Colleen went to a dance in the community hall in the village, on a Friday night. She saw a familiar face from years earlier, and walked over to the drinks table to talk to him.

“You won’t really know me, may not even remember me, but we were at the same university together. I was studying to be a teacher and a scientist. I’m Colleen Balfour.”

“Sure I remember you. We never actually got a chance to speak to eachother, but I saw you at the cafeteria during most lunch hours for my entire first year. Then you were gone. I’m Kenneth Sington.”

“I’d been doing my study part time, so that I could work on my science projects at home part time too. So it took several years, especially to finish a double science and teaching degree. I’m an English and science teacher at a high school in this village. Your first year was my last one. Then I started teaching, and largely stuck with it, except for a sabbatical recently.”

“Would you like to dance?”

“Yes,” she said.

They walked out onto the floor, and he put his arm around her waist, and held her hand with his other hand.

“So I guess that science was your main interest, and you just added the English to your degree to give you another subject for a teaching job,” said Kenneth.

“I have spent more time on science out of school, but I’ve also been working on a short story, which may even develop into a novel. It’s over 60 pages long now. It’s a bit of a mixture of science fiction and fantasy. Knowing science fact may help a bit in the writing of it. I haven’t shown it to anyone yet, but I’d like to know your thoughts.”

“I’d be happy to read it right through and tell you,” he said, “It’s so nice to see you again. I always wished I hadn’t been so shy of approaching you in that year at university.”

“How would you like to come over for lunch tomorrow? I’ll make us a hearty meal, and then let you read the manuscript of what I’ve done so far, while I’m working on the next few chapters?... That’s if you’re free tomorrow afternoon.”

Kenneth decided that he had suddenly become extremely free that coming Saturday afternoon. She gave him directions to her house, and they danced some more.

He got to her place at noon the next day, and enjoyed sliced ham, an assortment of salads, and some fruit. Then she gave him the manuscript. Only she knew that it was an account of all of her leprechaun and shrunken gobbling conquests. She had changed the names, and changed the vocation of the character based on herself, and set the location in another country, but everything else was word for word.

It took him until around four o’clock to finish reading it right through on the couch, while she sat at a table in another part of the room writing away, until she had another 2 pages done. When he was done, she came and sat beside him on the couch.

“Do you think it has potential?” she asked.

“Well it’s pure fantasy, which tends to have unlimited potential, as you can write about anything, where leprechauns are concerned. It’s the dynamics with of relationships that the leading lady has with each of the fellows she shrinks that kept me fascinated. The one who shrank himself and set himself up to be eaten by her is hard to believe, but the others seem to respond in an understandable way. You never finished the storyline of that private investigator. He gets away, but the story doesn’t say what happens to him after that.”

“I must have been dealing with so many characters, that tying up his plot line slipped my mind,” said Colleen, who’d actually written no more about Dick Flanigin P.I., because she didn’t know that he’d been found by his former client Brenda Leesil and eaten by her soonafter he’d escaped from Colleen, “I’ll have to work that into future chapters.”

In fact Colleen didn’t know that at least two other people, namely Brenda and Edith, shared her desire to eat shrunken young men whole.

“It’s an original story about shrinking and an original story about leprechauns, and that should make it more marketable, if the unsual content takes with the reading public.”

Colleen had no intention of showing it to a publisher, but had written it as a disguised diary of her own personal memoirs, for her own reading pleasure in the future, as a way of recollecting her happy conquests.

“What are your favourite scenes?”

“I like the surprise that the latest shrunken guy got, when he saw that the earthquake turned out to be the woman digging up the leprechaun kingdom, but I guess the most dramatic surprise, and hence my favourite scene, would have been when the first guy had spent the morning trying to lure a leprechaun out for her at his tiny size in the meadow, and she casually told him that it didn’t matter, because she was planning to eat him all up instead.”

“So would that picnic lunch she made of him be your favourite of the actual eating scenes?”

“I think the pavlova in the kitchen at the end with the last guy was the best of them. If he had to be surrounded by food, pavlova looks and feels the cleanest, even moreseo when accompanied by strawberries, and he had a nice dining room setting to look up at her for the last time, as he met his fate. Obviously nobody wants to be eaten like that year seven kid in your story did, but the pavlova was probably the best way for any reluctant victim to go.”

“Well thank you for your feedback? I’m going to put a pot of tea on. Would you like me to bring you a cup?”

“Do you have any fruity herbal tea?”

“I do keep a peach flavoured one. Will you have that?”

“Yes, thank you.”

While they were drinking their tea, they continued to talk.

“English was never my strong point. I wish I could have given you more ideas to work with on your story,” he said.

“Not at all. You’ve given me some valuable insights. I appreciate your taking the time to read it.”

“I’m interested in anything you do,” he said.

“That’s a nice thing to say to a lady.”

He put his arm around her and snuggled his cheek against hers.

Then they kissed eachother and snuggled again, and he fell asleep in her arms.

He awoke at least two hours later and saw that he was surrounded by pavlova and strawberries, on a huge dining table, or at least relatively huge, because he’d been shrunken somehow, and was not able to see the seat he was facing, because there were four candlesticks positioned in front of his plate. Each candlestick had a page of writing attached to it with sticky tape. It was Colleen’s handwriting, and on the same paper that had been used for the rest of the manuscript. It was all true somehow, and she had reduced him and put up the new chapter for him to read, presumably before she came back to give him the ‘actual eating’ scene that he had chosen as his favourite in his appraisal of the novel.

