“I suppose we’re learning lessons all over the place here today,” Judy declared with tangible satisfaction and a sunshine-eating grin as she sat regally upon the towering throne of her office chair, gazing down upon the floor. “Aren’t we?”

            Her audience, the pair of her three-inch sons, for their part, nodded in some combination of neck-bracing enthusiasm. No head bobbing was ever enough for her. They rested on their haunches on the carpet below, each standing before the altar of the individual enormous bare foot they’d just spent nearly three hours each coddling and compressed beneath. Her long toes occasionally flexed before their little faces, but seemed content to let them rest for now.

            Kyle was still pale and shaking from the nauseous experience of losing his lunch to the fight, his stomach not quite accustomed to being flipped, smashed, and generally ensconced in a fog of musky toe flesh. His body heaved every few seconds: a byproduct of the shock.

            Scott remained still, hands folded at his waist, almost in a state of self-imposed meditation. He didn’t look up at Judy.

            “I’m sorry you didn’t take to that so easily, honey,” Judy said genuinely as she directed her attention specifically to her youngest. “I know it takes some getting used to. But that’s why we’re here. To make sure the message sinks in. Now, do you need any more water?” She brandished the water bottle cap full of cool liquid between her thumb and forefinger.

            “N-No,” Kyle said bravely, shaking his head.

            “Drink it,” Scott hissed.

            “He’s a growing boy, sweetie, Kyle can decide for himself,” Judy fired back instantly in her most frosting-coated voice. Her big toe flicked forward, nudging Scott in the ribs with its peachy pad.

            “Oh… ok-kay…” Kyle breathed, shaking his head. He pressed his fist against his clammy forehead, gazing up the length of his mother’s building-sized leg as he prostrated meekly before the statuesque row of her burly toes. “I’ll… take some water. Please.”

            “Please what?”

            Scott felt an itch in the back of his throat that made him want to hack and sputter, and it wasn’t just because of his own latent motion sickness after the long lurching ride in his mother’s slipper.

            “P-Please… Mom.”

            “…my.”

            “Mommy,” Kyle finished piteously.

            “Good boy,” Judy cheered. She beamed in that broad, self-congratulating way she did whenever she’d achieved a true victory of body and soul. Leaning down toward the floor, she deposited the translucent lid up against the grooved rim of her big toe, which held steady. Her fingers parted and her index beckoned, pointing at the liquid, in case her son was too delirious to recognize the gift.

            Gratefully, Kyle crawled forward, dipping his lips down into the miniature saucer like a dog and slurping the water up to calm his burning throat. All the while, Judy watched with hands on her knees as the gentler of her three-inch children quenched his desperate thirst from a source she’d placed before the very same humongous, heat-swollen foot which had driven him to sickness a mere fifteen minutes before.

            Scott gritted his teeth. His knuckles tightened. Even if he’d required refreshment as catastrophically as Kyle did at this moment, he was fairly certain he wouldn’t be able to take a sip. The sight of his brother enacting it was too much. To let that purified water into his throat would be more damning than the salty licks leaked from Judy’s toe pores which so inevitably found their way past his lips. At least with one of those, he had a choice.

            “That’s it, honey,” Judy encouraged in a soothing whisper to Kyle. “Drink up. I want you to stay strong and clear-headed, so everything I’m teaching you today stays sharp and at the front of your mind. Go on, take another sip.”

            Kyle wiped his mouth, slumping back to his knees as he finished drinking his fill. Contented, Judy leaned down again, taking ample time to let her palm open and loom over Kyle’s vulnerable body.

            “Moooooom…” The lilting voice boomed through the walls, dauntless as ever, and carried easily into Judy’s office. The French doors beyond creaked as they were pushed open, followed by the thumping footsteps Scott knew were coming.

            “Yes?” Judy responded to her daughter without turning around. “You’re home already?”

