# Prove It

By: TheDragonBoy

## Content

James heard the dull thuds approaching and looked to the door. Through his glass wall, he watched it open. In walked June, dressed for business, as she’d been when they’d said goodbye. He looked at her straight on, but she did not immediately look at him. Her eyes flicked by him as she entered and turned toward her large, elaborate wardrobe. She seemed to be in a bit of a haze: with a distant gaze and a neutral, perhaps slightly unhappy expression.

She opened the wardrobe and seemed to take a moment to breathe before taking off her heels and putting them away. She took off her jacket and hung it, put her earrings in their padded box, and then set her fingers to the buttons on her shirt.

James waited patiently, knowing by her mood that she’d prefer to finish changing before anything else. He watched as the buttons came undone, one by one, from her collar down to her waist, pausing just before the end as she undid her belt and the clasps on her pants. Then, all at once, clothing shed to reveal skin.

James couldn’t help his tiny heart beating just a bit faster; it always did. As the shirt came off to reveal her bra, and the pants slipped down to reveal her panties, he looked up and down the length of her body and marveled in admiration. Sometimes he almost couldn’t believe that the little girl he’d been given to as a gift all those years ago had grown up and become… well, June.

Of course, ‘little girl’ had always been a relative term, and certainly not one which had ever been relative to him. She’d been many times larger than him when they were both six, and she was many more times larger than him now that they were in their twenties.

June cast her work clothes into a hamper and reached for new ones. She slipped on a more comfortable pair of shorts, and donned a loose top that only reached down to cover her chest, leaving her midriff exposed. It was only when James knew she had finished that he decided to speak up.

“It was Carol again, wasn’t it?” he asked. She turned her head towards his tank and her gaze settled on his tiny form. Some life returned to her expression; her eyes showed she was happy to see him, but her mouth formed the perturbed little pout she’d been concealing up to that point.

“Yup,” she confirmed. “She is such a pain in the ass.” Her tone was more annoyed than angry. But he could already see the shifting in her mood as she took her first steps toward him, as if she were leaving most of that workday aggravation behind with the dirty work clothes in the hamper.

James walked a few millimeters and pushed open the little glass pane that served as his door, stepping out onto the stand for his tank that served as his spacious balcony.

“Let me guess,” he began, then switched to a mocking voice. “‘I know you’re an intelligent young woman, but you’re still young, and we can’t go about implementing your new policy suggestions without proper blah, blah, blah.’”

June chuckled and smiled. “Dead on,” she replied. James had never met this ‘Carol’ himself, but he’d certainly heard June mimic her enough times.

“So they’re still insisting on doing the work by hand instead of hiring a mage?”

“Yup. You’d think when they hired me as an advisor that they’d actually listen to my advice, but nope. I think even more than a mage they should try to find some common sense, because the solutions are obvious.”

James smiled as he saw that little smug smirk of hers come through. He knew she was right; she was one of the smartest people in the city, certainly the smartest he knew; she was observant and methodical, always quietly curious, watching and thinking things through. Then again, this was James’ opinion, and not only didn’t he know very many people besides June, but he might have been a tad biased.

“Anyway, I’m gonna go relax for a bit, wanna come?” She slipped her fingers over the little safety rails at the edge of his stand and offered her upturned palm.

“Sure,” James replied happily.

He stepped up and his feet sunk into the familiar surface of her warm skin. Taking hold of her thumb for support, he let her whisk him away, and with a practiced, steady hand, she ferried him across the room and over to her bed.

Technically, he could have gotten there himself. Long past were the days when she’d considered him a mere ‘pet’, kept in a doorless tank in her room. Though he was still technically a pet, the relationship certainly felt different than back then. For one thing, the new tank that she’d bought for him when she’d moved out of her parents’ house had come with a lot: tons of space, all the latest miniature electronics, toys, exercise equipment, and not least a door, stairs in the stand, and even a little elevator. In fact, she’d rigged most of her furniture to be tiny-accessible, her bed included. A lot of it had been custom work, which hadn’t been cheap, but she could afford it.

While James did appreciate the freedom to travel on his own- say, if a certain someone fell asleep in her cozy bed without remembering to bring him back to his own- June’s room was large by normal human standards, and it was quite the trek for a tiny. Besides, he’d been riding in her hand since they were little kids, why stop now?

With June’s help they arrived in only a couple seconds. She sat on the edge of her mattress and then laid down on her side, pulling herself further onto the bed with her free hand, while keeping the one with James in it almost perfectly upright and remarkably steady. When she was settled in, she rested her knuckles down on the bedding, just a few inches from her exposed belly, allowing James to step off onto the white expanse of her covers.

June was truly enormous to James up close. Even laying on her side, she rose easily ten times his height. And as she pulled her hand away and stretched to her bedside table to grab the TV remote, her body spanned a length that would take him over a minute to walk, or much longer over the jagged, unstable terrain of her bedding.

There was a click and a whirr as June finished retrieving the remote and pressed the first button. James watched the large (enormous at his scale) flatscreen swing down from its mounting place on the ceiling to face them. She started flipping through the channels, looking for something interesting. She knew James well enough not to ask what he’d like; she usually found he wasn’t particularly interested in TV no matter what was on, but he always seemed happy to watch with her.

She picked something quickly enough, leaving the remote on the bed nearby, but before settling in to watch, she reached over her bedside one more time, opening a drawer in her bedframe without even looking and lifting something from inside up onto the mattress.

James watched her retrieve the familiar looking box. It was about the size and shape of a half-gallon milk carton: long and rectangular and made of sturdy cardboard. Except It had little airholes in the sides, and an arrow with the words ‘this side up’ showing it was meant to be kept laid flat, rather than stood up straight.

He took his eyes off it for a few moments to mind his step as he walked closer to her. Reaching her belly, he placed a hand on it to steady himself, swaying with the ebb and flow of her breath, before lowering himself down to sit with his back against her cushiony, warm midriff. This was the safest way they’d found to relax together. She could feel him resting against her bare skin and know exactly where he was without needing to look.

By the time James had settled in and looked back towards her face, June had opened up the side of the box, tilting it back at a slight angle and reaching a few fingers inside. While James could feel her pulse, thumping, even and steady against his back, she couldn’t have possibly felt his, as his tiny heart began to beat faster once again.

When her fingers left the box, they were holding a tiny man.

She hardly even glanced at the little guy, held by his waist, wriggling between her digits. She opened her mouth and popped him inside. James watched her lips seal and cheeks twitch as she slid him around, tasting him for a few seconds, before a quiet little *glrk* reached his ears and he saw her throat tremble.

She reached in for another and came out with two at once, tossing them immediately past her lips and giving them much the same treatment as the first. Another few seconds of savoring, another swallow, and they were gone.

*guuuurgle*

James could hear the sound quite clearly- feel it even, vibrating against his back. Beyond the smooth skin which comforted and warmed him, June’s body was gearing up for a round of snacks.

The TV continued to flicker with pictures and sound, but James only watched June. He watched every single one of her snacks as they disappeared into her mouth, and traced the path he imagined they were taking as she swallowed them down: down through her neck, behind her breasts, and stowed somewhere in that burbling belly of hers, where she’d turn them into nothing more than nutrients, a few more noisy gurgles, and a bathroom visit.

TV was nothing compared to a spectacle like that. One after another after another, tinies just like him, disappearing, devoured and sent to be digested. She could eat dozens of them in a sitting, gulping them down effortlessly to fuel her own immense body. From the perspective of a normal human like her, it was hardly even worth a thought. But to a tiny like James…

Well, James wasn’t really a tiny like them. To them, he was sure it was terrifying. Heck, it had been for him too for a little while. The line between an ‘edible’ and a ‘pet’ was entirely marketing and packaging (and price); and to a six-year-old girl, those don’t mean much once the buying is done and the packaging is gone. But on the whims of that little girl, he’d stayed around, and after a while… Watching her eat them- the other tinies- had always been a captivating sight, but after he started to feel safe again and the terror started to wear off, it never stopped being captivating.

She had always amazed him, even back then: this girl ‘a million times’ his size, fingers as big as his entire body, arms and legs just like his own but massive beyond comparison, strong and solid but living, thundering around her room, and taking care of him every day, keeping him safe and fed and warm. She had practically been his entire world- and largely still was. And watching her eat other tinies had gradually- rather quickly, even- become another part of that amazing world. It was astounding, incredible, what her body could do: devour dozens of people his size like it was nothing, and turn them into… Well, as they both got older, and he watched her grow and mature, he found that what she was turning those tinies into was something more graceful and beautiful than his young mind could have imagined.

After years and years and years of this, of watching and talking and listening and growing up together, they both knew she would never eat him. He could sit there, safe and sound, resting comfortably against her belly, even as a few inches beyond her skin she was busy dissolving whole swaths of other tinies into unrecognizable slop for her enormous body to absorb. And after all those years, his fascination never faded, in fact it only seemed to grow bigger and stronger, just like June herself.

*GURGLE* *GLORP*

James braced himself.

*UUURP*

He felt June’s belly shutter as the burst of gas escaped at the far-off opening of her mouth, but the jerk was a bit stronger than he expected, and it knocked him forward, face-first into the bedding. June, no longer feeling his touch, glanced down.

“Oop, sorry,” she apologized.

“That was a big one,” he said with a chuckle. At his weight, almost no amount of tumbling or falling was actually dangerous, especially not on an ultra-soft bedspread. He pushed himself up again and settled back in against her.

“Guess that’s the danger of sitting up against my belly while I’m eating,” she joked.

“Probably beats being on the inside, though,” he replied.

“Oh yeah, more than ‘probably’,” she agreed. “I’m sure it’s not too pretty in there.”

“Well, definitely not as pretty as you are on the outside.”

“Aww, thanks James.”

“… Still, probably isn’t too bad, except for all the dying and stuff,” he added after a moment.

“Heh, yeah, right. Oh geeze, remember when we were little and I used to tease you about getting eaten? Man, I was a messed up little girl.”

“You weren’t that bad, really. Most of the time you were great.”

“Oh, yes, every great pet owner threatens to turn their pet into a snack,” she agreed sarcastically, grabbing another tiny man from her box and tossing him into her mouth for emphasis. She gulped him down almost immediately; James watched her throat twitch, and his eyes followed the path down her neck.

“I don’t know, I don’t think I’d mind being your snack if I could, you know, survive.”

She turned her head to look at him directly and shot him a skeptical gaze.

“You’re joking, right?” she asked. He gave the question only a moment’s thought.

“No, I think I’d go for it. I mean, if I could live through it and I wouldn’t get hurt, yeah… I think I’d like it.”

“No, you would not,” she scoffed, looking back to the TV dismissively.

“How would you know?” he challenged playfully.

“Because when I did used to tease you about it you were always terrified,” she reminded him.

“Yeah,” he admitted, “but things are different now. I mean, I would never even sit here with you like this back then.”

She couldn’t deny he did have some point. Sitting up against her gurgling belly was not anything he would have done willingly- let alone happily- when they were little, especially not while she was snacking.

