“Don’t YOU pretend you can expect me to enjoy getting lost in your stomach.”

“Okay, I won’t, but you can’t avoid it either.”

He watched as she put the pavlova into the oven and sat in front of the glass door smiling in at him and licking the tip of her finger to prepare him for his own upcoming experience. Then she took him to the bench, added the cream and strawberries and took him to the dining room table.

Louise laughed, as she ate pavlova eagerly with her spoon, licking her lips frequently and gulping and swallowing and cleaning her mouth with water from a glass and jug.

She took out a list and he noticed a series of lines, with boxes next to them.

“Shrink to tiny size,” she said, and ticked that one off, “Chase through a garden, tick. Lick my lips, tick. Cook, tick. Sorry I couldn’t manage the dates, but you made that difficult. Now all that remains is to be able to tick off eating you.”

“Well that really will tick me off,” he said.

Louise laughed again.

“Puns in the face of … or should I say the mouth of adversity,” she added, “You knew where you were headed from the moment you saw me in the nature reserve. It’s almost over now. Goodbye little man.”

Louise forced him into her mouth and slid him back and forth, eagerly sucking all the pavlova remains from his tiny body. Then she pushed him to the back of her tongue. He sat and held tightly to her back teeth, while he watched each of her fingers coming into her mouth, one by one, to be cleaned by a quick slide along the front half of her visible tongue. Her soft pink fingers looked adorable, as did the palm of her retracting hand each time he could focus clearly on it. That such a hand had held him after reducing him that day, he considered, had been pleasant in itself, if not for the overlying experience that was to come.

Then he saw her fingers opening and closing in her hand, and realised that she was doing the kind of wave that models did when seeking to acknowledge the attentions of their fans either on catwalks or in public places where they had been seen. Louise was, he still felt, more lovely to him than any model, and she was about to do something to him which no model had ever thought of before.

“I never had those kisses and dates we talked about,” he called, “Maybe we could do that firs-“

Suddenly he felt drawn backwards and fell feet first uncontrollably into Louise’s throat. She gulped with no effort at all, and he went down inside her chest, and towards her tummy, and then suddenly, he was back on the table looking up at her.

“I told you to trust me,” she said, “I added a teleportation effect to the ring’s design. Nobody has to grieve you. I read your emails. I never stopped loving you, and I never stopped working on giving you a solution that would work for both of us … if you’d ever consider wanting it again. If you don’t, I’ll let you go.”

“Like this I guess I do,” he said, “Can that thing make me big again, and then small again?”

“Of course. I just wish you hadn’t shut me out before.”

“People died, Louise. I needed time.”

“You let me think you needed forever, forever without me and everything we dreamed and talked about.”

“Maybe I should have turned to you. I just didn’t know you could teleport me. I thought you could really shrink me and eat me, if your September 10th email was to be believed, and I’m sure now that it is. Back then I just didn’t want it. I’m sorry, but you should be too. You scared me like nothing else today. You could have told me about the teleportation before you ate me.”

“Well from now on you’ll know. I wanted at least one run with you thinking it was forever.”

“I guess that never bothered me when we were emailing. It did add a certain spice to the whole experience. I do still love you more than anyone else, Louise, and in ways that no other guy or girl could understand.”

“I think your dining etiquette’s improved a lot in the last few minutes,” said Louise, “And I still love you too.”

Although Captain Miniature and his friends at the Growe Institute didn’t know it yet, their arch nemesis Red Moll was now without the backing of the organisation that had sponsored and instigated most of her recent activity. Neither did Louise Waters know that she had also shut down the lifeline of Sydney Australia’s leading arch criminal.