Hanging upside down in front of a beautiful girl's face was not the way I had expected to face death, thought Tucker. Seeing as he was going to die a slow, horrible, painful death in the belly of a woman whom he had considered a friend, it was a fairly astute observation. Still, he had had time to get used to the idea.
 
"Go on Amy. Do it," came the voice of Jessica somewhere behind him.
"Good heaven's woman! The last thing she needs is encouragement," said Tucker as he met the gaze of Amy's brown eyes. She seemed to be hesitating more than she had with the others. Perhaps she remembered their friendship and couldn't easily betray the trust that had been between them. Perhaps it was Tucker's occupation as a man of God that soured an experience that she had shown every indication of severing up until now. Perhaps, thought Tucker remorsefully, she's just full. It wouldn't be surprising. Between the two giantesses, they had eaten the entire town.
That last possibility seemed to be discredited as Amy opened her mouth...
 
Three days earlier.
 
It was hot in the desert. Shimmering waves of heat distorted the valley in the distance bending the light and confusing the mind. It almost looked like the ocean was hiding just at the edge of the horizon, waiting to cleanse a hot traveler of grime and dirt. For a brief moment Tucker imagined the caress of the waves upon his body. It was a fleeting image, boiled away by the kiln in which he stood, sticky with sweat and mildly sunburned. Hmm. Maybe if he had darker skin like his father had had then he would feel more comfortable.
 
"Hang on you guys, lets take five. I gotta reapply the sunscreen."
Amy and Jessica, both of whom had been only a few steps of Tucker, nodded wearily, too tired or too thirsty to speak. They slung off their packs in the shade of the steep cliff side and took long pulls of their canteens while Tucker fished for the SPF 50 in his backpack. Whatever one needs is sure to find its way to the bottom of the bag, ask any hiker and he'll tell you so. Predictably, that's where Tucker found the sunscreen. He began repacking his rucksack with the items he had needed to remove to obtain the cream and then squirted a generous amount of the white pasty substance into his hands and began to rub it into his arms and face.
 
Tossing the bottle to Jessica, she being the nearer of the two girls to him, he pulled out his own canteen along with some trail mix to give them some extra energy.
 
"Must be a hundred degrees farenheight out today," commented Amy. She tried to sound nonchalant about it but there was an underlying weariness to the statement that was characteristic of someone who knew that there was no air-conditioned movie theater to escape to. No, they would be walking in this for the rest of the day.     
 
"One hundred and three to be exact," amended Jessica who had a tiny thermometer dangling from the side of her pack.
 
Tucker didn't see the point of knowing the temperature. If it was hot, it was hot. There was nothing you could do about it.
 
He glanced over at his travel companions. They were both his age, towards the ladder half of twenties. They were both exceptionally beautiful. It was hard not to notice, especially with the shorts Jessica wore. Not that he knew Jessica well. Amy was his friend and she was a knockout too... maybe not so much right now but then again, all three of them were hot and thirsty.
 
Jessica stole the bag of trail mix from Tucker and grabbed a handful of peanuts before passing the bag to Amy.
 
"How long do you figure Tuck?" asked Amy.
 
"Another couple hours and we'll be through the worst of the heat. I figure we can take it easy for a time. No sense getting heatstroke. Why don't we relax at the entrance to that cave over there? The air will be much cooler?"
 
He should have spotted the cave sooner. His father would have been angry that he hadn't seen it. "Keep you eyes open," he had always said. "The reason people miss so much is because they have their eyes on their shoes and not what's around them."
 
Tucker's father had been a pureblooded Native American and the best tracker Tucker had ever known. He had also been a sergeant in the army. Had been, until he was killed. It had been a life-altering experience to get his father's body back, full of holes but with a tiny Silver Star and a note that said he had died for his country.
 
Tucker's mom had been devastated. She started drinking more and her artwork, normally suffused with cheer as if she had poured liquid sunshine into the canvas, became dark and morbid. It still raked in the cash though. As it turned out there was a market for paintings reflecting the long dark midnight of the soul and she and her son led a comfortable living with her work. Not to mention Tuck's father's life insurance.  
 
It was probably his father's death that led Tucker to become a priest. His mother was Polish and pure Catholic. After the burial, Tuck started attending daily Mass and struck up a friendship with the local priest. Six years later he graduated from seminary and settled down at a parish not too far from where he grew up. It had saved him, he had always thought. God had saved him from what he would have become after his dad died. He glanced over at the two women sitting beside them. Any red-blooded man would give his right hand to be on a campout with those two. But aside from his mother, Tuck decided that no one could have understood the bond he had shared with his father. A bond forged in the head of the desert and cemented with the dusty tracks of a thousand animals. No, few people could understand that kind of a bond. In church and in nature, Tucker had felt the presence of the Almighty and known peace and understanding. It was then that he decided to dedicate his life to Christianity. Since he became a priest he carried that peace with him wherever he went.
 