“You think just because you’ve gotten comfortable lying on a belly that you’d be okay inside one? You’d totally freak out, forget about ‘liking’ it.”

“Not if it was you,” he insisted. She looked down at him a second time, still incredulous, but now faintly curious as well.

“What difference does that make?”

“Well, cause, it’s you. I mean, if you could somehow promise me I wouldn’t get hurt- and, you know, digested- then you’d be there with me the whole time, so…” he trailed off, not really sure how to explain himself more clearly.

“You’d seriously trust me enough to eat you?”

While it sounded just a bit unnerving when she phrased it like that, James couldn’t help but think the question was almost silly. His entire life was in her hands; he’d been trusting her with it for years.

“…Yeah,” he said, nodding and even smiling a bit.

June broke off her gaze and seemed thoughtful for a moment, before smiling a bit herself with a mixture of warmth and humor.

“Well, I’m flattered, James. But even if that were true, I still say there’s no way you’d ‘like’ it.”

“I don’t know…” he replied. She was probably right. She was almost always right. But the warm feeling he felt as he contemplated being inside her, echoed by the warmth he felt coming off her skin, he just couldn’t quite discount it.

She noticed that smile still lingering on his tiny face.

*guuuuurgle*

Coincidentally, at that moment, her stomach happened to give a long, loud groan. Given the topic at hand, she couldn’t help but feel a bit of her old desire to tease start to bubble up, but where she would have usually brushed it off as cruel and immature, this time she did decidedly the opposite.

“You do know what that sound is, right?” she asked. “That’s the sound of all the messy goop in my stomach literally stripping tiny flesh off tiny bones, turning them into a bunch of smelly slop. And it’s always hungry for more.”

A younger June might have grinned deviously, telling him that- and might have used much the same vocabulary- but present-day June watched with a flat expression and keen eyes, observing the grin on his face. It quivered for a moment, but never disappeared.

He did know, and yet the sound and thought of it, knowing it was all a part of June…

“Guess you should eat some more then,” James replied.

Well, he certainly wasn’t the same little tiny-boy he used to be, she’d give him that. Was it possible that he might actually…

“…Guess so,” she said after a moment, dropping back into casual conversation. She reached into the box again and pulled out a few more tinies, popping them into her mouth one at a time and swallowing as James watched and listened. “You want anything?” she offered.

“No, I’m good,” he replied. Along with the tinies he could hear slipping into her stomach, that discussion had given them both plenty to digest.

*GURGLE* went her belly.

* * *

When James woke up the next morning, June had already gone out. It was a bit of an early rise for her considering it was the weekend, but not unheard of. He had his supply of food- his tank had a miniature fridge that she always kept stocked weeks in advance- and running water straight off the house’s tap. He ate and kept himself busy with the many little gadgets that filled his glass-walled home, and often he’d look out the window that his tank had been positioned next to, checking to see if June’s car was maybe pulling into the garage.

It took until the sun had long set before she returned. He didn’t catch her pulling in, but the steady *thud* *thud* *thud* of her steps climbing the stairs was a clear sign. He smiled, putting down one of his toys and walking out onto his ‘balcony’ to greet her.

Her door opened, and the first thing he noticed was the smirk on her face. She seemed rather amused with herself, and a tad thoughtful, with hints of devious mischief, all thinly masked under a facade of her usual composure. And unlike yesterday, she was looking right at him from the moment she arrived.

“Hey June. Where have you been all day?” he asked. His voice was chipper and casual enough, but he had a curious, slightly concerned expression. Something about that look of hers seemed to pull at memories of when they were little, but he brushed the thought away.

“Oh, just out picking up a little something,” she replied nonchalantly.

James noticed she was carrying a bag, some kind of shopping bag to be more precise, branded with a logo he didn’t recognize. She set it down on one of her numerous little tables, acting suspiciously casual, and reached inside. What she took out was a hard case, branded with the same logo. She brushed the bag away and put its previous contents down in its place.

June glanced back at his tank to make sure he was watching, still wearing that smirk, before she undid the clasp and opened the case. Inside was a single glass bottle: a clear, round-bottomed flask with a cork seal, half-filled with some unknown, green liquid. She took the bottle from its protective enclosure and walked towards him.

That settled it, she definitely had a scheme cooking. She’d brought back surprises for him before, but something about this seemed different.

“What’s that?” he asked suspiciously. Was it something she planned to feed him? Or pour on him?

“Well, do you remember last night? What you said about how it might not be so bad to be one of my snacks?”

“…Yeah?” he replied, taking a moment to recall.

“How you’d trust me to eat you if I could promise you’d be fine, and that you’d even like it.”

“Uh-huh…” He could tell she was on the verge of some reveal, but he still couldn’t piece together what was coming.

“Well, I just thought I’d give you a chance to prove it.” Her smirk broadened just a bit.

“‘Prove it’?” he echoed.

“That’s right. I’ve got your ‘promise’ right here,” she sloshed the green-filled flask in her hand and held it forward. “If I drink a little of this on an empty stomach, and I give a little to you, you can pass right through me, completely unscathed.”

Suddenly, all the pieces came together. “You commissioned a potion!?” James asked with genuine surprise.

“Yup.”

“Geeze, June, how much did that cost!?”

“Don’t go trying to change the subject. Or were you just messing with me last night?” she playfully accused.

“I-” He stammered for a moment as he tried to process what she was saying.

Would June have actually gone through the trouble- not to mention the expense- of getting a potion made just for this? Would she actually try to eat him? His heart began to beat a bit faster. If this was real, and he agreed, would she just snatch him up right on the spot like she used to tease when they were kids? No, not like her snacks, June wouldn’t do that to him. But would she really swallow him if he let her? …And would he really let her?

“Are you messing with me?” he finally asked. There was a noticeable gravity in his tiny voice. He had to know if she was serious. In response, her tone shifted; she still wore that amused smirk, but that little devilish flare he recognized as a remnant of their childhood was nowhere to be found, and her voice took on a sincere quality in addition to her usual confidence.

“I swear, the potion’s real,” she said.

“…And you didn’t just get it for a joke? You’re not just going to return it, or resell it or something?” It’s not so much that he didn’t believe her but that he hardly believed any of this. He had to be extra sure.

“It was full when I bought it,” she replied, jiggling the currently half-filled flask lightly again to illustrate her point, “I drank the rest on the way in.” She couldn’t help a bit more of her playfulness slipping in with that one, but her sincerity still showed.

“…And… you’re sure it works?”

“I paid top dollar to get it from a very reputable mage, and have it independently tested. As long as we both take it, nothing inside my body can hurt you; no digestion, no suffocation, no crushing, you won’t even get hungry.” And then her voice changed yet again, all other qualities giving way for just a moment to a few compassionate, heartfelt words. “Do you really think I’d try this if I weren’t sure you’d be safe? No way you’re going to end up a real snack after all this time.”

There was no doubt about it now. Hearing her talk like that… she was serious. Silence followed for a few seconds, and in that candid moment, she added a few more choice words.

“…You can say no,” she said without a hint of teasing, “and this all goes away.”

Inside James’ tiny head, his thoughts were racing. Staring up at June now, he felt a swirl of emotions: excitement, admiration, desire, anxiety, fear and a dozen others he couldn’t name. His eyes fell from her face to her chest, just below her breasts, where he could imagine her stomach, sitting there, waiting for him.

And just when she was about to break the silence, he spoke first.

“…I want to try it,” he said. His eyes lingered at her abdomen for a moment, but he looked up just in time to catch the mild expression of genuine surprise on June’s face, just before that amused smirk of hers returned.

“Well, if you really think you’ll like it…”

She stepped closer to his tank as she pulled the cork from the bottle and discarded it next to him. It was almost his height, and a fair bit wider. She reached down into his tank-stand and brought out a tiny appliance with a funnel at the top; a little thing she’d had made so they could share drinks more easily.

“You have thought this through, though. Right?” she asked, sounding noticeably more playful now.

She’d made it clear that he could bail whenever he wanted, and she’d made sure he’d be safe either way, so as far as June was concerned, there wasn’t any harm in a bit of teasing now. It’s not like when they were kids, and she was threatening to eat him for real.

“It won’t just be you in there tonight. I had to drink this stuff on an empty stomach,” she reminded as she tipped a few drops of the green potion down the funnel, “so I’m starving. Once you’re down, there’s going to be a lot more going in after you.”

James did his best to imagine it, sitting in June’s stomach with piles and piles of her food, busily worked over by whatever inner depths he could always hear gurgling and squelching from the outside. The tiny man nodded.

“Yeah, I know.”

“And you’ll be going out with all that food too,” she pointed out as she pulled the bottle back and reached for the cork.

James faltered as he wrapped his hands around the tiny mug at the base of the funnel. He hadn’t quite thought of that. He’d always thought of getting eaten as meeting an end in a stomach, and getting absorbed into whatever had done the eating. But he wouldn’t be getting digested, which meant he’d be part of the leftovers, coming out of her-

His heart began to thump even harder. The thought that her bowel movements were probably larger than his entire body briefly crossed his mind, and while it faintly registered as something he might want to be concerned about- and frankly, disgusted by- the thought of resting not just in her stomach, but also at her rear exit, filled him with a whole new shade of excitement.

He took the mug from the funnel, eyeing the green liquid inside. It smelled foul, which put him off for just a second, but a quick glance at June- and her chest hovering just at his eye level- gave him all the encouragement he needed.

James threw his tiny head back and downed the concoction.

He’s really going through with this… June marveled, her curious, almost disbelieving little grin growing just a touch.

“Blech!” the tiny man retched in disgust, but he’d managed to get it all down. June’s smirk split into a little laugh.

“You know, I’m sure my stomach’s a lot worse than that potion,” she warned playfully.

“It wasn’t- *ugh* - that bad,” James insisted. Besides, he wouldn’t have to drink anything in there.

“If you say so,” she replied sarcastically, and as she did, she slipped her fingers over his stand’s railings invitingly. He saw the familiar gesture and climbed on, though this time when he made contact with her skin, it felt different somehow. That beautiful warmth, and that soft, giving touch; knowing he was about to actually go inside it all…

She carried him off, heading first toward the table where she’d revealed the potion.

“We have to wait a couple minutes for the potion to take effect,” she told him in passing as she placed the bottle back into its case and closed it up, “So you have a little bit longer to decide which side of my belly you’d like to spend your evening on.” She then walked over and sat down on the side of her bed, taking a moment to undo her shoes with her free hand and slip them off. She peeled off her socks as well, wriggling her toes in the open air. James didn’t say a word, far too enthralled in the thoughts of what was to come.

I wonder if he’ll actually want me to swallow him? I really hope I don’t end up having to puke him up. Maybe I should give him a little hands-on preview…

…*drip*

“Wh- what-!?” James flailed for a moment as a dollop of warm liquid suddenly splashed down over his head, wetting his hair, face and shoulders and running all down his shirt. Attempting to wipe the stuff from his eyes resulted in long strands stretching between his hands and face. A little tremble running through the hand below him distracted him from his mild panic, and he turned and looked up to see June’s chuckling face hovering above him.

