The polarization in the mood was evident among the quartet. Though she spent the majority of her day making sure the house was immaculate before finally taking a seat to rest she found herself constantly unable to resist the urge to get up for some menial reason such as going to the bathroom to fix her hair or checking on the food in the kitchen for the umpteenth time.

Marcelle and Ingrid were both seated in the dining room, Tanner nearby on the actual tabletop near his step-sister. Marcelle at the moment appeared the most apathetic, more than content to fiddle around on her phone her digits tapping away with the extreme precision expected of a girl from this generation. Ingrid meanwhile had the side of her face resting in her palm as she drearily twirled the strands of her hair while her foot tapped relentlessly underneath the table. Tanner kept himself occupied by taking deep breaths and trying to give off a semblance of being collected,. If he were acting as skittish as Ivory right now he'd bring the whole mood down. After another needless inspection of the kitchen Ivory entered the dining room.

“ So do you have a strategy for how you're going to introduce Tanner?” Marcelle asked, momentarily turning her attention away from her phone.

Ivory cocked her head a bit and lightly scratched her chin. “ I gave it some thought. I'd rather not be needlessly dramatic about it. I'll beat around the bush a bit before I lay it on him.”

“ What if he doesn't like him or get freaked out?”

Ivory bit the corner of her lip with uncertainty. It's a distinct and highly probable possibility. That comment also made Tanner stiffen up imagining a scene where the guy totally loses it and calls him a freak or something to that effect.

“ It'll be fine, whatever happens happens.” Ingrid interjected, lightly rubbing Tanner's back with the edge of her finger. She also stared a couple of daggers at Marcelle, being too aware of the mind games she was trying to implement.

Tanner relaxed, appreciating the encouragement of his sister. “ Yeah, we'll wing it. Everything will work out.” He reiterated.

“ You're right, there's no point being a worry-wart about it.” Ivory sighed, realizing it wasn't helping anyone by being so tense about it. For the first time in the last hour she looked as if she was going to take a seat and the moment she did knocking was heard from the front door. All her nerves and then some came rushing back, she briefly forgot everything she had mentally coordinated up to this point.

“ Alright, Marcelle get the door.” Ivory ordered. Ingrid was too excitable and has been chomping at the bit to meet him. She didn't need her daughter scaring him as soon as he walked in the door.

While Marcelle left without a word, Ivory crouched down to Tanner. “ Are you ready sweetheart?”

“ I'm the one who should be asking that, you seem more nervous than me.” He thought. “ As ready as I'll ever be.”

Upon opening the door Marcelle made sure to take a step back to ensure she'd get a full body view. The man was dressed well enough for the occasion, in black dress slacks and a polo shirt capturing the best of both worlds in terms of looking formal yet casual. Her eyes went north noticing that he was quite a lithe and lanky individual standing at about 5'11.

“ Er, hello . . . .miss.” He began. Contrary to his thin build he possessed a deeper voice than expected.

“ You sound like you were expecting someone different.”

“ Well . .” He began to scratch his head. “ You don't look like Ivory . . and nothing like how she described Ingrid for that matter.” He chuckled a bit.

“ What a dork.” She thought. “ Whatever, I'm her niece Marcelle and I'm staying for the time being.” With a curl of her finger she invited the man inside. When they entered the dining room Ivory had already placed her little surprise into her clasped hands. Tanner wasn't a fan of being held this way given that he had to curl his body to fit snugly, which wasn't easy on the spine. Then add in the increasing perspiration in the confines of her palms made for a hot and humid carry.

“ Aha, the woman of the hour.” He came forward looking like he was going for a hug but Ivory took a few steps back. At the sight of her reservations he stopped in his tracks.

“ Hey.” Ivory greeted. A few paces behind her he noticed the figure who matched all descriptions of her daughter. Unlike Marcelle, she wasn't anywhere near as subtle in staring him down to the letter.

“ And you must be Ingrid.”

“ Hey Richard.” She said, her voice coming off aggressively enough to make Richard think he may have done something wrong already.

“ Heheh. You can call me Rick.” He awkwardly laughed, he wasn't keen on making eye contact with Ingrid while she was burning his image into her mental facilities and brought his attention  back to Ivory. “ What's wrong, I made it on time.” He joked trying (and failing) to lighten the air.

“ It's about my son Tanner . .” She began.

“ Here we go.” Tanner thought, his heart rate starting to surge.

“ Oh yeah.” He remembered. “ You mentioned you had a son, is he home?”

