Allen hunched over the desk in his bedroom, restored to his full height again as he tapped away on his laptop keyboard, hoping to complete as much homework as he could with this brief respite in his sister’s bizarre conception of quality time together.

            Roxy, apparently running low on her trendy Kranktrap apparel, had insisted on a meandering trip to the only clothing store in the mall she was willing to set foot inside.  She’d at first insisted on hiding Allen in her satchel and buying them frozen yogurt as reward for his keeping quiet while she perused the racks of dark t-shirts and shredded jeans, but her eight-inch brother had quickly dispelled the appeal of this possibility with his promise to bug her incessantly for the entire trip, frozen yogurt or not.

            There were, of course, silencing spells she could perform to get some peace and quiet, but after some persuasion, Roxy was at last convinced to leave Allen behind and return him to normal so he could complete enough of his schoolwork for the weekend that their parents wouldn’t get on the twenty-year-old’s case about impeding her brother’s scholastics.

            “Just work fast, okay?” Roxy groaned as she begrudgingly waved her hands and fluttered her lips to perform the spell that brought Allen back to his original height, or at least as close to it as she was willing to allow.  When the spell was complete, he’d stopped at just over four feet tall, which still put him well below eye level with the witch: just how she liked it.  “Because as soon as I get back, you’re going right back down to fun size.”

            Roxy placed her hands on her hips and gazed down at her schoolchild-sized sibling with a triumphant grin.

            “C’mon, please?  Normal size?  You’re not even going to be around to see me being taller than you,” Allen said, punching his sister playfully in the denim-clad thigh.  His hair was still sticky with dried milk from his earlier swim in Roxy’s cereal bowl.  “Plus, I really need a fricking shower, and I can’t reach the head like this.”

            “Fine, fine,” she grumbled, giving a final snap of her fingers that tacked on another foot and a half to Allen’s stature, which still put him just below eye level with her.

            “You know, if someone rings the doorbell and I have to answer it, and it’s someone we know, they’re going to notice this!” Allen protested, standing on his tiptoes in an effort to climb the final few inches that would return him to normal at last.

            “So don’t answer the door, squirt,” Roxy replied good-naturedly, patting her still-shorter brother’s hair before drawing back with some revulsion.  “Eww.  Yeah, you really do need to wash your hair.”

            “Glad you finally noticed,” he shrugged, moving past her and heading for the stairs to make his way for the bathroom.  The topic was obviously closed as far as his sister was concerned.

            “I’ll be back before you know it!” Roxy sang.  She closed her eyes, focusing her energy until a soft glow emanated around her body as she began to warp away.  “Use this privilege wisely.”

            “Privilege.  Of course,” Allen groused with an irritated snicker.  He paused near the stairway railing, eying what appeared as a decorative paperweight with a blue gem on the coffee table.  From this vantage point, he could just barely make it out as it rested in the other room.  “How do you know I won’t use the call stone to get mom and dad to come home and save me?”

            “One, because you know they’re probably still working on that minotaur-hybrid-whatever, and two, you’re having too much fun,” Roxy commented, correct on both counts as she disappeared into the light.  Allen rolled his eyes but smiled all the same.  “Now hurry up and do your boring not-fun-size crap while I’m not here to see it.”

            And so he did, after a thoroughly refreshing shower that washed away the remaining sugary gunk from his dip in the cereal bowl.

            Allen had to admit, he did feel sharper now and more prepared to tackle his required tasks after a break for the past day.  Despite his parent’s gentle objections, he often never gave himself real breaks from his studies, perhaps out of some inherent desire to prove himself as a significant individual without the use of magic, though if asked, the teen would’ve just insisted he was simply dedicated to the work.  As grabby and immature as she could occasionally be, Roxy really was the only one close enough to the cusp of his human world and the other to know just how to ease this part of him.

            Barely forty-five minutes had passed in his solitude when, as Allen shoved the laptop away to take a breather from his essay, he felt the familiar tingling inside, and instinctively wrapped his legs closer to his body as he was rapidly reduced, instantaneously shrinking into the center of his now-enormous swivel chair.

