I was sitting on the ground, eating and drinking the food and water I’d found in the cocoon’s storage compartment. The sun was high in the sky now, and the warm light shining on me helped me to cope with everything that had happened. My face was still wet with tears – I’d been crying for hours, I figured. I kept expecting to wake up, to find that I was still in that device, and that my house, my parents and everything I knew was still there. But sooner or later I was going to have to accept that it was just me now. Somehow I’d managed to stay hidden during all that had happened, and for thousands of years afterwards, and now I was apparently the only human from my time still alive. I was the only normal-sized human too: that shrinking gas must have spread uncontrollably during the war, affecting almost everyone who survived. Their descendants, a race of three-inch-high humans, now made up the world’s population.

The boy I’d found earlier was still with me, sitting quietly on my miniskirt, taking in everything I’d told him. His name was Ryu Merlon, and he was thirteen years old. He lived in a community in the forest, a whole day’s walk for him from here, and had come to visit the ‘sleeping giant’, about which his people had told so many legends for ages. He had climbed up the cocoon, but, when I opened it to get out, he fell in without me noticing him. That was how I came to find him in there.

Between bouts of tears, I’d managed to tell him my entire story, though how much he believed me I didn’t know. At the very least I’d managed to get him to call me ‘Katie’ instead of ‘O Great One’, and I think he’d accepted the fact that people long ago were all my size, and that I was no different from him, just much bigger, and from uncountable years in the past. I explained how the cocoon worked to him, but it didn’t seem to help. Apparently his people had lost most technological knowledge over the ages, and things like nuclear power and electricity and space travel didn’t make sense to him. At least people still knew how to speak English, though it sounded a little different. Otherwise my new life would have been a lot more difficult to live.

I’d figured out how to open the back of the cocoon, and what I’d found there both cheered me up and brought back the sadness. My parents had managed to pack a lot of my clothes and other belongings, lots of food, and even a self-erecting tent for me to stay in, in case our house got destroyed. There was a box full of books – old-style books, with paper pages – along with an inflatable mattress and blankets, and even an inflatable raft. I was indescribably thankful to my parents for their foresight, but looking at all these relics of the world that was long gone just reminded me of everything I’d lost. Seeing my school uniform, which I’d always hated to wear, made me think of all my friends from school whom I would never see again, except maybe in my dreams.

While I was thinking I saw that Ryu was getting restless on my skirt. I picked him up carefully, and held him close to my face so I could hear him better. He looked back at me shyly, still half-afraid of me, but also with empathy. He’d told me his parents had been killed by an ishiloo when he was very little, and that he didn’t really have any family left either. (I had no idea what an ishiloo was, but apparently it was some kind of big, man-eating beast. I hope I never run across one.)

“So,” I said, wiping away my tears for what I hoped would be the last time. “Is it still okay if I go with you back to your village? I don’t wanna stay here any longer, and I’d like to get to know some people as soon as possible.”

“Uh, okay, Miss Katie…”

“Not ‘Miss Katie’, please! I’m just sixteen, remember? Just ‘Katie’ is fine. I may be way bigger than everyone else now, but I don’t wanna feel like some kind of freak.”

“Okay…Katie,” he said. I smiled at him, and he actually smiled back. “We can go if you want…but what about all your things?”

“I think I’ll just come back for them later. You said it’s a day’s walk for you, but it can’t be that far for me, right? And I don’t want to walk into town dragging a bunch of luggage behind me. In fact, I think I’ll pitch that tent some distance outside your town – I kinda want a little privacy right now, you know?”

“Uh, all right. We can go. I’ll try and walk faster…”

“Don’t be silly! I’ll carry you, of course. You barely weigh anything, so it’s not like I’ll get tired…”

He looked at me in wonder. I could already tell that his people’s world is going to change dramatically once they see me.

“Thanks,” he muttered, blushing a bit. “Um, Katie, could I…could I perhaps sit on top of your head? I’d like to get a nice view.”

“Aren’t you scared you might fall off? It’s a long way down…”

“I could hold onto your hair. You’ve got such nice long hair.”

I laughed a little, and he blushed again. Despite him trying to act cool and natural, I could tell that he was a little, uh, let’s say ‘smitten’ by me. Not that I was surprised – guys had fallen for me all the time, even thirteen-year old guys – but I didn’t think anyone would ever have thought that an attractive girl one-hundred-and-forty feet tall was still attractive. Having lost the man I was completely in love with, I really didn’t feel ready to start another relationship, but I guess it couldn’t hurt having a little admirer.

