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The pane of glass rattled as the vintage oaken door opened once more. A pair of large breasts, tightly bound and insufficiently contained in a gingham frock, pushed through before the rest of the tall woman's body. "Sorry if we're late," she giggled, despite arriving alone.

An assortment of seats formed a rough circle in the center of what must've once been a largish dining hall for a wealthy family, over a century ago. This small mansion had since been converted into apartments and offices, and Full Moon Counseling had gained one of the latter. Rather than an ostentatiously long feasting table running down the length of the dark wood shelves, loaded with books and objets d'art, there was an ornate carved desk at one end of the room, away from the gathered chairs and loveseats. The owner of this desk sat at the circle, Ms. Barbara Moon, LPC, nearly lounging in the voluptuous upholstery of a comfortable, vintage office chair. It resembled a throne, between the craftsmanship of the seat and the bearing of the elegant, dusky woman perched in it.

She simply raised a dark eyebrow at the latecomer, a practiced subtle smile curling the corner of her puffy, rosy lips. "Please, Miriam," she said in a voice as thick as port, gesturing with feline grace to a purple velvet loveseat on her right. Miriam slunk to her place: a vast field of wildflowers printed on her dress trembled with every exaggerated tiptoe, a useless gesture completely lacking in subtlety. She spread out over most of the cushions as she plumped herself down, bouncing in her seat, trying to find a comfortable position for her bulk. Her hips throbbed and swelled, and her tremendous breasts performed two separate earthquakes within her dowdy dress. The overall effect was not wasted on at least one of the other participants, who gawked at her until his wife lightly stroked his back. The gawker blushed and coughed and trained his attention upon the Turkish rug, despite how the springs beneath Miriam's considerable rump cried out in agonized chorus.

Barbara waited as patiently as a statue for the ample woman to get comfortable, which was at last signaled by Miriam's simpering and cutesy apologies. "Very well. Good afternoon, everyone. We're all assembled, so I think we can begin. As this is our first session and we've yet to become the fast, close, intimate friends I anticipate"—Barbara paused for nervous laughter—"I think we should go around the room and introduce ourselves. Laura, would you like to start?"

A short, wiry blonde woman on the counselor's left sat up a little straighter, her pale eyebrows rising. "How much do you want to hear? Like, am I supposed to talk about why we're here?" Her voice was thin and strained.

"Just your names and a little something about yourselves."

The woman smoothed some strays in her kinky blonde hair, pulled back into a scrunchie. "Hello! My name's Laura Payne, and this is my husband, Rodney." She scooped up the tiny person resting in her lap and proffered him to the group. Rodney was a buff little man, well-toned muscles rippling over his three-inch body. He sat up in his wife's palms, raising his chin and waving at the other two couples. "As you can see, we're kind of outdoorsy, athletic types," she said with a forced laugh. "We love running and rock climbing, and Rodney's very into weight training."

"Is that so?" asked Barbara.

Rodney attempted to stand in his wife's palms but she wasn't able to hold her hands steady enough. He knelt instead and called out, "Yes, as a matter of fact, I have a state-level competition next weekend, if anyone here's interested. Depending on how I do there, I could go to national." The middle-aged woman on Laura's left leaned forward in her seat, eyes wide and intense. The little man on her knee who had gawked at Miriam now stared up at her.

"Oh, that's quite ambitious, sweetie. One step at a time," Laura said, chortling. Rodney looked back at her with a pained expression.

"I don't know, you seem ready to take on the world." Barbara's voice was silky and warm. "Why don't you show us a little of what you can do?"

Rodney looked over at the therapist, whose pillowy lips hinted at a smile. With a huff, Laura placed her husband upon a low glass table in the center of the group, claiming her arms were getting tired. The muscular little man kicked aside a couple tabloid publications and began to stretch. Today he wore miniature charcoal dress trousers and a black Bundeswahr tank top, and his dark hair was cropped close to his scalp. With a sharp grin he flung up his arms, showing off his deltoids and traps. He rotated slowly upon the table, working through a sequence of poses, curling his arms this way and that, throwing out one leg or drawing his limbs in tightly.

