Sarah shook her hand back and forth, causing me to swing violently as I bounced between her fingertips.  Each of them was larger than me on its own, and she was taking special care to keep them tightly clamped on my collar.  “You’re just so small!” she squealed, the higher pitch evident even with her enormous, booming voice.  “I love it!”  She left me dangling in front of her face, tossing me around while she jiggled her hand and giggled very so often.

She stood out of the chair, moving cautiously so that there was no risk of my collar sliding out of her grip.  Sarah strained her legs and back slowly, trying to build anticipation for when she reached her gargantuan height.  Unfortunately, several inches short of that her head banged into the ceiling, and she slumped down to recoil from it.  “Ow!” she exclaimed, rubbing her head where it had collided with the ceiling.  “Who the hell put that there?” 

After a quick glance at what she had ran into she looked back to me giddily.  “Dude, I’m enormous!” she declared, leaning into me with wide eyes.  She did not have to tell me, of course, but something about how excited she was made it even better.  “I can’t even stand up indoors anymore!  This is so cool!”

“I know!” I replied, matching her enthusiasm.  “You’re like twice as tall as I ever was!”

“Whoa, I am!” she responded, the comparison just now occurring to her.  “And you thought I was big when I was just a head taller than you.  Now even if you hadn’t shrunk I’d still tower over you.”  She paused for a moment, and somehow her eyes brightened and her smile got even wider.  “Oh man, I can’t wait to see everyone at school tomorrow!  They’ll be like ‘Sarah, we’re so sorry, we should’ve been nicer to you!’ and I’ll look down at them and be all ‘Ha ha ha, I’m gonna step on you, puny humans!’”  She did a passable but unnecessary impression of the Jolly Green Giant for herself, which strangely made me even more excited while imagining it.

“How big do you think you’ll get?” I asked.  “I mean, if I have a minimum size, you might have a maximum one.”

“Eh, maybe,” Sarah answered flippantly.  “I kinda hope there isn’t.  I’ve grown three feet in a day and it’s not even noon yet, a hundred feet isn’t really out of the question.”

“But Sarah…” I began.  I hated that I was about to curb some of her enthusiasm, but she needed to know my thoughts on it too.  “If you get that big you won’t even be able to see me with a magnifying glass or something.  I’m already puny compared to you, and if you get much bigger you won’t even be able to pick me up like this.”

“I thought that’s what you wanted, though?” she said, coming down a little.  “You’ve always wanted me to be gigantic, and now I can!”

“You already are to me, though,” I responded.  “I always wanted to be your tiny man, and for you to be my giantess.  That’s not what we’ll be if you get that huge, though.  You’ll be everyone else’s giantess, and I’ll just be some speck of dirt stuck beneath your fingernail.”  I sighed sadly before continuing, and she graciously paused to let me finish.  “We won’t be able to hang out, or talk, or play any fun games together.  You won’t be able to hold me or look down and laugh at how small I am by your foot.  And I won’t be awed by how big you are because I’ll be living on you somewhere until you absent-mindedly brush me off.  We won’t have any more fun, it’ll just be lame and you’ll forget about me.”

Sarah was silent longer than I expected, lids shut over her beautiful eyes.  When she opened them again water was brimming at the bottoms and she rapidly blinked to dissipate it.  “Is… is that how you really feel?” she asked, her booming voice quivering. 

“Yeah, it is,” I replied.  “You getting big enough to step on houses is cool and all, but I’d end up being nothing to you, and that…”  I trailed off, unable to think of how to properly express myself.

“Hey, cheer up!” Sarah said, giving me a quick shake.  “I’m really glad you told me before I got too big for you and it was too late, though I did kinda force the issue.  We’re partners, and I don’t want to do anything that’ll hurt you.  And when I think about it, you’re right.  We wouldn’t really be together anymore, we’d just be… two people of opposite sizes in the same place, you know?  Sure, I’d have my fun threatening to squish all the people who used to bully us, but I’d miss your company.  I guess I’m… I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.  You know how I can get carried away when I’m excited about something.”

Whew.  That could have gone sour real easily.  “Thanks for listening to my concerns.  I don’t mean to hold you back, it’s just that you’re so important to me, and if what we had went away I don’t think I’d be able to bear it.”

“I know I’m important to you,” Sarah replied, quickly getting her swagger back.  “I’m your giantess, after all.  You shrank because I wanted you to so that I could enjoy towering over someone so tiny.  Really, with you this small I don’t even need to grow any more.  I’d never take a thousand people running away from me when I could have you standing at my feet, eagerly waiting for me to step on you.”

“I think I had something to do with shrinking, too,” I corrected her.  “I’ve been fantasizing about you as a giantess for years but didn’t start getting smaller until I told you.  Seems like they might be connected to me.”

“See, that’s where you messed up!” Sarah exclaimed, proud to have tripped me up.  “You fantasized about me as a giantess, whereas I always wanted you to shrink.  There’s a big difference between a shrunken person and a giantess, which I’m sure you’re well aware of now.  Besides, you didn’t start shrinking until I told you about my dreams.  Sounds like you’re shrinking for me.”

“Well I told you first,” I shot back, “so clearly it’s for me!”

