I walked ahead, hugging the wall, a sheet of white stretching miles above and before me. That was the rule – if I were to traverse the apartment by myself, I had to do so as close to the wall as possible, for safety reasons. Said rule was given to me by my caretakers when I became small enough, too small to walk on my own without at least a degree of caution. In exchange, they promised to follow a rule of their own, namely that they would watch their step, although I couldn’t quite say they adhered to it all the time. Or at least Maddie did not; I could count on Justine, her kindness and gentle, watchful eye. And although I was now too small to see her face clearly from all the way down there, I could always tell she would notice me.

The road to the kitchen was long and not without peril, as I just mentioned. It wasn’t easy to trek through a hard, seemingly endless floor of the hall, always at risk of being passed by one of those thousand-mile-tall young women, the feet of whom would shake my entire being just by them taking a step near me. And if I weren’t clutching to the walls on my journeys, those encounters would’ve been even more perilous, if not outright deadly. In moments like these I couldn’t help but imagine what would be written on my tombstone. Andrew Newt, aged twenty-six, died from… Well, from what? How to put it without damaging whatever was left of my dignity at this sorry state? How about… Died from being in a wrong place at a wrong time. Perfect. And in a wrong size. Insensitive, but not entirely untrue.

I wished I could stop and get some rest. But aside from being hard, the floor was cold. Unbearably cold, despite it being mid-Spring. I suppose the temperature just gets lower when you’re so close to the ground. Or you can’t deal with it like you’d normally do when you’re this small. The point is, the floor was too cold to stay in one spot for too long and even though my legs began to hurt at that point, I pressed on. I only wished I had some footwear on me. Justine was kind enough to supply me with a sort of a tunic to wear, which she crafted from a piece of bright-purple cloth (so that I’m easily visible, she said), but my feet were now simply too small to make any shoes for me. Funnily enough, it didn’t bother me to walk around the place barefoot before, when I was still a bit bigger. Or maybe I just ignored my feet aching while I was too busy dealing with gradually dwindling away.

Speaking of shoes. As I reached the front door to our place, now being a foot (from a normal person’s perspective) or so from the entrance to the kitchen, my attention turned to two massive objects standing nearby. They were blue, each the size of a ship, with thick ropes as wide as tree-trunks hanging from their fronts. Justine’s shoes,  size 10 if I recalled correctly. Her being a tall girl, it was only natural her feet would be big too, even more so when you looked at them while being barely half an inch tall, just as I was then. Normally, I’d pay no attention to her footwear lying around, but now I was almost mesmerized. I was still in shock from seeing household objects magnified to impossible proportions like this, still getting used to how the world of the giants looked from my perspective. My imagination began to run wild once more, as I realized her single shoe would be as spacious to me as a mansion, if I decided to move in and live inside it. Although why would I do that in the first place eluded me for the moment. But then I imagined the inevitability of Justine putting her foot in one day and whatever wish I had to get into her shoes immediately vanished.

I decided to focus on the task at hand and the reason of my journey, namely getting to the kitchen and having something to eat. Which might not have been an ambitious assignment, if not for the circumstances. I knew I could expect a small platter with whatever the giantesses deemed suitable for me to eat today lying on the floor, so that I could reach its contents. But before I could enter the kitchen, there was yet another rule to follow. Stop. Look inside. Make sure its safe to enter, then (and only then) go in. I stopped by the entrance and leaned in, checking if either of the girls was present. Barely did I do so, a massive objects passed me by, a gust of air sweeping over me. I looked back and saw Maddie’s enormous form walking away, her giant, bare feet slamming the floor in a series of loud thuds. She walked at a normal pace, but to me she still seemed incredibly fast. She was now more akin to a mobile mountain or better yet, a mobile volcano, her short, red hair like a fire on its top. As she disappeared into her room and from my view, I realized I still could hardly believe this colossus used to be a normal, short girl less than a week ago. Before I began to shrink.

Let me tell you how it all started.