He recalled her reference to ‘valuable insights’ and realised that she had given him the book, disguised as a work of fiction, in order to have him help to determine the way he would make his own contribution. Rather than read the entire four pages, he speed scanned them, jumping through and skipping the bits that told of what he already clearly remembered, like his meeting her at the dance the night before and coming over to read the manuscript. She must have written those, while he’d been reading those 60 pages that afternoon. Now he jumped ahead to see what she really had in mind for the ending, although he guessed that she would be eating him from the pavlova soon enough.

He heard a shower start running upstairs, and guessed that he had the duration of her shower and changing to go, before she came down and enacted his final part in the story.

“Don’t worry. We’re going to get you out of here,” said a voice.

“Who was that?” he asked, and then remembered the invisible leprechauns in the story, “Are the leprechauns she wrote about real too?”

“Yes, but I’m glad she didn’t shrink anyone else before the food colouring wore off, or we couldn’t have come in to rescue you. This time we pulled the wires out of both her alarm circuits and her video camera circuits first. She won’t see or know anything, even when she finishes her shower and gets back to her room. But we do have to get you out of here fast. She can’t see us, but you’re a very visible target, and she may still have some of that food colouring to spray about in the hopes of catching us. With her great size advantage, she’ll be on you in no time, if we’re still in the house when she gets back down here,” said a second leprechaun, “Climb out of that and get to the rope and hook we used to get up here.”

The leprechauns led her back to the tunnels and a deeper cavern, where they had been living ever since Colleen had dug up their kingdom and eaten most of their population. They welcomed Kenneth as a refugee to their kingdom and held a meeting to decide what to do about Colleen.

“She has gained more and more advantages, and basically can’t be stopped,” said Kenneth, who had learned everything by reading her manuscript, “She can take that portable reducing machine anywhere and surprise anyone with it. Before they know what to do, she can have them reduced and gobbled down at the venue of her choice.”

“Our only hope is to reverse those advantages, said the princess leprechaun, “As the surviving sovereign, I can authorize a journey to the deepest caverns to obtain the Ring of Reversal, but I can not instruct anyone to come with me. Whoever uses it will retain full memory of how it was used and why. Anyone who doesn’t will remain oblivious to a lot of things.”

“Could I come too?” asked Kenneth.

“You’d be most welcome,” said the princess.

They put fresh wicks in their lanterns after a long sleep, lit them, and the princess led Kenneth and five other leprechauns to the deepest caverns, where they found a large ring resting on a rock in a cavern that had its own unique light source.

“Most surface people think that we leprechauns are merely legends,” said the princess, “However, the Ring of Reversal is a legend well grounded in truth and known only to our people, and now to you, Kenneth.”

“How will it reverse her advantages?” asked Kenneth.

“To do that directly is beyond even the powers of the Ring,” said the princess, “It can only aid us by reversing the passing of time which has occurred since Colleen acquired all these advantages. Our kingdom would never have been found and dug up. The young men she shrank and ate will never have been shrunken and eaten, and everyone’s memory will work only as far as that point in time to which the flow has regressed. We know that she first perfected her non-portable version of the reducing machine and ate Stanley less than two years ago. So we will reverse the flow of time by two years. The memories of anyone touching the ring will remain unreversed. We will know everything that has happened in the last two years.”

“Before you do that, can I ask a special favour? I know you’ve done so much for me already,” said Kenneth, “But can I reverse things more than two years from my own perspective, and then you can all just go back the two years you want to?”

“You’re welcome to make the attempt,” said the princess, “But we do not know how a human being would be affected by the ring. Your memory may or may not remain unchanged as ours will. If it does change, you will have forgotten as many years as you end up reversing with the Ring.”

“It’s worth the risk, as I’d like to do some things over differently,” said Kenneth, looking at the Ring again.

To his tiny self it was the size of a large hoop, like the ones that people played with for exercise. Now he was holding something like that, but with vastly different attributes.

“Well you just touch the ring with both hands, and let your thoughts direct the flow of time as far back as you want to go. Then you’ll disappear from here and be wherever you were in the past.”

 “Thank you for letting me do this, and for saving me from Colleen’s tummy,” said Kenneth.

 “We were happy to do so,” said the princess, “She has eaten most of our people, all of them gone just like that, while she enjoyed them as a series of meals without feeling the slightest sense of discomfort herself. You may use the Ring as you see best now. Once you have vanished from this timeline, we shall use it ourselves.”

Kenneth held the ring with both of his hands and concentrated all of his will on having his timeline reversed back much further than the last two years, all the way back to a point when he was a junior high school year 8 student, the year that he estimated that Colleen would have been just starting her double degree at the university. This time he would meet her before he even left school, and he would tell her he loved her. It would be easy, knowing that she had let him kiss her in their reunion part of the original timeline. He would have years with her, before she perfected her reducing device and became a danger to him. After that, if he hadn’t found a way to sabotage her progress in designing and making the reducing machine, he would suddenly emigrate without a word and without a trace. She would never find him. He might even get a shot at removing her machine, if she didn’t know that he was aware of her intentions by having lived a previous timeline and read her manuscript.

The leprechauns watched Kenneth fade from sight, and then set about turning their timeline back two years only. They found themselves reappearing in their kingdom, with the cavern’s soil roof intact, the palace still there, and nobody from above aware of them. Colleen herself might well have been picnicing in the meadow, but had no idea that the objects of her mouth’s desire were living right under her.

