She looked stern, yet obviously pleased to have recaptured him. He looked into her lovely beautiful eyes and was reminded anew about what he’d been missing for so long. He gazed at her beautiful mouth, as she spoke the words that reassured him of the inevitability of his fate, and he knew that he would never have missed out on the afternoon that they had just shared together, not even to have escaped what was to come.

“Maybe you’re right about the emptiness. At least that will be gone now.”

Colleen took him back to the kitchen and took a pavlova down from the bench.

“It’s a good thing I kept making them. This was your favourite eating scene when you first read my manuscript,” she said, and gently placed him into it. She put him into the oven and turned it on low, and walked out of the room.

She soon returned wearing a clean dress after their chase through the garden, and sat down on a chair and looked in through the oven window.  Soon she opened the oven, took the pavlova out and placed it on the bench. She stood towering in front of him, while she placed strawberries on the pavlova, and then added whipped cream. He looked up, as she licked her finger and then carried the pavlova to the dining room table. It looked exactly as it had done at normal size when he’d been tiny sized, except that the manuscript pages were not stuck to candlesticks in front of him this time. She sat at the table and gave him a clear view of her, and picked up the spoon.

“You’ll be the last mouthful to go in,” she said, “I’ll eat all the rest of this dish first, so you  can watch the rest going in.”

The movements of her tongue, the dainty way her hand gripped the spoon, the gulping of her neck, and the look in her eyes were all awesome sights.

Finally she passed the spoon under him, drew it up to her face, and then put out her tongue and licked him until he was almost clean.

Then she took him in finger and thumb and cleaned his face completely.

She took him in her clean finger and thumb, and held him there, while he watched her licking her other finger and thumb clean. Then she drank a glass of water and opened her mouth wide.

“Does it look clean and ready for you?” she asked.

“It seems to be,” said Stanley.

She stuck out her tongue at him, then withdrew it and smiled.

“This is it this time. Here we go,” she said.

“Goodbye, my darling,” said Stanley.

Colleen licked him several times, while he savoured the view, making the most of an impossible situation.

Then she slid him over her lower lip and onto her tongue. He lay there for a very long time. He wondered if she were thinking over everything he had said about how much she had meant to him, and about her own declaration that she loved him just as much.

Then she raised the front of her tongue, slid him into her throat and gulped relentlessly. Even as he reached her tummy, he was still madly in love with her.

Two more years went by, and Denny had enjoyed all his days in the front compartment of Moynie’s stomach. He had absorbed all he needed through some form of osmosis that came from the dividing wall between the two compartments of her stomach. It seemed to process part of what she had digested in the rear compartment, and use it to sustain Denny in the front compartment.

One day he felt what he could only describe as a tummy quake. Her stomach heaved and shook around him, and then he felt himself forced upwards, until he was in her throat. Then she coughed and coughed, until he reached her mouth. Finally she opened her mouth, and slid him out along her tongue and into her hand.

“Denny!” she said, “How have you been?”
“Very good, thank you.”

“I brought you back out again. I’d like to go on some more dates with you. I can gulp you down again later.”

For their first new date, she took him to see Edith. Another time, she took him to a lake, and put him into her mouth while she gulped in air and swam across to the other side. Then she took him for a walk on the other side, and eventually reversed the process to get them home again.

One night at home, she invited him to sit or lie on her chin and massage hre lips with his hands. He found this very enjoyable.

“Before you go back down to my tummy, I was wondering if you’d like to take me on a date in your land,” said Moynie.

“Sure, but you wouldn’t fit through the portal.”

“Edith introduced me to Colleen Balfour, who’s now living nearby at my size. She could ask her friend Miss Frances Woodfield to reduce me to your size for a day, as she now owns the machine,” said Moynie.

“I’d have to be careful not to be seen though. I would have been missing from school for the three years I was in your tummy. We’d have to stay out of the village, but there’s lots of nice places to explore in the countryside. It might be worth bringing some food through the portal with us though.”