“Oh, sorry,” she said in an exaggeratedly sarcastic voice, as she wiped a bit of glistening drool from her bottom lip. “Like I said, I’m starving.” She took a deliberate pause. “But if you want to go where my food goes, that stuff is gonna be all over you.”

James looked down over himself again as the initial shock wore off. This is June’s… saliva, huh? he thought. Sure, it was a little off-putting, with a less than pleasant smell, but as he let it rest on him… He could feel June’s warmth in it, and that smell was just a stronger variant of her smell. He brought up one of his hands and stared at it, watching it glisten. He spread his tiny fingers and felt the surface tension pulling them gently back together, stretching into strands between his thumb and pinky. He imagined pools of this stuff soaking into her food, holding it together, softening it up, getting it ready for her throat… It would be covering him too, getting him good and slippery for his long trip down…

June noticed how quiet James was being, but memory told her that wasn’t anything new. Terrified, wide-eyed silence had been a normal response to her cruel little jokes when she’d first gotten him. But this wasn’t like then, was it? She didn’t want him to be terrified. With all those vague, shifting expressions on his tiny little face, she couldn’t really tell what he was feeling. Even if this was his choice, maybe he was still a bit overwhelmed by what he’d be going through? Even if in some strange, inconceivable way, he did actually want this.

“You know, normally I’d probably be snacking on tinies about now, huh? But, I guess with you being part of my dinner, I’ll just stick with real food for tonight.” She kept most of her teasing tone, but she hoped that if he’d been worrying about being stuffed inside her with a bunch of other tinies, that would at least ease his mind a bit. His reaction left her quite surprised.

“No-!” He clenched the word back in his throat, initially because he realized how frantic he sounded, but he fumbled even longer as he also tried to understand just why he felt so strongly. Eventually he forced out an explanation. “I, um… I actually hoped you would eat some.”

June was so surprised that her amused disposition actually gave way to genuine concern.

“Wait, you want me to eat other tinies with you in there? You know they’re gonna get… digested, right? All over you?”

He understood the point she was making. Her stomach was not going to be gentle. The mere thought should be horrifying. But too many times now he’d rested against her belly and tried his best to imagine all those poor tinies sitting inside it. Stewing in her stomach juices, melting away into nothing. And now he imagined being in there with them, surrounded by June on all sides in every way, watching her amazing body at work up close, feeling firsthand how it churned and burbled and took other little people like him and turned them into more of her beautiful self.

“I… I want to see what happens to them- or feel it, I guess. I want to know what it’s like for them… when you eat them.” He looked away from her. He couldn’t think of any better way to explain it. And he knew it sounded crazy, but it was the truth. Even something like this, because it was all a part of her, he just couldn’t help but feel…

“…You really want to see all that?” she asked.

James nodded.

She looked down at him for a long moment, wheels turning in her head, concern still lingering on her face. And then suddenly, she stood up.

Jarred by the unexpected lurch, James looked up to her face again. He wanted to ask what she was doing, but he hadn’t quite regained his confidence in his words after that last attempt, so for the moment he just watched in curious silence.

June walked around to the far side of her bed where she sat back down. Holding James out to one side, she bent all the way over and pulled open the drawer between her legs. Reaching in, she pulled out a familiar box, pushing the drawer closed again with a foot. She set the box down up against her crotch at a rather steep angle, opening it onehanded.

Looking down from her other hand, James could see inside. All the tinies within had been piled into a flailing mass at the back of the container, thanks to June tipping it back so far. But their struggles were eerily silent; it was a feature of the packaging: enchanted to keep all the snacks inside from making unwanted noise.

He watched her pluck out a single tiny between two fingers, and as she brought the man up to her face, she brought James over as well. She held her pet right up in front of her mouth, and then dangled her chosen snack between them, right before James’ wide-eyed gaze.

He saw the terrified look on the other tiny’s face, but only for a moment, because once June opened her massive mouth in front of him, he found it impossible to look at anything else. His tiny jaw dropped as hers did, and he went stone still. The lush, red lips parted to reveal a huge, ruby-red cavern, glistening with little puddles of drool connected by hair-thin strands to the fleshy walls of her cheeks, the ridges of her palette, and the smooth, arching surface of her pink tongue, all framed by glitteringly white teeth.

On the heels of awe, James felt a sudden jolt of fear, and for a moment it even threatened to consume him as his battered mind tried to cope, until he suddenly realized why: He hadn’t seen her mouth up close like that since they were kids. The last time he’d been face to face with her like this, he’d been a terror-stricken little boy cowering at the threat of ending up in his owner’s belly as one of her many snacks. He shivered for a moment, feeling a potent dose of that long-latent fear run through his body, swirling together with all the new emotions inside.

June’s moist breath washed over him, bringing with it a taste of her warmth and the scent of her insides, and a moment later the air around him rushed back in the other direction as she inhaled. Then, with a simple flick of her wrist, she tossed her snack onto her waiting tongue.

James watched with riveted, unblinking eyes. The tiny scrambled toward the pearly gates of her teeth, but her tongue rose up like some great pink beast, eclipsing the tiny man from view. When it fell again, James could see it had tossed the man farther back inside, where he now struggled to get a hold firm enough to push himself upright again amongst the saliva-slicked slopes of June’s mouth.

Her lips fell closed, stretching and twitching before his eyes as wet smacks and slurps came from within. They reopened just a moment later, and James scoured the vivid landscape until he once again located her snack: laying battered and limp toward the back of her ebbing tongue, now thoroughly slathered in her saliva, soaking in a little pool of it that had collected around him, a pool James could already see growing as June’s hunger rushed more of the pre-digestive lubricant out from some hidden recess of her mouth.

And then James watched her tongue rise. Slowly. Deliberately slow. Not just the tip, but the entire pink, glistening muscle. It swelled up, blocking more and more of the other tiny from James’ view. June’s snack reached out toward freedom just before her tongue eclipsed his body, but James could still see the tiny man’s fingers stretching desperately toward the light, his arm pinned by the squishy hold at the apex of the tongue’s swell, as it pressed against the red ridges above.

*GLURK*

Her jaw shuttered, the tiny fingers disappeared in an instant, torn away into some unseen depths with a loud squelch. Her tongue receded to rest comfortably, and June’s mouth was empty.

James continued to stare, utterly transfixed, even as her breath washed over him again, and her lips settled into a fine gap, just big enough for the air whizzing by him to pass through. She stared right back. She wasn’t sure anymore what his reaction would be; that was part of the reason why she’d done it. But just standing there dumbfounded on her palm wasn’t telling her much of anything.

“…Are you sure you want to see more than that?” she finally asked.

James heard the words, but his gaze was still locked on the little glimpses of red and white he could steal from the movements of her lips. He felt feelings and thoughts inside him warring with each other, old fears with new desires, love and trust with instinctive apprehension. But that’s not what had him so tongue tied, it’s just that the next thing he wanted to say was a little…

“…Come on, James, say something…”

He could tell all this silence was worrying her. He knew she understood all this even less than he did- a situation neither of them were used to- and she was probably worried she’d gone too far. So he forced out the words for her sake.

“…Could I… um… could I touch it?”

June’s big eyes widened just a touch as they looked down on him. And then the next moment she gave a little amused snort, and her lips curled into a tiny smile. Not only was she surprised and impressed that he’d kept his nerve, but he’d sounded so cute and awkward just then. She marveled at him for just a moment, and pondered curiously if a ‘touch’ was all he would want, or if he really would ask her to go further.

“Alright,” she said softly, and her lips hung just barely parted for a moment as she took more conscious note and control of the muscles within. And then out from the tiny gap, slipped the glistening, light pink of June’s tongue.

James stepped toward the edge of her hand, transfixed, as he watched it emerge. And as it reached toward him, he reached toward it, forcing himself just a tad through his hesitance. And touched it.

A shiver ran through his tiny body, a shiver June could feel against her sensitive tastebuds. James pressed, sinking his fingers deep into the warm, wet, spongy surface, and felt the whole enormous muscle shift slightly at his contact.

He felt like he was a boy again, seeing for the first time this amazing, giant girl in all her awe-inspiring, beautiful glory. But it was different now. Yes, it was every bit as striking and extraordinary, but now he had years of experience to balance the fear. This wasn’t just some hungry little girl playing with her potential snack anymore, this was June, the person who’d taken care of him his entire life. He’d just watched this tongue of hers steal another tiny away from the world, slather them in drool and ship them off down to her stomach to digest without a second thought, and yet he felt he could just so easily give himself over to it, knowing that June was in control. She’d taken care of him his whole life, hadn’t she always been in control anyway?

James had no idea how long he’d spent staring, feeling the heat and the gentle trickle of drool running down his arm, all he knew was what made him stop. The ground he was standing on- June’s hand- suddenly tipped forward, and before he knew it he felt her palm at his back and the glistening pink of her tongue rushing towards his face, and then-

*sluuuurp*

The next thing he knew, he was sitting in her level palm again, breathing hard, heart racing, watching her tongue slink away.

She licked me! he realized, his mind rushing to relive the sensation of her tastebuds against his skin, his entire body pressed up against her in a way he’d never experienced in all their years together; placed for a moment at the entrance to her body, the precipice of her unknown, the doorway to the inner workings that had swallowed up thousands and thousands of other little beings just like him to fuel his caring June.

And in that moment, all he could think was that he had the chance to see it all for himself, to let it take him, knowing fully for the first time that it- that she- wouldn’t hurt him.

“Sorry,” she muttered insincerely, swallowing innocently as that little teasing smirk started showing through again. She hadn’t been able to resist. She’d needed to do something to break the moment, she couldn’t have just continued to drool all over him (and her hand). And, well, if he did want to take the full trip, he’d have to get used to her body handling him without his say. It’s not like she could control things if he made it past her throat. Of course, that was still a pretty big ‘if’.

“You still okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he replied instantly, even smiling a little. He made no attempt to wipe her drool from himself this time. Her amused smirk grew wider.

“You want to try that again?”

“Yeah,” he repeated.

She gave him another moment to catch his breath, before the sight of her lips parting once again rapped his attention. He felt an electric excitement throughout his entire tiny body as he watched the slick, pink mass emerge again, anticipating its soft, warm, sodden touch. He reached out his arms.

June was slower, more deliberate this time. She pressed her tongue against him with a steady, constant pressure, gradually sliding it up over the length of James’ tiny form, pressing as much of him into its curving surface as she could. And when she finally withdrew, both of them, for a brief moment, felt the tiny man leave the familiar cradle of June’s hand entirely, wholly bound to her tongue by the pull of her saliva, before James once again slipped free, sliding off back onto the soft skin below.

When June could see his face again, she couldn’t help but raise an amused eyebrow at the wide-eyed, spellbound expression on her little tiny’s face. She hadn’t been at all sure exactly how this night would go, but she hadn’t been expecting anything quite like this. And she certainly hadn’t been expecting what came next.

“I’m ready,” he said.

“…Huh?”

