My eyes fluttered open in the dim pre-dawn light. I lifted my head to look around; everyone else seemed to be still sleeping. Mike was still wedged safely between my breasts and for a while I just lay there feeling him on my chest. He stirred in my cleavage, pushing at the soft flesh that surrounded him until he came to rest on his side. This was probably how Rachel felt when she woke up in the morning with Howard. It was a strange feeling, like a small beanbag that had been warmed in the microwave: soft, light, and warm. My sensitive skin could feel almost every part of his form. I looked down to see his little head poking out at the base where my two breasts met.

“Veronica?” I looked to my left; it was Eve.

“Yea, what’s up Eve?”

“I was just thinking about my time with Joan. I think I was lucky in some ways. She was very kind to us you know.”

“I suppose…”

“It was much better than living in the public domain.”

“Don’t fool yourself, Eve. She was a malicious bitch who preyed on people that were smaller and weaker than her.”

“She helped us! I would have died if she hadn’t picked me up.”

“And you might not have been pummelled so badly if she hadn’t made a pact with Lyndon!”

“She cared, Veronica.”

I couldn’t believe how much she was in denial. Sometimes Joan would come to a death orgy, where people were allowed to purposefully kill the little ones living in the public area. While other Dominants made a mad grab for as many shrunken people as they could, she would just sit there and wait for us to come to her. People used to push and fight, desperate to get to her because being used by her guaranteed survival. She liked to believe she was some kind of hero, some kind of saviour. But she didn’t even try to stop the killings, or the abuse. She just benefited from it.

“I suppose I used to think that too, before I met Mike. But she didn’t care enough, Eve. Not nearly enough.”

“So how did you meet Mark?”

“He was the head of the team that rescued the village at Cordite Square. Joan was there that night with me and her other pets. I remember it was a long trip back to the headquarters. You wouldn’t think you could really get to know someone after just a few days. But after we got back we spent a lot of time in the open area.”

The open area was a small brick building attached to the main hanger, which held the free shrunken world. Because even the most dedicated SPRT member would be tempted to handle the shrunken people, it was decided pretty early on that no normal sized people were to enter the main hanger. There was something about little people that made you want to pick them up, pet them. Though it was fine with Mike, a stranger would find it pretty distressing.

So the “open area” was built so shrunken people who wanted to could interact with normal sized people. It was basically like a suburb with bars and hotels where shrunken people would stay for short periods of time for various reasons.

Sometimes it would be used for operation meetings. Some of the members were shrunken people also and would help by infiltrating a particular group and scoping out the place. It was sometimes safer because a new face in a crowd of shrunken people would often go unnoticed, whereas new dominants were often treated with suspicion.

It was also the place where most relationships between different sized people were born and where I finally decided to go and live with Mike.

When I first decided to move in with Mike. Even though we could see each other in the open area, we wanted to live together. So we began the long and arduous process of moving. Not only did he have to make his apartment shrunken person proof, but also we each had to undergo some serious mental profiling.

They sat each of us down in different rooms and fired question after question at us for hours on end. I entered the room from a small door in the rear. It was huge from my perspective; the coarse besablock walls were painted a stark white, while the floor was laid with a thick red carpet that came up to my knees. A heavy wooden table in the centre of the room loomed overhead. It took up almost half the room but somehow the place still seemed so empty. Leaning against one of the table legs was a ladder that looked like it was made out of model railroad tracks tied together. A voice came from a PA speaker telling me to climb to the top. And so I did.

The first “interviewer” I had was a shrunken person, like me. I can’t remember everything she asked me but a few things stuck in my head. Like what I would do if a stray animal broke into the house. How I might be forced to climb up and down rickety ladders like the one I came up on all day every day. What would I do if Mike and I got separated somehow?

The next character was a normal sized person. He stomped around the room, huffing and puffing, yelling things like, “He won’t be so sweet once he’s got you in his hot little hands.” He told me numerous stories of how some people went away with their lovers and were never seen or heard from again. Sometimes they were accidents, other times the little people were tortured to death by crooked members. He would lean over the table to try and impose his size upon me. He did everything but tell me that Mike was actually a sex-crazed, crack-addicted maniac who would pull me limb from limb at the first chance he got.