The leprechauns who had used the ring retained their memory of the previous timeline, but were glad to see the prince and all the others still there, uneaten, and unaware.

The princess went to the prince and explained everything that had happened in the previous timeline, and the way that they had used the Ring of Reversal.

“If things go on the way they did before, then all we’ve done is buy ourselves back those two years,” said the princess, “Then she’ll find this place and eat most of us again, or even all of us this time.”

“We need to warn the people we know she shrank last time and will again this time, and we need to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes that confirmed our existence to her and led her to find and dig up our kingdom,” said the prince, “The first one we can help is Stanley, when she first meets him in the meadow.”

Years further back in time, Kenneth found himself in a forest. The only one he recalled ever having been to back in year 8 was the one halfway or so between the meadow and the village, and yet he must have forgotten his way. He’d just have to keep walking until he got to either the village or the lower hill. If it was the lower hill, he’d turn around and walk back to the village.

When he finally came to a clearing and looked out, he saw that he was not in the forest, but in the public gardens in the village. It had seemed like a forest, because he had not returned to the size he had been as a year 8 student, but remained shrunken.

He recalled what the princess had said, about the Ring’s effects on a human user being unknown. It had not removed his memory of the intervening years, as she had feared it might, but had in fact not removed the reduction of his size either. Yet one thing was missing. By the time he’d awoken in the pavlova, he’d developed a five o’clock shadow, since he had not shaved since early on the Saturday morning, as part of his preparations for going to read Colleen’s manuscript.

Now he had no stubble at all. It was simply not growing at all. So he had been reversed back to the age of a year 8 high school student. Everything had been reversed, as a result of his amateur use of the Ring of Reversal as a human, everything except his memory and his size.

He couldn’t go to the university and court Colleen Balfour now. Nor could he return to school at that size. The only thing that he could do would be to hide out in the public garden and depend on the kindness of any ladies or girls he saw coming into the gardens alone, and maybe even find one who would love him as a tiny boy.

As it turned out, many a secretary from the village would at some point come to eat her lunch in the gardens. He would reveal himself and ask for food, and then, before they had to return to their afternoon’s work in the village, he would ask for a kiss. With the legends of leprechauns well known, he was always mistaken for one, and every secretary was happy to give him a kiss. However, none showed any interest in further romantic involvement.

On one particularly cloudy day, there were no secretaries coming to the public gardens to eat their lunches. He made do with berries from the gardens, as he had been used to doing on weekends anyway, and sat amongst the flowers, looking out at the gardens, wondering if it would rain. He had used a small hollow log for shelter on rainy occasions, and had made a bed of leaves and petals to sleep on every night, keeping it concealed in the log.

He noticed how dark the clouds were becoming, without actually shedding any rain, when he saw a girl walk into the gardens with an umbrella raised, as though she was expecting it to rain any moment.

As she walked, she had to lower the umbrella forward to avoid it continuing to bump against low branches of trees, and so her face was concealed by the umbrella. When she was almost to his section of the gardens, she saw that there were no more branches to worry about, and raised the umbrella to full height. He was 13, and she looked to be around 18 or 19, and stunningly beautiful. He was absolutely sure that she was Colleen Balfour.

He stepped back in surprise, as she continued to approach. He wondered if she’d seen him. She stepped closer and closer and stopped right at the edge of the flowerbed and stared in, downwards. Then she bent down and reached in with her lovely fingers and lifted him out of the flowerbed, and held him up in front of her, as rain began to fall onto the umbrella which now protected them both. He was about level with her upper chest, and tilted his head back to look up at her neck and face.

“Hello,” she said, “It’s just started raining.”

To her, they’d never met. She would assume that he was one of the leprechauns that she’d been seeking all her life. Even if he told her his fantastic story, it would make no difference to her intentions.

“It’s kind of you to shelter me,” he said.

“I like walking in the rain, and I’ve always found these gardens beautiful. I’m studying to be a teacher, and I’m on midsemester break in the first half of my first year,” she said.

It occurred to him that his best chance of escaping her lay in letting her think that he didn’t want to. Since she had no memory of her future self’s meetings with him in the altenate timeline, she didn’t know that he was aware of her plan to gobble him whole. He had to act, before she announced it.

“You look like a very beautiful lady, and you have a very beautiful mouth indeed,” he said, “Would you mind if I had a look inside it?”

“It would be my pleasure,” she said, pouting at his compliment, and lifted him higher.

As she raised him towards her mouth, he passed her neck and realised how important it was to avoid ending up on a downward slide from the inside of it.

She opened her palm a little and let him sit on the front of it while leaning against her fingers bent upwards like the back of an armchair.

“Are you comfortable?” she asked.

“Yes, very,” he said.

“I’ll open my mouth for you,” she said, and opened it wide.

He looked in at her radiant sparkling tongue.

“I’ll take you over to the gazebo,” she said, “The rain’s getting stronger.”

She carried him over to the gazebo, sat down on the chair and held him near her mouth again.

“Could I climb inside there for a while?” he asked.

That in itself would be pleasurable for him anyway, and would add credence to the role he was playing.

“You’re very welcome in there,” she said, and opened her mouth wide again.

He slid in over her lower lip and onto her tongue and lay down there for several minutes. She left her mouth open. So he slid around to face the front of it, and looked out at the rain falling heavily on the gardens. The sparkling raindrops looked beautiful as they fell on red rose petals, but her sparkling tongue looked so much more beautiful in her mouth.