He looked up into her eyes, and now she could see the excitement and the wonder pushing their way up through the anxiety and lingering fear.

“I’m ready,” he repeated, just a touch louder and a tad more certain.

June’s smirk shrunk to the faintest trace as her own lingering anxiety touched her. She had to admit, the thought of actually putting James in her mouth was… uncomfortable, almost mildly abhorrent. This was her pet, this was James, not just one of her snacks, she didn’t want him to end up like them… She found herself having to remind herself about the potion, that she knew he’d be okay. Still, if it weren’t for his cute, eager looking face staring up at her, she might not have overcome that instinctive feeling warning her that, just like she used to tease when they were kids: a tiny is a tiny, and she could eat him up just the same as any other.

“…Okay,” she said.

He watched her lips fall closed as she finished the word, and then he watched them open again. They spread wide, teeth and gums following in their wake, finally revealing to James once again that breathtaking scene which he’d been unable to shake from his mind.

But she wouldn’t take him like one of her snacks, she couldn’t toss James wildly into her mouth like that. If he really wanted this, he’d have to prove it. She stuck out her tongue, a bit awkwardly, and pressed it against the edge of her hand, like her fingers slipping over the rails of his balcony to invite him into the custody of her total, freely given control. He stepped forward as her breath washed over him once again, and he took another step as it was pulled back down her throat, back into the beautiful body that waited to swallow him up.

He placed a bare foot onto the warm pink, and faltered. But not from fear, not this time. Her maw called to him, but he could feel her tongue was too slippery, he couldn’t take another step. So instead he let himself fall. The muscle caught him, as he knew it would, trembling lightly as he landed on tiny hands and knees. In that moment, he felt himself leave the warm, familiar touch of June’s hand, for the new, steamy heat of her inner depths.

June reacted almost reflexively to the unexpected move, pulling her tongue halfway inside and rushing a hand underneath for fear he might slip off. Any other tiny she’d had that far out ended up falling into her lap, but of course James wasn’t struggling and flailing about, he just rested there calmly on the cresting tip of her tongue with hardly so much as a flinch. She released her held breath, letting it continue to waft over him.

James looked up when his world suddenly shifted and then settled, and saw the glistening, red roof of June’s mouth above, her massive teeth hanging over him in suspension like a vision from some surreal dream- or a younger James’ vivid nightmares.

He felt her breath wash over him again, pulling his attention back to the shadowed passage beyond her tongue. He stared back for a number of breaths, fear and fascination colliding and combining, but June held him there steady, almost as if she shared his fear.

Before too long he wrenched his eyes off her slow-pulsing uvula and cast his gaze over the rest of June’s mouth. He’d caught countless little glimpses of it, imagined it time and time again, wishing he’d somehow be able to see it all, but never certain enough in his own desires to ask.

A firm sense of reverence overtook him, taking in the walls, the teeth, the tongue, the cavern he’d watched swallow up every single ‘edible’ tiny June had ever devoured, from their first years as young children all the way until now, when he’d be the next.

And just as the fantastically unreal peace of it all began to sink in, that inexorably false peace was suddenly shattered as his world jarringly flexed and undulated and rumbled.

“You doing okay in there?” June asked, speaking the words around her pet, held in her mouth.

“…Fine…” he replied eventually, unable to muster the thought for a real answer. He felt a warmth rising around his wrists and looked down to see pools of saliva forming around them. “…You’re drooling…” he muttered almost unthinkingly.

“I’m hungry…” she replied in much the same way.

“…You need to get me wet, right?”

The utter ridiculousness of the statement struck her. A tiny in her mouth, reminding her how to eat tinies? She’d eaten uncounted swarms of them! She should know how to do it far better than some snack about to be swallowed! Except she had needed to be reminded, and the tiny in her mouth wasn’t a snack, it was her pet, James.

Pulling herself together and reassuring herself that this wasn’t some strange dream, she closed her mouth softly around him. Paying close attention, slowing the minute movements inside herself deliberately, she brought her tongue back and lightly sucked on her pet’s tiny form, drawing the saliva out from the far reaches of her mouth to wash over his body.

James found himself swiftly subjected to total darkness. Everything around him suddenly began to shift and flex, filling his ears with the sounds of crackling spit and the slip of slick muscles rubbing together. For a short moment, he felt his bearings torn away from him, hardly even sure which way was up and which was down. It was a feeling that should have been innately terrifying. Except that James was already accustomed to it.

He’d felt traces of it every time June handled him, every time she’d lifted him or ferried him, knocked him over or helped him back up. The overwhelming weight of her whims against him swept his bearings clean away. But it was that very nature that had taught him to rely on her instead. When he was with her, he had little need for bearings, for control, for stability. He was in her hands, often literally, and he knew it. Those hands, June’s hands, and the rest of her amazing, immense body had never failed to keep him from danger, any more than his own when he was in control.

And in that moment of sudden change and perceptual chaos, he could feel her there, holding him.

Light shone into the red cavern as June parted her lips, refracting through the strands of drool now webbed across his face. Her breath swept over him again, out and in, and then she spoke.

“If I swallow you, there’s no easy way back,” she said. June was not a woman who worried, much less one who let it show, but she couldn’t hide a hint of it from slipping into those words as they rushed over him. She’d never have thought she’d be the one getting cold feet in this. She felt a small sensation on her tongue as James stroked a hand across her tastebuds, taking in their slick smooth texture.

“I know you’ll take care of me, June,” he replied.

She felt a warmth in her at those words. To know that someone in James’ position, so inherently fragile and easily mistreated, had such faith in her. They really had grown quite fond of each other over the years, hadn’t they? James had been right, things certainly were different now.

June closed her mouth gently again, taking a moment to feel him against her tongue, just breathing there, being there, but she felt her drool rising, and beyond that her stomach longing to be filled. She took another breath through her nose, and let her tongue swell around the tiny in her mouth, her throat tensing in preparation to open wide and swallow him down.

June gagged.

The reaction took her wholly by surprise. Catching herself and keeping James securely behind her lips, she scolded herself mentally for allowing such a thing to happen. But the thought, the feeling which had caught her mind had struck her. When she put those edible tinies in her mouth, when she swallowed them down, that was the end of them. She was sending them away, down somewhere inside herself, to melt and churn and expire and die in her guts. To become her food and nothing more. It was a decision she made, utterly unconsciously at this point, with every gulp. But as the tiny in her mouth whom she knew was James began to slip towards her throat, some failsafe inside her mind had triggered.

Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so scared, she thought to herself, as the momentary rush of fear left her. She took a second to remind herself of the precautions she’d taken, the plan she’d made, using logic to push the fear into submission. But still she had to remind herself that swallowing a tiny was an easy thing she did almost every day, just to overcome how daunting a simple gulp now seemed. She took another breath.

But she couldn’t hold him there forever; after all, James was waiting. She closed her eyes and steeled herself.

*glurk*

That sound. James knew that sound. He’d listened to it again and again, staring up at her with wonder and fascination as tiny after tiny disappeared at its call. And now it was calling for him. He felt the wet darkness press against him, every soft surface of June’s mouth coming together around him, and then suddenly an opening by his face, and he was sucked down into her throat.

James was breathless.

I’m inside June… She swallowed me…

He felt himself sliding against the walls as his tiny body was carried along, guided by monumental muscles he couldn’t possibly resist. But resistance was the furthest thing from his mind; it was an embrace that he embraced right back. He spread his fingers against the slick textures passing him by and he listened. The ever-present crackling of her fluids, the rush of the blood in her veins, and gradually getting louder and louder the steady thump of her heart, beating a bit more quickly than usual.

It was unlike anything he had ever experienced before. A firm guiding force carrying him along, the heat of her body permeating his entire being, her internal soundscape now the only thing his ears could find, and her dark omnipresence the only thing he could see.

*squelch*

*SPLASH*

The darkness expelled James from its tight grasp but caught him again a moment later. It was a bit jarring, but no more than when June might occasionally knock him over. He felt hot liquids lapping at his body, rising almost to his neck as he held himself up on hands and knees. The floor below him was smooth and yielding, but folded and warped into uneven peaks and valleys, with every millimeter coated in unending slime.

*slosh*

He felt a wave knock against him as the muscle on which he stood swelled. He let himself be pushed over and land softly against the forgiving cushion that was, he finally realized, June’s stomach. The thought sent a jolt down his spine, an overwhelming excitement he couldn’t describe. He tried to look around, but he couldn’t even tell if his eyes were open or shut. There was nothing but darkness, like an endless expanse that seemed to stretch on and on. But all of it, the entire infinite void, was June. It was incredible. He had always lived in her world, but never like this.

“James?”

His name rumbled around him. Her voice sounded so strange, yet still so familiar; louder and deeper and stronger, yet still easily hers. Even distorted- or perhaps augmented- as it was, he could still pick up the note of worry in her tone.

“June, I’m here,” he said to the cavern of her stomach, but the unseen walls seemed to eat his words. What’s more, he realized now that he’d tried to talk, that something about his breath seemed strange.

“…James?” she asked again, a bit more worried now.

“June!! I’m here!!”

He heard the rush of air which, on the outside, had been a rather inconspicuous but greatly relieved exhale. Then he felt her chuckle a bit giddily.

“I can hardly hear you in there, James. Where’d I put the other- Oh, right, I left it in the car, didn’t I? James, I’m gonna go get the other bag from the car, but… First: one sound for ‘no’, two for ‘yes’… are you okay?”

“O-KAY!!” he shouted back, emphasizing the two syllables separately.

“Two sounds for ‘yes’,” she muttered, growing a little smile. James heard a dull thud following her words, rippling the unseen liquids around him. June put a hand to her chest, though she couldn’t quite say why. Just trying to feel him, James, buried somewhere in her body. Like she wanted to make sure he was still there.

*GURGLE*

James felt the deep rumble vibrate through the chamber, but he felt no large movements from the walls or the floor. It had come from somewhere else, somewhere even further on into her inner workings.

Even this is only one little part of her, he realized with continuously mounting awe. She had an entire body surrounding him, ebbing and flowing and flexing and weaving all around.

June heard the tiny, seemingly harmless sound from inside her, but of course those ‘seemingly harmless’ sounds were the same ones her belly usually made while it was ending dozens of tinies and turning them into digested mush. So she felt compelled to ask again.

“You still okay?”

“O-KAY!!” James yelled back.

“Good… I’m gonna stand up now.” She braced her legs rather nervously, but realized with a start that the box of tinies was still sitting between her legs. She started to reach down but stopped herself, then started reaching again but much more slowly, feeling almost like a toddler unsure of her own body. She took the box and pivoted to place it open-end-up on her nightstand, trying her best to move as little and as smoothly as possible.

She felt so awkward it was almost embarrassing. She’d carried James countless times: in her pocket, in her hand, even perched on her shoulder. She knew full well how to mind her movements, even the tiny ‘inconsequential’ ones, but she just couldn’t help worrying about what every little move she made was doing to him in there.

But just like when she’d swallowed him, she grabbed control of herself and forced herself to stand- slowly.