So he took her on a long date and showed her what he could of his world. As he held her hand and walked through the countryside, he thought of the surprise he’d first had when he had learnt that she was going to have him for ther birthday dinner, and the second surprise when he’d learnt about the front compartment of her tummy. He had spent three years in there and was now back in his own country.

When they reached the meadow, she put her arms around him and kissed him.

“I’ve always wondered what it would be like to do that with you,” she said.

“Your giant kisses were so lovely. I remembered them every day in your tummy.”

“When I told you I was going to eat you back then, I had already made up my mind. You reacted so lovingly, but I would have done it regardless. The reason I really came here today was to give you the choice. I’ve loved you all the time you were in my tummy and all of the two times you were out of it. I’d like you to go back in there, but you don’t have to now. You could stay here, where I couldn’t reach you.”

He walked with her in silence, holding hands while he thought.

“If you couldn’t reach me, I couldn’t reach you either,” he said, “Darling, I want to go back to the giant land and back to your tummy… until the next time you want to cough me up for another date anyway.”

He kissed her and felt her arms embracing him tightly.

“Thank you!” she said.

A few weeks later he was back in her tummy.

When Timothy was in fourth year high school, he went for a walk through the valley behind his school on a Saturday, until he accidentally passed throug the portal. He seemed to be in a giant garden. There were lots of ladies’ clothes on the washing line. So he assumed that a woman lived there. He walked over to the gigantic front door a long way from where he’d first emerged. The door had a bell cord which reached right down to the ground. Timothy pulled the cord, and was surprised by the lady who opened the door. It was Miss Balfour. He hadn’t seen her in over three years. She was now a giant. She stood there towering in front of him. Timothy looked up past her long dress to her high face.

“Timothy!” she said, “I haven’t seen you for a while.”

“Miss Balfour! How did you become a giant?”

“Oh don’t worry about that. Why don’t you come in for lunch?”

“Thank you. I’d like that after my long walk and climb,” he said, and watched her giant hand reach down to pick him up.

Once they were in her kitchen, she put him onto the table and said "I don't have any small plates. I think I shall just put you onto a plate of my food and let you help yourself. We will eat with our fingers."

She prepared a large plate of ham, salad and bread, and gently positioned Timothy in amongst the salad. He moved around the plate, helping himself to relatively negligible amounts of the giant's food, while looking up at the beautiful lady consuming mouthfuls of food that were larger than he was.

High above him, Miss Balfour's long neck gulped down the food.

He thought of how Miss Balfour was a giant now and had no real need for him as a school student.

She finished the meal and wiped her hands and mouth on a serviette the size of a parachute.

"Did you like it, little Timothy?"

"Yes thank you. I did get rather messy in it, but I think I would probably drown in your bathtub. I had better bathe in a saucer."

"Don't worry" she said, lifting him towards her face, "I'll have you sparkling clean in no time."

She drank a glass of water from the table and then put out her tongue and licked his face and hands until they were fully clean.

"There you are" she said, putting him down on the table "I shall let you rest on my dolls house, while I take a nap on her bed. The dolls house is on the bedside table. I shall take you in to the dolls house now."

"Miss Balfour, could you please put me down on the floor and let me walk in myself? I haven't really had any exercise, with giant hands giving me such nice rides everywhere."

"No I suppose you haven't....there you are," she said lowering him gently to the floor and releasing her fingers. She rose to her full height again, looking down at him.

"Shall I lead the way?"

"Could we just stand here like this for a while?"

"Sure, if you like."

"Thank you. This makes me respect what a big tall giant lady you are. So how do you feel to have somebody so small staring up at you?"

"I'm proud and pleased to have you as my visitor, little boy. You're one friend that I never expected to see again."

"My whole house wouldn't even come up to your knee now. I like being your guest, but I'm sure you'd never be able to be mine. I would have no room to welcome you, even if we could ever get back to earth."

"That does not matter. I would not try to squeeze into your tiny house, but you do not take up too much space here."

"Good. I am ready to follow you now.”

