Content
He was nervous, but he tried to be brave.
There had been so much over the last few days; an unending flow of new experiences. Unfamiliar faces coming and going and unfamiliar places along with them; this building, that building; rooms of all different sizes and materials, some of them stable, others on wheels. Darkness and light had traded turns, sometimes for long stretches and other times in brief flashes.
And then there was the present moment. Currently, it was dark. Dark and quiet. It had been for some time. But he was pretty sure by the last thing he’d heard, that this darkness was the last one. He’d arrived at his new home, and his first experience there was, apparently, supposed to be a ‘surprise’.
It seemed it wasn’t a fast surprise, though. He’d been sitting there in the quiet dark for a while now, long enough for all the hustle and bustle of the last few days to settle out of him. And as he’d calmed down, his curiosity had started to take a stronger hold. But with nothing to see or hear, all he could do was imagine. And so that’s what he did. He waited and imagined.
He was a bit excited, but he was also nervous. So he tried to be brave.
He tried particularly hard when he heard the first footsteps- the first in a long while. And then there were voices. Muffled and distant at first, but both were growing louder; louder and closer. They got so close that he was sure they were right there with him, but he still couldn’t see, only hear their conversation. They were talking about his surprise. One of them in particular sounded very excited. He started to feel the same.
Then suddenly there was a loud ripple and rush of fabric, and once again the dark and the light took turns. He snapped his eyes shut, the discomfort overpowering his urge to see, but he threw a hand over his face and tried as hard as he could to squint through. He blinked hard a few times, but before he even had a chance for his vision to adjust, a light shadow cast over him.
Still squinting, his world came back into focus. Or perhaps, one might say, it came into focus for the first time.
Two, wide, enthralled eyes met his. Mesmerized and unblinking in that way only a child could be. Framed by fair, freckled cheeks and long flowing hair. She stared at him with absolute, silent wonder, unmoving except to lean her face slowly closer and closer.
He swallowed his nerves, but stood his ground, staring back. He took in the sight. She was another kid, probably about his own age, though that came to him more as a vague feeling of familiarity than a conscious thought. He wasn’t really thinking at the moment, just looking, watching, beholding.
The only other children he’d seen before had been his size. He’d never seen a girl with a face so much larger than his whole body.
“Surprise! Happy birthday!”
Behind the girl, two adults stood, towering over them both. Upon hearing those words, the girl’s awestruck, flat lips, gradually curled upwards into a huge, exuberantly ecstatic smile.
“Really!? He’s mine!?” She spoke to the adults, but never shifted her eyes so much as a millimeter off of him- something he could see quite clearly with her face almost pressed to the glass that sat between them.
“That’s right, honey.”
“Wow!!” she exclaimed.
She seemed to look at him even closer now, something he wouldn’t have thought possible. He held his semi-awkward, semi-nervous pose, flinching just a touch at her booming cry. But by contrast, his expression was almost worriless- completely overtaken by wonder himself. He could practically see every bit of excitement pouring out from this girl’s eyes as she scanned him up and down.
“Hi! I’m June!” She addressed him for the first time, her voice carrying every ounce of enthusiasm her expression showed.
He felt the instinct to reply, but his words caught for a moment in his throat. It wasn’t just that she was big, but she was big. Not only her body but even her personality felt like it could sweep him away. And yet both just hung there, staring eagerly at him, awaiting a response.
“…I’m James.”
…A drawing and a bouncy ball…
He didn’t really know why, but whenever she was in the room, James couldn’t quite take his eyes off her either. He had other things he could do, his little tank had a few games and toys he could play with, and yet he just sat there, watching with riveted interest as this girl lay on her belly atop her bed, feet idly kicking in the air behind her as she hummed a tune and scribbled madly on the paper in front of her.
As far as changes to his surroundings went, there was the sunlight which slowly drifted through the room, the very occasional visit from her parents, and then there was June, who was by far the most dynamic force he witnessed from his perch on the little table in the far reaches of her bedroom. When she came, there was always sound, and activity. Objects moved from here to there; toys, chairs, clothes, papers, games, all flying about with an endearing liveliness. Or at least that’s how it seemed to little James, in his otherwise quiet, tiny, fairly unchanging world.
And that wasn’t even mentioning their actual interactions, of which there were many.
Case in point, June suddenly popped up off her bed, paper in hand, and bounced over to the edge, where she quickly slipped down onto her feet and scrambled over to his tank. Thankfully, after the first couple days, he’d gotten over the urge to flinch whenever she came rushing headlong toward him.
“Whatcha think?” she asked, equal parts excited and proud. She held up her drawing and pressed it against the glass with a dull *thunk*.
He looked it over with due curiosity, scanning over each line, and every blotch of color which sloppily crossed them. It looked like… a ball? With blue, and green, and squiggly shapes, but also with a big black thing in the middle. There was a word written nearby that he couldn’t read, even though the sloppy, block capitals weren’t that bad: ‘HOLE’. And accompanying it all was an arrow going through the whole thing.
“What is it?” he asked, intrigued by this strange, childly masterpiece.
“Well, my mommy and daddy are away for so long today because they have to go on a big, important business trip, all around to the other side of the world. And it takes a long time to get there and come back, because the world is like a million million millions big.”
“Oh,” James replied, spotting an uncertain shape around the edge of the ball- planet, that is- which he realized must be her mom and dad.
“But I had a smart idea,” she continued excitedly. “They should just make a big hole!”
“A hole?”
“Yeah! Cause it would be faster!”
“…It would?” He stretched the limits of his young mind, but though he wanted to agree with her, he just couldn’t quite understand.
“Yeah, see, um… Oh!”
She quickly threw her drawing down on the table next to his tank and rushed off to grab something from under her bed. After a moment of wriggling and muttering under there, she ran back over with a bouncy ball he’d seen her throwing around earlier. She lifted the lid above him and plonked it down right next to him, making sure to hold it from bouncing or rolling away.
The sudden arrival of the large rubber ball, not to mention her hand holding it from above, brought back that flinch he’d recently gotten over, and left him staring again. He watched the way her fingers gripped it; they were just like his, but their sheer scale revealed details he would never have thought to notice. He couldn’t help but marvel at their simple, intricate presence.
“Try to walk around to the other side,” she told him.
At first he almost didn’t want to. He felt just a bit frozen in place. He’d seen how quickly she could zip around her room, and she was so much bigger and stronger than him. She’d startled him just by putting this ball down next to him, and she hadn’t been using nearly as much force as when she tossed that same object- still many times his size, not to mention weight- all different ways around the walls, floor and ceiling. Now all that potential, wild energy was sitting right there in his tank with him.
“Go on,” she encouraged.
Nervously, he forced his legs to move, and took a few steps. He kept his eye on the ball, and the slender fingers that held it, as he slowly walked around its perimeter. Once he had made it halfway, the object suddenly rushed up and away from him with a little gust of air, triggering another flinch.
“See, going around takes a long time. But if there was a hole in the middle, you could just go through it! Like it wasn’t even there!” She announced her point proudly. “Just, um, just walk back to me, but pretend the ball is still there,” she instructed.
Gathering himself, James did as he was asked, walking back toward her face in a straight line as she watched through the glass. He made it back in a third as many steps.
“Huh, that was faster,” he noted.
“See!? That’s why they should just make a big hole in the planet! So people can get to the other side faster!”
James thought for a moment and nodded. Wow, that actually sounded like a really smart idea. He never would have thought of that. June must have been pretty clever to figure it out.
…Sharing lunchtime…
“And this is Sparkle. I got her when I turned five, which was a whole year ago now, cause I got you when I turned six.”
“Wow, you have really cool toys,” James replied as he watched her put her latest stuffed animal down. Each one had been several times his own size, allowing him to see all the details up close. Though even so, they each seemed like pale imitations of life compared to the energetic girl showing them off.