He reached for her lower lip again and started to pull himself out, as she brought her hand back to receive him. She dried him on the top of her pullover and then held him again.

“You have such a beautiful mouth, and such a long lovely neck, and your tummy looked soft and wonderful when you first picked me up. It would be so exciting to go into all of them. Is there any chance you would be prepared to swallow me?”

“I’ve wanted to swallow a leprechaun for some time,” she said.

Colleen pressed her lips to his face and kissed him slowly for nearly a minute.

“I won’t do it today though. I’ve just had a large lunch in a restaurant in the village out there. I’ll take you home with me, and you can keep me company for a day or two.”

Colleen slipped him between the base of her own neck and the top of the pullover’s neck, so that nobody would see him when she left the gardens. She walked out of the village and through to the forest, and up the hills, though the meadow, further up the hills, all with the rain pitter pattering on her umbrella. It felt very romantic, despite the enormity of his keeping up the pretence of having offered to be eaten. This way she would not take steps to keep him from escaping. She took him into the house and put away her umbrella.

She sat on the couch and held him up in front of her mouth again.

He ran his hand from side to side over her lower lip, rubbing it affectionately.

“I’ve met lots of ladies in those gardens, and none of them had any interest in eating me,” he said, “If you hadn’t come along, I’d never have had the chance. Even if they had been interested, they aren’t as beautiful as you, especially your lips and your tongue. It was lovely in there, back at the gazebo.”

“I love you,” said Colleen and kissed him again.

His next question was a calculated risk.

“When are you going to eat me?” he asked.

“Well it would be nice if you could keep me company tonight. Tomorrow I might go for another walk, and then come back and have you for lunch. I need to visit a friend anyway, and I can’t tell her about you or take you with me.”

This would give him the whole morning to escape, while she was out, and still give him the optimum romantic opportunity with her for the evening. He was pleased at how things had worked out. Every lady he’d befriended at tiny size in the public gardens had been a substitute for his original goal of reversing time to be with Colleen at full size. Now that he had experienced her kisses while still shrunken himself, he felt that he had missed nothing.

He watched her eating her dinner in front of him in the dining room. It was almost like a continuation of the scene in which her alternate future self had left him waiting to be eaten in the pavlova.

Then she filled a small bowl with tap water, and let him use it as a bath in the kitchen, while she went upstairs and had a shower. He wondered if there were any chance of escape now, and whether he might be passing it up by staying the night. However, he couldn’t think of anything. So he just let himself and his clothing, which was something akin to a Tarzan outfit, get washed in the bowl, and then stepped out, reached for a napkin she’d left as a towel, dried his body off and waited for the shorts to dry out too.

Colleen returned to the kitchen in a beautiful nightgown and took him up to her bedside table and placed him on it. She slowly slid into bed, pulled the sheet and blanket over herself and sat up, leaning against two pillows.

“Come here, little darling,” she said, and enclosed him gently in her hands.

She brought him towards her and said, “Rub my mouth again, like you did before.”

He slid his hand over her lower lip, genuinely enjoying every moment of their interaction. Then he reached out with both arms, embraced her cheeks and pressed his lips to her lower lip.

“I love you too,” he said, “And I did just as much, back when you said it.”

“I’m going to lie down now. I’ll let you rest against my cheek on the pillow.”

She did so, and they talked for a few minutes.

“Colleen, could I lie on your neck instead? It excites me to know that I’ll be inside it at lunch time tomorrow.”

“It would give me the same anticipation,” she said, and lifted him gently into place.

Having her soft neck below him, feeling its occasional breathing movements and guessing at its gulping power excited him so much that he could hardly sleep. It took him longer than her to drop off, and he awoke in the morning feeling more tired than she seemed to be. He hoped he could think straight to plan an escape, the moment she’d left the house.

They had breakfast together, and then she took him to the lounge room and put him on the ground.

“Is there anything you’d like, to keep you from being bored until I get back?”

“Just some photos of your face close up, if you have any, so that I can look at them and think about being eaten by your beautiful mouth, Colleen.”

She took out a photo album and sat on the couch, placing him on her chest to look down at the album while she turned the pages.

“Pick out any you like and I’ll leave them on the floor for you,” she said.

He chose three pictures, and she slid them out of the transparent sleeves in the album and placed them on the floor, and set him down gently too.

“I’ll be going now, but I’ll see you for lunch, darling,” she said.

“See you too, my love,” said Kenneth.

She walked out and locked the front door. He walked over and saw that there was no room to squeeze under it, and looked around the room. He could see no way out, and ran through the house, scrutinizing all of the downstairs rooms for possible exits. It was a lot of time consuming exercise for a shrunken boy. Finding no openings in other rooms, he returned to the lounge room. If he could make her think that he had escaped, she might eventually leave him a chance to slip out the front door, or even be carried out in her bag without her knowing, and get away from her when she put it down somewhere at one of her future destinations. There seemed to be a ventilation opening just beside the curtain rod.

He looked at the clock. It was 10:45. He began to climb the closed curtain, looking out of the window at the scenery as he did so. It was still overcast and would have made for a very romantic scene with Colleen, if she had planned to eat him a day or two later. He was almost at the top, when he saw Colleen running up the hill towards the house, with a significant look of urgency in her steps.

She wasn’t supposed to return for over an hour, he thought. He had to make it to the ventilation opening before she reached the lounge room. It might even lead out of the house, although getting down from that height on the outside would be problematic at best.

