She would visit me every week, telling me about town and sharing with me stories of her week. She's away in University now, so it's been a while since I've seen her.”

Madison didn't say any more than that, so I chose not to pursue. I guess she didn't want to talk too much about it.

“I'll try sleeping here tonight,” I said to Madison, “I want to see how well your handiwork can keep me asleep for.”

I had wanted to sleep in the same bed as Madison, but I knew it was crazy even for me. A random toss or turn at night might flatten me into the mattress without Madison even knowing it. My logic got the better of my desires, and I just went with the flow.

“Okay, then.” Madison said, “I'll switch off the lights for you, and we'll see each other in the morning.”

Madison lifted the roof back onto the building, and my surroundings suddenly became indoors again. With a flick of a switch below the table, the lights in the building went out and all that was left was the light from Madison's own room streaming in. With another click, those lights went out too, and I was left in the dark on the bed, with only the sounds of Madison's footsteps to keep me company.

A slight creak of a bed was heard, before Madison said to me from her own bed, “Good night, Eliot.”

“Good night, Madison,” I said as best I could from where I lay down. Drowsiness began to fill me, and I soon drifted to sleep without effort. What a long day it's been, I thought to myself.