“ He's fine . . it's only.” Ivory was struggling to keep her hands level and Tanner was hoping she'd get one with it, he felt every last tremble of her hands.“ It's only . . he's not like most people and it's not something I can easily put into words without sounding insane so . . .I'm just going to show you.”

Rick felt a little bad for assuming the absolute worst, perhaps he was crippled, mentally disabled, something along those lines. One thing was certain nothing would possibly have prepared him for the sight he was about to see. Without further ado Ivory slowly unclasped her hands in front of Rick's eyes.

The night and day contrast of his face could have only been done justice with a before and after photograph. His jaw hung loose, his brain trying to find some sort of rationale behind the sight before his very eyes. A tiny man . . no tricks, no ifs ands or buts about it. A living, breathing, tiny guy that was looking right at him. 99.9% of the vocabulary he has amassed over the span of his life that he could form into an adequate sentence to convey his astonishment left him leaving only one word. “ . .Wow.”

All things considered Ivory considered his reaction to be better than some of the worse case scenarios she anticipated. “ Have a seat dear.” She instructed. Rick gladly obliged, taking careful steps feeling a bit woozy as he tried to make sense of what he thought was the impossible.

“ I know it's a hard thing to believe, but I thought if I showed you straight up there wouldn't be any denying it. The brass tacks of it is that Tanner was born with a genetic disorder that's caused him to shrink and so . . .here he is, all 3 ½ inches of him.”

That at least gave a general overview of how he's seeing a phenomena that he thought only occurred in works of fiction, but ultimately it answered only one out of the dozens of questions he had. Still, the situation was already strange enough so he may as well roll with the punches. “ I see. . . Well um, who cares right? Regular sized or not, he can still be a friend of mine.” He forced a laugh trying to make the unnatural as natural as possible. “ Hey man, how's it going?” It was painfully evident he didn't know how to approach him. He initially extended his hand out to the boy and wanted to hit himself for his poor consideration. Revising, he retracted all but his pinky to offer a handshake.

“ You know, just living.” Tanner replied. He gingerly met Rick's digit with his whole hand which hardly was able to grasp the whole circumference of his finger. Shaking his lone digit, made him appreciate the extent the girls went in moisturizing their hands. Though not unpleasant, there was a roughness that he was unaccustomed to.

Ivory's posture relaxed considerably now that the hardest part was over and now they can move on. “I bet we're all starving, lets go to the kitchen and fix our plates.” She figured she couldn't go wrong with a roasted chicken, macaroni and cheese, and peas given she didn't fully know Marcelle or Rick's eating preferences.

Everyone save for Tanner, who Ivory already prepared his plate beforehand lined up in the kitchen. The whole time Ingrid was ready to go, having every last question of her inquisition lined up. As soon as everyone sat down to prepare to dig in she got right into it.“ So Rick, what drew you to Ivory?”

Unlike the revelation of her miniature step-son Rick was somewhat prepared for this much. Ivory warned him beforehand that she may grill him, still the bluntness and lack of any sugarcoating caught him off guard. “ Wll we're both in similar points in our lives. Kinda want to settle down and find someone, so . . .I figured why not give it a shot?” He smiled, placing his hand over Ivory's delicately.

“ Uhuh.” Ingrid said not impressed in the slightest by the show of sappy affection. “ You're a film director huh?”

“ Yeah, something like that.”

“ What's that supposed to mean?” Marcelle asked. She was widely uninterested at the whole date and Rick as a person and was back to fumbling on her phone from underneath the table until she heard something that caught her interest.

Rick lightly tapped his fork on the plate. “ Lots of underground stuff you can say, the type of stuff that usually gets sent straight to DVD.”

“ You work on anything that made it onto the big screen?” Ingrid asked.

Rick laughed humbly. “ Heh heh, I wish. Nothing you guys ever heard of.”

The group casually chatted away sustained in large part by the small talk of Ivory and Rick, the occasional input from Ingrid who fired questions at him to look for justification to dislike him, and rarely a one to two word comment from Marcelle. The only one who was at total silence was Tanner who was widely relegated to the sidelines. The closest he came to being interactive in the conversation was the occasional gaze of Rick, it was as if he wanted him to jump in from the fray. Tanner thought that maybe it was his curiosity that was making him stare more than anything, he was a novelty to him after all. Ultimately, Tanner wondered if this was how normal families interacted with each other. With all the normal sized people taking charge of the discussion there wasn't anything relevant or productive for him to contribute so why wouldn't he remain silent?