Poetics aside, though, this was all to protect me. In the early days of SPRT people of different sizes could fraternise with each other as much as they wanted. A giant might take someone out on a date in the “giant” world and no one would bat an eye. They had laws in place which protected little people, so where was the harm? The answer was simple. It was just too easy for Dominant spies to infiltrate the system and take advantage of the huge cracks. They tried a number of different things before finally concluding that there was no real way to enforce the laws outside of the HQ. They couldn’t stop people from leaving (it’s against the whole "freedom" thing), so now they tried their hardest to convince people not to.

When I signed my name on the papers I effectively became Mike's property, so I was still technically protected by the laws. But away from the HQ the only thing stopping him from hurting me were his feelings and his conscience. A SPRT member would come and visit with me once a week to see if I was OK. Even so, a lot of people don’t report it if they're being abused.

As it turned out, Mike wasn‘t a sociopath. The times we spent together were some of the best times of my life. Of course, that was when we weren’t on the run from Lyndon.

“What are you thinking about?” My concentration was broken by Eve’s voice.

“I was just thinking about the ordeal I had to go through before SPRT would let me go home with Mike.”

A smile quickly grew on her face. “Yea, they don’t like little people leaving the warehouse, do they?”

“No.”

“Today we’ll have to get the tailors in here and get you some proper clothes. Those look like they were uncomfortable when they weren’t tattered and burned.”

We both laid our heads back down to catch some more shut eye before the beginning of the new day.

Later that morning Eve was once again her bubbly self. I was talking to one of the other men when I saw her skip up to Rachel and one of the guards. They tried to keep their balance as the impact tremors from her “little” hops violently shook the ground. She was two steps away by the time they were flat on there asses and I could only picture what it was like to be so close to those huge feet when they hit the ground.

She put her hands on her hips. I couldn’t make out what she said (we usually whisper to little people), but the next thing she did was scoop them both up off the ground. Rachel was fine, it was just something you had to deal with when working so closely with giants, but the soldier freaked. Eve held him with her thumb against her palm, a classic way to lift someone when you were going to let them sit in your open hand. He flailed his arms and legs wildly, beating at her thumb with his fists and screaming so loud I could hear him from the middle of the yard.

Eve was almost in shock. She tried consoling the little guy. “It’s OK, I’m not going to hurt you.” Eve turned her attention to Rachel. “But I would never, Oh…” She snapped back to the little man in her other hand. His struggles were finally getting him somewhere: closer to being killed. Eve didn’t wont to hurt him so she was putting only enough pressure to hold him there. But he was struggling so furiously she was having trouble holding on to him.

“Please stop! I might drop you if you don’t stop.” Her face creased into a frown of distress and concentration, her eyes began to water at the edges. Oh god, she was ready to start crying at any second.

“Ronny, I think someone needs to intervene, before...” Mike had been in my hands all this time, watching the whole fiasco as I had. His voice was suddenly drowned out by sirens.

“Jefferson, can you hold my boyfriend for a moment?” Jefferson and Mike waited by the tent while I slowly approached the great weeping ditz, hands held in the air above my head.

Eve was only about fifteen feet away from my perspective. The sirens silenced the screams but I could tell from looking that they were getting more desperate. The little soldier was terrified his life would come to an end beneath the thumb of a giant woman and Eve was terrified that she would drop him and he would fall to his death.

“Put the humans down!” A harsh and dry voice crackled over the PA.

“Put them down or we will be forced to open fire!”

I finally reached Eve; I extended my hands to her and spoke in a clear and careful voice.

“Eve, give them to me. Slowly.”

Eve, teary eyed, held out the little people in her hands. I took the soldier first. Eve dropped him into my open hand and I immediately closed all my fingers over him, leaving his head poking out of my fist. Rachel moved quickly into my hand, glad to be out of the clutches of Eve the giant wimp.

