In a nondescript, picturesque, mid-spring evening amongst the forest only a stone’s throw away from a suburban neighborhood, there lied a clearing in the woods. An unremarkable clearing, save for the ring of stones which spiraled out from its center, some almost as tall as a person, some stacked atop one another and across each other, some made out of granite, basalt, sandstone and lime, some smaller ones growing flowers in their crevices. Few had laid eyes on these stones in the past hundred years, though laying in their midst, snoring lightly, briskly, cutely, was one such girl who had been guided by their unlikely pull.
Amy Chen had a book on her face. She’d evidently fell asleep reading, so an outside observer wouldn’t be able to make out her red-rimmed rectangular glasses, or her dark brown bangs, or her braces, or any other ailments which, though endearing in their own way, also signaled to every student in her grade level that she was somewhat runty, nerdy even. The precise kind of creature which would be picked off by a predator for lagging behind the rest of the herd… had she been some kind of antelope or zebra or something.
Luckily, Amy Chen didn’t have to worry about voracious big cats or velociraptors. No. Her predators were two-legged, and somehow even more vindictive than the most vicious of panthers.
One such creature stalked the tree line. Its eyes narrowed as they quested for its prey. Its mark. There she was, sleeping. Easy pickings. It wouldn’t be long now. Sneaking up on Amy Chen would be a cakewalk, so long as our predator remained quiet.
As if it’d be hard. Zora O’Neil was a trained athlete, and part of any sport meant having poise. She watched her step, avoided crunchy leaves, and kept to the soft patches of dirt and grass as she approached, approached, approached, annnnnnnd…
“Boo!”
“AIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!”
Amy screeched awake, shot to her feet, and bumped her crown on the rock overhang. “Owww…!” Tears welled up in her eyes and fogged her glasses. She rubbed her head as she crouched from beneath the rock overhang, leaving her book in the dirt. “What are you doing here…?!”
Amy’s pain and frustration shifted to annoyance soon enough; her assailant’s laughter was so rambunctious, she doubted she heard her.
“HAAAAA, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Ha, I gotcha good, didn’t I! You little twerp?”
Zora O’Neil smirked down at Amy’s puny form which seemed somehow to shrink even now. The beginnings of puberty were already causing Zora’s height to blossom, and though 5’4” wasn’t exactly anything to write home about, amidst her 5th grade classmates Zora might as well have been a colossus. And she never shied away from flaunting it – whether it was basketball, track and field, volleyball, soccer, or swimming, every physical ordeal placed before Zora was taken by her as a challenge, and she passed each one with flying colors. So assured was she of her physical superiority over her peers that Zora had even taken to lording it over them in more… direct ways.
Amy Chen wasn’t the first of Zora’s victims. But considering her scarcely 4’9” frame, her painfully shy disposition, her meek obedience in the face of the slightest trouble, and her tepid pallor as a result of her indoor lifestyle, she had definitely proven the most fun. Zora’s check-ins with Amy had become a weekly if not daily occurrence, and they always culminated in some new indignity to inflict on the transfer student, whether it be physical, emotional, or financial in nature.
Amy wanted to run… but this was Zora. If she tried, Zora would catch her. Then she’d be scared and tired. Amy clenched her fists and swallowed her tears… better to just let this play out. Zora’s laughter had mostly petered out, and so Amy decided to repeat her question.
“Oh, that’s what you wanna know?” Zora scoffed, and she put a single hand on her hip. With the other one, she grabbed a bottle of Gatorade from the pocket of her sweatpants, taking a deep, gracious swig before replacing it. “Well, honestly… I was worried about ya! Clearly. I even called your mom, and she said you’d been coming home late from school these past few weeks! So, when I spotted you duck off into the woods…” Zora approached Amy, who seemed insistent on stepping back, even shimmying behind any number of the massive stones. Yet, like a persistence predator, Zora never increased her pace. She simply approached the avoidant, tiny young girl.
“… I just had to follow you. To make sure you’re okay… and all.” Zora bared her teeth.
Amy shuddered. “Yeah right… There’s no way.”
Zora shrugged. “Yeah, that’s true. But I did call your mom, though. Heh, heh.”