I agreed, and put little Ryu down on top of my head. My hair, which was strawberry blonde and almost waist-long, was my most beautiful feature, or so Hal had told me. (But then, he’d also said the same thing about my legs, my breasts, my eyes, my hands and my lips.) Ryu lay down on his stomach, spread out his arms and legs, and held on tightly. His tiny body tickled my scalp, and I pressed down on him gently with my hand to make sure he was secure. I stood up and headed over to the edge of the cliff, and looked down on the calm, blue ocean.

“Wow!” my mini-passenger exclaimed. “You can see everything from up here! You must feel like, I don’t know, a…a walking tower or something!”

I laughed again. I told him that everything was still the same size it had been in my time. Plants, insects, rocks, the ocean’s waves, everything was normal-sized. Only humans seemed to have been affected by the shrinking gas.

“I’d like to go down to seashore sometime,” I said. “It looks so beautiful down there. But right now I’d like to meet the rest of you little guys. Will you show me the way?”

I made my way down the grassy slopes of the hill, until I hit the trees of the forest and the ground began to level out. The forest was lush and beautiful, but not at all difficult to walk through: it reminded me of walking through a wooded city park. Ryu kept on making comments from on top of my head, and I laughed out loud when he let slip how nice he thought my hair smelled.

“Let’s hope I’ll be able to wash it from time to time,” I said. “Otherwise it might not smell so nice before long.”

“Don’t worry about that, Katie. There’s a river that runs right next to where we live, and a large lake some distance upstream. You could take a bath there, if you want.”

“You bet I want. Just tell your people not to come close whenever I’m there, okay? Unless they want to see their ‘sleeping goddess’ naked.”

“Well, uh, I thought you…”

“That’s a ‘no’, Ryu.”

“Um, I…I understand. Sorry…”

“That’s okay. Now, how much farther is it?”

After another thirty minutes of walking Ryu warned me that we were getting close to his home. After my long confinement I must have lost a little of my strength, since my legs were pretty tired already. I sat down in the shade of a large and beautiful tree, though what kind of tree it was I didn’t know. There were so many new things I saw in this world, things that were strange, yet familiar at the same time. Even the sky seemed to be a different shade of blue, and a half-moon rising above the tree tops appeared a little larger than the Moon I remembered. It began to strike me that maybe it hadn’t been just a few hundred, or even a few thousand years since that awful evening when my life changed.

I held my hand against my forehead, and Ryu gladly climbed down into it. I put him down on the ground, next to my outstretched legs, which immediately drew all his attention. He was only half as tall as my thigh. I told him he could climb up into my lap, but he declined. Maybe, I thought, he was nervous about what might happen if he didn’t manage it. It would definitely be embarrassing for a guy to be seen failing to climb up a girl’s leg.

“I could go on ahead, if that’s okay with you,” he said, walking up and down along the length of my thigh. “No offense, but you really are massive compared to… well, us ‘little’ people. You could scare everyone to death if you just walked into town.”

“So you’ll go ahead and warn them? Good idea! Let’s hope they believe you first. But in case they don’t, here, you can take these.”

My little skirt didn’t have any pockets, so there was nothing there I could give him. All I could think of was the pair of pearl earrings I was wearing. They’d been a gift from my mother, and I’d had them for ages. I took them out and gave them to my little friend. He needed both hands to carry them, and once or twice he accidentally dropped them. I didn’t mind, though.

“Thanks, Katie!” he said appreciatively. “I’ll bring them right back…I won’t let anyone take them.”

“Oh, it’s fine, really! Keep them as long as you like. Why would I still want to wear earrings, anyway? There’s just no point anymore.”

“Will…will you…be all right?”

“Yes, thank you. Just go now, okay? I’m getting hungry again, and I don’t wanna be stuck in this forest, alone, for long.”

I curled up my legs so he wouldn’t have to walk all the way around them. After a hasty ‘goodbye’ he disappeared behind the tree I was lying back against. I sighed and closed my eyes. The sounds of the forest – leaves rustling in the breeze, strange birdcalls from unseen birds, the sound of a river far in the distance – helped to ease my mind, and I didn’t begin to cry again. I just wished, over and over, that events had been different. If I had just done one thing different, perhaps I wouldn’t be here right now. But such thinking was pointless.

“I’m here, now, and that’s that,” I thought. “Nothing, nothing is going to change that. What had happened was awful, horrible, but I can’t let it take hold of me. I’ve got to at least try and carry on living here, maybe it will all turn out all right in the end. If only there was a…a place for me here, where I could fit in. Where I could be happy again.”

I nodded off in the shade, and woke later with a stiff back, and still no sign of Ryu. I thought he might have run into trouble, but just then I heard a sound. It was the sound of voices – many, many voices, though they were soft – and I realized they were coming from behind the tree. Where the village lay. I stood up and stretched, then walked around the great tree trunk. I almost got the shock of my life.

