Part 2

He flailed and kicked and yelled, but to no effect.  Her hands abruptly lurched upward, faster and more abruptly than any theme park ride he’d ever been on.  Flattened to her hand, he saw the ground plummeting away through the gaps, suddenly five stories below him in only a second or two.  Blood drained from his head then rushed back, dizzying him.  He’d always been afraid of heights, and until now Mom had been the only one to carry him – and she’d always done so extremely gently, careful not to move too fast and always watching for a signal from him to stop.  And Mom also usually set him on a small plate or saucer and carried him on that, so he was a little more protected and didn’t have to look straight down or anything.

His sister, though, took a far more cavalier approach to handling him.  Her right hand lifted away; his feet had been propped against it, and for one harrowing moment his legs and backside slid forward, treacherously close to falling off her palm …

He cried out, twisted, clawed toward safety.  Her palm tilted back to help him, as it turned out; but he couldn’t have known it would.

“Oh, relaaaaax,” Elle quipped, rolling her eyes down at him from still multiple stories above him.  “I’m being careful with you.  You’re not gonna fall, unless you keep squirming like that.”  Her voice was still so loud, but not totally deafening now that the walls weren’t there to amplify it.

He splayed his limbs out along the thick skin and deep ridges of her palms, to lower his center of gravity as much as possible and find some stability as her hand carelessly swayed about.  Every time she shifted her stance even a little, it could have knocked him off his feet.  Everything about this was unnerving.

Once he felt relatively safe, he unleashed the full wrath of his voice on her.  “I’m gonna kill you for this!!  Or … or Mom’s gonna!!  You let me down right now, or it’ll be even worse!!!”

“Umm, what?” she retorted.  “All I hear is a bunch of little squeaks.  Like, what are you even saying?”

He responded by yelling even louder, sitting up, and gesticulating furiously at her and then at his room down below.

Elle snorted.  “You wanna go back in your little toy bedroom, huh?”  She cracked a little smirk.  “Nah.  You’re gonna help me and my friend Stacy for a little bit.  Don’t worry – I’m gonna put you right back afterwards, lil’ guy.”

He balled his fists.  “You put me back right now!!!  Or I’ll—“

Her right hand clamped down and cut him off from the outside world once again.  In frustration, he lunged up and slammed his fist into her palm as hard as he could.  Her flesh was firm and unyielding; he wondered if she even felt it at all.

Her hands heaved forward and side to side as deafening THUMPs resonated through her body and his.  She wasn’t being particularly careful to hold her hands steady in front of her, and he was buffeted about by the natural motion of her hands as she walked.  The glimpses he caught between her fingers were all familiar sights – blue and white wallpaper, the hallway bathroom he used to use, pictures on the wall of their family, even of him at full size – all of it blown up to freakish proportions, and whizzing by with alarming speed.