Chapter 2

Vera awoke with a start as she felt something sliding down her throat. Her eyes shot open and then quickly shut again as the harsh sun pierced them. Her head was throbbing and pain wracked her body. Where was she? What had happened? The last thing she remembered was sunbathing on a lounge chair on the cruise ship deck. No…there was more. The memories flooded back. The icy winds had startled her from her nap. The sky had darkened and the crew and passengers were all shouting in terror and confusion. A storm had struck the vessel with incredible speed. Not just a storm—a hurricane. Vera recalled now the eerie lights in the sky, the fifty-mile-an-hour winds, and the huge wall of water that rose up and swept her from the deck. Something had struck her head and she knew no more.

At least she was alive. Vera thanked God for that, even if she was no longer onboard the ship. But why couldn’t she move? Hesitantly, she tried to open her eyes again. Everything was dim and hazy but she swore she could see tiny, dark shapes moving about her body. A ticklish sensation on her skin confirmed this.

“Gross,” she thought. “There’re bugs all over me!” She tried to lift a hand to brush or swat them off but found her arm was bound to the spot. For that matter, so were her legs and feet, and her midsection felt like it was wound up in thin vines or strings. What was going on?

Vera’s vision slowly began to clear and the offending insects came into focus. But they were not insects, at least not any kind she recognized. They had two arms, two legs, and curious little faces. Their heads were pink but their outer shells were colorful and oddly patterned. Almost like…clothes. Vera’s eyes opened wider as, gradually, she accepted the truth.

She was covered in tiny people.

Faced with this revelation, Vera did what any sensible person would do in such a situation. She screamed bloody murder.

“AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!”

The force of the shriek sent the soldiers gathered on her face hurtling in all directions. Some were blown off her chin, tumbling to join their allies on her neck and upper chest. Some fell off the sides of her face, plummeting past her cheek bones and into the sand, where they landed with broken bones and concussions. Two hapless men were thrown straight upward. They hung poised in mid-air for a split second before plunging down into the lady’s wide, still-screaming mouth.

Vera felt the tiny creatures hit her tongue and begin to slide. In her reclined position, the inside of her mouth was practically vertical and gravity was taking the little men straight towards her throat. Disgusted and horrified by this thought, Vera ceased her scream and quickly lifted her tongue. She caught the minuscule shapes and pressed them firmly against the roof of her mouth.

It was an odd sensation, to say the least. Vera could taste the leather of their uniforms, a tang of metal from some sort of body armor, and the salty sweat of their skin. She could feel the little creatures kicking and squirming in primal terror, trying to escape the jaws of a massive predator. She could even hear their shouting as it echoed inside her head.

There were people, tiny impossible people, inside her mouth. This was completely insane!

Pulling against the ropes binding her, Vera was able to turn her head slightly and spit the two little men onto the beach. They landed with a plop beside her face like discarded watermelon seeds.

The ropes at her neck had frayed and snapped when she turned. Encouraged by this, she tried to pull free of the bindings across the rest of her. She struggled and squirmed, causing her body to shift this way and that. She could feel the little men staggering and stumbling all over her skin as their terrain began to lurch back and forth. Some were quickly scurrying down miniature ladders or leaping wildly off her body to escape.

At last, the ropes binding her upper body and arms began to snap. When she had shed enough of them, Vera pressed her hands into the sand and pushed herself up into a sitting position. A few little men still gathered on her torso suddenly felt their world upended. They began to fall or slide off of her with high-pitched shrieks of terror.

Some clung tightly to the fabric of her bikini top, daring not to look at the considerable drop. Vera gasped as she felt a few slide straight down her cleavage, where they were swallowed up utterly. Being fairly busty, Vera was used to occasionally dropping things in there—crumbs, cereal, blueberries, once even her car keys. But tiny men? That was a new one. They tickled like crazy but Vera had to admit it felt kind of nice. She decided to leave them in there for the moment and focused on the others.

