“Seriously, you better not fall asleep on me like this.  I’ll conjure up an entire snowstorm into the kitchen right now and freeze you back awake,” Roxy grumbled as she held her eight-inch brother out at arm’s length, her fingers wrapped around his back.  With her free hand, she brushed the purple streak in her hair back behind her ear.

            “Can I help it if I put effort into my day?” Allen yawned, resting his forearms comfortably on his sister’s firm thumb where it crossed over his chest.  “Besides, Mom would throw a fit about the damage if a pipe burst and you didn’t notice until the basement flooded.”

            “One time that happened, when I was eight, and anyway, I seem to remember a certain selfish little someone begging me to make snow inside so we could make angels and snowmen because it was too dark to play outside anymore,” Roxy corrected with a smirk.  “And I think I delivered, to say the least.”

            “Yeah,” Allen admitted, letting his sarcastic façade fall for just a second as he recalled this fond memory all those years ago of his sister happily creating a tiny winter wonderland in the kitchen.  Not only was it impressive, but it had made him feel incredibly special to have someone so powerful create something just for him, because he had asked her to.  It had been perfect until enough damage was caused that it would’ve made a mechanic’s fiscal year, if not for the expert restorative magic of their parents that set things in order within minutes, and even then, Allen didn’t regret a second of it.  He had a feeling Roxy didn’t either, despite the scolding she’d received.

            “What, don’t say you want it to snow in here again?” she chuckled, noting the nostalgia evident in his tone.  Her fingers squeezed a little more around his shoulder blades.  “Getting a little old for those kinds of games, aren’t we?”

            “Says the twenty-year-old who just made me play freaking hide-and-go-seek,” Allen retorted, sliding easily back into his previous teasing demeanor.  He wrapped his arms underneath Roxy’s thumb for better support and kicked his legs awkwardly in the open space.  “Hey, could I get a little support here?”

            “Okay, okay, hold up there cowboy,” Roxy said with a roll of her eyes, and brought her palm underneath her brother’s swinging legs so he could stand in her hand for support, though she still kept the fingers of her other hand wrapped firmly around him for balance.  “So what do you wanna do, then?”

            “Um…”

            “And FYI, there are wrong answers to that question.”

            “Oh, great.  Mind letting me know what they are?  Because I’m pretty sure I’m about to say them,” Allen smarmed, crossing his arms and shifting his weight from one leg to the other, now that he could actually stand on the malleable surface of his sister’s palm.

            “Wrong answers would include requests of any kind for me to make you bigger yet.  They also include any requests for me to give you money, or make you taller in general,” Roxy informed with a stiff upper lip.

            “That seems awfully restrictive,” Allen groaned.

            “Hey, I don’t make the rules, I just… oh wait.  I forgot.  Of course I make the rules.  What am I even saying?” Roxy continued with a self-deprecating laugh, then abruptly returned to the falsely serious expression she had before, raising her eyebrow.  She drew her arms in until she had her brother hugged against her stomach.  “So what’s it gonna be?  What’s the next game?”

            “I can’t believe you’d trust me with something so important.”

            “Yeah, well, don’t get too used to it.  If you pick something dumb, I’m choosing everything we do for the rest of the evening, and you’re gonna have to pretend really hard that you’re not having so much more fun than if you’d been doing your boring homework at your boring size,” Roxy said gravely.  With her index finger, she reached up to the top of Allen’s head and began roughly patting his hair down.

            “Believe me, I don’t think I’ll have to do much pretending.  Almost anything would be better than that stuff,” Allen admitted with a shrug, gripping the soft fibers of Roxy’s Kranktrap shirt for support as she clutched him lightly to her torso.

            “Ah-HA, so you admit I know what’s best for you then?”

            “Well, I wouldn’t want to say something so extreme as that, but whatever makes you happy,” Allen shrugged.  “I figure you’re gonna do that no matter what I say.”