But that didn't mean that it made those two girls any less interesting to look at. They were gorgeous. Amy had wanted to go for a hiking trip and since she and Tucker were old friends from high school, she had asked him along for his survival expertise and pleasant company. She had brought Jess, a collage friend of hers, with them.
 
Making their way over to the cave Tuck tried not to notice the sway of Jessica's buttocks, clad in tight shorts. She was a dancer and it showed. He distracted himself with the tracks of a mouse around a nearby rock while they proceeded to the cave.
 
Tracks are fun to study and when Tucker looked up again he notice the ladies disappearing into the mouth of the dark cave. Straightening up and brushing the sweat that had been running into his eyes, he started towards the cave.
 
Upon entering, he took out his flashlight, requiring another search through the bag, and made his way into the cave where he was sure he would come across the two females sprawled out on the delightfully cool ground.
 
 Instead, he found himself venturing deeper into the cave than he liked. When the mouth of the cave became more of a speck of light he stopped and hallooed the girls. The echo coming back was distorted, as if it had traveled around many different tunnels before finding its way back to him.
 
Not liking this whatsoever he marked an arrow on a nearby rock pointing towards sunlight. Then he wove one of his climbing ropes around the rock and started feeding it out as he continued down the corridor, stopping to halloo for the girls ever hundred feet or so. Damn woman and their curiosity. He really was glad that he decided to be a priest and forever rid himself of stupidity like this.
 
"Amy?" he called. "Jessica?"
 
"Yes we're back here," the response finally came, somewhat below him it seemed to Tuck. He shone his light high ahead of him and as a result missed the drop-off right before him.
 
Stumbling down a sort of hill, he came to rest at the feet of the two girls. They weren't looking his way but concentrating on something in Jessica's hands.
 
"What the hell possessed you two to climb back here?" demanded Tucker, not bothering to keep annoyance out of his voice.
 
"It seemed like it wanted us to come," said Amy.
She pointed at the object Jessica was holding. It was a statue of a woman. It glittered in the light and it reminded Tucker of Indiana Jones going after the Indian Idol.
 
"We're going to be famous. It's certainly a relic belonging to some ancient tribe!" exclaimed Jessica, practically jumping up and down.
"Wait just a moment," interjected Tucker. "If this thing is all the way back in here maybe there's a reason it's back here."
"Don't be such a sourpuss Tucker," said Jessica scornfully. "A man of your education and profession should know better than to believe in curses."
"I don't believe in them but I still think that it might be best if we left it where you found it. There may be an archeological reason for it. If we just put it back where we found it we can go back to town and convince a scientist to come back and take a look at the area. They'll want to catalog where everything is and it's important that we don't move anything!"
"I already picked it up. Besides, we'll need something with which to convince a historian that we found something worth the hike up here."
 
Tuck reluctantly agreed and together the three of them made their way back to the entrance of the cave.
 
When they stepped outside into the sunlight, something odd began to happen. It seemed to Tucker that the earth began to shake and suddenly he found himself flying through the air. A rock rose up from below him and suddenly everything went dark.
 
When he came to, it was dark out. Tuck sat up and immediately wished he hadn't. His head was in agony. He felt around for a moment and discovered a welt that would have made a UFC fighter wince.
 
Staggering to his feat he looked around for the females. There was no sign of them. Rocks had been thrown about in the most unusual fashion and after some staggering around Tucker fell into a somewhat oval shaped crater with a strange wavy pattern imprinted in the ground within. Odd.
 
He climbed out and looked down the gradual slope of the mountain on which he stood. Ovals, pressed into the ground at regular intervals led down the mountain. He wondered what could have caused it. They almost looked like a pair of... footprints.
 
Looking back in one of the oval creators he studied the wavy pattern within. It was the exact same pattern Amy's shoes had made.
 
He ran to another creator. It was identical to Jessica's tracks only larger.
Uh oh.
What his mind was telling him was impossible. It just wasn't credible. Was this truely some ancient curse? How could this be real?
 
It took him all night to follow the tracks to the base of the mountain where he discovered the additional tracks of a few normal sized people.
 
Putting his skills to the test he was able to discern that the normal sized folk were startled by the giantesses. What worried him was that the giantesses’ footprints led in two different directions from here and there were no normal footprints leading anywhere. The giantesses had taken the people somewhere. But to what purpose? Had they found someone needing help and come to their aid?
 
His only option was to choose a set of tracks and follow it to the end. He chose Amy's and hoped that he could catch up to her if she had chosen to rest the night.
 
Two days later he came across something that he should have expected but didn't recognize until he was nearby. It was an enormous pile of waste, no doubt belonging to Amy. It didn't smell as bad as it could have after being bleached in the sun for a day. He hurried around the pile and followed the tracks. He skirted a fallen tree that looked like it had been pulled up by the branches and discarded after wiping... what the hell was that?
 