Just a few yards in front of me stood a huge and diverse crowd of tiny people, none of them taller than three inches. They seemed to be mostly men, but there were a handful of women and young boys as well. They were a mixture of many different races, but their voices and accents varied little between one person and the next. Men and women both wore plain and simple clothing, though it could come in any color, and was often adorned with small leaves, feathers and flower petals. Some of the men carried bows, others spears, and others still a kind of small, primitive-looking handheld cannon. Upon seeing me, the group as a whole stopped dead in its tracks. I heard some people scream, and saw a few faint as well, but most of them stood riveted to the ground, unable to move a muscle.

One of the tiny folk came running towards me; it was Ryu. He ran all the way to tip of my toes and bent over, out of breath. I bent down and scooped him up, before he could get a peek up underneath my skirt – not that I would really mind that, I just didn’t want him to get any, well, ‘ideas’.

“Look…Katie…” he panted, lying on his back in my cupped hand. “I’ve…brought them…everyone! They still didn’t believe me…but I got them to come!”

“Oh,” I said. Though the people were miniscule, there were a lot of them, and I wasn’t exactly comfortable in front of crowds. I hugged Ryu tenderly against my stomach and began approaching the mob. None of them moved or ran away, but as I got closer I could hear cries, murmurs, gasps and whistles erupting from the crowd. I approached to within a foot of the nearest of them, towering over them like the goddess they must have thought I was.

“Hi, uh, everyone,” I said. “I’m Katie Martyn. I…well…I guess I’m your newest citizen. Pleased to meet you!”

The young men who made up the first few rows of the crowd were staring intently up at me, and I blushed as I realized why. Feeling self-conscious, I pressed my thighs together.

“Okay, uh, are we just going to keep standing here? I was told I would be welcome in your town, or village, or whatever. If that doesn’t happen soon, I might get angry and…”

I lifted up one foot and held it over the nearest row’s heads. Everyone ducked down or ran away, and a panic began to spread through the multitude. I regretted my stupid joke, and immediately put my foot on the ground again. At that moment I saw something  utterly strange. A small animal came running up to me, alongside the crowd. It looked like nothing more than a small dinosaur, less than two feet long. It had a birdlike neck, long arms and legs carrying sharp claws, and a long tail sporting a fan of red feathers. The rest of the animal was cover in blue feathers. It opened its mouth and chirped, and I saw rows of gleaming teeth.

Riding on top of the animal, in some sort of saddle-like contraption, were several men. They were dressed just as simply as most of the others, but their bearing clearly showed that they were leaders of some sort. One of them, a well-muscled man in his thirties, dismounted and approached my feet. He went down on one knee and looked up at me.

“Mighty stranger,” he said, addressing me. “Please, do not be angry at us. We all came to see you for ourselves, because none of us believed that boy’s story. But we can see you now. My name is Carn Cosell, and looking after this community is my responsibility. I would like to invite you into our village, but I cannot be sure of your intentions…”

“Oh, don’t worry,” I laughed. “I was only fooling around just now. I won’t do it again, and I’m sorry. Of course I’m not going to hurt you, or anyone else. I just…maybe I should tell you my story first?”

“If you wish. But why not come with us first? Our home is not far away, and you must be tired from your long journey down from your mountain…”

“Nah, not really. But thanks a lot. I’ll definitely come with you…speaking of, should I just follow the group, or what?”

“You can follow me, great lady. We will ride on the fessofar you see before you. It’s a swift bird, but I believe you can keep up.”

“No problem! Ready when you are.”

I put little Ryu on my left shoulder and told him to hold tight. He grabbed hold of both the fabric of my top and my dangling hair.

“I’ve never been called ‘great lady’ before,” I whispered to him as we set off. “You did tell them exactly who I am, right?”

“Well…I may have, you know, exaggerated a bit…”

“Great. Just as long as no-one starts worshipping me, or…god forbid, what if someone wants to…you know…copulate…” I made a grimace, then burst out laughing at how stupid I sounded. Ryu just sat there on my shoulder, quietly. He didn’t seem his usual, cheery self.

“Hey, I wasn’t talking about you!” I said, giving him a little prod with my finger. “I was just…oh, never mind!”

I let him be for now. My new life was about to begin, and I didn’t want to screw it up by making an ass out of myself. Carn and his buddies were riding ahead of me on their dinosaur-bird-thing, while the rest of the people were walking along somewhere behind. As of that moment, I wanted nothing more than to become part of their community, though I could tell it wouldn’t be easy. Either I would have to adapt to their way of life, or they would have to get used to me and my personality, not to mention my ridiculously huge size.

“It’ll be weird for all of us,” I thought. “But…somehow…I don’t think it’ll be that bad. In fact, it might even be kinda fun.”