He staggered onto the curtain rod and ran along it to the end, and reached the grid, just as he heard her footsteps outside the front door. Kenneth jumped into the ventilation opening and saw that it only went in a few inches and seemed to have no opening at the other side. It had either been filled in since Colleen bought the house or had only been there for show.

Kenneth sat down and looked out as Colleen came into the room.

“I realised while I was out, that you called me Colleen, when you asked for the photos,” she said, “I never told you my name, and if you knew that, it could only have been from hearing me talking with my friend on some other occasion. I think that you might have overheard me talking about my dining interests in leprechauns too. Not so keen to be eaten as you represented yourself to be, are you?”

He said nothing, understanding now, why she had suddenly come running back to the house.

“Well I imagine you’re hiding,” she said.

Colleen began crawling around on the carpet, looking under the couch and under every other piece of furniture. She stood up and went out and searched the other rooms, and then returned to the lounge room.

She looked around the room slowly, and then her vision rested on the ventilation opening. With a stern look, she walked slowly towards it, until she was right in front of it, but a little below it. She walked away, out of the room.

He realised how close he had come to being discovered. If her lovely face had been the height of the opening, she would have seen him for sure. All he could do now was wait for his chance to get away, and be sure not to make any mistakes.

Colleen came back into the room with a small stool, and placed it on the floor and stood up and stared in at him. Her face looked beautiful beyond his wildest dreams, and yet he well knew by now the ramifications of it being there at that particular time, having discovered not only his intent to escape or hide from her, but also the means by which he had attempted it. The stern set of her full lips was arousing beyond his ability to express it, and yet the sight of her neck not far below them stirred a mixture of excitement and anxiety too.

“Now I can see why you acted the way you did,” she said, “There’s no escape, little darling.”

Her hand reached in and clasped him and removed him. She stepped down off the stool and took him to the dining table and sat down. Her face towered above him and showed a look of haughtiness at her advantage.

“Little darling, I’m going to gobble you all up,” she said.

“I know, but I do want you to know one thing. I wasn’t playacting about loving you, or even about how beautiful your mouth is. I really did enjoy it in there.”

“I know that. But I am curious as to where you’ve seen me before. I haven’t been into those gardens in my school days. I decided to explore them for my first time yesterday for a rain walk.”

“It wasn’t in the gardens. I first saw you at your university,” he said truthfully.

“I didn’t see you, but I did talk about eating leprechauns with one friend there, who was also in my teaching classes. So you were planning to get away by letting me think that being eaten was your own idea.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for last night, little darling, and for yesterday in the gardens.”

“It was lovely for me too,” he said.

“Well it looks like you’ll have a chance to make use of that memory of the outside of my neck from last night’s sleeping experience now. Goodbye, little darling.”

He tried running across the table, but her hand blocked his path in no time. She picked him up and licked him like an ice cream a few times, and then placed him into her mouth and gulped.

Remember Colleen's first vore crush from the opening chapters? Now we see what happens to him after the Ring of Reversal undid the time period in which he was eaten by Colleen.

In the time only two years before the Ring of Reversal had been used, Colleen met Stanley in the meadow, looking for what, in this timeline, would be her second leprechaun. She was more convinced than ever of their existence now. Stanley invited her on the date again and agreed to come for her that evening.  (The events of chapter 1 are now being altered in this new timeline). Colleen went up to her house, and Stanley walked out of the meadow, when he was approached by the leprechaun princess.

 “You can’t keep your date with Colleen,” she said, “She has been after us for years, but she only ever caught one of us in the gardens in the village, as far as we know. She’s invented a machine for reducing the size of her boyfriends. She’s going to eat you in a day or two.”

The princess explained what had happened in the previous timeline.

Stanley thanked her for the warning and headed down into the village to buy the candy man and the flowers, and to write his poem. The warning was nothing trivial, but neither was his love for Colleen. He would simply not go into her house on any dates, so that she never had the chance to aim her reducing machine at him. He thought about everything that the princess had told him. He was flabberghasted at the way Colleen, in the previous timeline, had set up a leprechaun hunt using him as bait, only to announce at the end, that she had planned to make him the main meal all along.

He took her to the restaurant, and invited him back to his own home to kiss her instead. He went on several more dates with her, but kept finding excuses not to accept her invitations to her own home, where she kept the reducing machine. One day she invited him on a picnic in the meadow, and turned up with everything she needed, and took out a small device.

The leprechauns were watching invisibly.

“She’s adapted it into a portable version earlier in this timeline,” whispered the prince, “She must have done it because Stanley wouldn’t go into her house. We don’t even have time to warn him.”

Colleen shrank Stanley to tiny size and used him to search the meadow for leprechauns, just as she had done in the previous timeline. For Stanley, the difference was in knowing what she was going to say and do, when the leprechaun hunt proved fruitless. He tried to sneak out of sight, as they combed the meadow, but she was too alert, fast and attentive for him.

Then he saw a leprechaun pop into visibility under a flower that concealed the leprechaun from Colleen.

“Pretend you’re chasing me,” said the leprechaun, “Don’t worry about me. I can turn invisible again before SHE gets me. If I get the chance to lead her away, you make a break for it, without letting her know that you’re trying to get away from her. Get to our tunnel to the underground kingdom.”

Stanley chased the leprechaun towards Colleen, and then saw Colleen crawl into view and sit towering above the leprechaun.