James felt gravity shift in the darkness. He let it take him, along with the sloshing liquids, slipping against the contours of June’s gut as her incredible body moved around him, carrying him along for the ride. And then everything settled again into relative stillness, the rebounding waves still splashing against him.

“…You still okay?”

James laughed through the strange sensation in his lungs. “Yes! I’m fine, June!”

She felt June laugh around him, mildly nervous. “Come on, James, one sound or two, remember?” But he could tell from her voice that she’d understood enough to know he was okay. Still, he replied as asked.

“O-KAY!!” he shouted.

“Good.”

She seemed to hesitate for a moment, but then James felt the oddly familiar, rhythmic thudding that he knew so well as June’s steps.

*thud* *thud* *thud* *thud*

James could feel himself swaying back and forth with the contents of her stomach, matching the pace of her stride. Perhaps, if he tried, he could trace his way through the house with her, noticing when she turned corners, stopped at doors, or walked down stairs, but his interest in the outside world was utterly dwarfed by each of the new sounds and sensations he could now reach, resting there inside her.

He could hear the air rushing in and out of her massive lungs, the continuous thumping of her heart, and perhaps most exciting, the sloshing of her stomach juices against the walls and against him. This stuff, this warm fluid surrounding him, this was the magic potion that turned tinies like him into food, into fodder for June’s amazing body to drink up and absorb and use to grow. And he was touching it.

“Alright, here it is,” came June’s booming voice as the footsteps stopped. James finally wondered for a moment what exactly she had left in her car. What else had she picked up besides the potion? “I have to bend over, so, um, brace yourself in there.”

Rather than tense up and brace, he simply relaxed as his entire world lurched, tossed forward as June leaned forward, digestive juices splashing everywhere. He felt something knock against him, something fleshy, but much harder and bonier than any part of June’s insides he’d felt so far, something that tumbled along with him. But before he could reach out to find what it was, June stood up again, sending him off in another direction.

“Let me just get us back to my room and we’ll try this stuff out,” she said. She was starting to get back a bit of her usual confidence, but didn’t sound completely comfortable yet. James settled again as the steady thumping of June’s steps resumed.

This is what it’s like to be her food, he marveled. Terrifying; it should have been terrifying. Every little move she made sent him tumbling and splatting and splashing into pools of hot acid. But it was almost blissful to him. Every little movement was June’s movement. It was like he was part of her, right there with her as she walked, as she breathed, as her stomach gurgled with him inside. And everywhere he slid, June was there to catch him, ready with her warm, soft embrace as always- though admittedly quite a bit slimier than usual.

He pressed his hands again into the slick warmth of June’s insides, feeling her life pulsing against his fingers, and basked in it.

If only I could see it too…

The thudding stopped, and he felt a relatively gentle lurch as she sat down, and another as she twisted to the side. He listened to the vague shiftings of her body as she worked her arms, and then her voice came to him again.

“Okay James, tell me how it’s going in there.”

“O-KAY!!”

“AH!” The sound of her cry and the sudden jerk of her body sent James reeling. “Not so loud!” she scolded.

“What!? I-” he took a moment to adjust the volume of his voice to what he thought would be normal, but with all the constant little squelches and splashes it was hard to really judge. “I thought you couldn’t hear me,” he said.

“I couldn’t before, but I’m using a stethoscope now.”

“A what?”

“It’s a thing doctors use to listen inside someone’s body. I picked one up just in case you were actually crazy enough to…”

“Yeah, I guess this is kinda crazy, huh?”

“A little,” she agreed, but her voice was accented with a little chuckle of relief. “It’s, um… it’s good to hear your voice, James.” He could hear some of the last few bits of anxiety leave her with that statement, not to mention the steady thump of her pulse gently slowing down.

“Yeah,” he agreed in turn. As awestruck as he currently was, it was comforting to that bit of persistent terror at the back of his mind that June could still hear him, that they could still talk.

… *gurgle* …

“So… you don’t exactly sound like you’re freaking out in there,” she said.

“No, I’m…” he trailed off, not really able to find the words to describe his current state of mind.

“…What’s it like? Being one of my snacks?” she asked. As she started to get comfortable again, her newly rediscovered teasing streak was starting to poke through as well.

“It’s… it’s just… amazing… I never imagined anything like this…”

“Really?”

“Not in my dreams, or my nightmares. It’s just… knowing that all of this is you… in all directions, everything I can touch, everything I hear. It’s all you.”

She took a moment to try and imagine him in there, somewhere under the chest piece of the stethoscope, under her skin, wedged inside some little nook of her body she couldn’t even feel. He’d always seemed rather small to her, but now that she couldn’t even feel him…

*GURGLE*

The sound came so loud through the instrument in her ears that it startled her, sending a twitch through her body that rocked her occupant and sent little waves lapping against the edges of his enclosure.

“Sorry, I really am hungry.”

‘I’m hungry.’ For James, those simple words suddenly took on a whole new meaning. She- this mountainous, mighty, beautiful being all around him- needed to be filled, needed food to nourish her immense, elegant form.

“You can eat,” he told her, his words both conveying the promise that he would be okay, and betraying the excitement he felt welling up to see- or at least feel- her body in action.

She snorted lightly, amused at his little encouragement, still almost in disbelief at his eager attitude. She contemplated reaching for the nearby box of tinies, he had said he wanted to see them in there after all, and she was still curious to test that most unlikely of his claims, but another idea crossed her mind.

“First, I have one more surprise for you,” she said.

“What’s that?” he asked as he felt her shifting again. Knowing June was planning something for him was always a bit suspenseful. She was so much bigger than he was, she could do just about anything. But being inside her, completely at her whim, and unable to even see what she was doing brought the suspense to an entirely new level.

“Well, I’d originally picked this up just in case I needed to get you out. I wanted to get a little rope or something, so I’d have some option besides just throwing up, but I realized you wouldn’t be able to see, so…”

“…So?”

“So… I picked up some glow-water.”

“You did!?” His heart leapt with excitement.

“Ow! Volume, James! This thing really works.”

“Sorry,” he apologized much quieter.

“Now, you’re sure you want to be able to see what my stomach looks like?” she asked. “And the rest of my dinner too?” She definitely sounded a bit more teasing now. She was starting to accept the idea that James really was enjoying this, however weird and crazy it was. James himself took a short moment to consider her words, but in the end the allure of actually seeing June from the inside was just too much to pass up.

“…Yes.”

“Alright, then,” she replied with a smile.

She reached over to the bag she’d taken from the car and pulled out a glowing plastic bottle. Dropping the stethoscope for a moment, she twisted off the cap and put the drink to her lips.

*gulp* *gulp* *gulp*

She forced herself to stop at three, remembering that anything she swallowed now would end up right on top of-

*SPLASH* *SPLASH* *SPLASH*

James felt a sudden assault on his senses: bright light and loud splatters and shocking cold. It was the most uncomfortable he’d felt since stepping foot onto her tongue. But he shook it off as the new contents of her belly settled. He wiped the wet slime from his face, and slowly opened his eyes.

They opened wide.

“Sorry if that was a little too much,” June apologized, putting the stethoscope back to her chest. She heard no response. “James?” she called, sliding the instrument along her skin, thinking she might be listening to the wrong spot.

“Wow…” she barely heard him say.

It was even bigger than he’d imagined. He’d been able to tell it was wide, wider than some of the rooms in his tank-house, but it was tall too. Towering walls of reddish-brown and pink, glistening with her inner liquids, strewn with squiggling folds, undulating smoothly to stir the newly illuminated contents.

Not even June’s food gets to see this, he thought, just me. Then something that was neither red, pink, nor brown caught his eye.

“Oh,” he remarked.

“What?” June asked.

“It’s that tiny, the one you ate before me.”

James focused on the man, practically curled into a ball with his eyes tightly shut, half submerged in June’s stomach juices, cowering against the walls as if they weren’t the very things that would end him, his trembles not even enough to disturb June’s natural waves.

“Oh, yeah, I kinda forgot about that one,” she admitted. To be fair, the contents of her stomach wasn’t normally a thing she had to remember. “What’s it doing?” she asked curiously.

“Just sitting there…” James waded over through the opaque, glowing waters of June’s gut. Tentatively, he reached out a hand and gave a gentle poke, much more like he were testing some strange, unknown object than a fellow tiny.

The little man’s head jolted up; reddened, veiny eyes staring at him. His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

“He still can’t talk,” James reported.

“Yeah, the magic from the box isn’t supposed to wear off till after they’re gone,” June replied. “Never really thought about that, but I guess it makes sense. I guess nobody liked chatty snacks.”

“Snacks…” James repeated, letting the word sink in. There he was, staring at one of June’s snacks sitting in her belly. He’d never seen an ‘edible’ tiny this close before. He used to be scared that if he got too close to them, June might mistake him for one of them and eat him instead. Of course, that was quite a few years ago, back when she used to make a point of reminding him that he was just like them and could be swallowed just as easily. Thinking back on it, it wasn’t hard to understand why this one would be afraid.

He's going to be a part of June soon… he thought, almost with a sense of reverence. Some part of him did feel bad for the tiny guy, knowing what was to come, but it was a shallow sympathy at best. This living force of nature that was his owner’s body had claimed the poor, edible, thing. He was hers now. It was out of James’ hands, neither his place nor within his power to interfere. And perhaps even more significantly, he didn’t want to. This little man like himself was June’s food, the fuel of her life, and he wanted to see her take that fuel into her being, to add and build upon her already amazing self.

And he didn’t just want to see this tiny taken by her body, he wanted to see what he knew her belly was capable of, to decimate a relative mountain of food, a sea of tiny faces, the avalanche of ‘snacks’ he’d watched disappear down her throat, an entire stomach’s worth of sustenance.

He watched a section of the walls press towards each other, as if trying to squeeze something of substance from the paltry gases between them, but all they managed to grab was a swath of June’s juices.

*GUUURGLE*

“I guess two little tinies isn’t much in there, huh?” came the reverberating voice around him.

“…No…” he replied slowly, taking in just how small he and his temporary companion were compared to those towering, glistening walls.

To James, hunger was usually some unquantifiable feeling, some vague inexact sensation, but if June’s hunger could be measured by the empty space between the grasping walls of her stomach… well, he almost couldn’t imagine it. He waited for her to say or do something, but she only sat there quietly around him.

“…Aren’t you going to eat?” he finally asked.

Honestly, despite hardly having eaten all day, her hunger was more or less being held at bay for the moment. The needy, empty feeling in her chest filled by James’ presence and the strange, nervous, fascinating feeling he brought. But he hadn’t asked that question purely for her sake, she could hear it in his voice.

She reached over and picked up the box she’d left on her nightstand, glancing down onto its contents, little tinies tumbling on top of each other in the cramped space. They seemed different somehow, now. There was a surrealness to the moment, like a pair of wires had crossed in her brain. She’d gotten so used to the idea that James was separate from her snacks, a concept reinforced by years and years of edible tinies disappearing down her gullet while he remained safely outside. But now he was inside, already sharing a belly with one of them, and in another moment, she knew, he’d be packed inside with all of them, another little face with limbs in the squirming pile she was looking down on.