Amy rolled her eyes glumly. Part of the fiction Zora had crafted involved presenting herself as Amy’s best friend whenever any of Amy’s parents happened to be nearby, or picking her up, or at a parent-teacher conference. Which wasn’t hard on Zora’s part, considering Amy had nobody else who wanted to spend time with her at school anyway.
“So,” said Zora, finally taking her predator’s gaze off Amy. “I honestly thought a freak of the week like you would spend your free time at some sort of nerd haunt or book club or yarn session.” Zora eyed the book, face-open on the wet, late afternoon grass. “But even I’ve gotta give you credit where it’s due, Ames. This place doesn’t look completely lame… What is it?”
Amy cringed. This place… her secret place… this was supposed to be a safe space, a place for respite. That her bully followed her here, defiled its sanctity. Home, school, now even the woods were not safe from Zora’s scourge. Amy didn’t want to say anything… but if she didn’t, she knew Zora would probably punch her, kick her, sit on her, and more.
Amy sighed. She avoided looking in Zora’s face as she explained. “I read about it late last semester. I don’t entirely know what it is… but I went to the library—”
“Boooooo-riiiiiing!” Zora was stretching her arms high above her head, increasing the apparent size of her frame while airing out her freckled limbs. “Unless you have some better ideas of fun for us to have together, I suggest you skip to the cool stuff.”
Amy’s hair stood on end, and she rushed out, “It’s called a wishing circle! Ap-apparently…”
Hands in her skirt pockets, Amy meandered again as Zora let that sink in.
“A… wishing circle?” Zora’s tone betrayed that the erstwhile coolness of the stone formation had been replaced with Lord of the Rings fantasy mumbo jumbo.
“Mm hmm! According to the settlers who first lived here, circles like this have been found where, if you close your eyes and wish for your deepest desire, it’ll come true!” The light in Amy’s own eyes glowed, then dimmed. “Not that that’s ever happened to me. Every day when I come here, I shut them tight. And I hope… I hope beyond hope… that my life can change. That I’ll find some true meaning… something different than what I endure at school… from you.” Amy didn’t know what made her feel so defiant, but it just came out, and it was too late to take the words back.
“From me?!”
Zora’s growl was enough to make Amy bristle, stopped dead like a deer in headlights. She turned behind her, only for Zora to grab her at her button-up collar, the kicking and squabbling girl grunting in frustration.
“Let go! Let me go! Help! HEEELLL—”
Zora’s hand over Amy’s mouth reduced the screams to muffled growls.
“Oh… Ames…” Zora said, smiling as Amy petered herself out, reducing her struggles to a stray kick here, a meager push against Zora’s body there. Zora wasn’t muscular, but she was lithe and tall for her age, and she was more than capable of subjugating Amy for however long she wanted.
Zora went on, “If you really didn’t like our arrangement, you should’ve just said so. I mean, I had to admit, it was losing some of the fun for me myself. It started out neat! You used to be a lot funnier to pick on! But then, things got… boring.”
Zora was shuffling Amy further and further into the center of the wishing circle. The stones that encompassed the pair looked more like a jury evaluating their souls than simple rocks.
“So go ahead. Make your wish. But I’ll tell you what I’m gonna wish for!” Zora said, punctuating her words by throwing a battered Amy down to the ground with force. “My wish is for our relationship to get… fun again. I wanna have loads of fun with my beloved friend… tiny little Baby Amy. I want things to get exciting for us. And when I open my eyes, I know that things will still be the same, because your fairy tale doo-doo is just make-believe. One… two…
“Amy?”
That was… weird.
Amy had been right there.
“Amy? Amyyyy?”
Zora turned left and right, she looked up, she checked the stone blocks that encircled them. The shrinking violet was nowhere to be found.
“Where’d you go? Amy? Amy?!” Zora turned in place, perhaps a bit too fast. Even as a trained athlete, she couldn’t twirl for long before collapsing in a heap. “Oomph!” Her butt made a print in the grassy patch of weeds and dandelions, and it felt sore. “Owwww…”
Zora rubbed against the back of her sweatpants when she felt some odd movement. It seemed too big to be a bug, but too… too weird and fleshy to be some sort of bird or rodent. And it was stuck against the back of her pants.