The tree had obviously been used in place of toilet paper but it was something in the tree that had caught Tuck's attention. Stepping a bit closer he realized it was what he suspected, a bone. There was nothing surprising about that. Amy would have gotten hungry and plucking a deer between her fingers would be easy enough judging by the size of her shoes. Finding enough food would be troublesome at her size so it would be understandable if she had simply swallowed the creature like a normal sized person would eat ants or bug for survival. 
 
Just as he was about to turn away, Tuck noticed something else, another bone but this one more obscured. It looked like a skull. Not a deer skull but a skull! Tuck stepped closer in spite of himself and nudged the skull free. It rolled a bit and then stopped, it's empty eye sockets staring back at him. A cold shiver ran through Tucker as he realized why there were no hiker tracks leading away from where the giantesses had found them. Amy and Jessica had eaten them.
 
Tucker crossed himself. Finding Amy seemed like less of a good idea now so he started hurrying back the way he came. His only delay was a brief burial of the skull and the other bone, it looked like an arm bone but Tuck couldn't be sure, and a prayer before leaving. He didn't see any other bones and didn't feel quite up to the task to start looking.
 
As it turned out, Amy found him. He heard her footsteps, fast and unencumbered by her new size. The vibrations in the ground came quick and steady. He had time to hide. Hell, he could hide better than anyone in the whole nature reserve. Evasion was another one of his father's skills and Tucker had learned it well.
 
However, he decided against this. Amy had not eaten him before. Perhaps she would spare him again. Besides what if she found someone else to eat? She might have devoured someone but that didn't mean she had to again. If he could talk some sense into her he might bring out the good in her. Wasn't that his job as a priest?
 
It was with no little amount of trepidation that he stepped out into the giantess's path a moment later. Waving his arms and a red shirt he had pulled from his bag, (the bottom of it), he managed to attract her attention before she stepped on him.
 
What amazed Tucker was the sheer size of the girl. It was hard to guess how high she was with no frame of reference. Staring up at her she was outlined by the blue sky overhead. She bent down towards him, her hands on her knees.
 
Tuck practically ran for cover. He managed to stop this reaction but didn't quite suppress raising his hands above his head, instinctively protecting himself from the falling sky. At least it seemed like a falling sky. That much of anything coming right at a person causes instinct to kick in. However Tucker's fears were baseless and Amy simply looked down at him. 

"Tucker?" she boomed, her voice as loud as a crack of thunder. Tuck flinched at the sound of his own name sounding across the plains as loud as a rock concert he recently attended.  

"Ye-Yes. It's me," he said timidly.

"What?" bellowed Amy causing another involuntary jump from Tucker. "You're going to have to speak up. I can't hear you all that well when you talk so softly. Here, let me help you." Amy reached down and snatched him up. Tucker realized that she moved so quickly that there wasn't a damn thing he could have done to avoid her grasp. Sitting down herself, she brought Tucker to her face and smiled at him. It was a reassuring expression that told him they were still friends, at least for now. 

"Amy!" Tuck shouted. "How did this happen?"

Amy shrugged. "I dunno. It must have been that statue. Grew me and Jessica right up. We've been having a ball since. It's so wonderful being a giantess." 

"How about for the people you met? The people you... ate?"

Amy's eyes grew wide (wider than they already were) as she stared at the little man in her grasp in wonder. "How did you..."

"Your waste. I saw the bones."

Amy suddenly looked remorseful, deflated. "Jessica found several hikers on the trail. We played with them, convincing them not to fear us. It was Jessica who ate the first one. We didn't plan it. I swear. I only ate one guy. I felt horrible after I thought about it! Really I did!"

"That does not excuse the fact that you ended another human's life in a most violent an horrible way. Can you imagine the agony he went through as you chewed him?"

"Swallowed," corrected Amy.

"Whatever! I would never have believed that my friend was capable of such an atrocity!"

"It was peer pressure. Jess was doing it. She would have eaten him anyway. She ate four guys."

"It's no excuse!"

"I know!" wailed Amy, tears running down her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she whispered and dissolved into sobs.

"There, there," calmed Tuck. "You have the opportunity to redeem yourself. We can make haste together to find Jessica before she does more damage. Then perhaps we'll return to the cave and see if we can find something to restore you too to normal size."

"I can do that already," Amy informed him. "I can change my size from this tall to back to normal. I already did it once. Jessica too!"

"Amazing," said Tony, shaking his head. Still if she could grow to be as tall as a skyscraper than why not shrink too? He was having a hard time wrapping his head around the situation as it was. 

"You've been given an incredible gift to do good for others, Amy. You could move heavy objects and come to the aid of rescue workers during a natural disaster. God may forgive this one lack of judgment if you resolve to lead a peaceful life. But for now we must hurry after Jessica!" TBC