“I really am a terrible pet owner,” she mumbled, half sarcastic, half self-deprecating. She reached in and plucked out an anonymous tiny snack between two fingers. “Alright James, you asked for it. Here’s some company.”

Little James heard those foreboding words and then: silence. A suspenseful absence of sound, as his little ears failed to detect anything over the background of constant sloshes and crackles. He was nearly about to speak up and inquire when he finally heard it. A distinct, single squelch, from a distant place far above, beyond many body-lengths of tightly clenched throat muscle.

A swallow.

He looked up, following the squiggling folds of the stomach walls until he found the twisted knot of muscle that he’d slipped through. And he waited, June’s heartbeat counting the seconds. …Three, four, five, six.

With a wet crackling, the sphincter stretched, and a glistening mess of saliva and fleshy tones slipped forth.

*SPLASH*

James’ eyes widened a bit, realizing what he’d just witnessed. After all those years of watching June flick other tinies into her mouth, of tracing their imagined path through her unseen innards, first out of terror and then from fascination. Now, he’d just watched her swallowing a tiny from the inside. He watched June’s food push itself up from the glowing pool of acids and examine its new surroundings, the reality of the situation sinking in for both of them.

*gulp*

The recurrence of the familiar sound took him by surprise this time. He looked up again, head moving quickly, and listened to the metronomic pulse of June’s veins. …Four, five, six.

*squelch*

*SPLASH*

A splatter of glowing droplets danced over James, ripples lapping against his body.

*GURGLE*

The walls shifted around them, knocking every tiny inside into a tumble as June’s delayed dinner was stirred within her belly. Three tinies shielded themselves and looked around in terror. James simply let the fleshy walls move him, the digestive tides carrying him until he came to rest again, his face shifting into a giddy excitement. Those hungry gurgles he’d always hear as she ate, this is what they were. This was her body beginning its work.

*gulp*

“How’s my dinner looking?” came June’s magnified voice, a moment after clearing her throat. She was morbidly curious not only about what answer he might give, but about how he might give it. She couldn’t imagine the feelings going through his tiny head.

“We’re all fine in here, for now,” he replied. He looked over at the imposing fleshy walls, knowing perfectly well what they would be doing over the coming minutes- the coming hours.

“‘We’, huh?” He really didn’t seem to have a problem lumping himself in with her snacks. Well, he was already literally being lumped in with them anyway.

*squelch*

*SPLASH*

June heard the arrival of her latest mouthful over the stethoscope, an oddly loud noise for a movement inside her that she could hardly even feel if she tried.

James saw the latest tiny- no, two of them- squeeze through the entrance to June’s stomach and crash into the glowing waters, almost landing on one of the others. The wave they sent out washed over his head, knocking him off balance. When he settled again on his hands and knees and tried to surface, he found his head just barely reached the open ‘air’. It wasn’t just more of her food filling up the space, there was more liquid now, more acids leaking from the walls.

*gulp*

June sent another edible down her throat and reached for the next, looking down at her chest as she did. It wasn’t anything she’d thought of before, but now she couldn’t help but imagine each one landing somewhere down inside there with James. Curiously, she wondered if that was what her little pet thought about when he watched her eat.

*SPLASH*

*gulp*

…Three, four…

*gulp*

…Five, six…

*SPLASH*

Her pace picked up, hunger slowly taking over now that she’d started to eat. She began swallowing each tiny before the last had even reached her belly. Which, naturally, led to a particular reaction on the part of her digestive system.

*GURGLE* *GLORP*

*UURRP*

The glowing tide quickly rose over James’ head, along with the heads of her other snacks, setting off a frenzy of panicked splashes. Instinctively he tried to stand, to bring his head up to the ‘air’, but the smooth, uneven surroundings offered very little stable ground. And now suddenly the enormous stomach didn’t seem quite so roomy. Sure, there was still plenty of space above him, but down on the stomach floor with all those flailing limbs he found shockingly little open space.

*GURG*

He felt an instinctive bolt of terror as the hungry rumble filled his submerged ears. A nightmare rushed back to him, leaping forward from years in the past, a conjured image of what little June’s stomach would do to him if she ever made good on that threat of swallowing him down.

“Hehehe.”

James froze still at the sound. The gentle, amused chuckle that he knew so well, easily recognizable even now. He let his limbs relax, and sank all the way to the stomach floor, the rising pool of acids deadening the frantic sounds above and letting the deep, steady thump of June’s heart shine through. He never could fight back against her, not outside and certainly not inside, but he didn’t need to. He was hers, and she would take care of him. He noticed that strange feeling in his lungs again, and realized in that moment of calm that it had replaced the urge to breathe. The potion was doing its job.

“How was that?” came her voice through the walls of muscle and sea of acids.

James opened his mouth to reply, but found he couldn’t hear his words.

“…James?” She still sounded fairly playful, but there was a hint of concern now.

He looked up through the glowing waters toward the surface. Her snacks seemed to have calmed down a bit now that she’d paused her binge, swimming in a slightly more orderly fashion. He pushed off the squishy stomach floor and rose toward the surface.

“James, if you’re playing with me, I swear I’ll-”

“You’ll what? Eat me?” he joked as he reached the ‘air’.

He heard her let her breath out, relieved.

“That potion doesn’t let me talk underwater.”

“Underwater? It fills up that fast, huh?” she asked rhetorically.

She actually had thought ahead about that part, but she’d opted out of adding some kind of speech enhancement to the potion. The stethoscope was way cheaper, and she really hadn’t thought he would get this far, so she’d decided to stick with safety-critical enchantments. Considering he didn’t sound like he was drowning, or melting alive, it seemed like it was working too.

“…You don’t want to stop, do you,” she voiced it as a statement, like she was coming to terms with it. “If I keep going you’ll be buried in there, no way to talk to me, no way out until it’s all over. But you don’t want to stop.”

“…I …I want to see what you can do…”

“Huh, didn’t think you’d have any surprises left for me after all these years,” she said with a permissive smirk. She gave it one more moment of thought. “…Enjoy the ride James, can’t wait to see your face on the other side.”

*guuurg*

There was a low rumble from somewhere beyond in her inner workings. He glanced around at the walls, excited but still a little nervous. He wasn’t sure what he’d just signed up for, but he knew he wanted to find out. His eyes passed over the other tinies. Most of them were looking at him now, expressions ranging from shock to horror to rage. He could sympathize with them, but deep down he knew they were never his to save. They were all June’s, and she would do with them as she wished.

*gulp*

And it sounded like she wished for dinner.

What followed was only memorable as a blur, a vivid, exciting, terrifying blur. Tinies began raining down from the sky by ones and twos, faster and faster. She must have had three or four in her throat at once she was downing them so fast. She’d been holding back all day, even until this point, but now she gave into her hunger.

He fought the edibles to stay at the surface for as long as he could, just to watch her amazing, powerful gullet deposit mouthful after mouthful into her belly, the cacophony of frantic splashing overpowered only by the occasional squelch and grumble as her stomach churned.

Eventually his vision became clouded with limbs and faces. Tiny bodies like his own tumbling on top of him. And yet she kept going, downing mouthful after mouthful to the point where he wondered if she’d broken into a second box or maybe even a third! He watched it all happening in awe, like a tornado or a tidal wave, a force of nature. Until finally there was nothing left to see but the crowded bodies of her dinner, so he closed his eyes and listened, and felt.

Gradually, he felt the hot fluids of June’s belly cover more and more of his body as it rose. Every other snack continued to fight for altitude, which only helped push the submissive James deeper. Until all there was in every direction were writhing limbs. But as his ears slipped down into her growing digestive pool, there was her heartbeat again, and another ominous rumble, and the ever-present heat.

And there he was, in the center of June’s meal, in the middle of her stomach, tucked away inside her belly. After all these years.

*UURP*

Pressure came from all sides as the walls beyond compressed the mountain of tinies around him, letting up gradually as the stomach relaxed again, but spurring on a fresh round of struggles throughout her dinner.

This, this was what it was like to be part of her meal. To be one of those tinies- one of these innumerable tinies- that she swallowed down without a second thought.

“Phew, I needed that,” came her voice, loud and clear. “…It’s really weird to think you’re actually in there this time.”

Yeah, it is, he thought in response. This must be what it felt like for all her snacks when they talked during a meal, overhearing half a conversation in the midst of her casual digestive onslaught.

“…Well, I guess it is kinda late now. Guess I’ll get ready for bed.”

He felt the movements that marked the start of her nightly routine. At first he identified each one: standing, reaching, walking, but before long they began to blend together with the unconscious movements of her digestive system, and the world outside gradually became an unknown blur. Where she was, what she was doing, it was all a mystery, an utterly irrelevant mystery. All that remained certain was June. And for her recent meal, what that meant was digestion.

And what that meant for James was constant, unending motion, from every direction but one. He’d reached the bottom now, his back resting against the soft muscle of her stomach floor, every other tiny having clambered out from underneath him. They struggled above, and her pulse beat steadily below. But tinies were small and light, even collectively. And the potion did its stated job, keeping him protected from everything within her, including her dinner.

Every few moments, he felt the walls shift, pressing in tighter, sending a literal wave of panic through the mountain of her meal. He listened to the absence of their screams, wondering gruesomely how long it would take for her body to overwhelm them. She hadn’t been exaggerating, he thought, when she described as a child what it would be like for him if she’d actually eaten him. In fact she’d undersold it by a fair margin. His sympathy for her dinner only grew with every moment, but it was a sympathy balanced with acceptance. This was nature at work, in all its horrifying glory. This was the miraculous process of June living and growing. And she was showing him firsthand.

At some unknown point he recognized a familiar sound, muffled and often obscured completely. The shower was running. All this frantic chaos inside her and she’d indifferently proceeded to strip and take a rinse before bed. He imagined her casually washing herself- not that it was something he imagined often!- without hardly a second thought to the tinies she’d swallowed only a few minutes earlier, still stewing and writhing in her gut, except maybe a spare concern for her dear pet. They were just along for the ride, as much a part of her routine as any other part of her body. And she hardly even noticed their existence. Was this always what it was like? Calm casual June on the outside and constant, unthinking, brutal digestion on the inside?

He was just beginning to seriously question how long this chaos could go on, when he realized whatever his legs were currently touching was no longer moving. The frantic struggles were gradually calming. Little by little. No, one by one. As the tinies who could keep fighting remained near the top, and the ones that couldn’t sank limply to his level, the struggles of her collective meal literally dying down.

That’s what edibles were to her stomach at the end of the day, little bits of meat. “A nutritious meal that’s fun to eat,” that’s what the boxes said.

A sudden rush derailed all thought. There was a mighty slosh, everything tumbled around him. He lost all bearings but he didn’t panic, even with death and digestion on all sides. He swallowed his panic and listened to the constant pulse of June’s heart.

“Good night, James,” came her teasing voice. “Hope you’re enjoying being part of my dinner after all.” A moment later, the tone in her voice had softened and she added “…Hope you’re okay.”