            “Actually, what would really make me happy would be if you’d quit stalling and tell me what we’re playing before I get too bored of your peanut gallery commentary and just choose something myself,” Roxy said as she leaned against the kitchen counter.

            Allen grappled awkwardly with the fabric of his sister’s comparatively enormous t-shirt, face-to-face with Kranktrap’s rubbery logo, and hummed dramatically.  He prodded at the stylized illustration of the four members screaming out lyrics, their craggy faces dotted with stage paint.

            “We could go down to the store and find you a less obnoxious shirt?”

            Suddenly, he felt his sister’s fingers pulling away from around his chest and pinching at the back of his shirt.  Her other hand disappeared from below, leaving him dangling again as she pulled him away from her stomach and brandished him at arm’s length.

            “Okay, buster,” she growled.  She waggled a disapproving finger at him, even bopping him lightly on the nose with her pinky.  “That does it.  No more choosing privileges for you.”

            “Dang.  All I’m saying is, you could do better.  You look like a forty-year-old roadie in that,” Allen chuckled with a shrug, impeded somewhat by the fact that nothing was holding him up but Roxy’s fingers clenched on his clothes.  “Can I stand on your hand again?”

            The girl shook her head emphatically from side to side.  “Nope!  You lost that privilege too.”

            “You sure do run a tight ship here, don’t you?”

            “You have no idea,” she whispered threateningly, biting her lip to keep back a revealing smirk.  “I think you have an apology to make?”

            “To who?  Kranktrap?” Allen snorted.

            “Don’t you go making sarcastic jokes like you’re not in the hands of someone who can make anything she wants happen for real!” Roxy warned playfully, her hand swinging gently back and forth, causing her eight-inch brother to follow the same swaying trajectory.  “Don’t you forget who’s holding who.”

            “So what then, you’re gonna warp us into Kranktrap’s studio and give them a surprise visit so I can apologize for a terrible t-shirt they didn’t even have anything to do with designing?” Allen asked.  “They’d boot you right out of there.”

            “Well, I could always bring them here, you know.  Then you’d be in trouble!  Except Stan.  He’s the only warlock in the group, so he’d probably block me somehow.  But I’d get everybody else!”

            “I thought it was harder to warp people to you?”

            “It is, but I’ve been practicing at school with a couple people.”

            “Yeah, I’ll bet.  Kranktrap lives halfway around the world.  I bet you’d only get them halfway over the Pacific and then accidentally let go, and then you’d drown your tone deaf gods,” Allen said, crossing his arms and actually moving his shoulders in the direction of each arc as his sister continued swinging him back and forth.

            “Mmmkay… now you’ve really gone and done it!” Roxy grunted melodramatically, furrowing her brow as angrily as she could manage. She sunk to the floor, bracing herself against the counter, until she could stretch her legs out on the hardwood.  Reaching forward, she plopped Allen down on top of her foot so that he was awkwardly wrapped around her left ankle.

            “Oh, wow, I said something else, so you let me go.  Great.  Should I say they’re all ugly next, too?” he laughed, rolling off to the side and standing next to his sister’s jean-clad calf.

            “Nope.  You’re gonna say you’re sorry to me.  Like you did before,” she said with resolve, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow expectantly.  She pulled her right leg in closer, but arched her foot against the floor, pivoting on her heel, so that the pink bare toes could wriggle freely in Allen’s direction.

            “You’re kidding.”

            “Nope!  Give ‘em a kiss, Mr. Know-It-All,” she instructed.  Her big toe poked roughly at his stomach, nearly knocking the wind out of him.  Then, arching higher, she nudged the row of digits right under Allen’s chin.

            “Wow.  This again?  Honestly I just can’t imagine what it’s like to have all that power, and at the same time, so little imagination,” he grunted as the toes pressed gently against his neck.

            “Shut up and get it over with already,” she giggled, then snapped her fingers.  “Hold up one second, actually.  Don’t do it yet.”