“Alright. I shall try to walk slowly" she said, "Otherwise you will not even be able to run the distance in the time that I shall take to walk it."

She led him into her dolls house room, picked him up and lowered him into the open roofed dolls house with an upstairs bedroom waiting for him. The window looked out onto the bed beside the table on which the dolls house stood. His own tiny bed was beside the window. He got onto it and looked out as she climbed into the giant bed. It would be nice to sleep so comfortably in this giant place knowing that an old friend had become a giantess and could look after him.

"I hope you sleep well, little Timothy."

"Thank you giant Miss Balfour. I hope that I can be useful to you sometime."

"Oh you will," she said smiling adorably, "I have decided to have you for dinner tonight."

"Dinner! But why?" he exclaimed.

"Because you are a delicious little boy. Sleep nicely, little Timothy," she said casually.

"But I'll be terrified!"

"I know that, and it does not make any difference to me how terrified you are. I know that from your perspective, you have everything to lose by this development; which for me will have all the relaxing atmosphere of a calm evening meal. The reality is, that while you’ll be counting down the time until it happens (nervously coming to terms with an approaching fate you’d rather avoid), I shall be enjoying myself and eagerly looking forward to bringing that fate about for you. If you’ve understood that, there’s no point in trying to talk me into another course of action, is there?”

"But I shall still be in your stomach trapped forever."
"There's nothing you can do about that, and you can say nothing to discourage me from having you for dinner."

“As pleasant as you’re able to make it, I guess I don’t want to meet with such a final outcome,” he said.

“I was quite sure you wouldn’t,” she said, maintaining her alluring sweet manner for him, “That’s why I have to leave you trapped in this room. I’ll look after you, without letting you sneak away.”

"But I have my whole life in front of me."

"You have your whole life inside of me. I’m going to do it soon."

"I think you're a wonderful teacher, and I'd like to be friends with you, but I really don't want to be eaten."

"Well you’re certainly going to be!" she said confidently.

"It's not fair."

"That's your perspective, because you're the one who'll be eaten. Think how happy I will be. It certainly won't seem unfair to me."

"But Miss Balfour, I thought that we were friends."

"I'd love to eat a little friend.  I am big enough now that I can easily swallow you whole. We had better get some rest now," she said, settling her face on her pillow.

"But Miss Balfour, I don't want to be eaten."

"Well you will be, Timothy. You cannot escape, and I see no reason to let you go. If you like, you may continue to think of me as your teacher, but I am going to think of you as a piece of luscious food and have you for dinner without sympathy or mercy. The gobbling of you shall not frighten me in the least, and there is nothing you can possibly say or offer me that would persuade me to change my mind and spare you. It would be quite natural for a big giantess like me to eat a tiny little boy like you for my lunch. So there!"

She poked out her tongue, teasing him.

"I hope that you were watching my tongue, Timothy, because you will be placed upon it at dinner time. Now I shall open my mouth wide in front of your little window. Have a look inside it, since you will be inside it yourself when I do the gobbling."

She opened her mouth and he stared past her huge lower lip in at her big sparkling tongue and the distant throat that awaited him. It was like a terrifying tunnel down to her stomach of no return.

"So what do you think about that, little Timothy? Would it help you to prepare yourself for tomorrow, if you climbed into my mouth for a few minutes now? I shall keep my teeth apart. You will not get hurt."

"I shall try" he said.

She opened her mouth. He sat on the window ledge, climbed over her lip, and lay down on her tongue, with his face and arms resting on her lip, looking out at her dress as she sat back in her bed. After a few minutes he called out to her.

"Can I come out now, please Miss Balfour?"

She brought her mouth back to the dolls house window, and he climbed back to his bed.

"I don't mind going into your mouth Miss Balfour. I could do it every day without being scared, if you like the taste of me. I just worry about going into your stomach."

"Are you saying that I don't have a nice stomach?" she asked with an air of being offended by his remark.

"No, but I don't want to live in it."