            “Yeah, they let us out early. All done with R&R training stuff, but I need Kyle to help me set up some of the new software crap on my tablet, but I can’t find him. Have you seen-”

            Scott let his gaze wander upward at last, in time to see his sister looming over the shoulder of their seated mother: the only way she actually held the height advantage with their parent. The girl, dressed in her Clinic-appropriate taut white polo and faded jeans, was just brushing a few silky dishwater-blonde locks over her ear when her sights at last snagged on the view before her. Her baby-blue eyes bugged momentarily, drinking in the vision of her two brothers, both older and younger, bowing before the twin queens of their mother’s bare feet.

            Maggie’s tongue flickered at the corner of her mouth. She shifted her weight, arching the rubber sole of her birkenstock sandal against the office floor. The leather squeaked low against her summer skin.

            “What happened?” the seventeen-year-old shrink-rehab intern questioned slowly. Scott was having a hard time reading her tone. Somewhere between concern and curiosity. Her gaze flipped equally between him and Kyle.

            “Oh, we had a… miscommunication,” Judy explained. She threw her hands up softly in feigned abandon, as though the reasoning for this scene were utterly mysterious to her. “And you know I have a strict honesty policy in this house, honey.”

            “Yep,” Maggie confirmed.

            “So that’s all. We’re just having a review right now of the kind of expectations I have for you three kids,” Judy said. She shrugged gently, smiling sincerely to her daughter.

            “Well, um… I guess I’ll just… leave you guys,” Maggie said with half a smirk, though she was blinking more times than necessary. Scott wasn’t sure if it was the previous sensory deprivation he’d experienced or simply blind optimism, but he was pretty sure he detected a tic in his sister. A flinch in her jaw. Her fingers, dancing just a little too restlessly as her hand laid against her hip. Her eyes were no longer splitting time between her brothers, and instead she’d focused her gaze down on Kyle, though the pitiful boy didn’t seem to recognize it.

            “Hmm? Don’t be silly, honey. The boys and I are almost done here, and I haven’t seen you all day because of your training. Come on, pull up a chair,” Judy loudly insisted, pointing to the other swivel chair parked along one of the office countertops.

            Scott looked to Kyle, who was visibly soothed at the mention of their being almost done here. Of course, it was difficult for the elder sibling to feel the same muted elation. He knew his mother too well to believe her definition of the word “almost.”

            “Okay!” Maggie rebounded easily, snatching the back of the chair and dragging it with generous purpose across the floor. She laid her work bag back against the wall. The roll of the chair’s wheels echoed in Scott’s eardrums until the nearest leg of the thing spun to a stop mere inches from where he sat before Judy’s toes. She sunk into the seat, adjusting the handlebar height to its tallest position, and pried her heels out of the sandals. They clunked somewhere behind the chair as she discarded them and laid both freshly freed feet happily by her mother’s, ensuring her oldest brother was now confronted three gargantuan, silently expectant peds.

            Scott remained stoic, deciding his odds of remaining disengaged were better preserved by avoiding reaction. Maggie, content either way, savored the increased liberty. She sighed, stretching and arcing her toes, rubbing her heels along the reddened strips where the straps of the footwear had worn on her flesh after a full day of training at the Clinic.

            “Good day?” Judy questioned.

            “Yeah. We learned some new stuff and got to practice it.”

            “Oh? Such as?”

            “Uhh… some new stuff with a couple different kinds of shoes… how to move faster without doing anything, you know, bad to them… stuff I’ve been good at for a long time, so that was kinda boring. But it got better later,” Maggie said, brightening at this final mention. She grasped at the carpet fibers with her toes, inching the tanned mass of her foot itself forward, nearer to Scott. “We did some stuff with… accessories, Olivia called them. You have to have the tools, but if you do, you can do some… interesting things. To teach.”

            Scott saved himself the eye-roll. It was almost too predictable to feel disappointment. He’d only have been fooling himself.

            “Well, honey, since the theme of today, according to your brothers, seems to be making sure lessons have sunk in, I wouldn’t be very fair if I didn’t extend the same challenge to you. So why don’t you give us a demonstration of what you’ve learned today?” Judy suggested pleasantly, folding her hands in her lap with palpably tingling eagerness. Her toes curled. “I’m sure we’re all very curious.”