Laura coughed quietly. "Honey, I think that's enough, now." But the middle-aged woman disagreed, her long, sandy hair falling in thick whorls about her husband as she leaned forward to study the demonstration. Barbara cleared her throat and writhed in her seat slightly, crossing and uncrossing her legs as the tiny muscle groups bulged, stretched, and shuddered with shocks of power not far from her bare, sun-kissed knees. Only Miriam seemed disengaged, regarding the tiny weightlifter politely but otherwise preoccupied. She appeared to mutter to herself during the show, tucking her chin into the start of her cleavage and kissing the air as she whispered.

At last, Rodney tugged up his tank top and showed off his washboard abs, in miniature, garnering enthusiastic applause from Barbara and the older woman on Laura's left, and some eye-rolling from the besweatered, bespectacled man on her knee. Laura retrieved her husband and sat back in her chair.

"That was spectacular, little man," Barbara announced. She glanced around at the other people. "No one else has to put on a little show like that, if you're feeling intimidated." She laughed, as did the middle-aged woman and Miriam; Laura only pet her husband roughly, ignoring his protests. "Now, how about you, Margaret?"

The middle-aged woman smiled a wide, warm, smile. Her eyes were soft and tired and wise, and her hair flowed like honey from her scalp and over her shoulders. She relaxed in her seat to prominently display her own tiny man, a lean and fashionably scruffy little fellow in meticulous miniature glasses and a classic beige sweater with leather elbow pads. Together they appeared very scholarly and cultured, but there was a tug in her smile and a slump in his shoulders that hinted at something more.

"My name's Margaret Kelley," she said. "This is Lionel." He raised a hand and smiled, staring a little too long at the massive heap of woman on the loveseat. "We've been together since high school. We have three lovely children, two young women and a young man, who have finally made their way off to college."

"Congratulations!" Laura chirped.

Margaret grinned at her languidly. "I'm afraid we're the classic empty-nesters. All these years we've been looking forward for this moment, and now it's just the two of us in this big, empty house by the lake." She shrugged and ran two fingertips down her husband's arms. "I'm a freelance editor, and Lionel is an adjunct professor with the university. Mostly online, of course."

Barbara beamed at them, tapping a pen against the arm of her stuffed chair. "An editor, how interesting! What's your specialty?"

For a moment, Margaret's eyes flashed and lost their weariness. She smiled, tilted her head, and parted her teeth to draw a long, stalling breath. "Erotica," she said, glancing at the muscular little man in Laura's clutches. This, over Lionel's head and behind his back.

"And you're a professor," called out Miriam. Her bosom heaved over her forearms folded in her lap. "What do you teach?"

Lionel's tiny head shook abruptly as he tore his gaze from the deep chasm of her cleavage and looked up into her weak smile and washed-out eyes. "I, uh, that is... Etruscan−" he started, before his wife's long, slender index finger wound around his head and muffled him.

"Don't get him started," she said, smiling. "He'll go on for the rest of our session, and then some." She laughed, and Laura lightly touched her shoulder and made a comment about little men who need to much attention. In response, Margaret raised her head and looked down her nose at the small, indignant man straddling Laura's lean, yoga-panted thigh. "Well, some people demand a lot of attention," she murmured, "and some people naturally command it. Don't you agree?" The smile wavered on Laura's face, while Rodney's tiny, dark eyes glittered at the middle-aged woman.

Licking her teeth, Barbara turned attention away from the couple across from her and to the large woman on her right, all on her lonesome. "And now we come to you, Miriam. But it looks like you arrived without your partner?"

"Oh, that!" Miriam's body shuddered as she laughed. "No, he's here! I don't go anywhere without my little Brent!" Before anyone knew what was going on, the large woman thrust her pudgy hands deep into her own cleavage, appearing to struggle to heave her own breasts apart. "Come on out now, it's time for introductions!"