"Well you had better change your mind, because you are going to be in it for a very long time. It will not matter to me what you think of it. I will continue enjoying my happy long life long after I have swallowed you down."

"But don't you think it is unfair to keep me there all of my life, just so that you can enjoy one meal?"

"You will just have to face up to it. I am not going to allow you any way out of this. It will not be frightening for me, when I am eating you. I am looking forward to it. You will have to be brave. Now if you wake up before I do, have a look at me while I am asleep, so that you can prepare yourself to be kept inside me."

"Why should you have so much fun eating me, while I go through such terror?"

"For one thing, I am big enough to eat you, and for another, you know that my stomach will be soft and comfortable."

"And impossible to get out of."

"Timothy, I gave you lunch, washed you with my tongue and let you sleep here this afternoon. Don't I deserve a special reward?"

"I am very grateful, and I would do anything for you except being your dinner."

"You will have to let me eat you for my dinner, little Timothy. I will not accept any other reward for all the kindness that I have shown you. I am not going to listen to any more of your objections. Go to sleep and think of yourself as a piece of food for me to enjoy eating. You will understand the situation much better, if you do that, little Timothy."

For the next few minutes she noticed a real state of melancholy in him. She could see the complete absence of hope in his demeanour now. She felt an extra comfort inside, knowing that he had reached this complete and total focus on the inviolate future he was facing.

She soon fell asleep.

So did Timothy.

He awoke in the latter half of the afternoon to see that Miss Balfour was still asleep, but he was in desperate need of a way to escape from her.

He went downstairs and out of the dolls house. He found a small nail file on the table beside a wall. He lifted it, jumped to Miss Balfour's pillow and crept over to a part of her hair that was not held in place and weighted down by her sleeping head. He filed off a few strands, which were as dense as rope to him, snuck over to the bedpost, tied Miss Balfour's hair strands to the post and slid down them to the floor, only to feel her hand clasping him from behind. She had awoken and reached down for him.

He was soon surrounded by her giant fingers and unable to see out of her closed hand.

When he had been released by her fingers, he instantly fell into some sticky substance, and heard a door close. He struggled to the surface and looked around. He seemed to be in a dark room. However, there was light behind him. He turned around, and was shocked to find himself in a piece of pavlova warming up in an oven which must have been turned down low so as not to burn him.

He looked through the glass at a giant unoccupied kitchen, and recognised it as Miss Balfour's. Soon she came back into the room, opened the oven door and leaned down to look in at him. She smiled at him, closed the oven door and began setting the table, and soon came and sat on a chair in front of the oven door, beaming in at him, licking her lips with glee.

Miss Balfour had won.

She looked big beyond compare, and she was now going to eat him for her dinner. She opened the door, dipped her finger in the pavlova and licked it.

"I think you are ready to be gobbled now."

She took out the pavlova, with him still inside it, placed it at the table, and sat down towering over him.

"Do you want to say anything before I start, Timothy? I will not be able to talk to you with my mouth full, especially when it is full of you."

"No Miss Balfour. I know it won't help at all to beg for mercy."

"Good. Then without further ado, little Timothy, I shall proceed to eat you."

She ate the pavlova around him, using her fingers.

Then she picked him up and licked off the close bits of pavlova from him.

She held him in front of her face and laughed at him.

Then she opened her mouth, placed him inside it and closed it, rolling him around on her tongue.

"I know what I should have said. I will try to get out and ask her" he thought "If I can just-"

She drew him suddenly into her throat.

He struggled to keep from falling down further as she started gulping with tremendous pressure in an attempt to fully swallow him.

Suddenly she coughed him back up into her mouth and out onto her hand.

"Little Timothy, you are being naughty again. You must stay still in my throat, so that I can gulp you down. If you struggle again, I shall have to swallow you head first. I do not think that you could struggle then. However you will be rather frightened. You will taste just as nice to me, whether you go down head first or not."

"I will be good Miss Balfour, but can I please say one thing after all? I thought of it while I was in your mouth. I would like to ask for it, before you gobble me down."
"What is it?" she asked with a surprised interest.