He felt the touch of her stomach wall again, sinking toward the bottom of the pile once more. He reached out and stroked it, knowing she couldn’t feel it but hoping that she could. That huge upset must have been her lying down in bed. She’d spent the whole day pulling together this scheme for him, and now it was time to sleep off her dinner.

I’m okay, he thought in reply.

*GURGLE*

Her stomach churned around him, stirring her meal even further in its new orientation.

“Heh, guess I’ll take that as an ‘I’m okay’,” she joked.

James would have chuckled if he’d had air. He felt her shift again one more time, and then she went still.

And as if she controlled time itself in this world of hers, everything gradually began to slow down. The constant, erratic struggles of her meal faded out, giving way to the steady, methodical movements of her surrounding muscles. The swell of her chest, the rolling contractions of her gut. Her pulse slowed too, gradually, as minutes ticked by.

And what was very recently a frenzied chaos of silent screams was now almost… calm. He listened to her living symphony, organs harmonizing in time throughout her body. He’d only just learned that to be her meal was to be thrown violently into the frenzied pit of doomed snacks, but now… to be her meal meant to sit peacefully in her belly as she drifted into sleep, lulled along by the regular contractions of her body as he helped her close out another day.

* * *

He wasn’t sure how long he’d stayed awake listening, when he’d fallen asleep, how long he’d been out, or what exactly had woken him. All he knew was he was suddenly aware of a loud, constant sloshing. His first thought was of June, and his second was a recollection of where he was.

He opened his eyes and saw nothing but shades of green and brown. There was light, but it was somewhat dull, like he was staring through a tinted fog. He could see the green-tinted pink of the stomach floor below him, but above him was a murky… sea.

A thought occurred to him, simple and expected yet somehow totally unbelievable. He moved his limbs, but the ‘air’ was thick around him. It wasn’t air, though, and it wasn’t water either, it was far too thick. He pushed off the muscled floor and swam upwards until his head broke the surface, catching a glimpse of the long, sagging, pink ceiling before a wave rushed over him and sent him under. He surfaced again and noticed the walls shifting; a smooth undulation rolling down the length of the stomach, sending out a steep wake that sloshed and splashed like an angry ocean.

It took some work to stay afloat, but he managed it for a moment and looked around. The stomach was much darker than he remembered and much fuller, the tide rising almost completely to the squiggling folds above. But what he noticed most, was what wasn’t there.

There… there wasn’t a single tiny left… Not one… Not even a trace. Just this… slop. The sea he was swimming in, the thick, churning chyme, this was them. She’d melted them all down. Melted the flesh from their bones. Melted their bones!

This was what it meant to be her meal. This was digestion. A churning storm of acidic waves that tore food apart until it wasn’t even food anymore. An endless caustic onslaught.

He heard a distant rumble, not quite like the deep gurgles of her gut, and recognized it as snoring. He noticed her heartbeat, slowed and soft. Then the walls squeezed in again, waves of chyme sloshing forward and pulling him back into the brown sea, the once brightly glowing light dimmed by the dissolved remains of countless tinies now swirling in a nutrient stew.

All this, and she wasn’t even awake. She’d broken down every snack she’d swallowed without even trying, without even noticing, without even having to be conscious.

*GURGLE* *SQUELCH*

Her stomach rumbled loudly around him as he sank back beneath the waves. A victory call, having decimated every scrap of food she’d swallowed down.

James had never felt so lucky to be alive in his entire life, and he’d been very lucky several times.

*SHLORP*

A sudden rush of current pulled him along the stomach floor, startling him for a moment, until one simple fact offered him an explanation. He peered out through the massive sea of murky brown and thought:

Her body needs to make room for breakfast.

Everything in there needed to leave…

* * *

June blinked awake to the sound of birds and the gentle glow of sunlight. Waking up was so much better without an alarm. Sometimes she wished every day could be a weekend, one of the few passing fantasies she’d kept since she was a little girl.

She stretched lazily in her sheets, smiling, and her belly gave an idle little gurgle as it flexed.

That started to jog her memory at about the same time she noticed the stethoscope laying on her nightstand. She glanced over at James’ empty tank, then put a hand to her midriff. For a moment, she had to contend with the intrusive thought that she’d just eaten and digested her childhood pet, but she pushed the idea from her mind. Glancing at the case sitting on a table across the room, she reminded herself that she’d paid good money for that potion, and had every reason to believe James was fine and probably having the time of his life, that little weirdo. She smirked at the idea and put her confidence on.

“Morning, James,” she yawned, pushing herself upright in bed. She picked up the stethoscope and pressed the cup below her breast, where biology had taught her her stomach rested. “You still in there?” She put in the earpiece and listened.

…*gurgle*…

She would have liked to hear his voice, but that had just about been the reply she’d been expecting.

“Guess you’re not still in there, huh.” She moved the cup lower, scanning idly back and forth. “You probably can’t talk right now,” she said, half to herself, like openly acknowledging the futility gave her an excuse for trying. “…You know, I had this crazy dream last night… We were kids and I actually decided to eat you like I used to tease. I giggled and poked my tummy for hours with you inside and imagined it all feeling so good… If I’d had a dream like that when I was six, you’d be long gone…” She spoke with an ironic tone, like commenting on someone who happened to avoid an accident by some stroke of pure luck. “Would have been a waste, though.” She smirked and put the stethoscope down; she couldn’t hear anything over her own voice, and she knew there was nothing to hear anyway.

Who would have thought all these years later I’d end up in here after all, right?

James felt her stand, the rush of gravity as her body carried him quickly upwards, and the mild reduction in pressure as she straightened her torso, removing the slight bend in her midriff where he currently resided.

Currently, James was basically a speck. A little iota of humanoid-shaped meat. He had no hope of free movement. Every direction was occupied by muscle, flesh and bone, layers upon layers of June’s internal workings, with a teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy, narrow path winding along amidst the organic hustle and bustle. A long, tight, meandering tube, filled to the brim with every drop of thoroughly digested tiny she’d eaten the night before, along with the singular ‘snack’ who had survived. A single intact snack, caked at every joint, contour, nook and cranny of his form with the dissolved remains of a long gone dinner, wrapped tightly in taut intestinal tubing, buried somewhere deep in the winding coils of the woman’s gut, behind muscle and bone and fat and skin, and completely nonexistent to the world at large.

And he smiled.

He always smiled when June said good morning to him. Though she was right in assuming that today he wasn’t in a position to return the gesture. But that wasn’t unusual, she was almost always right. The new feeling of her footsteps reverberating through her body caught his attention for a while, but they soon faded into familiarity with the rest of her soundscape. As had happened with most of his new experiences, there in his owner’s depths. Because as undeniably unprecedented as all this was for them, he still couldn’t help but find it all, in a way, strangely usual.

The fleshy walls hugged him tight, like how she sometimes held him in her fist when she needed to be careful with him. And he did what he usually did and simply surrendered himself. Her various movements swung him to and fro, jostled him, tipped him, just like any other time they spent together. Sure, he’d never been caked in chyme before, but being with her as long as he had, he’d grown fairly tolerant of not dissimilar things like sweat and various secretions, aspects of her body that weren’t particularly noticeable to her at her scale, but which stood out clearly at his. All in all, this hadn’t taken much more getting used to than that. Really, there was only one major difference from the usual: she wouldn’t be putting him down and leaving him behind, he’d be along for the whole ride.

And so he laid there limp within her, basking in the warmth of her body and the warmth of her presence. With nothing else he could do but let June carry him, he fell into a variable state of half-sleep, lulled by the steady rhythm of her being. He stirred often, though.

He stirred for a moment when he heard the shower kick on, thinking back to the night past. He’d been creeping through her intestines for long enough now that her stomach seemed like a distant place, despite the fact that he could still hear its dulled churning through the layers of intervening flesh.

He stirred again when he heard the clink of cutlery. The distant, almost inaudible gulps as she carried on with her routine breakfast. Another meal to follow the last, which aside from him would have been all but forgotten about at this point. He marveled at how she carried him with her- carried all those tinies from last night in whatever new form- without even a single thought. More than that, she carried a piece of every tiny she’d ever swallowed: a pinch of flab here, a strand of muscle there, a length of hair. Such power and grace.

But most vividly, he stirred when she spoke. Only a comment or two addressed to him at first, but eventually a phone call as well. He couldn’t hear the other party, but he could clearly hear the displeased tone in her voice when she shared her feelings about having to work on a Sunday.

Some time later there was the jarring roar of her car coming to life- dampened and dulled by the walls of her belly. And then mostly tiny shifts, followed eventually by more walking.

It was somewhere around that point when he finally noticed a change inside her, one that had been building- or rather depleting- slowly as the hours crept on. The chyme he’d been covered in, the nutrient-rich brew that her stomach had worked so hard to craft from her late-night binge, was mostly gone. He might not have even noticed except for the fading light that left with it, but as he looked and felt around, his senses confirmed it.

He wondered for a long moment, trying to understand what had happened. He didn’t remember any other passage draining the slop away, and he surely would have noticed that. But if not that, then…? He brushed his hand over the walls again, and their strikingly soft texture. June’s pulse beat steadily from the other side.

…That is where it was going, wasn’t it? Into her. Really into her. It was becoming an actual part of her, not just the remains of her meal carried in her body, but another piece of her body itself. Slowly, one little drop at a time, slipping out through the soft walls. The surface suddenly felt different against his hands now, despite still being the same. It was more than just another muscular surface, it was the final, ultimate line. The one he wouldn’t be crossing. The point where food became June.

He thought back to the sea of faces he’d been crammed in with just hours earlier, the almost literal sea of chyme, slowly and gradually rendered down into practically nothing, picked away at drop by drop, absorbed.

This is what it meant to be her meal, he thought once more. To slowly slip deeper and deeper until you were filtered out of existence- out of your existence and into hers. It was almost terrifying in its stark, systematic process. Going on and on every hour of every day, just beyond the smooth, innocuous surface of her skin. And yet the feeling of June all around him, the sound of her breathing, and occasionally of her voice, kept him feeling remarkably safe, even buried there in the ultimate depths where her food finally became naught.

James dwelled on these feelings for an unknown time, adrift in muted, living darkness, until suddenly, after hours and hours, his surroundings abruptly changed. The soft, muscular walls that had consistently pressed against his face, parted with a familiar squelch. And with a few more diligent contractions, June’s body pressed his own onwards into someplace new.

For a split second, he thought he might have made it to her exit, and a strange flurry of emotions filled him. But the continued darkness and warmth of her body quickly told him otherwise, confirmed shortly afterwards when he met another of her fleshy inner walls, this one smoother rather than soft.

His arms and legs bent freely in ways they hadn’t been able to since her stomach, as he was released into this new chamber. It was the most room he’d had in quite a while, but he hardly took advantage of it, simply letting himself settle limply. He’d long since resigned control of his body over to June, but without the complete encapsulation he’d just left behind, he found he did need to exert some control over himself to stay in a semi-comfortable position and avoid folding over himself the wrong way.