“You’ve done well, Stanley,” she said.

“Has he indeed?” called the leprechaun and ducked under a flower, and then turned invisible.

Colleen reached for the flower, while the leprechaun invisibly ran to the far side of the flower patch, then turned visible and called again.

“I don’t know how you got past my scrutiny that well, but here I come to get you. I’ll have you in my stomach yet. You can be sure of that,” said Colleen.

She pursued the leprechaun, who kept playing the same trick, every time a suitable flower came along to conceal the sight of her turning invisible.

Stanley took his opportunity and ran away through the meadow in the opposite direction, where another invisible leprechaun took his hand and led him to the tunnel. Colleen was unable to capture the first leprechaun and wondered where Stanley had gone to. She called for him and searched for him until the sun went down, and then had to return home in the dark.

It began to dawn on her that she’d been tricked, but how? Had Stanley guessed what she’d been planning to do with him?

Stanley went to live with the leprechauns in their kingdom under the meadow, and never stopped thinking of Colleen. 

Colleen set her year 7 English students a homework assignment to write a short story for about leprechauns, with the intention of reading every submission slowly and deciding on which was her favorite. When they were completed, she took them all into her science laboratory and locked the door, in order to read them undisturbed. Most of the stories were about the typical legends, pots of gold, riches and wish fulfilment and adventure. However, the fifth one she read captured her interest so much, that the rest that followed all seemed empty and completely boring by comparison.

THE TINY TRESPASSER

Miss Frobual was a teacher, who was walking through her school grounds one day after classes had ended, when she saw a tiny creature in the school gardens. The little fellow saw her and turned and ran.

“Oh no you don’t!” she called, and gave chase.

Miss Frobual ran around the path, to the other side of the garden, and cut off his escape. She bent down and snatched him up out of the flowers.

“Now I’ve caught you, little leprechaun. I’ll teach you to trespass in this school!” she said sternly, “I’m going to take you home and have you for my dinner!”

She put him into her handbag and walked home.

When she got to her house, she took him out of the bag and sat down to read a book, leaving him on the table beside her. He watched as she licked her fingers every now and then to turn the pages more easily. The view of her tongue was like a prelude for her eating plans.

When it was night time, Miss Frobual turned the next page of her book, and then picked him up and opened her mouth wide in front of him. She put him inside and then started reading again.

“Please wait! I have to tell you something!” came his voice from inside her mouth.

Miss Frobual opened her mouth and extended her tongue, letting him slide along it onto her hand.

“Well then, what do you have to say for yourself?” she asked.

“You won’t believe me unless you just look more closely,” he said, “Can you hold me up to your eye?”

She lifted him right in front of her eye and looked closely at him. It was Rhyen, one of the boys from the school, except that he had been turned into a leprechaun.

“The Leprechauns really did trespass here, and the Queen of the Leprechauns turned me into one, so that I could marry her daughter, but I didn’t want to. So they left without me. Then you thought I was trespassing and chased me.”

“I didn’t know it was you, but why didn’t you marry the leprechaun girl?”

“Because I’ve been in love with you.”

Miss Frobual gave him a big kiss, and took him to the dining room.

She fetched some food from the kitchen, gave him small portions and ate with him. He looked up at her eating and thought, “That could have been me.”

Colleen continued reading the story.

After dinner, she put him in the dolls house and then lifted it up off the ground and put it on her bedside table. The dolls house mattress on the bed was just the right size for him. She left the wall lamp above her bed on, and it illuminated part of the dolls house too. He pushed the bed close to the dolls house window, so that he could look out at her.

“Thank you so much for that lovely kiss, Miss Frobual.”

“Well knowing how you feel about me, and how I misjudged you, I thought it was the least I could do,” she said, and then yawned on the pillow, showing him her wide open mouth.

He looked inside again and thought about what it would have been like in there, if she hadn’t finally recognized him. She had such a nice looking mouth. No wonder he was in love with her.

“I think you’re the most beautiful lady ever,” he said.

“Thank you, little boy.”

“I’m sorry I ran away too. I’ve always been in love with you, but when I first saw you, I didn’t know what to do.”

“It’s alright. I understand completely,” said Miss Frobual.

“I’m so happy that it was you who found me.”

“So am I.”

“Thank you for giving me the nice big dolls house to live in. I’ll always be happy here with you.”

“I think you might be getting the wrong idea, little boy.”
“Don’t you love me too?” he asked.

“I love you very much,” said Miss Frobual, “But I still have a dinner plan to reschedule, and you’re forgetting that you’ll have an important part to play in it. It’ll probably be tomorrow night. It was lovely spending this evening with you though, and I’m very flattered by your feelings for me.”

“But you know I’m not a trespasser now.”

“Of course I do. We won’t say any more about that. But I’m sure you’ll still make a delicious dinner. Don’t worry, I’ll be very gentle with you, and by this time tomorrow night it will all be over.”

“But I could have escaped with the leprechauns. I only stayed behind, because I’m in love with you.”

“That’s why I gave you the kiss. I’ll give you some more tomorrow, when I get home from school. Then I’ll gobble you down at dinner time.”

“Miss Frobual, I don’t want to be gobbled down.”

“Well you’re going to be. Now let’s not keep going around in circles about it. You can stay in the dolls house tonight and tomorrow. The tomorrow night, I’m going to eat you for my dinner. Right now we need some sleep.”