            He sighed.  It wasn’t as long as he’d have liked to work, but maybe that was still part of his problem.  He had to start letting go of those impulses to never rest, and just have some fun, or he was going to start losing it, as Roxy was insistent on reminding him at regular intervals.

            “You’re back sooner than I thought.  So did you buy twenty more of the exact same Kranktrap shirt, or just ten?” he snorted with playful derision, still not turning around, as the back of his seat would’ve blocked his view of Roxy anyway.  If his sister felt the need to surprise-attack him with her shrinking spells like this, it seemed the only correct response to suck the fun right out of such an empowering act and pretend like it didn’t bother him.

            For a moment, there was no answer.  Glancing around his environment, Allen frowned to realize the sheer scope of his desk before him.  He hadn’t expected it to rise quite so high, yet there it was, like the overhang of an office building.  The fraying tufts of his swivel chair cushion seemed wilder, the threads stretching longer, and with surprise, the teen realized just how small he was at this moment.

            It was hard to be sure, as he was steadily becoming convinced that he’d never been shrunken this small before, but by his best estimation, he barely registered at half an inch tall.

            This was peculiar, to say the least, as Allen continued standing in the slightly unnerving silence.  Ordinarily it wouldn’t have taken Roxy more than a few seconds to snatch him up in her playful fingers and deposit him into her palm after shrinking him, usually with a cheeky taunt accompanying the transfer.  Even then, if she did have plans to make him anywhere near this small, she always began at a height of around eight or ten inches, as it was an easier transition to make, so the change was never quite so jarring as this.

            Allen was thoroughly used to having his height reduced just for his sister’s amusement by this point in his life, and as a result hadn’t really felt fear or anxiety from it in years.  But now, going directly from his ordinary height down to the length of a person’s thumbnail, horrendously dwarfed by the world around him, created a twisting sensation of discomfort in his gut.

            Roxy made her jokes and always had her way, but she was always, always gentle with him, ensuring his safety first and foremost.  No matter how much he might’ve complained about her magically induced choices for him, Allen would’ve admitted this without hesitation.

            This, now, just felt… different.  A little wrong, even.

            “Roxy?” he called out after more than a minute of pure silence had passed, padding cautiously across the buoyant surface of the chair cushion toward the back.  “H-Hey?  Anybody there?”

            Giggling resounded through the entire room, booming not just from the volume created as a result of his reduction, but from sheer uninhibited joy.  Cheerful as it was, it gave Allen cause for hesitance.  Something about it made him recall a feeling, like an old memory he’d tried to forget.

            And then it hit him, even before her bright blue eyes were beaming at him, even before he had to look up to those bouncy golden locks or the smugly glistening grin of the sixteen-year-old intruder.

            Grace.

            He’d only been in the same vicinity as the headstrong prodigy of a witch twice in his life at group dinner gatherings arranged by his parents and several other magical families.  In some overheard gossip before the meal, he’d learned a little of the girl’s staggering accomplishments: how she was knocking her early examinations out of the park, how she had mastered spells meant for witches and warlocks with at least five years on her, and how incredibly powerful she was as an entity.  She certainly didn’t look it, with her admittedly cute face and doe-eyed expressions of glee that made her look like she would’ve fit in on a high school homecoming committee more readily than her almost-assured position in one of the more respected covens someday.

            Once dinner was served at the first meeting, when Allen’s parents happily introduced him to the rest, he’d been warmly greeted and offered salutations by the kind members of the local magic community.

            Only Grace’s face was different as she looked on him, a thin smile on her lips as she became aware that he was the only non-warlock in the house.  Later on, he’d noticed her moving through the clustered bodies slowly, making her way towards him.  Roxy, noticing this, had shepherded her brother to a different room and begun making loud jokes, which seemed to discourage the girl from coming any closer.

            There wasn’t much explanation, but Allen knew he could trust his sister’s generally critical instincts on people, and his impression, partially from Roxy’s recommendation and especially from the hungry look in her eyes as she gazed at him, was that Grace was one best to keep distance from.

            And now here he was, reduced to the size of a snail, alone in his home while one of the most powerful young women in the world stared down at him, her hands resting on her knees as her pretty countenance loomed overhead.