“Yeah, I-”
“June! Lunchtime!” called her mother’s voice from downstairs. The girl turned toward the door and shouted back in turn:
“Coming!” Then she turned back to him. “Hold on, I’ll be back.”
She pattered off out of the room, leaving the door swinging in her wake. He watched the spot where she’d disappeared for a long moment. She seemed to leave a vacuum behind every time she departed. The room was just so still and quiet in her absence, like everything in there was just waiting for her to return.
Neither James nor the room had to wait long, though. A few minutes later, and he heard the distinct footsteps approaching again, and this time when she appeared, she was holding something large in both hands.
“Mommy and Daddy said this time I could eat my lunch up here with you,” she announced cheerily.
Wearing her ‘careful’ face, she brought the tray she was holding over to James’ table and slid it out of her hands. He walked over to the side of his tank where she’d set it down. The edges of the tray were raised a bit, but he was just tall enough to see over. The thing was almost as large as the floor of his tank, with plates bigger than his bed.
“Ah, here it is.”
He looked back toward June, after one of the rare moments when he’d taken his eyes off her. She was standing back up after reaching down to grab something from underneath his table.
“Hope you’re hungry, James. Cause it’s lunchtime.”
She lifted the lid of his enclosure with one hand and reached in with the other, holding the object she’d retrieved. It was long and skinny, like one of her fingers. She placed one end down against the floor of his tank, then pressed a little button on the opposite end. There was a click, and when she lifted the object away, something small had been deposited in its place.
He walked over to the spot as she let the lid close above him, and she dragged over a chair as he bent down to pick up his lunch: a teeny-tiny plate, with a teeny-tiny fork, and a little puck of James-sized food sitting in the middle. He pulled at the fork and it separated from the plate with a little snap, then used it to scoop off a piece of the familiar, semi-solid food he’d been given and brought it to his mouth.
Meanwhile, June had taken her seat and started chowing down on her own lunch: stabbing a sausage with her June-sized utensil and taking a big bite out of it. The mild noise of her mouth-open munching drew his attention. Her smile was visible between chomps, and she certainly seemed to be enjoying herself. Her next forkful was a glob of something vaguely white and mushy, which she seemed to enjoy even more, humming happily at the experience.
James glanced briefly at the next bite of his own lunch as he took it. It seemed like a tiny, little speck by comparison, while each mouthful she munched on was larger than his entire body. Aside from the difference in size, the smell of her meal began to waft into his tank, and the aroma was much more appealing than his own. If even half her enthusiasm was to be believed, it probably tasted great too.
“…What is that?” he asked after a moment’s hesitation.
Her mouth wide open and about a second away from another bite, she paused.
“Oh, this?” She brought the fork over to the side of his tank so he could see the off-white mush in detail. “It’s mashed potato!” Maybe it was the way he started staring at it, or simply just her nature, but her next words were, “You wanna try some?”
“Can I?” he asked with a bit of excitement himself.
“Yeah, sure!” She reached for the lid, then paused. “Um, not this much, though.” She quickly brought the fork back to her mouth and claimed the mound of potato between her lips. Then she dipped the cleaned fork back to her tray again and carefully snagged a much smaller glob of mush.
James watched her pop his lid open again and lower the fork inside. The utensil was several times his height in length, and the aromatic glob that stuck to it was, despite her attempts at portioning, still a few times the size of his own head. He watched it approach as she happily chimed:
“Alright, here you go- Whoops.”
*splat*
June had tilted her hand at a bit too much of an angle in her attempt to reach down, and the tiny ball of spud had slipped off her fork, landing right in James’ face. The tiny boy shook his head and tried to wipe it away. It was noticeably warm, but the temperature was surprisingly comfortable, and the smell that soaked into his nostrils made his mouth water.
*giggle* “Sorry,” she apologized. “But how is it?”
Once he was mostly clear, he took one of the handfuls that he was wiping away and brought it to his mouth. He licked it, then immediately shoved the entire crumb into his mouth.
“Ish show good!” he exclaimed with his mouth full.
She giggled at him again as she watched him gradually wipe more of the tasty food off his face to stick in his mouth. Within a couple seconds, he was relatively clean, but he kept running his hands over his cheeks in vain, trying to get the last remnants of the sticky substance off his skin.
“Here, this is what Mommy does when I have food on my face,” she offered, though she didn’t wait for a response.
Putting down the fork, she stuck her thumb in her mouth and gave it a good lick. Being as she was, right in the middle of a tasty meal, there was plenty of saliva in there to go around, and her digit had a distinct, liquidy sheen over it when she pulled it out. Immediately she lowered her hand back into the tank, and putting on her ‘careful’ face once again, she lined up her thumb as closely as she could with his head, and rubbed it over his face as gently as she could. Her mom always did it too rough, and she hated that.
James’s face sunk into the soft, somewhat slimy pad of June’s thumb. He nearly stumbled back but managed to brace himself with one foot. The pressure made him close his eyes, but just a moment later it was gone, and he opened them again to see the girl’s hand retreating away once more. In its wake, a thin spattering of her saliva remained on his face, but most if not all of the potato had been washed away.
He watched her return her thumb to her mouth to lick off the tiny bits of food she’d collected off him, then she happily announced:
“All clean!”
Satisfied, she returned her attention to her lunch, and continued her work of shoveling sausage and potato off her plate and into her gob. James kept eating too, mixing his own food with the little globs of potato which had fallen to the floor of his tank. But he was much less enthralled by his meal, and much more by the fresh memory of her enormous, yet gentle touch, and the traces it left behind.
…Getting closer…
“…And, done!” June chirped happily. She smiled down at the drawing she’d been diligently working on. From her place on her bed she lifted the paper and pointed it in her pet’s direction. “What do you think, James?” she asked.
“Um…” the tiny boy squinted, trying to make out the details over what, at his scale, was a fairly large distance. “A birdie, right?”
“What!? No! It’s a pretty dress!” she complained.
“Huh? Sorry, I guess I can’t really see that far.”
“Far?” she raised a skeptical eyebrow. It wasn’t far, they were in the same room! But lowering the drawing she’d been holding between them, she had to admit that James was basically just a little spot against the glass when she looked at him from her bed. If she couldn’t really see him, then maybe it made sense that he couldn’t really see her drawing. “Hrm, we have to fix this,” she decided.
Putting her art supplies aside, she scooted off her bed and scurried out of the room. James sat and watched for a few seconds, then minutes. He heard distant, muffled voices, but nothing he could understand. Eventually, though, he recognized the increasingly familiar sound of approaching footsteps- two people this time.
June led the return to her room, followed not too far behind by her father. They walked right up to his tank, and he couldn’t help but shrink back a little. June was already so much larger than little James, and her father was easily twice her height. Plus, the tiny boy hadn’t really met the grown up at all, while he’d at least had some time to get used to the friendly girl.
“So where do you want it?” her father asked, lacking quite a bit of his daughter’s usual enthusiasm.
“Hm… over there,” she decided, pointing to a spot along a wall much closer to her bed.
“You sure?”
“Uh-huh,” she nodded.
“Alright then. Go take him out of there first. Don’t want him getting bumped around. Be careful though.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
James had hardly had enough time to process the meaning of that exchange before June approached the tank even closer and opened up the lid to reach her hand inside.
“Out you go,” she chimed, as the tiny’s view was suddenly eclipsed by a palm almost the size of his bed, with five fingers, each at least the size of his whole body, wrapping around him from all sides.
“Aaah!” He let out a semi-suppressed yelp, squeezing his eyes shut as June’s grip pressed in against him. He felt the warmth of her skin immediately, and the pull of inertia as he was lifted swiftly off the floor. It was a rush of motion and fear, but it only lasted a second or two, and then suddenly everything was still again. Almost still, that is.
“It’s okay little James.” There was a mild attempt at comfort in her voice, mixed in with her usual excitement. And her voice itself was louder to him now without the glass in the way, in fact he could even feel it vibrating through him due to the direct contact.