“What the…?” Zora had no love for bugs, and plenty had been crushed beneath her hands, shoes, or against the might of her wielding a can of bugspray in the past. But as her fingers clasped around the object she’d just sat on and pulled it in front of her face… not even Zora could’ve possibly comprehended what she was about to behold.
“Oh… M… Geee…”
Zora’s gaze wavered. It couldn’t be… but… there, plucked between her fingers, was a tiny, diminutive Amy. And not just tiny in the hyperbolic sense. But a really, really, tiny girl. Two inches was a generous estimate; a chipmunk could dwarf her.
Amy’s arm was between Zora’s finger and thumb, and as she hung limply, Zora could feel her form twitching in her grasp. They locked eyes.
The seconds passed.
Then:
“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—”
Amy screamed. She shrieked. It was shrill and dripping with abject dread.
Zora didn’t even have the time to process precisely how she felt to be carrying Amy’s life in her literal hands; despite the fact they were at least a mile into the woods and nobody important could possibly pick up on Amy’s squeaks, she couldn’t help but give Amy an involuntary shush!! But if Amy heard it, she didn’t respond. Rather, her screams took on a new flavor:
“OH GOD OH GOD PLEASE HELP ME, SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME!! SAVE ME! HEEEELLLLL—”
Zora squinted at Amy in frustration. She shook her around violently in her grip, but that just made her screams pick up a handful of decibels. Rising to her feet also didn’t assuage any of Amy’s fears. Zora was – incredibly – starting to sweat. There may be nothing to worry about now, but when she got back home it would be increasingly hard to hide a screaming little girl without attracting the precise kind of attention she did not want. Trying her hardest to avoid simply wringing Amy apart in her fists, Zora checked her pants pockets. Her Gatorade bottle already occupied one, and a crumpled up Takis wrapper she’d been planning to throw away was stuck in the other. Her rear pocket was barely large enough to hold loose change, much less be deep enough to prevent Amy from climbing out. But, remembering the rear pocket did get her thinking…
Zora reached behind her, hooked the elastic band of the rear of her pants and underwear with her finger, and with no preamble she dropped the chirping, tiny girl inside.
Zora released, and she felt the slight tickle of Amy scrambling to avoid falling to the bottom of Zora’s panties. Just as planned; Zora followed suit by grabbing the sweatpants lace and pulling. Her pants hugged her buttocks closer and closer, slowly but surely tightening the way they contoured around Zora’s derriere, and panini-pressing the squirming girl solidly between her sweat-drenched undergarment and her milky posterior.
After only a few moments of this, Amy’s screams had all but ceased.
Zora sighed in relief. This would hold her until she got home at least. “AGH, that was weird…”
That problem handled, Zora was finally given the space to ask the question on all their minds: just how the butt did Amy actually end up… shrinking?
Zora laid her gaze over the standing stones which surrounded her… and she wondered.
She thought back to her wish.
Could it be… was the wishing circle real?
She’d have to come back here later. For now, Zora was tired. The sun was already shifting beneath the tree line, but the sweat Zora had accumulated over the day and afternoon would be hear to stay, at least until she got home. Briefly, with grim amusement, Zora cast a stray thought to the plight of Amy, squeezed by just a few pascals short of crushing weight, slathered in Zora’s butt sweat, silenced, and a fiftieth of her original size.
At first, Zora did feel just… a tad sorry for the girl.
Before bursting out into laughter. A laughter that, if Amy was still conscious, she could almost certainly hear.
“BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! HAHA, HA, HA, HAHA, heh…” Zora had to catch her breath before continuing her self-monologue. “Man, looks like her wish did work out! But not the way she wanted,” said Zora, patting the leftmost bum cheek beneath her pants. “This is the coolest thing that has ever happened to me. Well… time to lay down some ground rules.”
And so, Zora started to jog back, ignoring her soreness, ignoring her fatigue. This episode had not winded her; it had invigorated her. Leaping past the brambles, ducking under the branches, the sweat she’d worked up getting here would be a drizzle compared to Noah’s flood she’d create on her way out of the woods. And that wasn’t even counting the final leg of the jog on the proper road back home. Then, she’d be able to really cut loose. And all throughout, drowning in the salty deluge of Zora’s body, Amy would be there, in the dark, damp, dank, tight confines of Zora’s underpants.
If Amy survives, that would be the first step. The first introduction to her new life.