Chapter 3:

As Carl woke from his daze, the world spun around him in a blur of brown shades. It took several minutes for him to compose himself before he could finally stand and take in his surroundings, and in an instant, he went crashing back towards the ground. Carl couldn’t believe his eyes, in the distance all around him was brown earth which appeared to stretch on for many miles. He had just been in the middle of a forest; how could he have gotten here? His men were good at their jobs, but not that good. As Carl redirected his attention from the ground and towards the skies, he began to understand where he was. Above him stood the silhouette of a creature against the pale-grey sky, so incomprehensibly massive in size that Carl figured it could not be human.  Just as Carl was considering what to say to his assumed maker, the figure shifted to reach ever closer to him. The beast’s limb thrust down from the sky slowly, and unfurled as it grew closer, to reveal what appeared to be the shape of a human hand. The hand plunged deep into the earth beneath Carl, which gave way like a pool of loose sand, and raised himself and the brown earth to dizzying heights. As Carl involuntarily ascended, the light of the sun began to unveil the identity of the shrouded colossus. The creature that Carl had assumed could never have been human, was slowly revealed to be just that, but no one that he could ever recall seeing before. From his perspective, the towering giant who cradled him appeared to be a woman, the soft light of the morning sun rest on a pair of ample breasts, with nipples that the brisk mountain winds had turned hard as rocks. Fair of face and slender proportionately, the women was well into adulthood.  But Carl was far too high now to fully see her womanly sex, and could only make out the gap in the shrouded contour between her thighs.

In Carl’s awe, he had failed to notice that the giantess was carrying him towards a golden-brown cylinder erected from the ground far below. As the giantess lowered her hand towards the ground, Carl realized what he was staring it. Its surface had been smoothed since he last saw it, but he believed he recognized the hollowed-out stump of the tree that the men of the logging company had used as a makeshift table. The tree stump which had once only risen about three feet from the earth before, now appeared approximately twenty stories high, and was adorned with about fifty shifting figures that he couldn’t make out. When the giantess ultimately forced him to slip from her hand onto the sanded surface of the tree stump, Carl began to fully appreciate the gravity of his situation. The figures that Carl was unable to recognize mere moments ago, revealed themselves to be the now shrunken staff of the logging company stationed around the perimeter of the tree stump’s hollowed out core. To make matters worse, beyond the edges of the tree stump loomed five additional naked giantesses, gathered in a circle, as if to perform some sacrificial rite. Before Carl had the opportunity to collect himself and address his men, a thunderous voice echoed from above, shattering his nerves once more.

The giantess that had carried Carl to the tree stump, positioned at the very center of the logging site, was the first to break the forest’s silence.

“If you’ve come for our lumber and logs, perhaps we could offer you a hand? A warm gesture amidst this cold forest, wouldn’t you agree?”

The men below stood in crippling silence. The giantess continued to speak.

“The logs of this land are not yours for the taking, little men. They belong to the Earth and its creatures, so I Rose and my five petals here will supply you with a substitute for the object you desire. Logs, not from the Earth, but from ourselves. How does that sound?

The fifty men of the logging company made no attempt to respond. What sort of cryptic message was the massive women trying to convey? Expecting no answer, the giantess continued to speak.

“Before you lies a pit, shaped from the deeds of your many sins. But it is here that you will atone for your sins against the Earth, for in the bowels of this very tree you will face what the bowels of humanity can conjure.”

One of the many men below, not entirely grasping the sermon being preached to himself and his colleagues, spoke out in a small voice.

“Lady, what is this? Why the hell are we so tiny, and who the fuck do you think you people are telling us we can’t make a living on an honest day’s work?”

In an instant, the man was ripped from the surface of the tree stump, and then plunged into the depths of the tree’s hollowed out core by one of the women known as “petals”, who had previously been standing silently in a circle. Carl and the other men quickly gathered around the tree’s interior to see the fate of their comrade. To Carl’s surprise the man was alive and well, resting on a bed of sawdust about seven stories below. The man in the pit hurried to take in his new surroundings, and was puzzled to see that the inner surface of the tree stump’s core, in which he now resided, had been entirely smoothed over to resemble a deep bowl. The very bottom of the bowl was about the same diameter as the depth of the hole itself. The man sprinted to the walls of the pit and attempted to gain a foothold so that he might rendezvous with the men above, and tried for nearly a minute to no avail. In his frustration, the man cried out.

“Let me out of here you bitch! Guys, there’s no way anybody could climb these walls, you’ve gotta get me out of here!”

The giantesses up above made no reply. Instead, Carl and the men on the surface of the stump called out in a confusion of voices.

“We will get you out of there, man!”

“Stay still, we just have to make a rope!”

“Don’t worry we will come down and get you, just stay calm!”

The last voice was nearly cut off by Rose the giantess’ thunderous interjection.

“Yes, you will all be with your friend shortly, but I wouldn’t be in such a rush to meet the same fate. At least, not before we all have a little fun up here.”

Carl and the men on the surface of the stump settled themselves and were quiet once more, but the man in the pit continued to rage on in a fury. In retaliation, Rose spoke again.

“I’m sorry, what did you say? You’re so small that it’s hard to hear you. That’s it! What if you were to shrink even farther, then maybe none of us would have to hear your pitiful cries ever again. Lilith, please assist the man in the pit.”

With that order, one of the giantesses known as petals stepped closer to the tree stump, and sprinkled what appeared to be pollen onto the man in the pit. Then the men up above all watched as their coworker and friend collapsed into the bed of sawdust, succumbing to the power of the substance rained upon him. The man in the pit quickly shrunk from what must have been an inch relative to the tree stumps size, all the way to what appeared to be a millimeter tall. The men up above recoiled in fear after witnessing their friend reduced even further, realizing that they themselves might suffer a similar fate. Rose spoke out.

“Ah, much better! That man now rests at a height more befitting of his character. Please gentlemen, if you detest myself and my fellow ladies so much, do not hesitate to make it known. I’d love to grant the world a kindness and see you all vanish from my sight!”

The men on the surface of the stump were a mess, petrified by their sudden and unexpected confrontation with their own mortality. Carl was one of many to collapse to his knees in grief, but he realized that defying the massive women would only make matters worse, maybe he should try fulfilling their wishes instead. The thought sickened him.