The grip around him loosened and he opened his eyes. Covered in moderate shadow, he looked around to see not only her palm and fingers, but the fabric of her shirt. The edge of her hand was pressed against it, forming a secure little pocket, as she held him cupped against her chest.
He looked up to see her big eyes looking down over him, smiling. She was standing still, but at her relative height, he could feel the unconscious, idle sway of her body, the little shifts she made to keep balance and comfort. Not only that, but he could feel her breathing, steadily in and out as her chest rose and fell against him, along with the quiet, steady thumping of her heart not too far away.
Her skin was soft and yielding to the touch as he rested on it, letting his own breathing slow to a pace more resembling hers. He could hear her father grunt as the man presumably lifted the table and tank, carrying the tiny boy’s entire home across the room. But James couldn’t see any of it. For the moment, his entire world had been reduced to that narrow space against June’s chest, where she held him tenderly. Even so, he took in the view with wide eyes. He’d never been this close to anyone this size before. They were already huge enough from a distance, but like this… She wasn’t much older than he was, but not only was her body bigger than his entire tank-house, but it was so massive that he could probably get lost in it.
*thud*
“Ugh, there we go. How’s that?”
“Perfect! Thanks Daddy!”
“Anything for you,” he replied warmly.
James’ world lurched as June started walking. He rocked firmly back and forth with her stride, pressed forward and back as she accelerated and then came to a stop, but she held him securely right up until the moment they arrived. Then, she leaned forward a bit, spilling him fully into her palm before slowly pulling it away from her chest.
He saw her stretch her other arm past him to open the lid, and she moved him again, slow and steady, lowering him back down into his glass-walled house. He felt her knuckles reach the floor with a light jolt, before she slowly twisted her wrist to slip him free from her grasp.
“There we go, back inside,” she announced with satisfaction.
Letting the lid close, she took a couple steps back to judge the position, then nodded with approval. She took the remaining step or two to reach her bed and pulled herself back up onto the mattress, reaching over to grab the drawing she’d made.
“Here, can you see it better now?”
James was a bit dazed by the ordeal. Physically he hadn’t been injured in the slightest, but mentally it was a bit much. His eyes focused on her smiling face, now much closer than it used to be when they spoke from her bed- but so much further than it had been a moment ago.
“Well?” She asked again, slightly worried that her plan might not have worked.
He finally focused on the drawing, the details reaching him much more clearly than the first time.
“Oh! Yeah, that’s much better!”
“Yay! I’m gonna do another.”
…The first box…
It was an excited screech that first caught his attention this time. He recognized it as June immediately, and was instantly curious as to what was going on. Someone had just come home, he’d heard that much, but this seemed extra exciting. He tried to listen, but heard little to none of the goings on downstairs. The next identifiable sound wasn’t until he heard June’s little feet- or huge, relative to him- running double-time up the steps, and then in she burst to the room, leaping straight onto her bed.
James noticed quickly that she was holding something, clutching it in both hands. As the bedding settled from her impact, he saw what looked like a box; moderately sized in her grip, maybe half the length of her arm and two or three times as thick.
She put it down in front of her and worked her fingers against one end in an excited attempt to get it open. She made a little exclamation of success when she managed to undo the flap, and immediately tilted the end of the box up to peer inside.
He watched her expression shift to one of fascination and wide-eyed interest as she stared down at whatever was within. He could see thoughts were going through her mind, but he couldn’t make out what they were, any more than he could make out the contents she was so fixated on. Both, however, would become fairly clear soon enough.
Slowly, he watched her reach a hand inside and pull something out. She held it between two fingers, right in front of her face.
James blinked a few times, first confused, then surprised. She was holding… another tiny. A tiny like him. Not being very far from the bed, he could see the details quite clearly. It was a man she was holding, with hair on his face. She was staring a lot like she had been when she’d first met James, soaking in everything with her big eyes.
Had she gotten another pet? But James had arrived in a big tank house, not a little box. Maybe they didn’t need another tank because they already had one? Was this new tiny man going to move in with James? A new roommate? That was actually kind of exciting. Sure, this guy looked a lot older, but maybe he could teach James new things and they could be friends, and he would have some extra company while June was busy-
Wait… what was she doing?
From inside his tank, he watched fixedly as June slowly started to open her mouth. The tiny man began to wriggle uncomfortably, especially when she started bringing him closer. She stretched her lips wider, awkwardly trying and failing to get them around the uncooperative legs.
He watched with increasing unease and captivation as she started tilting her head up and raising her hand above it, changing the angle to make it easier. Before much longer, she’d managed to slip the tiny’s lower body inside, and then quickly continued with the rest, bringing her hand fully to her mouth and keeping it there as her lips sealed around the little man.
June lowered her head again, and though she was looking in James’ general direction, it was clear she was only staring off into space, all her attention focused on something else. She kept glancing down toward her hand and the lips it covered. He couldn’t really make out her expression, only that it was something intense. From between the gaps in her fingers he could see little twitches of movement, but he couldn’t tell exactly from where, or even from who.
What was going on!? What was she doing!?James asked himself these questions but found himself instinctively fearing the answers.
And then he heard something. It was a quiet sound, something he probably wouldn’t have noticed, even in the quiet room, if he hadn’t been so intensely focused on the scene. And even then, he almost wouldn’t have placed it, let alone believed it, if he couldn’t also see the little twitch in June’s throat that went along with it.
*glrk*
James felt something come over him, a mental dissonance strong enough that it almost became physical, held back only by his stubborn disbelief.
June’s hand dropped from her face, revealing her expression. Beneath her wide, wonderstruck eyes, was a small little smile, steadily growing wider and wider as she marveled at the thing she’d just done.
She sloppily pushed herself into a sitting up position, looking down over her own chest and pressing her hand at various different spots, like she was trying to feel around for the tiny she’d just…
Swallowed. She’d swallowed that tiny. She’d eaten him.
The more seconds ticked on, the less James could deny it and the more the reality sunk in. But just when he didn’t think it could get any worse, he saw her picking up the box again.
June reached in a second time and pulled out a second tiny, a woman this time. The little girl’s fingers moved quicker now, more confidently. She opened her mouth as wide as she could and pushed her hand toward it. Instead of struggling to catch the wriggling pair of legs, she simply stuck her pinched digits far enough past her lips that the rest of the tiny she was holding naturally had to follow.
James caught a quick glimpse of the miniature woman, splayed out on June’s cute, pink tongue, just as her hand retreated and her lips smacked shut, sealing the tiny away inside her mouth. He watched her jaws begin to move, twitching this way and that way, little bumps forming and disappearing in her freckled cheeks. Meanwhile her grin grew bigger and bigger, as her eyes filled further and further with delight, and her mouth filled further and further with saliva.
*glrk*
“Mmmm! Yummy!”
From that moment on, James was frozen completely in place, so motionless that you would be forgiven for assuming he was one of her toy dolls. He didn’t blink. His breaths were so shallow that his chest hardly even swelled.
June reached into the box again and drew out a third tiny, whom she gleefully stuffed passed her lips, humming happily at the experience. She closed her eyes, visibly sloshing the little guy around inside her petite maw, excitedly soaking in the sensation.
*gulp*
She traced a finger down her neck as she swallowed, until she lost track of the little man somewhere inside her enormous body.
It went on and on like this, for he wasn’t sure how long. Long enough that he lost count of how many tinies she’d pulled from the box, only to disappear past her innocent face. All he knew was that at some point, she’d peered down close into the container, saw it was now empty, and shortly after bounced off her bed and ran from the room, calling out for her parents in an excited, thankful voice.
James stared at the door after she left, terrified, and uncertain.
…Like nothing even happened…
He stood there quietly, listening to June talk. The mildly disturbed expression on his face too tiny for her to notice.
James was nervous, scared even, but he tried to be brave.