“Oh yeah?  Well you wouldn’t have had anything to tell me if I hadn’t outgrown you!” she retorted.  “I’m the whole reason for your dreams, so you’re just doing it because I want you to!”

“Maybe I kept myself short so that you’d be taller than me, ever think of that?” I asked.  “I wanted to be smaller than you, so I made sure it’d happen.”

Sarah lowered me until I was in front of the tip of her nose so she could focus on me while still dominating my vision with her amazing face.  “That doesn’t make any sense, dummy,” she whispered.  “You didn’t realize how much you wanted to be smaller than me until you were, so ha!  You’re tiny because I wanted you to be, not the other way around!”

“No, I’m pretty sure all that summer I was telling myself, ‘Sarah’s your best friend, and she’s going to have a growth spurt.  It’d be really awesome if she were taller than you, so stay short so that the next time you see her she is!’”

She gasped audibly and looked at me in shock.  “No you didn’t, stop lying!” she said, cracking a smile.  “You were horrified the first time you had to look up at me, I remember!  You were like ‘Oh no, Sarah’s taller than me, what am I gonna do?’ and I was like ‘Hello, little man!  Squish!’  I mean, not literally, but that’s how it went in my head.”

“Weirdly enough, that’s what I imagined happening right then!” I countered.  “I imagined shrinking real small under your gaze until you laughed and stepped on me, so it was my idea first!”

“That’s not how you told it the other day,” Sarah replied, her voice dripping with smugness.  “Besides, if we’re counting us imagining things, then I clearly win.  Back when I played with dolls I always imagined one of them was you.  I even named my favorite one after you and acted like it was my little boyfriend.”  I stared at her in surprise, and she gave me an arrogant look.  “Can’t beat that one, can you?”

“I…” I began, then swallowed heavily.  “I was jealous of your dolls because they got to spend so much time with you and get picked up by you.  I wanted to be one of them so badly.”

“Dude shut up, no you didn’t,” Sarah replied, shaking her hand so that I was thrown into her fingers.  “There’s no way you wanted to be one of my dolls.”

“I did, though,” I said, very seriously.  “There was even one that looked a little like me, so it wasn’t too difficult to picture myself in its place.”

“That was…”  A frog caught in Sarah’s throat, and she cleared it before continuing.  “That was my favorite one.  I liked it so much because it looked like you, and I could play like you were tiny.”  We were both quiet, looking at each other in solemn thought while we chewed on what we had just learned about each other.  Sarah finally broke the silence after a while, asking, “Have we seriously been doing this our whole lives?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I confirmed after mulling it over for a second.  “I’ve thought about you towering over me for so long I can’t imagine not doing it.  That first time I looked up at you I wasn’t horrified, I was amazed.  I thought that was the closest I’d ever come outside of my own head.”

Overwhelmed with emotion and not sure how to feel, Sarah opened her mouth to reply and closed it, then started laughing nervously before abruptly cutting it short.  After a few rounds of this she managed to center herself enough to speak.  “We’ve been best friends for years, though, we share everything.  Why didn’t one of us say something?”

“It was risky,” I replied.  “Put yourself in my shoes for a minute.  If I told you I always imagined I was one of your dolls and had recurring dreams where I was tiny at your feet and you weren’t into it, you would’ve thought I was a freak.”

“And you don’t have to put yourself in my shoes, because I’m gonna do it for you,” Sarah teased, “but I see your point.  If I told literally anyone else that I liked to picture them bug-sized in front of me, they would’ve run for the hills.  Guess I was worried you might do the same, and I didn’t want you to.”

I thought about it for a second.  “Are we freaks?” I asked, deciding the question was worth bringing up.

“Shit, probably,” Sarah answered quickly, as though she had been thinking the same thing.  “I mean, let’s look at the facts.  You’re an inch tall, and I’m over ten feet, and we’re both ecstatic about it.  I could squish you without a second thought and we’re dating.  Who cares if we’re freaks as long as we’re freaks together?”

“Hey, yeah!” I exclaimed.  “Why should I care what anyone else thinks as long as I have you?  I do wish we’d told each other a long time ago, though.  We could’ve shared dreams, played tiny and giantess or something, just had fun with it instead of worrying about getting judged.”

“That would’ve been neat, but why should that matter?” she replied.  “Right now I’m holding you in my hand like we both always wanted, and there’ll always be room for you in it.  It would’ve been neat to do all that stuff, but we’re living all the stories we’d tell each other anyway!  Plus,” Sarah raised her other hand and playfully batted me with a finger, starting me swinging again, “you imagined you were my favorite doll, so clearly you shrank for me.  I win.”

“Okay, you got me,” I conceded.  In truth I had forgotten we were even discussing that and was happy to let her have this victory.  “Pick your prize.”

“Well, you’ve been spending a lot of time in my mouth lately,” she started, “and since all your dreams seem to be about me eating you, that seems like something you really enjoy.  But since I always dream about squishing you and the last time you were down there you barely fit under my foot, I think it’s time we live out my fantasies, seeing as how you don’t want me to grow until I’m really a giantess.”

“You mean…”

“That’s right.  Your teensy self is about to spend a lot of time under my huge feet and there’s not a thing you can do about it.”