            “Oh, I can barely hold myself back,” Allen said with a roll of his eyes, pressing his fists into the ball of his sister’s foot in an effort to push it back a little, but to no avail.

            “This should do it,” Roxy said.  She blinked her eyes and grinned from ear-to-ear.

            Suddenly, as if rumbling up from the floor, was the pounding baseline of Kranktrap’s third-best-known song that was permanently etched in Allen’s mind like a cult tattoo thanks to Roxy’s borderline-psychotic obsession with it three summers ago.  Guttural screeches from the lead vocalist led into it and confirmed the tiny teen’s fears as he realized his sister had essentially turned the entire kitchen into a concert hall speaker.  His bones rattled with the crackling energy of musical metal.

            “You’re joking,” he mused in disbelief.  “Really?”

            “Do I ever joke?”

            “Almost always.”

            “Okay, maybe about most things, but not about the greatest musical act to ever walk the planet.  Or fly over it, in Stan’s case,” she retorted.  Her toes drummed quietly against the floor, causing her whole foot to vibrate even more as Allen’s breathing automatically synchronized to the beat.

            He groaned.  “You know, we are actually, right now, crossing the line from really sick prank to legitimate abuse,” Allen informed her, resting his cheek against the thick ankle.

            “Come ooooooon,” she sang playfully at the same pitch as an electric guitar solo that had started up in the song.  Her opposite foot, still curled toward her brother, bopped him in the back and nearly knocked him off his fleshy perch.  “Take much longer and we’re gonna hit Randall’s solo.  Growl vocals for three minutes and thirty-two seconds straight.  Your call.”

            “All right, you win, you heartless cretin,” Allen grumbled in defeat, hiding a joking smile as he pressed his lips back to the bulbous surface of Roxy’s big toe.  Puckering, he kissed it again.

            Open air had definitely helped cleanse it of the warm, rubbery flavor her shoe had provided, only to be replaced with the downy hint of carpet fiber mixed with rarely lotioned skin.  Not wholly unpleasant, if a little degrading, but what did he care?  At least no one was here to see it.  A tiny dot of soggy sock fuzz brushed his lip and he recoiled back again, wiping his mouth aggressively.  He could feel a dab of moisture on his skin.

            Roxy blinked and the music shut off.  She straightened her legs back out, satisfied with the gesture, and splayed her toes back against the floor.  Her palm laid over Allen’s back again and she plucked him off her ankle, drawing him closer to her shirt again as she stood back up with the cabinet for support.

            “Not bad.  Better than the last one, anyway,” she commented.  She grinned snidely, rippling her fingers around Allen’s body and giving him the feeling of momentary weightlessness, then added facetiously: “Use a little more tongue next time and you’ll be all set for the first time you can convince a girl to make out with you.”

            “Honestly, it’s incredible how much material you give me that I could so easily use to build a case against you with a Ranthbarl Court hearing,” Allen groaned, his eyelids drooping with boredom.  “For that comment alone, I bet they’d take away your warping for at least a week.  This is just making a mockery of your entire order.”

            “Oh, what do you know?” Roxy snarked as she sauntered out of the kitchen and into the hallway.  “If you had powers, you’d just be using them to look at brain cells all day or something.”

            “Exactly.  I’d be doing something useful with my time instead of pretending I’m the queen of the world.  I’d be-” Allen insisted, but was interrupted from further commented by the massive thumb of Roxy’s opposite hand, which the girl had pressed handily over his mouth.

            “…and that’s just about enough out of you for right now,” she sighed.  She stopped in her tracks in the foyer and tried not to laugh at the sight of her toy-sized brother with his arms crossed defiantly and a long finger blocking his complaints.  “Don’t look so grumpy.  I could’ve just stuffed you back in that sock you seemed to think was such a genius hiding place.  Now, seeing as you’re not going to be making suggestions for the next few minutes, I guess I’m picking the next activity, huh?”