Lionel could ogle her freely now, as everyone stared with slack jaws at the dumpy, plain woman pawing her own chest. Miriam tilted her head, and limp and curly hair slipped down her rounded shoulder to spill over one immense boob. "Oh, are you stuck? Silly little man! Guess it's up to me to rescue you from my body, once again!" She laughed and comically rolled her eyes at the other participants. Bending at the waist, her belly flattened and spread over her chunky thighs as she exposed the chasm between her abundant boobs to the room.

"Miriam, really!" Barbara vacillated between amusement and shock, or so she transmitted to the group.

"Come on out of there, don't be shy!" Miriam crowed like a circus barker. She clutched the low-cut neckline and gave her boobs a vigorous shake.

Margaret shot Laura a glance. "This is bordering on obscene," she hissed, but Laura only gabbled wordlessly, staring at the flabby, dancing spheres, unable even to blink. As for Rodney and Lionel, they too gazed into the abyss and, after a moment, discovered it gazed back. A round smudge of pale flesh emerged from the recesses of Miriam's summer frocks, within the plunging, inky cavern of her cleavage. The smudge grew thick, dark glasses frames and sprouted a wiry tuft of brown hair atop an expression of resentment. It was followed by a damp plaid shirt and dark green chinos: a tedious, plain, and frustrated little man carefully stepped out of the darkness and picked his way across the shaky platform of Miriam's dress interior. Finally freed, he took two steps upon the broad, bare knee that emerged from beneath her dress and leaped, clearing the distance from the loveseat to the coffee table. The little man stumbled, skidding on a magazine, but righted himself.

"I could do that," muttered Rodney.

"You've met Miriam," the nebbishy man called out, straightening his outfit and smoothing his hair, "and Miriam being Miriam, it won't occur to her to make introductions. My name is Brent Little, and before you start, I've heard all the jokes." He raised a hand as though he were large enough to ward off anything the group could toss his way. It was a futile gesture, and all he could do was nod as the puns flew over his head like gunfire. "That's right, get it all out."

Miriam straightened up like a massive, mythological monster and made cursory adjustments to her neckline, ensuring it still showed off plenty of mammary. "There's no need to be rude, little Brent," she sniffed. Margaret chuckled, despite herself. "I just wanted to make sure you felt comfortable being out here at all."

"Of course I wanted to come out!" His voice was sharp and surprisingly loud. "I hate riding in there, it's frankly humiliating!"

Miriam leered at Margaret and Laura. "Oh, he loves it, don't listen to him." She did not notice Lionel licking his lips and folding his hands before his crotch. "I needed to be confident that you would be present here, you know, really make an effort at this group therapy thing."

Brent stamped his foot, a dull thud against the vast glass plate. "It was my idea! Christ, Miriam, are you seriously trying to redirect the narrative before we even get started?"

Barbara had been straining to stifle a fit of giggles behind her hand, but now she cleared her throat and waved her arms. "Okay, okay, everyone. We've made introductions, that's a great start."

"But we didn't say what we do!" Miriam whined.

Up went Barbara's sculpted eyebrows. "By all means."

"You go ahead," Miriam said, poking her husband with a thick, sausage-like finger crowned in a thick, acrylic French nail tip. He yelped and swatted uselessly at the meaty digit, yelling that he was an accountant for a law firm and couldn't talk much about it. "And I'm a kept woman!" Miriam's cheeks practically inflated as she grinned happily at the group. "My little guy earns so much, all I have to do all day is lie around, eat ice cream, and watch my stories!"

"That was my first guess," whispered Laura to Margaret, earning a playful swat from her neighbor. Rodney grinned up at her and told her it was a good one, until he spotted Barbara glaring at them.

"That's very good, everyone," she said steadily, slightly louder than indoor volume. "Thank you for being forthcoming. I'm sure we all learned quite a bit about each other, didn't we? And now−"

"Hold on," piped up a tiny voice. "You didn't talk about yourself. Aren't you going to take a turn?" Laura blushed and tried to cover her little husband, but Rodney batted her fingers away.

"I'm not married," said Barbara. She shook her head in disbelief.

"Of course, but I think we'd all like to learn a little about you," returned Lionel, nodding at Rodney.