Vera reached out and plucked a few little people off the front of her bikini before they could tumble onto the beach. She cradled three little men in her palm and lifted it higher to inspect them. Each miniature creature was about an inch and a half in height. Their skin was pale and Caucasian-like in color and their hair was fair. They wore old-fashioned chain mail and tunics and helmets with odd tassels on top. Vera chuckled at the thought but the teensy men almost looked Scandinavian.

The little men stared up at her in terror as they were brought closer to her face. They were soon cringing and curling into fetal position. Their fear stirred a sudden twinge of guilt in Vera that replaced her confusion and shock at the situation. She suddenly realized how huge and terrifying she must seem to such tiny beings. Vera cooed quietly and made kissy noises at them, as if trying to calm a small, nervous animal.

“Shh, shh, it’s okay. I won’t hurt you!” she whispered, her breath rustling their hair and the horse-tails of their helmets. “My God, you’re real, aren’t you? I’m not imagining this? I can’t believe it. Tiny people. This is completely—ow!”

Vera felt a number of sharp stings on her skin. She looked down to see a number of the miniature soldiers gathered near her on the beach, muskets pointed her way. They fired another volley of almost microscopic bullets. These collided with Vera’s arm and waist but did no more damage than the bites of gnats. Still, it was rather annoying.

She turned their way and bent forward (quite forgetting the stowaways in her cleavage whose world was compressing as she leaned over). Pursing her lips, she blew a sharp breath on the cluster of soldiers, causing them to be thrown backwards and fall sprawling into the sand.

“Hey, knock it off!” she chided them. “Point those pea-shooters somewhere else!”

Satisfied for the moment, Vera turned to freeing her lower body. She lifted one leg and then the other, snapping the ropes that bound them. Tiny soldiers went sliding down the length of her legs or clung desperately to her toes as they were hoisted into the sky. Vera reached down and removed the remaining ropes from her hips and thighs, gradually untangling herself. As she did so, she casually brushed lingering little people from various parts of her.

“All right, everybody off! The Mt. Vera Fun Park is officially closed for business!”

She switched to a cross-legged position, sitting pretzel-style, and set the three “prisoners” from her hand on the ground between her legs. Her body blocked their escape on all sides. Vera did not want these creatures to all simply scurry off. If any of them were capable of speech, she wanted some answers.

As she scanned her person for stragglers, Vera was surprised to find an older gentleman with a bushy mustache clinging to her nipple through the black fabric. As her hand approached, he fearfully clutched it tighter, causing the lady to gasp at the surprisingly stimulating pressure.

“Whoa! Watch the hands, pal,” she said, plucking him off and setting him between her legs with the others. “We’ve only just met.”

She next slipped her hand down her décolletage, finally fishing about for the men who had vanished within. She plucked them one by one from her bosom, adding them to the collection between her legs. One feisty little guy attempted to scurry away from her fingers, wriggling deeper between her breasts and staying a half-step ahead of her grasp. Exasperated, she finally placed a hand on either side of her chest and squeezed inward until the little man was quite trapped. The wind and the fight were knocked out of him and the man was soon added to the burgeoning crowd below.

“People always said I had a knockout figure,” Vera laughed.

The young lady stared curiously at the mass of writhing shapes between her legs. Their tiny eyes stared back up at her, nervous and uncertain.

“Okay, little guys, can you speak?” she asked. “Habla Espanol? Parlez-vous Francais? Sprechen sie Deutsch? I don’t even know what you are. Should I try, I don’t know, Elvish or something? Come on, somebody talk to me!”

* * * *

Lord Fallowmark and a number of his men peered up at the towering giantess with fear. The rest of the soldiers who had been swept from her form were fleeing in terror back to the city. But for some reason, she had kept a few of them prisoner, trapped in the valley created between her crisscrossed legs.

The colossal creature had been barking sounds at them for some time and though at first the sheer volume had forced the men to cover their ears, gradually they were beginning to acclimate. It became clear that these were not the grunts of an incoherent beast. Some of the noises, in fact, sounded like words.

