I looked up at Sondra, hopeful she would find something to help me with my situation.  She raised a hand and twiddled her fingers for a moment, then made a gesture like she was yanking something out of the air before pointing at me.  Her expression told me something should have happened by now, but there was no change in my size.

She looked down at me and frowned.  “I figured a remove curse spell would’ve done something,” Sondra said.  It probably would have, if that were the actual problem, and maybe I could explain why to her someday.  “It makes sense that a dying curse would be harder to remove than an enchantment from a mischievous wizard.  Don’t go anywhere though, I still have a few things I want to try.”

After a deep breath, she spoke a couple of arcane syllables and pointed at me, then pressed her thumb and forefinger together before spreading them apart.  Her frown remained, and since I was still tiny I surmised that had not worked either.  “No working around it, either,” she declared, then blew a strand of hair out of her face with a sigh.  “Enlarge doesn’t work.  Maybe something’s tweaking the way magic works for you?  I’ve got one more spell that might do something.”

Once more she uttered some arcane words, but these sounded like the previous ones in reverse.  She pointed at me, then set her fingers as they had been after her last spell and pinched them together.  I felt magic saturating my body.  Whichever spell she had cast was working.

In an instant, Sondra exploded in size.  Everywhere I looked in front of me was the dark red of her robe, its visible threads no narrower than me.  I craned my neck back and saw her hand still hanging in the air, her thumb wider than many houses I had been in.  It was not until I was almost looking straight up that I saw her face, her eyes and mouth wide in shock.  Even though it was thousands of feet away her face still looked enormous, and I could only imagine what it looked like up close.

 It took Sondra a moment to overcome her surprise and say anything.  “Well,” she boomed, “I didn’t make you invisible, so that means...”  Her voice was a devastating rumble to me, more like the sound of rolling thunder than anything else I could compare it to.  I could feel the power of each syllable in my chest as my insides shook.  If this was how a normally quiet person sounded, I dreaded hearing any of the others.

The sky fell, and I flinched away from Sondra’s face as it raced toward me.  Luckily, it stopped when the tip of her nose touched down, and a single eye had become my ceiling.  Her pupil alone was enormous, easily large enough that I could fall inside if I managed to get past the cornea, and each little fleck in the sea of blue was larger than me.  A breeze came from her eyelashes when she blinked, and I heard the soft squish of her eyelids coming together.

She shifted so that her face was no longer directly above me, choosing instead to look at me from table level.  While she moved, a single strand of hair landed on the metal tray behind me and got pulled forward with the movement.  I had to vault over it, pushing off the single strand for a boost since it was thick enough to come up to my waist.  When she settled in place, I still had to look up significantly to stare into the eye in front of me.

“Reduce is… more effective than usual.”  Even with the table as a shield I had to cover my ears from the tremendous blast of her voice.  Its sheer power made my knees weak, and I collapsed onto the metal.  “Hopefully the duration isn’t any longer.”

“Could you please whisper?” I shouted at her.  “Your voice is terrifying and it’s hurting me!”

“If we’re lucky,” Sondra’s roaring voice exploded from her lips, “once the duration runs out it’ll cancel the curse too, and you’ll go back to your normal size.”  She spoke at the same horrific volume as before, and I figured she could no longer hear me.  For however long this spell lasted, I would be unable to communicate with her.

Sondra sat back up, becoming a mountain again in an instant.  Carefully, she placed a finger against the edge of the table.  “Climb onto my fingertip,” she said, and I was immensely thankful her mouth was no longer just inches away.  “I’ve got something in my tent that might help, but I don’t want to leave you unattended.”  If she could even see me from up there, I could not have been much more than a speck to her.

Eager for anything that could help, I walked to the edge of the table to stand where her fingertip rose like a hill.  There was a wide gap made by her fingertip, and I hopped into it.  I bent my knees when I landed on the keratin to help with the fall, then took two steps forward.  At this size, human skin looked a little scaly, and there were more than enough handholds for me.  Once I had assessed my path, I grabbed on and clambered up to the highest peak of her index finger.

Sondra’s finger was an environment of its own.  I had to contend with waist-deep trenches and ridges from her fingerprint, climbing though and over them until I reached my goal.  It was soft but firm, giving little when I pressed down on it, and I could feel heat radiating from the surface.  Fortunately, even at my size it was not a very far journey, and I waved my arms to increase visibility.

When she noticed me, she began raising her hand toward her face.  Even though she went slowly, I still felt the violent surge of movement hit my body.  It knocked me down, and I fell into one of the gullies of her fingerprint.  Fortunately, it was a tight enough space to keep me from moving around, and I was able to stay on her finger.

As I approached her face, she was at least looking in my general direction.  It was already gigantic, and every bit closer I got only reinforced how gargantuan she was to me.  She kept her brow furrowed and lips drawn, focusing intently on keeping her hand perfectly straight.  When I reached her chin, I was glad the ride would soon be over.