After half an hour of Rick exhausting all of his go to topics and lame jokes, Ivory concluded he was running on fumes and decided things went about as well as they could it was time to pull the plug on it before he embarrassed himself. “ It's been a long day, I don't want to hold you up too long so you can go home and get some rest. I hope you enjoyed everything.”

“ Oh yes, everything and everyone was exquisite.” He said in his best cringe worthy impression of a french accent. “ Accompany me outside?”

“ Are you two going to make-out?” Ingrid asked, recognizing the obvious implications of his question.

“ Ingrid mind getting the dishes?” An irritated Ivory asked to keep her daughter from further spoiling the moment.

The couple and a disgruntled Ingrid who was regretting her tongue got up from the table leaving Tanner in the unenviable position of being alone with Marcelle. As luck would have it, she locked eyes on him once she was certain no one was being attentive to the dining room.

“ You must be feeling pretty nervous now.”

He knew better than to entertain her, but the way she spoke always made it sound like she knew something that he didn't. Despite her usually using her words to weed her way into his psyche, all too often there were nuggets of truth in what she says. Fuck it, Tanner bit. “ Why would I be? Everything went fine.”

“ Exactly, that was the worst outcome for you. She's going to go out with him more now.” Marcelle stood up with her plate in hand walking closer to Tanner. “ Then who knows, maybe someday they may get married.” She stopped in front of him. “ By then Ingrid will be away living on campus.” Marcelle descended down and lowered her voice down to a whisper, leaning next to his ear. “ Then you'll just be . . . forgotten.” Marcelle paused giving Tanner moment to let that sink in. “ Just something to think about.” Marcelle smiled sweetly and went off to the kitchen.

Tanner wanted to chalk up her comments to being a mean-hearted bitch as she usually is towards him. But again there was a layer of truth to her comments after he was largely an afterthought during dinner. If she was going to see more of Rick, which given how things went tonight seemed inevitable that may become a feeling he'd experience more often.

After five or so minutes Ivory was practically soaring through the door feeling like she was 10 feet tall as she went back to the dining room. While Ingrid and Marcelle were occupied in the kitchen she took the opportunity to bring Tanner upstairs to speak in private. She was so elated she breezed through the stairs faster than she ever would under normal circumstances leaving Tanner a little disorientated.

'' Thank you so much Tanner.” She gleefully said, dotting his face with in her mind were several small kisses, but to Tanner was a full frontal assault on his face leaving him having to wipe his face of the remnants of lip gloss on his face.

Ivory cleared her throat following a half hearted chuckle at her actions just now.“ Sorry about that. Things just went better than I could have imagined.”

Tanner did love seeing Ivory so happy and would hate to bring down her high with his concerns. Plus in fairness most of them were mainly byproducts of the mental warfare waged by Marcelle. “ That's okay, I'm just sorry I didn't have anything much to say during dinner.”

“ Oh don't let it bother you dear, you were only nervous is all. You two need to get used to each other is all.” Ivory said, still on cloud nine starting to hum to herself as she stood inches away from her vanity mirror to let her hair free and remove her jewelry. Much like Marcelle insinuated with the success of this date there will be more of Rick to be seen in the future and it wouldn't surprise him if she already had something in mind.

“ Hey, Ivory . .” Tanner said after having a tough time summoning up the courage to disrupt her while she was in such a good mood.

“ Yeees?” She chirped.

“ I know it may sound a little silly. I guess with you having Rick and . .Ingrid about to do her own thing. .” Tanner paused, feeling rather uncomfortable talking about such an issue. “ I've been thinking . .”

“ Oh sweetie.” Ivory stopped and turned back to Tanner. “ Don't fret, there's nothing for you to be concerned about. No matter who comes enters my life.”

“ Thanks, but not only that-”

“ You'll always be my precious little Tanner.” She smiled, brushing against his stomach with the tip of her nail, knowing of his ticklish tendencies.

“ I-Ivory, stop I'm being serious-.” He said trying to hold in his laughter. Of course it was hard to be taken serious on any capacity while he was cackling like a child and unable to keep a straight face.

“ Like I said Tanner, you don't have to worry about a thing.” She reiterated, ceasing her tickling attack of his midsection.

“ Alright . .I won't fret.” Tanner said dropping the subject albeit reluctantly. He was pretty certain she had his best interest at heart though he couldn't help but feel she heard him but wasn't quite listening.