That got two raised eyebrows from her. She then turned to Brent.

"What they said." Brent buttoned and unbuttoned his top shirt button and avoided the sultry therapist's gaze. "And stop that," he yelled at his wife who was leaning over the table, clapping her breasts and making om-nom-nom noises at him.

"I don't know how much there is to say," Barbara started, sitting up straight and resting her hands upon her knees. "I went straight into college from high school, earned all A's, and got my licensure as quickly as I could. I apprenticed at another clinic for a few years, but happened to show up at the right time when office space in this old mansion became available." She looked around the room, up at the ceiling, showing off the graceful neck beneath thick, rich waves of mahogany hair. "It just happened that the former owner was an Anthropole as well and, when he learned about my specialty—counseling to mixed-size relationships—he cut me a deal on office space. What can I say?" She shrugged and grinned at her clients. "Charmed existence. Now then, are we ready to start a real conversation?" She made a show of glancing at her watch, though a large, ivory analogue clock was positioned on the wall behind Margaret and Lionel.

Margaret glanced at Laura and Miriam, then asked, "How do we start?"

"I thought we'd try a round of icebreakers."

Lionel looked up at his wife and laughed. "That wasn't the icebreaker?" She smirked and covered his face in a kiss.

"These are just little exercises," Barbara continued, "to learn more about each other. And it's not just for the benefit of each couple, obviously. We'll all be sharing with each other, as a group."

"And you will too!" cried Rodney.

"Oh, Rodney. You're not going to give me any trouble, are you?" Barbara uncrossed her legs, briefly exposing the shadowy chasm between her thighs to the muscular little man. "Because I'm as well-versed in group counseling and emotional healing as I am in discipline, positive and negative." She recrossed her legs and ground her thighs together, muscles tensing beneath her sheath skirt. "And you all signed a waiver to attend these sessions," she added, eyeing Lionel and Brent for good measure, "or you had them signed for you, as the case may be. Now, I don't suppose any of you bothered to actually read the terms to which you are now legally bound, did you?"

The women exchanged nervous glances. If the men had anything to say, no one noticed.

Barbara's teeth glinted in a catlike smile. "There's nothing to worry about, I assure you. I like to tease everyone, just for a moment, to throw particularly rigid people off-balance and to open up everyone's minds. You all have every reason to anticipate that these are going to be some very interesting, unusual sessions together." Barbara's knee-high beige scrunch boots had very long, thin heels, and she twisted her foot gently upon one of these: Rodney and Brent stared at this action, momentarily frozen with tension, while Lionel was too far to see, with the coffee table in his way.

"Now, then," iterated the therapist. "Icebreakers. Ready? Favorite ice cream: go."

"Oh, um, me?" said Laura. "Well, we don't each much ice cream, to be honest. Once in a while, during the summer, w might have a frozen yogurt. But it's not really our thing, what with the fats and empty carbs."

"Butter brickle!" yelled Rodney, grinning up at Barbara. The group tittered.

"Good job playing ball, Rodney," Barbara purred. "Margaret?"

"I don't want to come off as high-maintenance," she said, "but there's one particular flavor I like the best. It's a cherry ice cream, but the ice cream is white. It's just flavor. And there are broken plates of chocolate embedded in it, along with chunks of cherry. It's a combination of the textures, biting into a crispy cherry and feeling the chocolate shatter between my teeth, that's what I love about it."

Lionel stared up at her. "I had no idea that was your favorite," he said.

She rolled her eyes. "What you don't know about me, sweetie..." His tiny shoulders sank as he turned to the group, but before he could announce his preference, his wife cut in: "Dark chocolate brownie, with hot fudge."

He laughed and coughed. "Well, she has to get it for me, so I guess she'd know." The group chuckled politely at this.

"I just like them all!" exclaimed Miriam. "I haven't met an ice cream I don't like! But you know what they need to make?" She leered at Barbara, who was sure she hadn't the slightest idea. "Little Man Ice Cream! Think about it! French vanilla ice cream, chocolate chunks, peanut butter swirls, and every once in a while you dig out a tiny little man!"