Sondra exhaled sharply, and a strong blast of air hit me.  Wind filled the crevices on her fingertip and lifted me up, carrying me on their currents.  I tumbled off her finger and over her fingernail, falling quickly to the floor.  Before I could so much as scream I landed on her thigh and began slowing down the gentle slope of her pale skin.  I clawed for something to grab onto, and my fingers managed to slip into a groove.  My descent had been stopped, and all I had to do was hold on.

When she no longer saw my speck on her finger, Sondra let out a loud squeal.  It pierced my ears, but I kept clinging to her thigh.  She stood, turning her thigh into an increasingly steep slope, and my efforts were for naught.  Her thigh went from horizontal to vertical so fast I could not have possibly compensated, and my fingers slipped from their hold.  I tried to grab onto something but I was falling too fast, and my fingers uselessly slid over her skin.  At the bottom, I ramped off her ankle bone and flew off, rolling over the floorboards.  The wood’s grain was a series of ridges to me now, battering me as I rolled into them until my momentum finally ran out.

I got back to my feet and realized just how small I had become.  Sondra’s shoes were already large, but now they were so titanic I would need a grappling hook to get past the sole.  Looking further up, my mind almost could not bear the sight of the full height comparison between us.  It seemed like she was miles tall from here, and I had never seen anything so big.  Cloud cover would ordinarily be around her knees, but somehow she kept going.  Fear for my sanity made me want to look away, but awe at her majesty won out and I kept gawking up at her.

She stepped back, and her chair scraping against wood was like a knife in my ears.  That sound was quickly drowned out by the crash of her heels setting back down, however, making the loudest explosion I had ever heard.  Tremendous shockwaves emanated from the impacts, causing me to stagger when they hit me.  My insides shook while my teeth rattled, then the second one hit.  This one knocked me off my feet, and it felt like I was about to shake apart.  Sondra was thin and rather light, but even her steps resulted in devastating earthquakes for me.

“Oh, you really messed up this time, Sondra,” she muttered to herself.  I was far enough away now that her voice did not pummel me repeatedly, but the slightest sound from her was still clearly audible.  “You made the tiny man smaller and then you dropped him.  You can’t hear him, you can barely see him, and now he’s on the ground somewhere.  If you just stay still you won’t make this worse and the spell will run out eventually.”

She looked around her feet for me, but from her height even if she could notice me I would be nothing more than a speck of dust.  Waving my arms would do nothing to help her see me, so I decided to save my energy.  Moving in either direction could result in her stepping on me, I realized, so I stayed where I was.  There was plenty of Sondra’s colossal body for me to look at, anyway, and if I got bored with that I had a closer view of wood than anyone had ever seen.

Sondra kept her feet planted on the ground, making sure she would neither crush me by accident nor generate any new earthquakes for me.  The spell lasted a while, though, and she still had to move.  Her shifting weight from foot to foot was an incredible sight.  I could see the tension and relaxation of every muscle in her calf, making her skin dance over them.  Everything she did, no matter how small, was clearly visible to me.

After what seemed like hours, the magic released its hold on me and I began to grow.  My luck did not change, of course, and I did not even reach the toe of Sondra’s shoe when I stopped.  Still, it was nice to no longer be the size of a metal shaving, and she ought to be able to at least faintly hear me now.

I pounded on the side of Sondra’s shoe, hoping my tiny blows could be felt through the leather, and started shouting.    “Sondra, I’m down here!” I called out, hoping my voice could reach her ears.  “The spell wore off, and I’m still my old size!”

She must have heard me, since after a moment Sondra looked down right at me.  After a quick gasp, she squatted, then lowered a hand toward me.  Her fingers threatened to engulf me, then two of them swung inward and pinched around my body.  Once she was sure of her grip she stood back up, taking me with her.  When she reached her full height she began moving her arm, slowly lifting me until I was at eye level again.

“Sorry about that,” Sondra said, bashfully biting her lip.  “I guess that fixing it was too much to hope for, and it just made things worse for you for a bit.  But don’t worry!  I’ll make this my top research priority, and if I can’t find out how to break your curse, I’ll find someone who can.”

“I appreciate everything you’re doing for me, even if it doesn’t always work,” I told her.  “It’s more than anyone else has been doing.”

“It’s what I’d want someone to do if I were in your position.”  She waited a moment, then added, “Do you want to know why I carry you like this every time?”

I shrugged.  “Sure.  It seems a little inconvenient, and everyone else is fine to just grab me.”

“Because it lets you look me in the eyes, like we’re equals,” she explained.  “If I were suddenly an inch tall, I’d be mad if everyone started treating me like I didn’t matter.  I figure it’s the least I can do until we figure out something more long term.”

“Well, it’s a nice thought,” I replied, “and more considerate than anyone else has been.”

“Just try not to hold the shrinking thing against me, all right?  I really did think it might help.”  Sondra looked over her shoulder, then back to me.  “The sun’s getting low, Lell should be back any time.  If she found something, we might be in for a long night.”  With that, she turned and left the wagon.  I focused on one of her pupils while she walked to lessen the feeling of vertigo, and aside from the occasional glance to where she was going, she focused on me.  It helped that she was easy to look at, with shining eyes that would draw my attention anyway, and I considered that this might just be more than typical human concern.