“Then we went to the beach, and I got to play in the ocean. It was really cold, and the water tasted funny, but the waves were a lot of fun. My daddy would hold me up and they’d splash everywhere. Have you seen the ocean before?”
“…Uh, no, I don’t think so.”
“Maybe Mommy and Daddy will let me take you next time, it’s sooo pretty.” She nodded, in full agreement with herself.
James looked up at the smiling girl. Outwardly, he didn’t seem so different from how he was normally. But inside, things were very different. Both inside him, and inside her… Though in his case it was almost entirely mental, and in hers it seemed to be solely physical. Just the other day, she had swallowed down a whole box full of tiny people, and even though they were probably all still swirling around somewhere inside her or something right at that moment, she didn’t seem any different from her usual self at all. She talked to him just like she had been doing since her birthday.
“June! Bedtime!” her mother called. “Remember, you have school tomorrow.”
“Yes Mommy!” she called in response, briefly turning toward the door before returning to him to finish their conversation. “Well, I guess I have to go to bed now, but… *yaaaaawn* But I’m not even tired.” Even as she spoke, she stretched lazily and her eyelids were visibly drooping.
James hadn’t noticed any of that, though. Instead, he’d been transfixed by the broad, close-up view of her gullet that she’d accidentally given him. Close enough that her breath lightly fogged the glass of his tank. The next thing he knew, she’d hopped onto her bed, and her dad had popped in to wish her goodnight and shut off the light.
“Goodnight, Daddy.”
“Goodnight, sweety.”
*click*
“…Goodnight, James.” She snuggled into her covers.
“… … Goodnight, June…”
…It wasn’t just a nightmare…
“Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay!” June’s excited cries practically echoed as she bounded into her room, crashing down onto her bed like a meteorite.
James smiled at her arrival and the life she brought to his otherwise quiet little world, walking to the edge of his tank to see her better.
His smile disappeared when he saw what she was holding.
He… he’d thought maybe it had just been a nightmare. But that box in her hands… Like watching a memory, he saw her fiddle with one end to open it before excitedly peering inside, then eventually sticking her hand in and pulling out a-
*HOMF*
The tiny boy flinched slightly behind his wall of glass. She’d shoved that guy from the box into her mouth so quickly that he hadn’t even been able to see what they looked like. Not that it mattered… a second or two later, and he saw the girl’s throat twitch, turning the tiny into the latest snack for her growing body.
*guuurgle*
He could hear the wet squelch all the way from his tank.
“I’m starving!” June complained. “But I wanted to save room in my tummy for you guys, cause you’re just so tasty and fun!”
Her explanation didn’t make much difference to the next miniature man she plucked out of her box and shoved past her lips, or to the little woman she grabbed after that. One following another following another, she gulped them all down with playful abandon. She swallowed a few while lying on her belly, then rolled onto her back and gulped a couple upside down, before finally sitting up to point the box straight into her mouth like a glass of water, letting the last tiny slide down into her pink, glistening grasp.
And all James could do was stare, gazing in shock, terror, and confusion at the cognitive dissonance of the scene before him. Part of him still couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Those couldn’t really be other tinies like him, could they? And if they were, she couldn’t really be… eating them, right? June seemed so nice! There was probably an explanation; there had to be! But…
*BWUURP*
June threw a hand to her face, embarrassed.
“…Guess I ate those a little too fast…” she mumbled.
To James, it didn’t even seem like June remembered he was there, not when she was so interested in the tinies she got in those boxes. He didn’t know what would happen if that changed. …And he was scared to find out.
…A demonstration in the bathroom…
James waited patiently, if a bit anxiously, his eyes resting on the open bedroom door. June had spent the last few minutes showing him her drawings of the beach, which she’d been working hard on for the last few days. But she hadn’t seemed satisfied with the detail, trying to add to the picture with vocal sound effects and energetic waves of her hand to give an impression of the waves against the sand.
All that presenting had apparently given her an idea, and she’d rushed off, leaving him with the instructions to ‘wait there’ and ‘get ready for a surprise’. He was kind of excited about the surprise, but the fresh memories from the day before kept him constantly nervous whenever she was around. It was a strange mix of emotions, as having her around also made him feel happy.
He didn’t have to wait too long before June pattered back into the room with an excited grin on her face, running right up to his tank- and pushing off the lid.
“Come on, I wanna show you.” Though well meaning, it ended up being much more of a command than a request, as she excitedly reached into his glass home and wrapped her digits around his body before he had a chance to object or react.
He silently tensed as her grip whisked him away. She brought him to her face first, for a passing moment, and smiled down at him cheerfully. Her grip was firm, but gentle; far too strong for him to possibly be able to escape from, but soft and comfy in the way her smooth skin cupped his meager weight. She brought her hand in against her chest before taking off back out of her room and into the hall.
His face nearly pressed against her shirt, James turned his head as best he could to catch glimpses of the surroundings as he passed by. This was his first time leaving June’s room since he’d arrived, and he managed to make out a few other doors, as well as photos hung on the walls, as the hallway blurred by at hyper-June speed.
Within a few seconds, she had delivered them to her chosen destination, carefully putting her tiny pet down on a cold, marble countertop.
“Ta-da!” she cheered, waving her now empty hand in front of him.
After a moment or two of dizziness, he refocused mentally and visually, and at about the same time, his ears recognized the distinct sounds of water.
In front of him was a large, deep, clear pool, framed in a circle of marble. Hanging above it, a large, curvy spout leaked tiny drops to splash down into the lake below, sending ripples in all directions.
“It’s the ocean! See?”
It was the bathroom sink.
But to be fair, at his scale, it wasn’t the worst substitute. She’d closed the drain and let it fill as high as it would go, doing her best to give a proper representation.
“But in the real thing, there are lots of waves all the time, like this.” She reached forward and swooshed her hand through the water, splashing a good amount onto the floor.
James’ eyes went wide. The ocean sounded terrifying!
“Oops, um… I guess maybe more like this.” She tried again, moving her hand a bit more slowly this time, sending a large, but much more manageable ripple through the basin. With a bit of trial and error, she even managed to make them just splashy enough to almost sound like the ocean too. “Yeah, like that. See? It’s just like this, but a bunch bigger. Cool right?”
Despite his anxiety, James gazed on with budding, youthful interest at the steady rhythm she managed to set upon the water. It almost sounded calming. A little splash leapt up and landed on his feet, causing him to crack a smile and a giggle.
“Yeah, that is kinda cool. I bet it was a lot of fun.”
“Yeah, it was-” She stopped suddenly, both her voice and her hand.
He wrinkled his brow and turned to look at her. She was staring off into space with an uncomfortable expression.
“Oh…” She put her dry hand up to her belly.
*gurg*
She pouted and turned away, but not toward the door. She started walking deeper into the bathroom.
“June?” he asked, mildly alarmed. He did his best to follow her, but she was away from the sink in two steps, whereas it took him closer to twenty just to reach the edge. He reached the precipice just in time to see the girl lifting up a toilet seat, and pulling down her pants.
“You just wait there,” she mumbled distractedly, pulling her bare rump up onto the seat.
June was at that in-between age, where she could manage using the toilet by herself, but didn’t really care too much about things like closing the door. And besides, even grownups occasionally used the bathroom with their pets around. James, for his part, had been living in a clear, glass house, and the standard of privacy he’d had before hadn’t exactly been better.
All that is to say, when little James saw June’s face scrunch up and her abdomen clench, the uncomfortable feeling that came over him didn’t have anything to do with modesty.
*plop*
…
*plip* *splash*
There was a lot James didn’t know about how people’s bodies worked, but he did have some idea about food going in, and… ‘stuff’ coming out. He was pretty sure that even if he didn’t chew up his food, what happened in between wasn’t nice; it sure didn’t seem like it ended nice.
*splosh*
And the ‘food’ that June had eaten fairly recently had been… well, they had looked like… like tinies… like him. Which meant…
*splunk*
…She was probably pooping them out… right now.