Margaret and Laura exchanged glances.

"And you can suck on him for a while," Miriam said, plucking up her screaming husband by his ankle and dangling him into her mouth. "Mmm! And you can hold him in your mouth and let him thaw," which she did, with her fully clothed and hot-blooded husband. "And then after that, who knows? You can eat him," she said, snapping her teeth at his flailing limbs, "or you've got another mouth that can eat him." Blushing cutely, she plucked at the hem of her skirt and lowered the shrieking, fighting little man between her fat knees.

"Not here! Not here, for Christ's sake!" Brent twisted furiously between her fingertips as he disappeared into the bulging valley of her thighs.

Barbara cleared her throat. "Please, Miriam, that's quite enough."

Miriam pouted and tossed her husband roughly to the coffee table. "But I thought this was couples counseling. How d'you think couples get started?" She winked broadly at Margaret and Laura.

Producing a tissue from nowhere, Barbara leaned forward from her recliner and began to mop the moisture from Brent's clothing. He insisted he could get it, but she insisted right back that she take care of this, shooting Miriam a dark look. "There is a time and place for such behavior, Mrs. Little. I will ask you to respect my sanctum or you will be asked to leave, without a refund."

Miriam's jaw worked a couple times but no sounds came out. Finally she harrumph'ed and slumped back into the loveseat, seemingly unaware of the wide canyon of inner thighs she exposed toward Rodney. Rodney noticed and made a show of perching on his wife's knee and turning to face her; Lionel noticed and Margaret noticed how he couldn't stop noticing.

"And," Barbara continued. "We're not done yet. Everyone? I'll wait." That got the room's attention, if for no other reason than they all thought themselves above being spoken to like unruly children. Miriam bought into it, looking abashed as she sat up and futilely tugged her skirt into place. Margaret and Lionel stared at the therapist with matching furrowed brows, matching expressions of disbelief. Yet while Laura looked cowed, Rodney only fell into a respectful silence while looking resentful as hell, which was still hard to take seriously on even a muscular man of four or five inches tall.

Barbara let the obedient silence rest for a moment, fixing each pair with her gaze in turn. "All right, next project: share something funny that happened to you as a child," she announced.

There was another moment of silence, but this one was thoughtful and searching rather than how dare you-ish. "Huh," said Rodney. Margaret asked, "So, like, second grade?" "I hardly remember," said Brent, glancing up at Miriam, who wanted to ask why her husband couldn't recall his childhood. Lionel had the urge to ask his wife where she went to elementary school, yet didn't want to be publicly shamed for not knowing yet another important fact about his spouse of thirty years.

Barbara looked among the group members. "I'm absolutely not going to volunteer anything about myself until some of you have gone."

Though the counselor wasn't looking at her, Miriam raised her hand slightly. "I think I've got one. Or how young are we talking about?" Barbara thought she would allow anything through the teenage years. "Okay. Well, there were these woods behind my school, and they were full of dirt trails for kids on their bikes, but on the weekends no one would go there, so I could take quiet walks there." Brent stared up at her and said she'd never told him this.

"I just liked to get away somewhere quiet," she said. "My parents fought a lot, and I didn't have any friends to go to the mall with. I was almost as big as I am now. I was almost as tall and almost as big around. You can imagine how popular that made me with the other kids." She smoothed her skirt over her enormous thighs, then slightly lifted one arm to stare at it. "I'd go walking in the woods. It was nice and quiet, these trees on the edge of the suburb, just squirrels and little brown birds. LBBs, I called them.

"One day I found someone else in the woods, a boy a few grades below me. If this was..." She thought about it. "I was in eighth grade and he was in fifth. I was weaving sticks together to make this kind of thing that exploded when you threw it, but I looked up and he was standing behind me, kind of hiding behind some trees, with his pants down. I just stood up and walked over to him. He didn't run away, just stared at me like he was scared, his little hand on his little penis." Miriam looked guiltily at the therapist. "I sucked him off. I wasn't even sure what I was doing, it just seemed natural. It just started with a little kiss, the head of his dick sticking out of his fist. I kissed it, and when he let it go I sucked it into my mouth and worked it with my tongue."