“My lord,” one soldier whispered, “can you hear it? She’s speaking! Those noises…they sound Piconorean!”

“Aye,” said another. “I’m only getting every other word or so. It’s similar to our language but in some bizarre dialect.”

“Impossible,” Fallowmark declared. “She’s not human I tell you! It defies the laws of nature!”

* * * *

Vera watched the tiny men whisper to each other conspiratorially. Eventually, they attempted to call out to her but their squeaky voices were quite difficult to make out.

“We’ll get nowhere at this rate,” Vera sighed. “You’ll have to come closer.”

Gently, she set a hand palm upward next to the crowd of minuscule warriors. When no one dared climb aboard, she simply scooped up a handful of them and lifted them up to her ear.

* * * *

It took a bit of trial and error but Vera and the Piconoreans were soon communicating. The accents and dialects were strange to both parties and here and there were words that the other did not recognize. But as far as Vera could tell, the Piconoreans were speaking English with an older, archaic flavor and an accent that was vaguely Swedish-like. It reminded her of the high school class where she’d been asked to read Beowulf.

“Okay, run that by me again. Slower this time,” she said. Vera was speaking in a stage whisper. Her normal voice’s volume was quite intolerable to the tiny creatures.

“You are in the Grand Republic of North Piconorea,” Osric Fallowmark told her. He stood at the center of her palm, surrounded by the other men she had gathered up. The lady’s delicate ear loomed above them like an awning. “And in the name of Chancellor Brogan, I hereby arrest you, giant! Come quietly and we shall not have to use force!”

Vera couldn’t help but laugh at this. “Oh, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” she giggled. “Look, I’m sorry if I gave you all a scare when I woke up but I assure you, I mean no harm. A girl’s just not used to waking tied up in a strange place. Let’s start over. My name’s Vera Kruscynski. Or ‘Vera Kruz’ if you prefer my stage name. I’m an actress, you see. Anyway, what’s your name?”

Vera shifted her hand in front of her and extended her pinky finger, attempting to “shake hands” with Lord Fallowmark. The miniature nobleman simply pushed it away. Or tried to at least; her little finger had more strength than his whole body.

“I care not who you claim to be,” he snarled, pushing and heaving his body against the finger. It refused to budge. “You are a threat to the Republic and a spy of South Piconorea.”

“A spy? Me?” Vera tried her hardest to keep a straight face as the little man continued to bluster at her and fight with her pinky.

“You will be brought in chains before the chancellor to face his judgment!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she protested. “I can’t meet a chancellor wearing nothing but a skimpy two-piece! I feel so exposed. Sure wish my luggage had washed ashore with me.”

The other soldiers had been peering off the side of her hand, eyeing the gargantuan curves of her form with awe. “This is not your usual method of dress, my lady?” one of them asked.

“Heck, no,” Vera told him. “Though Lord knows I wear enough of these. I’ve been doing some modeling lately. Just until my acting career takes off, mind you.”

“’Mo-del-ing?’” the soldier repeated, sounding out the unknown word.

“I try on different outfits and show them off,” the young woman explained.

“This is your trade? You are paid for this?” asked another soldier. “Truly the giants must be a decadent people to pay coin for the simple donning of garments!”

“Yeah, I guess we are,” Vera admitted. “But who are you calling ‘giant,’ twerp? Everybody’s my size where I come from.”

“Lies! Deception!” Fallowmark bellowed. “You come from South Piconorea, don’t try to deny it! I know not how those barbarous heathens created you. But I know that there is no ‘land of giants!’ The idea is patently absurd! There is nothing beyond Piconorea!”

“Says you, buddy,” Vera said with a smirk. She peered closer at several of the soldiers. “Say, why do you guys keep looking at my stomach and whispering like that?”

“They are no doubt wondering about the fate of their consumed comrade, Lt. Swiftbow,” Fallowmark stated.

Vera’s blood suddenly froze, as she recalled what had awoken her. “Oh, God. Did I…did I swallow one of you when I was unconscious? Why didn’t you mention this sooner?!”