*sigh*
June let out a long breath, then took a few in and out before wrinkling her nose.
“Bleh, smelly,” she muttered. She quickly spun the roll of paper next to her (far too much) and tore off a (far too large) wad to clean herself with. She wiped and dropped it in the bowl before getting up.
James, frozen in place, caught a far too lengthy glimpse before she reached over to close the lid and push the handle. He’d been holding out some hope, but he was now quite sure that whatever may have gone ‘in’, what came out definitely were not tinies, not anymore…
“Sorry, I guess I ate a lot,” the little girl apologized for the interruption.
Having learned well, she squirted a bit of soap into her hands from the dispenser, and proceeded to wash in the mini-ocean she’d made for her pet. When she was done, she pushed the plunger to open the drain and let the sudsy pool begin to drain.
James took a step back from the water as it started to swirl and chug noisily into the pipes. But on the opposite side of his marble island was June, specifically her upper chest, and as he backed toward it, he happened to catch a muffled little *glurg*.
It didn’t sound all that different from the drain…
…Making the connection…
As usual, just enough time had passed to let him start to relax, before one evening June ran into her room holding it again. The box. He’d seen it a few times now, how she eagerly devoured every tiny she could get her fingers on. But still, each time he couldn’t help but just stand and stare. He wasn’t sure why. He was horrified, but also mesmerized, awed. She could demolish them all… and to her it was nothing.
He watched her open up the end of the box- much quicker now- and immediately pick out two tinies at a time. She stuck out her tongue and plopped down one, then the other, pausing in between to slip the first securely into one cheek.
He listened to her hum around them, her jaw moving lazily back and forth as she tossed her snacks around on her tongue, until her mouth filled too much with spit and she was spurred to swallow them down. One, and then the next.
*glurk*
*ulp*
The same increasingly familiar, increasingly conflicting thoughts ran through his head. Was this supposed to happen? Were tinies like him pets like he’d been told, or were they… snacks? June was usually really nice to him, but she also did this. But of course she would never do that to him… right?
He watched on in fearful silence as tiny after tiny slipped down her throat.
…It was kind of amazing, though… how they all just… disappeared. She was so big that she could just… swallow them up and they were just… gone.
And she did like it; it sure made her smile a lot. And he liked it when she smiled. So maybe… this wasn’t actually a bad thing? But then… they sure didn’t look like they wanted to be eaten, and they definitely didn’t come back out… He sure didn’t ever want to end up-
And then, finally, it happened. It had been bound to eventually. Her eyes idly scanning her room as she mainly focused on the flavor dancing on her tongue, she happened to focus just enough to notice her little James, standing there at the edge of his tank, watching her. Watching her eat.
*glrk*
Their eyes met and she cleared her mouth, pausing for a moment. James took a sharp breath, but otherwise stayed still as a statue. She blinked, and the moment dragged on, wheels turning in her young mind.
*guuurgle*
From his spot just a few June-steps away, James could hear it loud and clear, the call of her belly.
Another second later and the girl looked away, turning her attention back to her box and fishing another pair of snacks from within, almost as if nothing had even happened. But something had happened, and they both knew it. They both knew she’d had the thought.
She’d thought about eating James.
…Chocolate…
“Hmm… okay!”
Two giant, June-sized fists whizzed round to stop a short distance in front of James, who sat comfortably on a thick layer of bedding.
“Pick a hand,” she instructed.
“Um… that one!” he pointed.
She opened her fist to reveal nothing but empty air.
“Nope!” *pbbbt*! She stuck out her tongue and blew a teasing raspberry, unintentionally drizzling the tiny below with a light mist of her spittle.
“Darn!” He looked up at June with disappointment. He was beginning to think he wasn’t any good at this game.
Still, he was having a bit of fun. Honestly, any time he got to come out of his tank was always interesting, even if it was a bit scary at times too. Presently, he was sat with June on her bed, the girl’s legs meeting in a cross behind him, with her upper body towering over him and her innocent smile beaming from on high.
“Don’t worry. Try again, I’m sure you’ll get it this time,” she encouraged. In truth, she’d been purposefully ‘making it harder’ for him the last few turns, but only because she wanted to make the prize extra exciting when he finally won. She put her hands behind her back again, then a moment later presented them once more. “Pick a hand,” she said again.
“This one,” James chose.
“Yay!” She undid her fist to reveal a tiny little brown speck of something, resting in her palm. She brought her hand down to the bedding floor so he could climb on and retrieve it.
“What is it?” he asked, pulling himself up onto her finger. He crawled over and picked up the prize. It was mostly solid, but also a little gooey, and it felt warm to the touch from June’s grip.
“Chocolate,” the girl answered. “My mommy gave me a piece, but I saved a little for you. It’s just a tiny bit, so I don’t mind.”
“Thanks, um, what is it for?”
“For eating, silly!”
“Oh!” He sniffed the bit of brown. “Oh!” Immediately he put it to his lips and took a bite. “Oh! Wow, that’s even better than the… ‘potato’.” He had a bit of a hard time remembering much of anything in the face of this new, amazing experience.
“Yup! Chocolate is super yummy. Maybe even the yummiest. I can’t believe you didn’t know that. There are probably lots of yummy foods you don’t know about.”
*guuurgle* … *glorp*
The rumble sounded loud and clear from the girl’s belly, hanging not too far above his head. June abruptly stopped talking, falling completely silent, but she didn’t look away. In fact she kept her eyes firmly on him, watching, thinking. James stared back in equal silence, a fear growing in his mind, but he didn’t dare say a word.
A long moment passed before either of them did a thing. But eventually, June started to move again. She curled her fingers slowly around her pet, already sitting in her palm, wrapping him in a secure hold.
James felt his tiny heart begin to race.
“Well, I guess that game’s over. Time for you to go back in your tank,” she said.
Scooting off her bed, she did as she said and carried little James back to his glass home, placing him safely back inside. Then, without another word, she walked quietly from the room.
…Too close for comfort…
James put down his game when he noticed June had entered the room. Immediately, he noticed she had a slightly… strange expression. She walked around to his side of her bed, her eyes resting on his tank all the while. Since her attention was obviously on him, he got up and walked to the edge of his home to greet her. He was about to call out and say hello, but just as he opened his mouth, he noticed what she was holding.
Inconspicuously swinging lightly by her side, was another box.
The smile that had been forming melted off his face, and any words got caught in his throat. Not saying much herself, she walked right up to the table that held his tank and leaned forward against it, lifting her hands- along with what they held- to rest them next to her pet’s transparent home.
Glancing back and forth between her pet and her fingers, June undid the end of the box. James could feel his tiny heart beating faster and harder, but it was probably nothing compared to the tiny he watched her pull from inside. Once she had the little thing in her grasp, they claimed the bulk of her attention, teasing a smile from her face.
June leaned in closer and closer to her hand, slowly… slowly…
*HOMF*
In a quick, playful little chomp, June threw her mouth open and shoved her fingers inside, with the tiny along for the ride. But of course, when her digits emerged a moment later, her snack did not.
She giggled around the morsel in her maw; maybe at herself, or maybe at whatever they were doing inside. A few *swish* *swish* *swish*es of her tongue later, and she gave a dainty little *glrk*, sending the snack down on its way to her belly.
She glanced at James again. He stood there stock still, as usual. Watching with wide eyes; terrified and enthralled at the spectacle. At the same time that he was questioning why she had decided to do this right next to his tank, he was also soaking in all the new details he couldn’t quite see from her bed; how her cheeks flexed when she moved her jaw, how her nose wrinkled and twitched when she focused on moving her tongue, how her entire throat vibrated when she swallowed…
June reached into her box and brought out another pair of wriggling treats. This time, she opened her mouth slowly, sticking out her tongue.
“Aaaah-” *NOMF*
She made overly exaggerated sounds, like she was playing. But it certainly wasn’t a game for the little ones she stuffed between her lips.