Rhyen thought about it until he fell asleep. In the morning, Miss Frobual woke up, gave him some breakfast, and took him back to the dolls house. She gave him a goodbye kiss and then went to school. Later she came home and kissed him again a lot. Then she sat at the dinner table and ate him all up.

The End.

Colleen could see that Frobual was an anagram of Balfour, and from that she deduced that Rhyen was an anagram of Henry, who had written the story. She asked him to see her after school about it.

When everyone else had left the classroom and gone home, she came over and sat at the desk next to his.

“I’m sorry that it wasn’t really about a leprechaun, most of the time,” he said, “I mean, that the main one turned out to be a boy. I’ll rewrite it differently tonight, after I’ve done the rest of my homework.”

“I don’t want you to rewrite it,” said Colleen, “It’s by far the very best of all the stories in the class. And I have noticed that the names of the characters are anagrams. I’ve given you full marks. You’re the only one, and if you see me on the last day of term, there might be a surprise for you.”

Henry, whose previous timeline self had learned of her machine when she told Frances Woodfield about eating Stanley, and had then snuck into her house and willingly shrunken himself for gobbling, was elated. Miss Balfour liked his story. In this timeline he didn’t know just exactly why she liked it so much, but whatever she was going to give him, he would treasure it always.

On the last day of school term, he stayed behind again in the classroom.

“I’ll give you your surprise in a little while,” she said, “I’ll meet you in the clearing at the end of the short walking track behind the school, the track that looks out on the valley. I’ll be there in about 15 minutes.”

Henry made his way down there, and was soon joined by Miss Balfour.

She sat on a raised section of grass, and said, “Would you like to have a cuddle?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Come on then,” she beckoned, and he sat on her lap and snuggled against her.

“Since Rhyen and Miss Frobual were based on us, I suppose it wouldn’t be presumptuous of me to surmise that you are in love with me too.”

“Yes, it’s true,” he said.

She kissed his cheek and then snuggled her own against his.

“I love you very much,” he said.

“I love you very much too,” said Colleen.

“This is a very nice surprise you’ve given me, just like you said you would.”

“This isn’t the surprise,” said Colleen, and he felt one of her hands releasing its embrace of him, “This is.”

She held a small device in front of him.

“Is that what you’re giving me? I don’t know what it is.”

“I’m not exactly giving it to you,” she said, and pressed the switch.

Henry shrank to tiny size, his arms slipping off her as he did so, and he ended up in the lap of her dress.

“This is incredible!” said Henry.

“I gave you all that story writing assignment, so that I could choose the best story, and you’re the winner. I know you wrote it from the heart.”

“All except for Rhyen wanting to stay with her without being eaten. I’d love to be eaten by you, Miss Balfour.”

“I knew that too, and you’re going to be,” she said.

He looked up at her beautiful smiling face, ecstatic beyond his wildest dreams that she had brought his fantasy to life.

“Oh wow! It’s so nice of you to make this machine, just to make the best parts of my story come true.”

“I made it before I ever read your story. It’s been my plan to use the machine this way for some time. When I read your story, I decided to use it on you. There’s another part of your story that I’ll make come true first.”

She brought him to her lips and gave him huge kisses.

“I love that too!”

“Would you like me to take you home and show you my kitchen and dining room now?”

“I think it’s really nice here. We’re all by ourselves. Nobody knows we’re here, and I love looking up at your nice mouth. Would you eat me right here?”

“I’d love to …. Little boy,” she said, recalling his frequent use of that phrase as a term of endearment in his story.

“I love you even more than before,” he said, “I’m so happy you’re going to swallow me down to your nice soft tummy.”
“I was going to choose the best story and make an end of term afternoon treat of the author anyway, but it’s so sweet and adorable of you to want me to do it. When would you like me to start?”

“About an hour before sunset, so I’ll still have a clear view of your tongue, and you’ll still have time to walk back to the school with some daylight.”

“That sounds fine. What would you like to do in the meantime? We’ve got an hour or so, I’d say.”

“Could you sit me on your shoulder and snuggle your cheek against me?”

“What a lovely idea?”

When she had him in position, they were both looking out at the valley. He remembered the times he’d walked down here by himself, and took in all the sights for the last time.

“I sat here when I wrote the story,” he said, “I did it in a lunch hour.”

“Really? That makes it extra special. Little did you know that your story would be brought to life on this very spot.”

“I didn’t know that you were going to eat one of us, no matter what. It’s really thrilling to know that now.”

“I think you’ll taste at least as nice as a leprechaun,” she said.

“How will you know?”

“I’ve eaten one,” she said, and told him about the captive from her first year of teaching studies, whom she didn’t know had been Kenneth, a fellow student from her final year in the previous timeline.

“It’s just as well you worked all that out, when he called you by name and got back in time to make sure he didn’t get away,” said Henry.

She told him about Stanley too.

“So I’m not the first boy you’ve ever shrunken, but I will be the first one you’ve eaten.”

“Yes,” she said, “And I think I’ll have to do it again, although I don’t expect to find someone so willing in the future. You’re a very special boy.”

“Well by then I’ll be part of your tummy. So I won’t have to be jealous of the others.”

She turned her face to him and kissed him again, and then looked at her watch.

“It’s 4:25 and the sun’s going down,” she added, “We’d better get started, unless you’d like to come home to my dining room instead.”

“I’m really very much ready now,” he said.

“Thank you, little boy. So am I then,” said Colleen.

She clasped him gently in her hand and licked his face several times. It was all of his wildest dreams come true.