“He was an impertinent instigator, always questioning my orders and my authority,” said Lord Fallowmark. “Swiftbow deserves his fate.”

“Jesus!” Vera cried. She glanced down at her midsection in horror. “There’s a little man inside me? Right now? Ewwww! Oh God, oh God—I—we should —shouldn’t we try to get him out or something?”

“Leave him,” Fallowmark commanded. “He is no use to us.”

In her panicked state, Vera was certain she could sense movement inside her. It was like the feeling of butterflies in her stomach, but this particular butterfly had a name and rank. She couldn’t process this. She had just eaten someone! Her head swam and her stomach lurched.

“Ugh, I…I think I’m going to be sick…”

* * * *

Deep inside the giant woman’s belly, Edwyn Swiftbow fumbled in the darkness. He was waist-deep in a viscous liquid and nearly choking from the foul air. He’d been thrown about violently for a time but now it seemed that his hostess had come to rest.
Swiftbow pulled a small tinderbox from his coat pocket and removed a few chunks of flint. Desperately, he struck them together in an attempt to create a spark and relight his torch. After a few tries, his efforts were rewarded. He lifted the burning brand and looked around him. Swiftbow immediately wished he hadn’t.

He could see now the vastness of the living cavern he was trapped in, the slick, grimy walls of muscle, the sickly greenish slime that sloshed all around him. Floating past him were large half-chewed chunks of whatever the giant had eaten for breakfast. Some of these particles were larger than his whole body. He pulled himself up onto a particularly large island of foodstuff and considered his options. They were few, to say the least.

“Right,” he muttered. “If this is how I go, then I would make it an end to remember! I’ll give this titanic trollop the worst indigestion she’s ever had!” Swiftbow readied his blunderbuss and aimed the gun at the slimy stomach lining. He checked how many rounds were loaded in the weapon. He would have to save one bullet for himself if he wished to avoid a slow, painful demise.

Just then, the cavern began to rumble like thunder. The ground below him shook with violent tremors and the stomach walls churned. Before Swiftbow knew what was happening, there was an explosion of brownish green and he felt himself flung upward into open space.

* * * *

Vera was hunched forward, vomiting violently onto the sand. The thought of a tiny, living creature crawling around her insides was simply too much. She coughed and sputtered, expelling her breakfast and several mimosas she’d sipped on the ship. Sure enough, when she opened her eyes, she saw one of the tiny soldiers lying in the center of the pile of spit-up. With relief, Vera noticed slight movements and twitches in the tiny form.

“Looks like—ohhh, blurgh—it’s your lucky day, little fella,” she said, rubbing her tummy and fighting another wave of nausea. “Hope you were—ugh—the only intruder in there…”

Shaking herself back to her senses, Vera slowly uncurled her legs from around the trapped little people. She pushed against the beach and, woozily, climbed up onto her feet. The young lady now stood at her full height—a mere 5’9” by her standards but at least two hundred and fifty feet to the Piconoreans. The soldiers stood before her huge boulder-like toes, craning their necks back and looking up at the monolithic figure above them. Her body blocked out the sun and her distant face was obscured by the promontory of her chest thrusting outward. The wind whipping at her hair turned it into a shifting cloudbank of brown silk. The tiny soldiers stared, gob-smacked.

“Okay then,” she said, looking down at Swiftbow. “Let’s get your friend here cleaned up and go meet the chancellor. Maybe I can convince him I’m not an enemy agent.”

“Absolutely out of the question!” Lord Fallowmark declared. “You are going nowhere until you are properly chained and in my custody! We can’t have a creature of your size simply wandering the land! Where do you think you’re going? Come back here this instant, giant! I’m not done talking to you!”

Vera walked casually across the beach, holding Swiftbow at arm’s length by a sleeve of his tunic. Behind her, Fallowmark and his men were scurrying to catch up with her enormous strides and trying not to fall into the trenches formed by her footprints.

To be continued...