“Mmmmm… Mm-mmmm…”
*glrk*
*sigh*
Smiling, she turned her head slightly in her pet’s direction.
“These are really yummy,” she told him with glee.
Her friendly expression seemed so inviting, and yet there was a look in her eyes. Something mischievous, or maybe worse. She gave him a moment to respond, but when he didn’t do so quickly, she glanced back to her box and promptly pulled out another micro to munch on. She popped the tiny woman onto her tongue and started sucking as she shifted her gaze back to the tank.
“…Are those… other tinies… like me?” James finally asked the question he’d been dreading.
“Mm-hm,” she hummed around her mouthful, nodding.
*gulp*
James skipped a breath. The cheery directness of her answer made the quick way she swallowed down the tiny she’d been toying with all the more impactful.
“I could swallow you up too, you know. Mommy and Daddy said so.” Her words were equal parts casual, provocative, and reflective, in a way where it wasn’t quite clear whether she was saying them as a joke to scare him, or as a legitimate bit of out-loud pondering. What was clear was that she’d been giving the idea some real thought, enough that she’d asked her parents if she would get in trouble for eating him.
She reached into her box again and pulled out three this time. With her face still pointed mostly in his direction, she casually shoved all three squirming little bodies inside and sealed her lips around them with a grin. Poor little James shivered as he stared. He could faintly hear the rush of saliva as her tongue swirled her snacks around her mouth.
*gulp*
*gulp*
*glrk*
June stared directly at him as she took each successive swallow, looking at him very similarly to the way she seemed to look at the snacks she pulled from her boxes.
“…Buuut… I don’t think I’m gonna, though,” she finally said. “You’re my first tiny, so that makes you special.”
She snagged yet another little snack and popped it between her lips, but this time she kept talking.
“Plus, you can talk to me,” she added, half-mumbling around the flailing form on her tongue. “I bet you’d be tasty, though.”
*glrk*
He shuttered at the sound, and she saw it.
*giggle* *urp*
She frowned.
“Guess I shouldn’t talk with my mouth full.” She waved away the belch, then shrugged, before reaching into the box yet again to continue her meal.
…Showing off after the dentist…
“Finally! Back home!” June groaned, flopping down onto her bed.
The sound woke James up from a little nap. He wiped his eyes and rose from his little bed, as June rolled onto her back and splayed her arms out tiredly atop her own, throwing her head back.
While upside down, she caught the little bit of movement in her pet’s tank, and it grabbed her interest. She rolled back over again and proceeded to crawl messily across her blanket to reach the far side.
“Hey, James,” she greeted happily. His presence seemed to lighten her mood a bit, bringing a smile to her face.
“Hey,” he smiled back and waved, somewhat meek.
“You know where I had to go today?” Wherever it was, she hadn’t seemed happy about it. James tried to guess.
“Um… school?”
“No! It’s the weekend, silly.”
“Oh yeah, right. …I don’t know, then.” There wasn’t much he knew about how big people’s lives worked.
“I had to go to the dentist.” She practically spit the word out with distaste, rolling her eyes.
“The what?”
“Do tinies not have to go to the dentist!? Lucky!”
“But what is it?”
“It’s this place you have to go to get your mouth cleaned. They do stuff to your teeth and stuff. It doesn’t feel good, but it makes it all nice and sparkly.”
As he glanced away for a moment to imagine what she was describing, her grin took on a devious hint.
“Blaaaaaaaah.” Just like at the dentist, she opened her mouth as wide as she could and stuck out her tongue, leaning right up to the glass just in front of where her pet was standing.
James’ was caught by the sound and looked back to see the enormous, gaping maw of the young girl staring him down just a few steps away. His eyes immediately widened and locked.
Her tongue wiggled teasingly atop her lower teeth, a soft pink pathway stretching straight back to her throat, where the arc of her gullet flexed and her uvula vibrated from her voice. Even in the shadows, her freshly cleaned teeth shone a pure white against the soft red of her inner cheeks.
*chomp*!
The next thing he knew, she’d snapped her jaws shut in front of him, and he was panting.
“Hehehe,” she giggled. “Whatcha think? Does it look nice and clean in there?”
It had looked immaculate, and petrifying, but little James was still years away from learning words like that- if he lived that long- so all he said in reply was a weak:
“…Y-yeah.”
“Hehehe,” she giggled a bit louder, clearly enjoying his reaction. “So, James, can I ask you a question?”
“Um… sure?” He didn’t exactly feel like he was in a position to refuse.
“What would you do if…” she paused for dramatic effect “… I decided to eat you up right now!?” She made a quick move and he flinched, but kept his eyes on her.
“I… I… uh…” His mind raced with possible answers. Running? She was way bigger and way faster. Hiding? Every wall in his tank was see-through. Fighting? He couldn’t possibly hope to hurt her, let alone overpower her.
*giggle* “So that’s what you’d do, huh? Just stand there? Good to know. Well, I’ll tell you what I’d do…
“First, I’d pick you up out of your little tank.”
She made a mock plucking motion in the air between them.
“Then I’d lift you waaay up high.”
She raised her hand up above her head, which she tilted back, but also a bit to the side, so she could keep watching her pet’s reaction.
“Then I’d slooowly put you inside here.”
She smacked her lips closed dramatically for effect, just below her fingers where the imaginary James was dangling.
“Then I’d do some of this.”
Turning back to face him fully, she put her mouth up to the glass again and noisily slapped her lips around, slipping her tongue back and forth between her teeth, up and down, in and out and everywhere in between.
“Mmm!” she hummed, savoring the imaginary flavor. “And then after that, I’d get to do this.”
*GULP*
She tried as hard as she could to make the loudest gulp she’d ever made, exaggerating the motion.
“Then you’d be aaalll tucked away in my belly.”
She gave herself a satisfied little pat.
“Yup, you’d definitely make a nice treat!” she declared.
A terrified, tiny James shivered in place as he witnessed the dramatization of his demise. She continued to stare at him for a moment, seemingly just taking in his reaction, though she also could have been considering putting her perfectly laid out plan into action.
“Y-you… You’re not actually gonna, though, right?” James whimpered. She put on a very obvious ‘thinking face’.
“Hmmmmm… Well, I’m not supposed to eat anything right after the dentist, so I guess not.”
James’ breathing immediately slowed a bit as he felt some relief. The air loosened a touch and the conversation lulled.
“Oh, wait, I forgot something,” she said suddenly, refocusing on her little pet.
“…W-what?”
“After you’re done in my belly… you come out of my butt!” The little girl spun around, shoved her rear in the air and drummed on the seat of her pants, wiggling it in James’ face while giggling to the ground the entire time.
“Alright- heheheh- I’m gonna go play in the garden. See ya later, James.” And with that, she ran off out of the room, quite a bit more chipper than when she’d entered, leaving James to stew in his worry. But at least he wasn’t stewing in her belly.
…A rainy day…
“Awwwgh… I hate the rain!” the little girl complained aloud. She sat on the edge of her bed, staring out her window with a pout.
“Really? I like it,” came James’ tiny voice from his nearby tank.
“You do?” She turned her head toward him and shot him a look like he must be crazy.
“Um… yeah. I like the noise it makes; it sounds cool.”
“Yeah, I guess so, but whenever it rains it means I’m stuck inside the whole time unless I wanna get all wet.”
“Oh…”
“…I guess you’re stuck inside all the time, so it doesn’t really matter for you, huh?”
The astute girl had hit the nail on the head, more or less reading his mind.
“…”
“…”
“…You wanna see what it looks like?” she asked. His tiny face grew a smile.
“Yeah.”
“Hehe, alright.”
She scooted off her bed and stepped over to his tank, pushing off the lid. He watched her hand descend upon him, stirring up a bit of latent fear, but it didn’t really take hold. She’d picked him up a few times now and he’d sort of started to get used to it.
