Madison

"I thought you said you could drive!" Madison swooshed her arm up in front of her face when the old banger of aunt Kaya barely missed a honking, oncoming cab. Its driver shook his fist, accompanied by a glare that spoke: Are you out of your goddamn mind!

"I can! I just need to get the kinks out." Claire yanked the steering wheel back into the direction of their own half of the road. The tires screeched like pork as Claire was forced to hit the brake when a few nuns took a hesitant attempt to walk the zebra crossing.

"Lots of kinks then…," Madison said.

When Claire brought the car to a complete stop, and her hand made an obtrusive gesture to urge them to walk, they walked.

One of the nuns gaped at the youthful lady sitting behind the wheel with incredulity before shooting her eyes in front of her again when Claire gave the woman a dirty look.

The car stuttered like a jammed phonograph as Claire hit the gas after forgetting to place the poke in the right gear.

"Oh my god…." Madison mumbled.

"What! Do you want to try it!" Claire spat as the wheels screeched through a sharp curve.

"The right! To the right here, Claire. The freeway's that way!" Madison pointed.

"I know! I know!" a car honked and screeched to a stop when Claire raced through a red traffic light.

By the time aunt Kaya's jerry-rigged Renault 4 hit the freeway, Madison took a breather and dared to lean back in her chair. Claire was finally hitting her stride.

"Wow! That was… something," Madison said while looking at her sister with incredulity.

Claire snorted. "Whatever. Hey listen, how come you're so sure about Mom?" Claire asked.

Madison shrugged. "She was acting strange lately."

Claire chuckled. "Mom always acts strange."

"I know, but things just didn't add up. And she lied to me."

"About what?"

"About her not hurting the Lillis. You, on the other hand, came clean about it."

"Yeah…" Claire mumbled as she kept her eyes on the road before her, thinking about the devastation she caused in Madison's city.

"I still loath it, but honesty is something I can respect," Madison added.

"It haunts me, you know. Ashley, during the night. I wish I had done otherwise, Maddy. I truly do."

"I believe you, Claire. But still… you like it, don't you? The power you have over them." Madison looked over at her older sister. The latter remained silent while driving.

"I saw the look in your eyes that day, right before you… It was the same look I saw with Vianna. God! How could I have been so stupid!"

"Vianna?" Claire looked at her kid sister with a cocked brow. "You hang out with that girl? I know her sister. She's nothing but trouble."

"Tell me about it," Madison said. "Say, can this thing go any faster?"

Claire gave a wry smile. "You mean faster than this snail's pace? Ha! If it could, it would already go."

Madison gave a deep sigh, pulled her knees up to lean her feet on the dashboard, rested her head on her hand and took in the outside scenery passing by at roughly 70 mph. She hoped they would still be in time.

Sophie

Snuggly nestled between two soaring ridges lay the ancient city of Southford. 1200 years of history bore the town when a bunch of nomadic Brobdingnagians decided to raise a settlement at this very place. No word in the documented history of that time spoke about the existence of either humans or lilliputians. They were there, though. Both of their races. And the Lilliputians were most likely the most ancient ones of all three of them. The study of pinpointing the exact timeframe whereby Brobdingnagians came in first contact with the other species was controversial.

The most widely accepted one – and the one taught at school – was the belief that it was about 300 years ago when a famous explorer got stranded on a remote island where he'd found people small as grains of sand.

On the other hand, there was also hard archeologic evidence that some tribes of the three species even coexisted as far as 2000 years ago – and some claimed that they lived even more peacefully mingled with each other compared to today's time.

Crested on top of a hill, with one of her boots resting on a rock, Sophie observed the head city of the Brobdingnagians down below.

A long river snaked along Soutford's eastern end to vanish in a gap of a mountain range surging beyond it.

Nearly 4 million people lived in the Brobdingnagian's power center. And a good chunk of them were influential ones. Brobdingnagians that had a thick finger in the pie during key decisions that impacted the lives of the more ordinary citizens, like Sophie.

Today she was going to change that. Because today was the day that these same people would learn how it felt to be forced to dance to someone else's beck and call. Hers.

For many years, Sophie has yearned to deliver the people in power a taste of their own medicine.

She'd practiced the art of oppression all of her life to make others do things only she wanted – whether they liked it or not. It was not hard to do while dealing with significantly smaller creatures than you. Thinking about the countless hours of leisure she'd enjoyed while forcing the humans to work on a never-ending list of chores – like painting her toenails or holding her pencil during homework – always conjured a smile of contentment on Sophie's face.

It was so enjoyable to have a reason to reprimand one of those filthy humans when they failed to satisfy her needs.

And when they did live up to Sophie's expectations – and the compelling need was there to punish – she'd simply increased her demands to the point that it became impossible for them to fulfill. That is where the fun part really started. Sophie loved the torturous ordeals that followed for these humans when they failed to paint her nails correctly according to her high demanding wishes. It was pretty joyful to act like a displeased mistress when faced with a pack of groveling dust mites. Cruel is what she was, and cruel is what she aimed to be.

It was delightful for young Sophie when she'd gained access to people even smaller than humans, the lilliputians. It gave her a foretaste of what it would be like to unleash her wrath on a 'large' scale. No longer would the tip of her finger or toe be only capable of cracking a human's chest. No, it could topple whole structures, entire skyscrapers even, with just a flick of her nail.

Her body was so incredibly massive compared to them, like an outstretching, vast landscape that took weeks of traveling if a lilliputian's wish was to journey from Sophie's head to toe. Each action from her side would feel like an intervention from the planet itself for these insignificant and wretched lilliputians.

Sophie could rain her wrath upon the lilliputians from such a height that the Lillis carried a strong belief the holy God herself cast this divine retribution upon them. And in a few moments, Sophie would be granted the opportunity to let off her steam upon those decadents of Southford too. Those faces must be priceless when their whole city ended up small enough to act as a collectors item in her bedroom.

"Stepping up the game, aren't we?"

Sophie looked behind her over her shoulder and gave Gard a curt smile before bringing her attention back to Southford, laying in the distance amply lower than the hilltop they were crested upon. A sudden change in de wind's direction flapped Sophie's dress tightly around her curvy legs, accentuating their stately forms. Gard and his lackey standing beside him could do nothing less than admire this woman's beauty displayed so sensually. Gard's eyes wandered shamelessly along Sophie's seductive-looking bareback. A gust of wind made Sophie's hair flap, revealing the creamy white of her smooth shoulders.

"You aren't surprised to see me," Gard said more like a statement than a question.

Sophie gave a faint chuckle. "I'm more surprised by the fact that you seem to be able to produce whole sentences without stuttering. Received some therapy lately, Gard?" she peeked at him over her shoulder with a sly, tempting smirk that made Gard's heart skip a few beats.

"I'm not the boy you used to know, Sophie," Gard said.

"And yet you act like him," Sophie turned around, eyeing the two patsy's who did their utmost to act like tough cops. Placing her hands on her hips, Sophie scrutinized them with deep disdain. Gard retard was doing a good job maintaining his sturdy demeanor. But the other one – an apparently clear rookie – looked back at her the same way a freshman would while gaping at an insanely hot senior girl.

He's already broken, and the other needs only a tiny nudge. Sophie thought.