With both little people securely in my hands I held them out toward the direction of the nearest guard tower and slowly lowered myself down into a crouch. When my hands were close enough to the ground I released Rachel and the soldier. The soldier practically leaped out of my hand and made a run for the fence. The guy had stamina. A group of his friends were waiting by a small hole they had made in the wiar. He was grabbed by his friends and half carried off somewhere while others stood with rocket launchers at the ready. I don’t know what they planned to do with them. I was pretty sure the rockets would hit the fence and explode in their faces if they shot at me.

I put my hands up and asked Eve to do the same. I couldn’t see behind me but Eve was still crying and after a few tense moments the sirens turned off and no one was left lying in a bloody mess.

I stood up and slowly turned, being careful of where I put my feet. I didn’t wont to stand on Rachel. Eve was just standing there, arms limp by her sides, face red with tears. I slapped her in the face; she put her hand up to her cheek and just stared at me dumbfounded.

“Get back to the fucking tent!”

She ran back in the direction of our tent.

“And you people should know better also. If you soldiers are going to come in here then you're going to be handled.”

I bent back down and motioned for Rachel to come into my hand. I wasn’t sure she would after this whole debacle but when I opened my hand she moved onto my palm. I looked to the nearest guard tower.

“First of all, we're not soldiers, we are part of the anti-terrorist Bureau. We appreciate you helping our man but you will not handle any more humans.” There was that term again, "humans." Were they implying that I wasn’t human anymore? I didn’t like that. The same voice that had ordered Eve to “drop the people” came over the PA.

“Who am I talking to?”

“I’m Agent Tubirt; I’m in charge of this camp.”

“Well, Tubirt, if people keep coming in here, then eventually something like this is going to happen again. It’s inevitable, so when you send people in here make sure they can deal with it.” I motioned down at Rachel.

“You do not give me orders, ma’am.”

“And you don’t give me orders either. I’m not one of your officers. Two people nearly died today because of some stupid misunderstanding!”

“That woman could have crushed that man under her thumb! You will refrain from picking up any more of my people.”

“Eve would never have done something like that.” I looked down at Rachel siting cross-legged in my cupped hands. “And nether would I.”

I had had enough of Agent Tubirt. After collecting Mike from Jefferson I headed back to the left for the mixed couples tent.

Inside the tent Eve was a wreck. Curled up into a fetal position she cradled Mark close to her face, making small whimpering noises every now and again that seemed to send shudders through her whole body. Mark, who was being drenched by a waterfall of tears, held his arms wide in sort of a hug, comforting his enormous girlfriend.

“Ronny.” Mike said from my palm.

“What?”

“Aren’t you going to do something?”

“Like what?”

“Like comfort her a little. Make her feel better.”

“She fucked up something chronic today, Mike. She doesn’t deserve to be coddled. And even if she did, why me?”

“Because you started it.”

“Oh, so I saved her ass from being shot and now I have to finish it by telling her it’s all going to be ok. Is that how it is?”

“Something like that, yea. And besides, we can’t have poor Mark drowning in her tears. Come on, she knows what she did was wrong.”

I took a deep breath in and let it out slowly.

“Fine.”

I put Mike down by the tables in the centre of the tent and made my way to where the weeping giantess lay.

“Eve.”

“I’m sorry Veronica, I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble.” She looked up at me, her eyes red with tears.

“Eve, I want you to look at your boyfriend and tell me what you see.”

Eve looked down at the drenched Mark sitting tentatively in her palm. He just smiled up at her.

“I… I don’t understand.”

“When we were small we had to yell and make big gestures so that the giants would notice us. We could afford to be clumsy because we were too small to hurt anything. Well now we are the giants, and not just figuratively. Everything we do is potentially destructive to everyone else.

"Look at your boyfriend. You could crush him under your thumb and he couldn’t do anything about it. Now think about what might have been going through the head of that guy you picked up today.”

“I would never have done anything like that.”

“You keep saying that, Eve, but the fact of the matter is he didn’t know you and he didn’t know what you are like. Something that he knew was powerful and potentially dangerous picked him up and he panicked.”

I stood up to my full hight and looked down at Eve.

“You are an extremely destructive force Eve and if you don’t wont to kill the ones you love then you have to be more careful. They were careful with us when we were weak; they protected us. Now it is time for us to protect them.”