This was the first time the giantess had spoken in Kaleb’s presence. He’d expected the sound to match the rest of her, a deep, ultrasonic rumble that would shake his bones. But it sounded almost…normal. Much louder than a real whisper, but he could understand the words, and it sounded like any woman’s voice.

And if he could understand him…

“I need help! Please!”

Emilia flinched a little upon hearing the tiny person talk, and began to set the gum down as carefully as she could. Her mouth tried to make sound, but nothing came out.

For his part, Kaleb felt a great weight slide off his shoulders. He collapsed into a sobbing, joyful pile. Emilia finally set the strip of gum down on her nightstand. She took a moment to gawk at the impossibly tiny being resting on top of it, then managed to speak.

“Are you…a person?”

Kaleb collected himself and responded. “Yes, I am. I am and I need help. Do you think you can get me to a hospital or something?”

Emilia, still wide-eyed, seemed not to hear the request. “What’s your name?”

“Uhh…Kaleb. It’s Kaleb. But I need medical…”

Emilia shook her head and stood up. She began pacing. “Ok, whoa. This is crazy.”

Kaleb was disappointed, but still happy to have been noticed. He knew that finding someone like him must be just as shocking for her as shrinking had been for him.

Emilia eventually settled down and sat down on the floor, her eyes level with him.

“Ok, tell me how you ended up like that. This is just so weird!”

Kaleb was beginning to feel ignored, but he soldiered on. “I’m not sure. I don’t remember very much from before I shrunk. But I know I had a normal life before this, and it ended when this happened.” He gestured to his reduced body.

“Huh. So you can’t remember anything?”

“Not really, no. Can you take me to a hospital, please? I think I need a doctor.”

Emilia’s brow furrowed for a moment, as if she were annoyed, but the expression passed in an instant. He’d probably imagined it.

“Wow. And you’ve been shrunk for three days! You must be starving.”

“Yeah, I guess I am,” said Kaleb, lying. He felt angry for some reason, but he couldn’t figure out why that was. He decided to forget about it.

“Oh, you poor thing! Here, I’ll clean you up and get you something to eat.”

Without waiting for Kaleb’s response, Emilia roughly plucked him from the nightstand and carried him to the bathroom. Her fingers were a little moist and sticky, but well within manageable levels. He welcomed the soft, radiating warmth. The motion was surprisingly calm; she was clearly holding him with a good deal of care. Her face was bright with a combination of concern and curiosity.

Emilia shuffled into the bathroom, holding her hands as still as she could, and turned the faucet on with her elbow. She waited, to make sure the water was nice and warm, before easing her fist and the tiny being inside it into the stream.

It was absolute heaven. Kaleb basked in the warmth and soothing rush. He felt the grime being washed from his body and relaxed into the pillowy flesh that surrounded him.

Emilia began scrubbing him softly with the tip of her finger. At first, the experience was a little frightening, but she was surprisingly careful with her pressure. The repetitive motion was calming. For the first time in several days, he felt at ease.

He opened his eyes and saw Emilia’s face. She was looking back at him, her expression one of concentration and concern. She was an attractive woman.

Kaleb blinked and looked away. There was no way he could start thinking of her that way. She was at least a few million times his size. At best, she viewed him as a cute oddity.

Abruptly, the bubbling warmth of the water receded. Emilia drew her fist from the sink and turned it off.

“That was nice, wasn’t it?” she asked, smiling down at her tiny guest.

“Yes, it was. Can I have some food now, please?”

“Sure! Here, let me put you down somewhere while I go look for something your size.”

Emilia took him into the living room and set him down on the coffee table, before heading into the kitchen. She had a little jump in her step.

Kaleb recognized the table from the previous day. Emilia had deposited him near the edge closest to the couch, more or less where he’d woken up after that first terrible day. It was a little concerning, but Kaleb was confident that things wouldn’t go quite as badly this time around.

Emilia came back carrying a single cookie. She sat down on the couch, facing him, and snapped off a small piece of the pastry. She crumbled it up over his head, allowing a shower of cookie crumbs to fall around him. Though he didn’t feel especially hungry, Kaleb knew he probably needed to eat something, and started picking apart a nearby morsel. It was about a foot across to him. Not exactly a healthy meal, but it would have to do.

Emilia took a bite out of the remaining cookie, all the while staring intently at the shrunken human being on her coffee table.

“So what’ve you been doing for the past three days? At that size, it can’t have been a whole lot.”

Kaleb didn’t remember telling her how long he’d been this way, but decided to roll with it.