June was gentle, as she usually was with him, her fingers curling around his tiny body in a loose grip, lifting him softly from the floor and out into the relatively open air. She held him against her chest as she turned and walked back to her bed, hopping back up to position herself in front of the window. Peering down, she carefully opened her fist, twisting her wrist to lower her thumb so her pet could see over it more easily.
To June, it was a fairly large window, looking out into her family’s dreary yard. To James, it was an immense, expansive view into a huge, sprawling, breathtaking world. Clouds sailed past at a quick, steady speed, high above in the gray sky, while the wind pushed at the treetops, swaying them back and forth in noisy gusts. Meanwhile, countless tiny raindrops, smaller than even James, pitter-pattered against the glass, the walls, the roof, and everything beyond. A huge, uncountable mass of tiny dots, collectively filling the entire room- house- no- the entire outside world with sound.
“Wow…” the tiny boy mumbled. She chuckled, a response that bounced him lightly in time with her chest. He glanced up to see her looking down at him, but she shifted her gaze to the window shortly after, feet swinging from her bed.
“…I guess it is kinda pretty,” she admitted.
…Practicing…
“Hey, watch this.” June stuck her hand into the box, resting next to James’ tank, and pulled out one of the remaining tinies she’d been snacking on. She dangled the poor man around a touch, getting a sense for his weight, then she tossed him toward the ceiling.
It wasn’t a particularly high throw at her scale, but to someone of her snack’s stature- or James’ for that matter- it was like falling from a building. Usually, though, the consequences of such a fall were scaled down too, thanks to their miniscule weight. In this case, though, it was much the opposite.
June tilted her head up to follow the airborne tiny, and opened her mouth wide as the little flailing mass began to fall, sticking out her tongue as far as it would go to maximize the landing area.
*smack*
The little man fell, not into her waiting maw, but straight onto the bridge of her nose, carrying just enough force to make the little girl wince, even if only from the surprise. The tiny tumbled off her face and she just barely managed to catch the little guy in an awkward frenzy before he ended up all the way down on the floor.
“Pfff-”
It was a faint little sound, but she’d heard it. She looked to James, who had a tiny hand over his tiny mouth. He hadn’t been able to help himself. He’d been well engrossed in horror as she’d started gulping down yet another collection of helpless, him-sized people, but seeing one smack her in the face like that when she’d been trying to show off just forced a completely unexpected chuckle out of him.
“Oh, that’s funny, huh?” she asked, embarrassed and a bit angry.
“N-no! No no it’s not,” he insisted, all amusement gone from his face.
“Humph! Well, if it’s so funny, you can watch me practice.”
She pushed open his enclosure and reached in for the grab. He tensed up fearfully as he saw her fingers stretching quickly out in his direction, not fearful of her touch, but frighteningly unsure of what might be coming next.
Retrieving her pet, she held him tight against her midriff and picked up the box of snack-tinies in her other hand, dropping the one she’d caught back inside. Climbing up onto her bed with her elbows, she crawled into the center and rolled onto her back.
Putting the box down by her side, June looked down the length of her body and pulled up her shirt to expose her belly. Then she set her fist down on it and gently loosened it, releasing James on the warm, squishy surface. She watched him look around, trying to understand where he was, until he eventually found her face.
“You stay there and watch,” she ordered in a pouty tone. “If you don’t, I’ll practice on you too.”
She didn’t wait for a response, instead immediately reaching for the box she’d just put down. James felt the surface shift below his hands and knees, her skin stretching lightly as she worked her arm. He looked around scatteredly, trying to process the quickly evolving situation he now found himself in.
When June raised an arm into the sky, it caught his attention again. The smooth spire of skin, muscle and bone stretched upwards many times his height. And right at the top, a tiny woman flailed, pinched between the girl’s dexterous digits. He watched the fellow micro sway slightly, this way then that, as June made little corrections to her aim, her mouth already open wide, waiting for another snack to swallow.
A second later, and that snack came. With a little shift of her fingers, the tiny she held began to fall, and James watched the miniature woman sail straight down, directly between the little girl’s lips, landing with an audible, wet:
*splat*
… *slurp* *slurp*
June lowered her arm as she savored her latest treat, rocking James with her movement, who otherwise stayed stock still as she’d instructed.
*gulp*
He saw the curt wave pass through her neck as it shuttered, disappearing somewhere beneath her bunched up shirt. His eyes continued to trace the invisible, downward path until they came to rest at the bare skin beneath his own body.
*blurble*
James felt his breathing begin to grow a bit more ragged, but he was distracted by his owner’s timely remark.
“See!? I can do it,” she declared. “Watch, I’ll do it again.”
Another tiny she withdrew from the box, and another tiny she hoisted up high, dangled above her bedspread, her sprawled out body, and more precisely, her gaping, pink pit of a gullet.
*splat*
“Yeh!” she cheered awkwardly around her mouthful, before sealing her lips to work on it.
James watched her bottom jaw shift and clench as she rolled her tongue this way and that.
“Mmmmm… Hm-mm-hm hm-hm-mm.” She hummed a little tune, punctuating the end with a distinct:
*glrk*
Once again he watched the faint sign of a tiny disappearing down her throat, but this time when they inevitably arrived in her belly, they didn’t just make a little passing noise, but a huge, terrifying sound.
*GUUURGLE* *shlorp*
James felt her skin vibrating beneath him. He swore he could almost make out distinct forms as something shifted within her guts, directly below where he cowered. Out of instinct, he scrambled, hastily backing away from the intimidating, hungry sound.
“Hey!” June scolded, immediately raising her head so she could see him. “I said stay there. If you move, I’ll eat you too!” she threatened. The mild stomach rumble he’d heard didn’t even register in her world, all she was concerned with was making sure her pet saw exactly how good she was so he would never laugh at her again.
James froze at her command, not moving another muscle aside from what it took to continue breathing. Satisfied, the determined girl reached over to grab another tiny- her last one- out of the box, and hold them up above her mouth. If she could do three in a row, that would definitely prove her skill- even if she was only holding them and not throwing them like she’d tried the first time.
She watched the little kicking man above her, aimed and… released. But just as she let go, the tiny made a particularly wild kick, at just the right time to throw off his path, sending him right into-
*smack*
“Hey!”
Out of reflex, the girl threw a hand over her face to grab the tiny, who ironically had once again landed right on the bridge of her nose and then slid toward her eyes. At the same time, she bolted upright, going from fully reclined to sitting in just a fraction of a second. But as she secured a hold on her rogue snack, she felt another tiny form tumbling down her belly.
June looked down to find James, having just come to a stop in a messy heap, caught in a little fold of fabric her pants made atop her crotch. Without much thought, she immediately reached down with her free hand to pick him up, bringing him up to her face for inspection.
As soon as James saw her approaching face he flinched, shrinking back against her palm.
“Sorry! Sorry! I didn’t mean to move!”
She looked down at him with growing sympathy and maybe even a touch of guilt, before abruptly shifting her attention to her other hand.
“Bad snack!” she scolded. “You made me drop my pet!”
Throwing her lips open, she shoved her final mouthful between her jaws with a vengeance. She made several, emphatic, mock-chewing sounds and motions to make it clear this mean morsel was being ‘punished’, before sending the tiny down to join the rest with a forceful:
*gulp*
She had no idea that actually chewing him up would have likely been the far more lenient sentence.
“There!” she said sternly, before her voice and expression suddenly softened considerably. “You okay, James?” she asked. Holding him close to her chest, she brought her newly-freed hand over and gave him an ever-so-gentle nudge with one finger.
“Uh… yeah, I’m okay.”
Her concerned pout spontaneously morphed into a brightening smile.
“Good. Now let’s get you back in your house.”
…Tic-tac-toe…
“X.”
“O.”
“Hm… X”
“Oh… O.”
“Hah! X! I win!” June called.
“Hrm…” James grumbled in annoyance. He wiped the little ‘O’ marks off his side of the glass.