“That was the very best thing ever!” he said.

“I hope you’ll still like the rest, although I’ll be doing it anyway, even if you change your mind.”

“Lovely beautiful Miss Balfour, I would never change my mind about this, not for anything!”

Her lovely lips smiled affectionately right in front of him.

“I believe you. I’ll pop you in now. You can move around and when you’re comfortable and ready for the gobbling process, just tap on my tongue twice with your hand, and then expect some big developments. Do you have any questions about it?”

“Will the gobbling process be just like in my story?”

“Of course, you couldn’t have put it better when you wrote that.”

“So you’ll be swallowing me whole?”

“Of course, little boy. That’s one of the main benefits of reducing you.”

“I love you. I love you. I really really love you! You can put me into your mouth now.”

“Farewell then, and have an enjoyable trip down,” she said.

She opened her mouth, and put out her tongue, placed him onto the front, and drew him into her mouth along with her retracting tongue. He slid around for a little while, and lay down flat. Then he lay there for a little longer, and then tapped her tongue twice. He felt her tongue moving, and felt himself sliding into the top of her throat. Then he felt the most incredibly powerful gulp, and he dropped a little down. Then came another gulp, and he was carried right down to her stomach.

In this timeline, Colleen again told Frances about Stanley and Henry. Nathaniel again asked Miss Frances Woodfield on a date, and events concerning both of them proceeded in exactly the same way as the previous timeline, with Nathaniel reduced and renamed Dollipop, and secretly licked on his face at her home where he lived from then on. The only difference was that Miss Woodfield’s decision to have Nathaniel reduced to the size of a lickable lollipop was based only on what Colleen had told her. In the previous timeline, she’d been given the chance to lick Henry a few times, before Colleen ate him.

Colleen had gone on her same sabbatical and employed and reduced Patrick, albeit with the already portable reducing machine, and eaten him in the office where she’d hired him, rather than at her home. So the leprechauns never caught up with that aspect of the timeline, and had no knowledge that the need to warn him had arrived.

There had effectively been the same two disappearances of Henry and Patrick, from the perspectives of those who had reported them to Dick Flanigin, Private Investigator. His events repeated themselves from the previous timeline, right down to Brenda Leesil eating him in the forest.

Since Edith’s experience with Connor had occurred at the school and her house in the previous timeline, and neither the leprechauns nor Colleen had known what she had done anyway, the same scenarios played out, right down to the inside of Edith’s stomach.

Stanley was still living with the leprechauns and pining for his full sized romance with Colleen. A simple butterfly effect result on this timeline, which flowed from the existing changes, meant that Tarquin was never in the public gardens to stare at Colleen the day she was eating her lunch there, and was thus never reduced and eaten.  This one the leprechauns had seen coming and considered it an unqualified success. With the foreknowledge from the previous timeline, the leprechauns were careful to stay invisible in Colleen’s house, and to remember the need to disconnect all video and alarm wires before attempting to rescue shrunken young men from her clutches.

Brent was another student at the school where Colleen was a teacher. As another schoolday came to an end, he packed his schoolbag and headed through the school grounds on his way home. He lived in the valley which, like Colleen’s house in the hills, was accessed by walking through the forest and taking a different turn. When he was part of the way through the forest, he suddenly began to dwindle to tiny size. Then he heard footsteps behind him and turned around to see that Miss Balfour had been following him, and was holding a device in her hand.

“This is what reduced your size,” she said.

“I never knew that such technology was possible.”

“It’s only possible for its inventor, namely me.”

“Can it be reversed?”

“There is a reverse setting, but I’ve never had reason to use it.”

“Well, I guess you’ve got a good reason to test that setting now.”

“I don’t think so,” said Colleen, “I must be getting home.”

She turned to walk away.

“Miss Balfour! You can’t just leave me like this.”

“Can’t I?” she called, and walked off through the forest.

He tried running after her, but she had outdistanced him in very little time and was soon out of sight.

Then he heard another set of footsteps approaching from behind, and turned around again, to see that it was lovely Miss Woodfield walking through the forest this time. She stopped when she reached his position. He’d adored her for a long time, but he’d never seen her from this angle. She looked spectacularly beautiful.

“Oh thank goodness you’re here, Miss Woodfield. I’ve been shrunken by Miss Balfour.”

“I know,” said Miss Woodfield, “I asked her to do it.”

She picked him up and put him into her handbag and started walking again. Brent lay inside the dark bag and wondered why his lovely teacher had orchestrated such an outcome for him. After about half an hour, he saw the light coming in, as she unzipped the top of the bag. Miss Woodfield took him out and set him down on the carpet. She sat down in front of him.

“Were you waiting long, after Miss Balfour reduced you?”

“No. She was barely gone when you arrived.”

“That’s good. We timed it that way intentionally.”

“Why did you two want to do this?”

“Do you remember another boy named Henry?”

“Yes. I don’t know why he left the school.”

“I’ll tell you. He liked me, and he asked me out on a date. Miss Balfour and I have been friends for a long time. Both she and Henry agreed that she would reduce Henry to the size you now have, so that Henry could be both my boyfriend and my little Dollipop. It’s a word I made up that combines doll and lollipop. I kept him upstairs, and would lick his tiny face many times, and enjoyed it very much. I gave him kisses and we were very much in love. In the school holidays, I took him on a camping trip one day, with my sleeping bag rolled up and packed in my backpack, on top of the food supplies.”