The sudden shock caused by the cold water made me gasp and cry out, and I clung to the disintegrating remains of my makeshift boat, trying to swim to shore. It was no use, however; the stream’s current was too strong for me to swim against and I was being carried off, further and further away from where I’d come from. I had a sudden flashback to my first night back at Rachel’s place after the accident – our quarrel followed by my thoughtless decision to leave her, and how a sudden thunderstorm had caught me in the street outside her home. I’d been nearly washed down a storm drain then, and she’d only just managed to save me before it happened. I was in a similar situation now, even though the danger wasn’t as immediate, but I still rued my own stupidity once again.
Ahead of me the stream rushed over some pebbles, creating turbulent waters that looked pretty hazardous. I tried again to swim for shore, but the current and the water’s coldness made it almost impossible. Suddenly, a huge dark object crashed down into the water ahead of me and I collided against it. I grabbed on to its surface and pulled myself free of the water before realizing what it was: one of Rachel’s boots. She’d waded into the stream – it was only ankle-deep to her – and had come to fish me out of my predicament. Before long I was safely in the palm of her hand, her fingers curled protectively around me. She gave me one corner of her scarf so that I could dry myself off, while I waited for the inevitable telling-off from her. She didn’t say a word, however, and I figured she had to be too angry even to scold me, so I decided to apologize first.
“Thanks for saving me, honey – looks like I’m never going to learn my lesson, huh?”
She still didn’t say anything, but just kept on looking at me with an enigmatic expression on her face.
“Look, I’m really sorry, it was a stupid, dumb thing to do!” I continued. “Please don’t bite my head off, okay? I won’t do it again, I promise!”
“I could actually do it, you know?” she said, smiling at me.
“Do what?
“Bite your head off.”
She snapped her teeth together suddenly and laughed as I recoiled backwards in shock. After recovering, I began to laugh as well, relieved that she wasn’t upset at me.
“Very funny!” I said, feeling a little cross as well as relieved. “So, what now, huh? Are you gonna put me back in your purse, to stop me from doing something stupid like this again?”
“If that’s what you want,” she said innocently. “I thought you wanted to do some exploring, though. I’m not going to ‘punish’ you or anything like that, sweetie – you’re not my child and you didn’t do anything wrong, anyways.”
“But you saw what happened…”
“Okay, so your, um, ‘boat’ wasn’t very good quality, but I can make you a better one, no problem. Just wait here, I’ll be back in a little while.”
She bent down and placed me on the ground at her feet. I stared up at her monumental figure as she walked off with great speed, leaving me all alone on the stream’s edge. I spent my time picking up the smallest rocks I could find and trying to skip them across the water, without much success. I also wondered where Rachel thought she could find a better boat for me. Did she plan on buying a toy boat at a store somewhere, just so that I could go for a little ride in it? After waiting about fifteen minutes, I decided it had been a dumb idea in the first place and was about to head back uphill to the bench, when Rachel came back. The impact of her massive boots as she waked made the muddy ground beneath me shake like jelly. I knew that, if she’d been unlucky enough to step on me, there’d be nothing left of me but a stain on the sole of her boot. She didn’t pick me up this time, but squatted down on her heels and put something down on the ground in front of me. It was a paper boat, about twice my length and quite sturdy in appearance. It was folded from what looked like a magazine page, since its surface was covered in pictures of cosmetic products. I wondered where she’d found it, before realizing that it was probably from the kind of women’s magazine that she always had a copy of in her handbag.
“It’s quite neat, isn’t it?” she said, sounding excited. “I used to fold these all the time when I was a little girl. I’d put them in streams just like this one and watch them for as long as I could. Go on, get inside!”
“Really? Are you sure this thing is safe?”
“Yeah, of course it is! I used three pages lying on top of each other to make it. It won’t leak or anything, and it should be sturdy enough to carry you, provided you don’t try rocking it or anything like that. Climb in, then I’ll set you off on your voyage!”
Without further argument, I climbed into the high-rimmed paper boat and lay down in it on my back. Then Rachel picked it up and took a few steps into the stream. She looked down at me, seemingly as excited by the whole thing as I was.
“The stream goes through a little forest just here,” she said, nodding her head in that direction. “I’ll be waiting for you on the other side. Don’t worry, I can’t imagine that there’s anything dangerous lying in wait for you inside. You can have some time to yourself, out in the wild of nature; I know that’s the kind of thing you like, Sam. Enjoy it!”
“Thanks, babe!” I said, waving up at her. “I appreciate everything you do for me, even if it’s helping me do something silly like this. It means a lot, really.”
She gave me a wink and puckered her lips in a little kiss, then stooped down and set the boat loose on the stream. I sat up and watched as the current took me further away from her, waving to her all the way. A moment later and she was walking back to the path, and I began to focus on the journey ahead of me. She’d been right; straight ahead of me, the stream entered what looked like a huge, dark forest of gigantic trees, but which I knew was only a small outcrop of trees in the center of the park, no more than sixty or seventy feet in diameter. That distance was equal to about a third of a mile to me, though.
Once inside the forest, the stream became more turbulent as it flowed over a pebbly bottom. I sat as still as I could, gasping every time a drop of water splashed into the boat, not daring to move for fear of capsizing it. After a minute, though, the water flowed smoothly once again. I looked around me in wonder at trees that appeared many hundreds of feet tall to me. There wasn’t a person in sight and I shouted as loudly as I could, knowing that no-one could hear me. It really felt like I’d somehow left civilization behind and was out on an adventure in the wilderness. Rachel’s paper boat held out really well, and I even felt safe sitting by its side and using my hands to paddle it faster. Floating all around me were fallen leaves, twigs and other bits of vegetation, having fallen down from the treetops far above. It was a magical experience and it almost felt like I was in a fairy-tale.