June wiggled victoriously before doing the same. This little tic-tac-toe sticker she’d had her daddy buy was great! And the little, tiny-sized marker it came with for her pet to use was so cute!
“Let’s do it again!” she said.
“Can I be X this time?”
“…Hrm…”
“Come on,” little James whined.
“…Fine,” she allowed with a little pout.
“Yes! Okay, X.”
“O.”
“X.”
“O.”
“… Ah! X!”
“Um- O-”
“X! I win! Yay!”
“Erm, not fair…” she muttered.
“What? It was too fair!”
“But I blocked you. You shouldn’t have been able to still win anyway.”
“Uh-huh!” little James insisted. “You were doing the same thing!”
“No I wasn’t!”
“You were too! Plus you were cheating. You were hogging being X cause you know you can always win every time.”
“Was not!”
“Were too!”
“Was not!”
“Were too!”
“Ugh- you- You stop it or- or- Stop it or I’ll eat you up!” the little girl screeched.
“Bu- … Bu-…”
His voice started to sink back to its usual tiny volume. And June’s shoulders started to lower as she relaxed into her victorious argument.
“…You would not,” James muttered bitterly as he turned away. June glanced off angrily at the wall.
“…Would too,” she muttered in a similar manner.
He turned back to look at her, and headstrong as a little boy with his skull size could manage to be, he replied.
“No. You. Wouldn’t.”
June’s shoulders swelled again, along with her chest.
“Yes. I. Would.”
“Would not!”
“Would too!”
“Would not!”
“Would too!” She shoved open the top to his tank and picked him up with a swift swipe of her hand. “Would too!” she repeated.
James took a sharp breath as she grabbed him, a wave of fear rushing through his tiny body. Brief flashes of his owner’s many snack boxes ran through his mind. He looked up at the much larger little girl with fear in his eyes, but also a little thing he’d learned from her: stubbornness. With a meek, cracking little voice, he choked out two little words:
“Would. Not.”
“Grrrr.”
She opened her fist and reached in with her other hand to pick James up between two fingers, very much like she did with the tinies she often ate. She brought the bite-sized boy right up to her scowling, furious face and glared at him.
Shutting her eyes, she opened her mouth wide.
They were hardly a match in size, but James’ eyes widened just the same. Her hot breath washed over him as her lips parted, so close that he could almost reach out and touch them.
There was no glass between them this time. He had a clear, completely unobstructed view of her huge, threatening gullet. Two rows of gleaming, chunky teeth; lively, pale-pink cheeks, paired with slightly rosier gums, all framing a brilliant, glistening tongue, which flexed and squelched and reached. It reached forward. It reached for him.
He felt her thrust him forward, just as he saw her jaws flex wider. Absolute terror gripped him, of a level he hadn’t felt in quite a while. He squeezed his eyes shut as hard as they would go, and then in he went.
He impacted her tongue with a wet splat, saliva instantly spattering across the entire front half of his body. The subtle roughness swept across his skin as she pushed him further along its length, deeper towards her throat.
She was actually doing it. She was actually going to eat him up. He’d disappear into her body and never come out again. He’d never play another game of tic-tac-toe again, never see another rainstorm again, never see… never see her again.
*slurp*
He felt another jerk as the fingers still gripping his little body pulled back, taking him with them. The sloppy, slimy tastebuds fell away in an instant, leaving behind only the coating of her drool, and the odor of her mouth. Trembling, he opened his little eyes and saw June’s pouty, scrunched up, guilty face.
“There, see?” she declared, gaze firmly pointed at the wall, the slightest quiver in her lip. “I totally could have eaten you.”
She gave him the absolute quickest of glances and noticed the drool dripping from his… everything. Still averting her eyes, she slowly lowered him down to her chest and gently rubbed him against her shirt in an attempt to wipe him clean.
When she was done, she lowered him back into his tank, and immediately afterwards dug her nails under the sticker they’d been playing on in order to peel it off the glass.
“I don’t like tic-tac-toe anymore,” she whimpered, throwing the thin bit of plastic toward a nearby trash can (and missing completely), before walking to her bed where she could wrap her arms around her knees.
There was a moment of silence that followed, which threatened to stretch on in to a long, indeterminate period. But just before it took hold, a tiny little voice replied.
“…Me neither.”
…Another year…
“♫ Happy birthday dear Ju-une♫
♫Happy birthday to you♫”
James heard the distant singing come to an end with a round of applause. He’d been listening to commotion elsewhere in the house all day long; talking, cheering, yelps of various pitches and emotions. Every now and then, he’d been able to make out June’s voice specifically, and he smiled when it sounded like she was having a particularly good time.
Hopefully, when the night was over, she’d tell him all about it before bed-
Just as he was starting to relax again, something caught his ear. Footsteps; several footsteps; several footsteps all getting closer!
He stood and walked to the edge of his tank, just in time to see June’s familiar face burst excitedly into the room, followed by a- no two- three- four- many other kids their age he had never seen before.
“There he is,” his owner announced, walking up and stopping a few steps from his tank. “This is James.”
A chorus of ooos and ahhhhs came from the little crowd, as they bumped into each other in an attempt to get a closer look, but June kept them all behind her at a marginal distance with discouraging waves of her hand. When they settled down for a moment, she took the last few steps over to him alone, and that’s when he noticed she was holding something, something tiny.
She pushed open the lip of his glass enclosure.
“I got cake for my birthday,” she told him happily, “so I wanted to give you a piece too.” What she lowered down to him was an itty-bitty little spoon, like the kind you might find to taste with at an ice cream shop, only even smaller. At his size, it was like a bowl with a long handle attached to the end, and it was filled with a scoop of birthday cake, just for him.
“Oh,” he muttered, surprised. As she set the spoon on the ground in front of him, he bent down and tore off a fluffy chunk, pressing it between his little lips.
*ulp*
“Wow! That’s good! Thanks June!” the little, little boy beamed.
“Awww, he’s so cute!” squeaked one of the girls in the crowd.
“So cute!” echoed another.
“I can’t believe you really have a pet tiny. That’s so cool.”
“It is so cool,” June agreed with a big nod. “I got him for my 6th birthday, and he’s the best birthday gift ever in the whole world.”
“Awww.”
“Wow.”
“Man, I wish I had a tiny too!”
“Can you take him out of there?”
“Sure I can,” June replied to that last one. She shot her pet a little warning look, before reaching in with both hands. She gently grasped James in one, and picked up the cake spoon in the other. Moving carefully, she brought both hands in close to her chest, and moved her birthday cake close enough so that he could keep eating it.
Another round of praise and jealousy swept the group, mostly repeating previous sentiments.
“Awww.”
“The cutest!”
“So cute I could just eat him up!”
James noticed her fingers suddenly tighten protectively around him.
“Can I hold him too?”
“No!” June yipped, and James felt a little jolt as she reflexively pulled him in closer. “No one else gets to hold him.”
There were a few disappointed tones that followed, but she quickly dismissed them and looked down to check on her pet and his treat.
“You like it?” she asked.
“Yeah! It’s great! It’s chocolate, right?” he replied between face-fulls.
*giggle* “Uh-huh.”
James gulped down the last tiny speck of sweetness before fully looking up into her smiling face.
“Thanks!” he said again, subconsciously licking his fingers. “Happy birthday June!”
Her smile broadened, and she pulled him even closer to her chest, pressing him gently against it as her fingers curled around him and her chin nuzzled his head.
“Thanks, James,” she replied, quiet and loving, holding him there for a moment before pulling him away. “I’m gonna go play some more. I’ll come tell you about it tonight, okay?”
He nodded happily, and so she gently maneuvered him back into his tank, and closed the lid above him so no creepy crawlies could come looking for cake crumbs. She gave him one last affectionate look before turning away and leading the kids in a charge back downstairs.
James watched the door as she left, and his eyes lingered on it for a long moment after. He couldn’t help thinking, despite all the scary things, that as a pet tiny, he was happy to have an owner like June.