But the reducer hadn’t taken that long to fall out through the hole in the bottom of the backpack. It had actually slipped out, while Frances had been crossing the school grounds to get to the first walking track that led eventually to the woods.

Ellie Blish was an 18 year old girl from the school, who often came in on Saturdays to take walks through the grounds. So it was that she found the fallen reducer machine and wondered what it was. After experimenting with the default setting buttons, she saw it reduce a fallen branch to the size of a stick, and then to the size of a twig as she kept pressing the button.

She practiced on some other objects and learned to control the extent of the reduction, by turning it off sooner when needed. Ellie had no idea where the device had come from, but she saw the potential for having a lot of fun with it.

Her own walk to school took her through the public gardens in the village. So on Monday morning, she happened to be on her way, when she saw someone sitting and reading a book. He was wearing a university jacket. She didn’t know that he was from the same university that Colleen Balfour had attended, although not at the same time. So the student and Colleen had never met each other.

The young man had not seen Ellie. So she hid in the bushes, and pointed the reducing machine through an opening she made by parting some leaves with her free hand, and aimed it right at the student. She pressed the button until both he and his book had dwindled to the size of one of the leprechauns.

She withdrew the machine and let the leaves cover her presence completely, while she looked at the shrunken student’s attempts to make sense of his situation. She giggled quietly to herself and then backed out through the other side of the bushes, put the machine into her school bag and headed for school.

The student began walking through the public gardens, and took the whole morning to get to the other end, where he saw a lady sitting and eating her lunch. She looked elegant and attractive, and somewhat older than him, and seemed to be the most likely person for him to approach for help. He walked over and stood in front of her and introduced himself. The lady leaned forward, picked him up and sat him in the palm of her hand.

“There was a light from the bushes, at least I think it was from the bushes,” he continued, “And the next thing I knew I was tiny.”

“Were you on your way to school?” she asked.

“No, I finished last year. I was studying a book before heading to university for the day.”

“I like walking through that university. My Bridge club rents one of the classrooms every Monday night, to play our card games. What course were you studying?”