That kept him slightly more aware as he once again settled into his stupor, that, and one other thing: the flurry of emotions he’d felt when he thought he was about to be… ‘released’. Relief, reluctance, excitement, loss, apprehension, and many unnamed shades in between. With no other work for his mind he found himself slowly unpacking the feelings as his body was moved along.

Some part of him did want to get out. Probably the sanest part, honestly. He hadn’t had food, water, freedom of movement, real light, or anything resembling the aspects of a normal life since his consumption the previous night. But at the same time… there was a peace, a serenity, a security in being there inside June, always close to his caring owner, never alone, always looked after- even if unconsciously by her body’s innards.

As stark in their function and disgustingly vivid in their appearance as his surroundings were, there was also a certain… honesty and vulnerableness he felt from it all. This was her inner world, the hidden, intricate workings of her being, he felt special for being able to see it all, to be a part of it. And he knew that at some point, in the span of a few seconds, if even that, he’d be cast out from it all and it would once again be hidden away, private.

And speaking of private… he’d never once seen… that part of June up close, her rear. And the more he thought about it, the more excited it made him. A strange, primal excitement that he couldn’t quite pin down. One that he was only vaguely acquainted with. And not only would he get to see it all on the way out, but he’d be inside part of it, touching it.

Time continued to pass, and as he pondered these feelings, he lost count of the number of contractions which had pushed him along, the world turning as he rounded bends, and trembling when June shifted or stood to walk.

After a period of relative silence, he heard her voice again, deep and slightly more muffled than it had been. And in reply he heard another voice as well. He’d heard a couple other voices during his journey with her, often fairly hard to make out, not that he had much interest in what they were saying. But this one did catch his attention. It actually seemed almost familiar somehow, though he was sure he’d never heard it…

…Carol, the name came to him slowly, and he smirked in the darkness. He recognized the other woman’s voice from June’s imitations alone. He could hear the dull, vaguely condescending tone clearly, despite only catching a few odd words, and somehow he felt he could feel June’s reaction, the frustration she was keeping inside, inside just like him. He listened vaguely to the exchange, minding the general contour of the conversing voices, rather than any specific words, until June’s final statement, which for whatever reason struck him almost as if he’d been addressed directly.

“Sorry, but I have to get going. I need to get home and take care of my pet.”

June broke off the conversation with those words and did just that, turning away and returning to her car, where she started the engine and put a hand to her midriff again. She could feel a pressure building, one she’d been waiting for.

She made her way through the streets distracted, one might even say anxious, which was not a state of mind she was well acquainted with. A lifetime of experience with her own body told her clearly that something was making its way to the end of her colon, and her logic told her it must include one of two things: her friendly pet James, in which case she didn’t want to keep him waiting or… compacting in there, or it was whatever her body had left of James, in which case… well, she just wanted to know. She hadn’t been able to confirm things one way or another all day, and while she was ‘sure’ everything was alright, she just wanted to be ‘sure sure’.

She pulled quickly into the drive, shut the car door, entered the house, up the stairs, into her room, into her bathroom… and then suddenly it was time to find out. She hesitated for a moment. She hadn’t been nervous about using a toilet since before she’d even gotten James- too young for her to even remember. But she pressed on.

June undressed her lower half, quietly casting her clothes into a heap, opened the lid and sat herself down. Her body instinctively tensed, a practiced response to the familiar surroundings. She made a conscious effort to relax the tension in her bowels, and then, she pushed.

*plop*

That… sounded normal, she thought, unsure if that was a comforting observation. She felt more of last night’s meal shift into place, and she pushed again.

*sploosh*

She paused, that had been most of it. Should… should she look? Would she be able to tell a difference if one of those had been James? …Was James still different from- She shooed the thought away like a pesky fly. She decided to wait until the end; she’d look once she was ‘done’, so she’d only have to face the truth once…

She tensed again, pushing, and her rear puckered.

*gasp*

James saw light, for the first time since June’s body had finished siphoning the glow-water from her bowels. It overwhelmed his little eyes, despite the fact that he was mostly in shadow, forcing him to blink firmly and squirm lightly out of reflex, his hands pinned and unable to shield his face.

It didn’t last long, though. After hardly a second of light, he heard June gasp, and an avalanche of muscle quickly buried him back into her darkness as she clenched around him.

“James!?” he heard her call. He was a bit too… buried to respond. Her anal muscles gripped him with a completeness reminiscent of her throat, leaving fairly little room for conversation, not that she would have been able to hear him too well anyway.

But she didn’t need to hear him. It was fairly hard to mistake the feeling of something foreign wiggling against her pucker without her control. And despite how much she’d ‘prepared’ herself for it, she couldn’t help but flinch at the strikingly strange sensation.

He heard/felt her pulse speed up as she paused for an awkward moment to process the shock and all it implied, but it didn’t take long for her to get a grip and relax her taut muscle. Relax, but not release.

“Hold on a sec,” she said.

He felt her stand, the walls of muscle shifting and sliding and folding over him as her hips rotated. Then came a few familiar jolts to match her steps, and then a drop accompanied by more shifting and sliding.

“Okay, here we go,” she warned.

Her words seemed to stop time, just for a moment. Even as he braced himself, James took one last impression of his little world, her world, the warmth and closeness and strange familiarity.

And then she pushed.

Out came James’ head, blinking into the bathroom light, along with his shoulders. Half a moment later and he felt cool air’s touch for the first time in a day, as his face gained distance from the radiant heat of his owner’s body.

Another push and James felt his chest and hips expelled from her sphincter, and all of a sudden June was no longer the strongest force in his world, as gravity reasserted its dominance. With the slightest help of his owner’s parting touch as her exit squeezed closed around his narrowing legs, he slipped, slipped, and then he fell.

A gentle, almost soundless thump announced his return to the outside world. An entirely inconsequential noise when compared to the sensations, both new and gone, that the pair were experiencing.

Strands of colored fiber filled James’ peripheral vision, his back coming to rest on the soft cushion of one of the bathroom towels, a welcome mat she’d laid out just for him. Light poured toward his eyes around a darkened silhouette of pleasant curves, and he widened his eyes even as his pupils contracted, his urge to blink defeated by his urge to see, as his vision quickly adjusted.

Shades of color came to the silhouette, painting it in the familiar tones of his owner’s skin, shading contours and giving shape to the form which hung suspended above him. Two round, smooth, cheeks, imposing and elegant.

He caught his first glimpse of movement, and it was in the pucker from which he’d been passed, a bud of pink amidst the shadows, twitching and stretching as it relaxed back into place, sealing off the depths of her inner world.

And then, as his vision broadened, he finally saw it. A sight that somehow filled him with a stronger sense of beauty and awe than anything else his mind could recall. The simple curve of a pair of lips; little, smooth swells, cleanly shaven, down the length of her crotch, gently parted by her stance to reveal the littlest hint of pink, glistening in the bathroom light.

And then a second later, it all changed. The cheeks folded up, concealing the pucker, closing the slit. Thighs came together and the crooked form of a squatting woman straightened as June stood. A few quick thuds, muffled by the towel around him, accompanied her footsteps as she hurriedly turned around.

His eyes followed the spot they’d been locked too, as if chasing the sight as it fled. But in the next moment he was granted an entirely new view. As June turned to face him, the front of her crotch came into view, and there again James could clearly see the neatly shaven slit; lips folded delicately across the gently sloping mound nestled between her hips.

He stared up, unmoving, at the beautiful form of his owner, the living mountain through which he’d just traveled, breathtaking and awe-inspiring in every aspect of-

“James!” June called again, squatting down to get a closer look at her pet. The movement happened to pull her crotch just out of his field of view.

Suddenly, James registered a burning in his chest and gasped for breath, breaking out into a series of panting gasps that quickly subsided as his little lungs once again held air. He hadn’t needed to breathe in hours, and it took a few seconds of conscious inhale and exhale before the familiar pattern began to return to automatic. His eyes focused on her face, painted with concern as she stared down at his worn, slimy, and fairly odorous little body. Getting a further grip on his airways, he choked out two words.

“…Hi… June,”

She gave no response for a long moment, just staring down at her pet, as if trying to read all the ‘James-ness’ she could out of his little eyes.

And then… she started to laugh. A full, friendly, deeply amused, deeply relieved sort of laugh.

“What’s so funny?” he asked weakly, smiling along with her. She smiled back at his rhetorical question as her giggles subsided.

“You had me worried, you little shit.”

That one made James chuckle too, tiny bounces in his tiny chest.

“You okay?” she finally asked.

“Yeah, I think so…” He tried to move his limbs and found that they were a little weak from disuse, but still solid, very much not digested.

“Here,” she offered, reaching down with her hands. She was more than a little reluctant to handle him, knowing where he’d just been, but she didn’t hesitate. She’d wash her hands later.

He felt her fingers slip under his body, and her touch sent a tingle across his skin, her soft warmth calling back vivid memories both old and new, the sensation of her touch now including an entirely new dimension. She lifted him up gently, even more so than usual, a slow, steady ascent. James tried to stand, and June noticed, shifting her thumb to give him something to hold onto.

With his feet under him again, he looked out over the bathroom. He’d been in there only a rare few times. He glanced over the ornate etchings in the marble features, the fancy sink, the shower she’d used while he’d been inside her, and his eyes settled on the toilet.

He could just see over the seat and into the bowl. Inside was exactly the sight anyone might expect, a familiar sight to human and tiny alike, despite the difference in scale, but that in itself was what held his gaze on the simple clumps of brown. Those had been other tinies. He’d watched her eat them, watched her digest them, churn and mash and squeeze and pump them throughout the long, twisting labyrinth of her pulsing depths, right up to the other side and their inevitable, casual disposal, with everything of value filtered out and absorbed into her being. A handful of little lives- several handfuls- reduced to a simple series of turds, all in a day’s work for June’s body.

She reached out with her free hand and pressed the lever, churning the still waters of the bowl into a whirlpool which pulled the remains out of sight. Then she turned and began the short walk from her bathroom to her pet’s tank, where his own little shower would be waiting for him.

The movement sent James off his balance, and with no tight, muscular walls to keep him in place, he toppled over. But June was there to catch him, just like she always was, inside or out. He fell softly on hands and knees to the surface of her gently curved palm.

Seeing he was unsteady, she cupped her hand slightly against her chest to ensure he couldn’t accidentally fall. Coming face to face with the thin layer of fabric which separated him from June’s torso, he stared like he was trying to recognize an old friend. He could swear, despite her footsteps, that he could still hear a faint gurgle, and the not-so-distant, steady pound of her heart.

“So…? How was it?” she asked, looking down at her quiet pet. “I tried to tell you it’d be horrible in there.” His answer took a long moment to come out.

“…You’re amazing, June,” he replied, slowly looking up to smile at her. A warm, friendly, sincere expression, that packed his tiny face with admiration and awe. She chuckled once and shot him a look, but finally admitted defeat.

“Alright, James, you win. I’m amazing.”

Originally Published: 8-Aug-2023