"Can I please have a kiss from you?"
"I am sure that I can manage that, but if you are trying to trick my mouth somehow, let me assure you that it will not work. Why do you want a kiss  from me?"

"Because I love you so much Miss Balfour.”

"You should have told me this before, Timothy. You would still make a very tasty meal for me, but I simply cannot eat up a chance for true love and happiness.”

"Do you mean that you will let me be your boyfriend instead of your lunch?"

"Yes little Timothy," she said smiling at him "You are very lucky. If you hadn't been coughed up and confessed your love for me, I would have gobbled you down by now, and you would be inside my tummy. Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I didn't know if you'd still like me or not. I thought you might laugh at me now that you're bigger than me."

"I certainly laughed at your attempt to escape."

"I know. I was going to take my time about telling you. When you said you were going to eat me, I thought we'd never be together happily."

"That was very nearly the case. I guess we'll have to remain different sizes, but you had better have that kiss you requested now. It will be the first of many."

Miss Balfour kissed him with her enormous lips.

"Thank you giant Miss Balfour. That was lovely."

"Would you like to kiss the outside of my neck, now that you are not going to be on the inside of it anymore?"
She held him in front of her neck.

He hugged it affectionately and kissed it.

*          *          *          *

After many weeks together, she found him amusing himself one day in the garden.

"Oh there you are Timothy. I have been looking and calling for you for hours. It's half past five. I have to go and get ready. I have some big surprises for you tonight."

She picked him up.

Miss Balfour took a plastic cup and half filled it with whipped cream from a spray can. Then she sprinkled it with chocolate shavings and small lollies. She picked Timothy up and gently lowered him into it and then spoke down to him:

"Timothy, I have a few things to do. I am going to take you somewhere for the first surprise. I mixed this up to give you something to enjoy while you're waiting. I'm going to put the lid on; so that you won't see me again until we are at the place of your first surprise."
"I'll look forward to it Miss Balfour, and thank you for this."

She put the plastic lid on the cup. Now he felt about for chocolate and lollies in the dark cup until over an hour later, when he felt the cup move.

Miss Balfour was taking him out.

Later still he saw the lid being removed from the top of the cup.

Miss Balfour dipped her fingers in the cream and licked them, doing this several times until all the cream was gone. Then she put her lips to the top of the cup and spoke.

"Timothy, I will pour you into my mouth and use my tongue to clean all that cream off you now. When I open my mouth, you may climb out onto my hand and see your first surprise by facing me."

Timothy was swished around on her tongue for about a minute. Then her mouth opened, and he saw that her hand was held open with the palm ready to receive him, and the fingers at right angles, pointing upward, so that he could not yet see where they were.

He climbed onto her hand and looked at the first surprise.

"Do you like my new dress?" she said.

"It's lovely Miss Balfour."

It was an old fashioned dress that left most of her shoulders bare.

"Your second surprise is to see where we are."

She unfolded her fingers, and he saw that she sat in the box seat high above the rest of the audience at a theatre.

"We're going to see a play."
"This is the best view of all" he said.

"It must be extra high for you."
"Yes. Can I sit on your shoulder and lean against the side of your neck?"

"I'm sure you'll be comfortable like that" she said and put him on her shoulder.

They saw the first half of the play and then there was an intermission.

Miss Balfour lowered Timothy onto the edge of the box and looked down at him.

"I'm going to tell you about your next surprise" she said "I feel that I have already had enough romance to last me the rest of my life."

"Don't think like that Miss Balfour. You may be older than me, but we've still got decades to go."

"Yes but the excitement of falling in love with you is over now, and I need to come up with something as enjoyable for me."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Well Timothy, I was thinking of that day after we first met. I can't help thinking that I might have been denied something, because you saved yourself from being eaten."