Margaret wore the shade of a smile on her face, while Laura looked horrified. Conversely, Lionel covered his mouth with one hand and Rodney perched on his wife's knee, staring in fascination. Brent tried to wave for his wife to bring over one of her hands for him to hold, but she shook her head. "It's okay. I licked at him, and he came in my mouth, and I guess I swallowed it. I just sat there, kneeling on the ground, and he pulled up his pants and walked away, and then I went home."

Barbara asked, "Were the kids cruel about it, at school?"

Miriam shook her head again. "He never told anyone and I didn't either. No one ever knew until you guys, right now. I saw him once or twice after that but we never talked."

"Would you have done it again?" Rodney asked. Laura tucked her middle finger behind her thumb and thwapped him fairly hard upon the back of his tiny skull.

"I don't know." Miriam's fat bottom lip pushed out. "I really don't know. I didn't want to date him or anything. It was just kind of a thing that happened."

Margaret asked, "Do you think about him, ever?" Brent looked into Miriam's eyes as best he could.

"Sometimes. When I'm sucking on you," she told her husband. "When I take you into my mouth... this sounds bad, but you kind of feel like him. I'm sorry." He looked stricken and he swore quietly. "No, no, sweetie, it's a good thing. That moment, I've never felt raw, wild passion like that. It was like the rest of the world shut down and we were two moving parts in a big machine that came together for that moment. I don't even think I'd want it again, it wouldn't be the same. But holy fuck, yes. I think about it once in a while." Finally she reached out for her husband and rested him upon one huge breast. He didn't fight or complain: he sat upon her wobbly flesh and tried to look into her face, but she only turned away to stare at the bookshelves.

"That was very, very brave of you, Miriam," said Barbara. "I'd like to remind everyone here that anything they say must be treated with utmost confidentiality. And just because you heard something here doesn't mean the person talking about it is necessarily comfortable talking about it with you, so please try to respect that. But thank you, Miriam. Now, Brent, what does that story mean to you? Does it show you anything about your wife that you didn't know before?"

Brent shifted to look at the therapist. His tiny shoes skidded over the soft, pale field of Miriam's breast. "I guess? I mean, I think so, but I don't know how to say it without sounding insulting." Miriam gasped and strained to look down at her husband.

"Well, framing it like that, Brent, I think it's okay if you took an attempt at it." Barbara's smoky eyes flickered up to Miriam's face. "Is that okay, Miriam? Do you understand that your husband may not have the vocabulary for what he's feeling right now? We women tend to do the emotional heavy-lifting for men, which leaves them a little stunted in their development." She smiled. "No pun intended."

"I guess," whispered Miriam. She planted her fists in the loveseat cushions, and her diminutive husband rose and fell slowly with her deep breath.

Brent winced under the pressure of all eyes turning to him. "I don't want this to sound mean at all. I'm not trying to disrespect you, honey. You know I love you."

"Out with it, Brent," urged Barbara.

"Okay. Okay." The tiny man also took a deep breath. "Frankly, this kind of shows me where you get your sexual appetite from. It looks like you've always been wired for freaky sex."

"Christ," whispered Rodney, and Brent glanced at him. "What, am I wrong?" he asked plaintively. "It's not a bad thing! It just... sometimes I wondered. You can be a little overwhelming sometimes, and I didn't know whether that was you or me. I haven't been with," he started, then choked on his words. Miriam swiped him off her tit and kissed him, sucking his entire head between her lips. She giggled at the saliva coating his face and licked it off, once, briefly, and he hugged her thumb.

"I dunno, that just seems like a ballsy kinda thing to say in front of everyone," Rodney said.

"I think you just volunteered to go next, Rodney." Barbara grinned at him, and Linda looked down in surprise.

The muscular little man cursed but smiled back. "Okay, all right. There is something funny I used to do when I was a kid." He motioned to his wife, who picked him up and reached for the coffee table. "No, no, just around me," he said. Laura looked surprised, but she placed him upon her thigh and cupped her palms gently around him.