The trees began to grow sparse eventually and soon I was out in the open again. The stream was broader here and the banks on either side rose up as great grassy slopes, obscuring any view of the landscape beyond. In the distance ahead I saw a bridge across the stream, on which a solitary figure stood. Occasionally other people would cross the bridge, but they rarely looked in my direction and I knew they wouldn’t see my boat as anything other than a piece of paper trash floating downstream from this distance. As I approached closer to the bridge, I could see that it was Rachel who was standing on it. I waved up at her as the stream carried me underneath the bridge. She must have seen me, but she didn’t wave back, and I guessed she was afraid of drawing attention to herself or to me. Aware of the danger of being spotted, I didn’t call out to her; instead, I just hoped that she’d come and collect me as soon as she could.
I was approaching the edge of the park now. Around me, the edges of the water began to be filled with reeds and other water plants, instead of the nice trimmed lawn grass of before. Looking ahead, I saw that the stream flowed through a chain-link fence and into a drainpipe underneath a road on the other side. I could hear cars passing on the road, but couldn’t see them from my low vantage point. The water wasn’t flowing as quickly anymore, so I dipped down my hands and began to paddle myself towards the shore. There was no sign of Rachel. I pushed the boat as far as I could into the towering reeds, which completely obscured my vision of the landscape beyond. I began to fear that my girlfriend would never find me in this overgrown place, so I decided to make things easier for her.
I grabbed hold of the nearest reed stalk and began to climb. It was as thick as a tree trunk to me and rose over a hundred feet above the surface of the water. Grabbing on to its smooth surface took a lot of effort and before I was halfway up, I felt my hands begin to sweat. I kept on climbing, determined to reach the top, but when I had almost made it, I accidentally grabbed hold of a dead part of the stem, which came loose at once. I fell down as well, desperately looking around for something to hold on to. The bit of the stem I was holding began to peel away from the plant, while I held on for dear life. Before I hit the water, the stem suddenly grew taut and I swung upwards again in an arc. My grip failed me and I flew through the air, screaming loudly.
I didn’t fall into the cold water as I’d feared. Instead, I found myself caught in something sticky that stretched between several of the reeds. It was a spider’s web, which gave me a brief moment of panic before I realized that it was an old web that had already been abandoned by its owner. I was still in a bit of a jam, though, and my only option was to try and break free somehow. I wriggled around and yanked my arms and legs as hard as I could. Several of the web’s strands began to break, but others remained solid, and the end result was that I was even more tangled up than I’d been before, as well as now hanging upside down by a single strand, mere inches above the water’s surface. I could carry on struggling, but it would only cause the single thread holding me to break, and, wrapped up in a sticky mass as I was, I wouldn’t be able to swim to safety.
“Rachel, where are you?” I cried out, wondering what was taking her so long. I knew I was going to get a big dressing down from her, but at that moment all I wanted was for her to get me out of the mess I’d gotten myself into.
She did find me, eventually, as she must have seen my boat disappear into the little wetland. A pair of giant denim-clad legs into view, trampling the reeds underfoot. From my precarious viewpoint, I saw that the water came halfway up her boots and I knew she wasn’t going to be happy about that. But first I had to let her know where I was, before she trod on me, so I began yelling her name as loudly as I could. Her colossal legs came to a halt mere seconds before they would have walked right over me. She reached down and plucked me from the web as though I were a flower in a garden. I breathed a sigh of relief, and soon she was carrying me back to civilization, cleaning the spiderweb filaments from me as she walked.
“Another close call, huh?” she said as I sat in her open hand. “Looks like I can’t leave you alone for more than a moment before you get yourself into some kind of distress.”
“I know, I know…I’m hopeless,” I said, trying to make light of the situation. “I’m sorry, I guess I should have stayed in the boat, instead of trying to be a daredevil. When we get back home, I’ll make it up to you. I’ll…I’ll clean all the mud off your boots, every last bit of it!”
She began to giggle and I saw she wasn’t angry at all. Relieved, I succumbed to laughter as well.
“Oh, Sam…my little cutie…you’re really aiming hard for the ‘boyfriend of the year’ award, aren’t you? You don’t have to punish yourself like that, really! I’m not mad at you, why would I be? Besides, it was fun hunting around for you like that…I mean, how often do I get the opportunity to do something that exciting? Not to mention rescuing my boyfriend from becoming a spider’s dinner!”
She poked me playfully in the chest, sending me sprawling onto my back. Then she explained that she had to hide me away again, since we were heading within sight of other park visitors and she didn’t want any of them to see me. It was also getting dark and she was keen on heading back home. So, she tucked me away again in her purse, where I lay down and relaxed, happy with how the day went.
“‘Boyfriend of the year’, really?” I said aloud to myself. “Well, I guess that makes you ‘girlfriend of the century’, at least. Oh, Rachel, how can I ever show how much I appreciate you, for everything you do for me every day? I love you, my darling, and I always will, for the rest of my life.”
Even though she couldn’t hear me, I hoped that, deep down, she could somehow sense how I felt about her. If every day to come could be like this – just the two of us, going our own way together, loving and caring for one another, I wouldn’t mind staying this small for as long as I lived.
Giantess World