“Mostly just trying to survive and get your attention,” he said, tactfully neglecting to mention the close encounters he’d had so far.

“Oh, wait. I can’t hear you.” Emilia got onto the ground and turned her ear toward him. He repeated himself, shouting this time. This time she could hear him.

“You’ve been in my room for days and I never noticed you! Are you sure you were really trying?” she said, somewhat playfully.

“No, no, its just … that I’m not always the same size. Yeah, sometimes I’m even smaller than this,” Kalbe gestured to himself, “sometimes a little bigger, and I always seem to get unlucky in that department.” Again, he avoided mentioning his unfortunate experiences.

“Oh, okay. Huh. So, you’re saying that this isn’t as small as you get?”

“Uhh.” Her inflection concerned Kaleb a little. “No.”

“Ha! Any smaller than that and you’ll be too small for me to see!”

Kaleb realized that he could, indeed, become too tiny for her to see, even if she knew where to look. If that were to happen…

“I suppose that’s true, isn’t it? If that were to happen, it would be easy to lose me, though.”

Emilia paused in her chewing and thought about it. “Yeah…you know what? I’ll be right back.”

Emilia got up, and went to her bedroom, presumably to find something to help her find him if he got unlucky. Kaleb smiled to himself. Things were looking up.

But fate saw his smile and frowned back at him. He began to shrink.

“Fuck! Emilia! I’m getting smaller! Emilia!” Kaleb shouted into the ever-expanding open space, hopelessly trying to prevent what was apparently inevitable. Crushed by the pointlessness of his efforts, he sat down and waited it out.

By the time the shrinking spurt had ended, he stood at maybe a twentieth of an inch, though any attempt at estimating his height was shabby guesswork at best. The crumbs were several times his height now; he was no more than a speck of dust to any normal person.

At this size, he was able to detect Emilia’s movements as deep tremors in the ground, her steps downright geological in scale. Kaleb’s mind, unmuddied by motion sickness or odor, found the sensation horrifying. He collapsed into a fetal position and clapped his hands over his ears. He could feel the colossal vibrations through his skin.

Emilia came back to the coffee table, holding a shoebox. She spoke, but now the sound impossibly loud and low, a ship’s foghorn on steroids. Kaleb clapped his hands against his ears, and closed his eyes.

For a few seconds, Kaleb felt nothing but a wave of new, stronger tremors. He cracked one eye open.

Emilia loomed across the sky. She was immense, mountainous, dominating such a large part of his field of view that it was impossible to look at all of her at once. She bent down to take a closer look at him, her eyes scanning the tabletop. The air displaced by her motion became a gale, lifting him up and rendering him airborne.

Being so small, Kaleb’s body interacted with the air in unusual ways. For one, it was thick, dense enough for him to float through. He remained suspended in it, a mote of dust riding the minute indoor breezes. Somehow, he remained able to breathe without difficulty.

In addition, the heat generated by his body was quickly radiated out into the vast, empty expanse, leaving him cold and shivering within seconds.

This might be a preferable way to go. Hypothermia offered him more dignity than Emilia’s boot, even if it claimed him in the middle of summer.

But it wouldn’t happen today. Kaleb grew again, in time to save him from chill, and causing him to plummet back to the ground. By then, he’d floated beyond the coffee table and over the carpet, which now rushed up to meet him. Things had a habit of repeating themselves.

While Kaleb was recovering from his brush with death, Emilia continued to search for him on and around the coffee table. By chance, she checked behind the table, and saw a tiny, pale thing squirming on the rug.

“Oh, thank god, there you are!” she cried. “I thought you shrank!”

“I did, but just for a second,” said Kaleb, holding back the shakes.

“Here, I found a place to put you, so that you’re safe.” She held out the shoebox for his appraisal, but he was preoccupied with a minor nervous breakdown. Talking Kaleb’s silence for approval, Emilia carefully picked him up and placing him on the cardboard, and carrying the box to her bedroom. Along the way, she chattered anxiously.

“I was so worried! You’re so small and fragile and I couldn’t bear to lose you so soon after I found you, it would have been just heartbreaking! I’m sorry about the box, by the way, it’s the best I could find on short notice. I promise I’ll get you some felt or something to sleep on, and some actual food too. I’m not sure what we can do about clothes, though. Oh my god, it’ll be like having a little hamster!”

She looked down and grinned happily at him.

Kaleb, dazed by the emotional rollercoaster of the day and soothed by the soft rocking motion of her walk, risked a smile. He fell asleep.