"I used to be this girl's pet, see."

"Oh, no, not this," said Laura, glancing at Barbara. "This story's going to get us in trouble."

The therapist shook her head, dark brown hair shimmying with a deliciousness inappropriate to the moment. "If you'd all read your waivers, you'd know that I'm not required to report anything to the authorities that, in my professional opinion, doesn't constitute a serious and present risk to your health or the welfare of anyone you know. I know some of what we're going to say may sound kind of shocking, but if someone has something they really want to share, I think it could be a useful bonding experience." Barbara's smirk did nothing to comfort Laura, but Rodney took it as a good sign.

"So I was a girl's pet. We were about the same age, that is, after I bonded with her we were about seven years old. You ladies know how that works?" Margaret and Barbara nodded but Miriam looked confused. "We tiny people—I guess the PC term is Anthropoles, now—we only live about five or six years on our own, out in the wild. But if we bond with one of you Bigs, and bonding is some kind of, I dunno, special emotional attachment? Then we start to catch up to speed with you and can live as long as you do."

"Have you bonded with me?" Miriam asked Brent. He waved her off and said he'd explain later.

"Her folks got me at a pet store−"

"You're a 900?" Lionel blurted.

Rodney gave him a dark look but nodded. "That's another story, but yeah. They got me at the pet store, she picked me out because I looked like her age, and then I became her living, breathing toy. I don't think she understood what Tinies... Anthropoles really were, but she knew to be careful with me, kept me fed and all that good stuff, put me away at night." He paused and ran his palm over Laura's thumbnail. "Usually. Sometimes she let me sleep with her, and it's not what you're all thinking right now, all right? We were kids. It was sweet and innocent."

"I'm sure no one's judging you now, Rodney," Barbara said. She checked everyone else's expressions.

"I'd just lie next to her pillow or whatever. But some nights, I got a little restless or curious, and I'd go walking. I didn't jump down to the floor, because the family also had this Schnauzer that was just a prick. They couldn't let him anywhere near me, they couldn't convince him I was part of their family. I was always just a snack to those shiny, soulless black eyes." Rodney tugged at Laura's thumbs, and she wrapped her hands closely around him. "So I'd go walking around her little bed, like, over the sheets or under them. Don't gimme that look," he snapped at Margaret.

Everyone turned to see what she was doing. She shrugged and swore she hadn't a thought in her mind.

"My favorite thing was to walk all around her body, like, put my right hand against her shoulder and start walking, never leaving contact with her. I thought of myself as her guard, I guess." His smile was lopsided and embarrassed. "And I'd walk around her and pull guard duty, making sure everything was okay, no one was coming to steal her or whatever, you know? But spent extra time around her feet. I'm not one of those guys, she just had really cute feet. I don't think that's too big a leap for anyone here to make." He looked around at the group, from the hole in the top of the shelter of Laura's hands.

"And I didn't do anything weird, right? I just... talked to them."

Brent laughed nervously. "And what did they say?"

"No, no, I just talked to them, like, 'Nice night, ladies,' or 'How's she treatin' ya?' Like parts of her body could talk and I was checking in with them." He looked down. "It was just a game I played. I was bored. She kept me in a box most of the day, and I'd get to play with her in the evenings or have breakfast with her before she went to school, but I'd get bored. So at night I'd visit her feet and just kinda cuddle them. Nothing weird, there's nothing wrong with a hug, is there? I was just a kid, after all, I didn't know from nothing." His head began to sink in the igloo formed by his wife's hands. "And maybe I practiced kissing on them. I thought it would be important to learn how to kiss, and her toes were really pretty."

"You did this all while she was asleep?" Margaret asked. Lionel seemed particularly shielded by how her honey-blonde hair fell around him.

"This was a funnier story when I first told you about it," Rodney said to his wife. She shushed him and covered him completely, looking entreatingly to the counselor.

"I think that's our time for today," Barbara said, shifting in her seat.


 

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