"And our romance has been much more fun."
"Yes it has up until now. However, I have thought this through, and I have made up my mind. If I keep on letting you talk me out of gulping you down and keeping you there, I will continue to feel as though I am missing out on that. The only solution is to gobble you down once and for all and leave you inside my stomach. You have managed to avoid it so far, but you are not going to delay it anymore. You are destined to be gobbled up, and this time nothing is going to dissuade me from doing the gobbling. You may think of tonight's treat here as a reward for the nice meal that you will finally make. Tonight, after the play has finished, I am going to take you home and eat you for my supper."
"Is there any chance that I could try talking you out of it?" he stammered.

"When you next wake up you will be in my stomach, a captive forever. Hush now, the play is going to start up again."

She sat back up and watched the curtain open.

Timothy stared off the edge of the box and wondered if he could chance a jump to the lap of a lady far below in the audience. No. It would hurt him badly.

"You can't escape" said Miss Balfour.

She had lowered her face to just behind him. She picked him up and sat upright.

"You know you are better than an after dinner mint, Timothy. So you can watch the rest of the play like this."

She put him into her mouth and lay him on her tongue with his neck resting on her lower lip.

Keeping her mouth open, she watched the play, leaving him to do the same.

When it was over, she removed him from her mouth.

"Timothy, you will have no chance to call from concealment for help between here and my kitchen. I shall carry you out of here gently in my hand, which will completely hide you. If you try to struggle or make a sound, I shall tighten my grip and muffle your voice. I hope that you can be cooperative enough to save me the trouble."

"I won't do anything Miss Balfour. I have never truly escaped you in the past. You've just chosen to spare me before, but that did not change the fact that you always won in the end. I will accept the fact that you have won now."

"That is very sensible. Of course you could be pretending to be cooperative in the hope of tricking your way out of this, but you will not succeed if that is what you are up to."

She kissed him.

"I promise that I am not planning any tricks Miss Balfour, because I cannot think of any."

"Good boy darling. I still love you just as much, you know. I am just long overdue to gobble you all up. How are you feeling?"

"Very frightened."
"I can understand that" she laughed "and I do not expect you to be brave, just delicious. This will be the greatest gobbling in the history of eating!"
"You planned it all well. I would never have guessed that this was my last surprise."

"Thank you and I am ready to go home."

Her fingers enclosed him and he did not see anything until they were in Miss Balfour's garden.

She opened her hand.

"We're nearly home."

She took him to her kitchen, put him on a plate and took it to the dining room. She sat down, but not at the table.

"Do you have any final messages for me?"
"I know you would not listen to any pleadings for mercy."

The plate was in her lap.

"I'd listen to them and then gobble you whole."

"No! Please!" he said and ran off the plate. She seized him and burst out laughing,

Colleen’s tongue came out of her mouth slowly in front of him. She was deliberately doing it in slow motion, to draw out the suspense of the taste test. He was able to look at a protrusion which was longer and wider than his entire body. It had two sides, but no apparent separation in the middle, just a slight dip where the two sides met. The moist fleshy sparkling appearance of her tongue was the most beautiful thrilling sight he had ever laid eyes on. In mere seconds he would actually feel the touch of it.

She moved him closer and slid her tongue over him. It felt every bit as nice as he’d hoped and more so, particularly as its soft moist taste buds ran over his facial cheeks. 

With those strangely stimulating ramifications still in his mind, he watched her tongue come out and lick him again and again. Being played with like a morsel of food by her beautiful mouth, without her having a care in the world was an experience that trivialised anything that had happened in his own personal past.

She put him between her finger and thumb, tilted her head back, put out her tongue.

She eased him gently into her mouth and found that her tongue could still perceive his dichotomy of reactions as they were manifesting physically in the movements of his tiny body. This pleased her immensely.

She drew him into her throat and considered his thoughts at that point.

“He’s at the top of my neck now. As soon as I start gulping, I can imagine every last wishful thought vanishing from his mind at once,” she thought, and did the gulp.

Little by little he lost more ground and sank lower into her gulping throat, and eventually reached her stomach.

She licked her lips with satisfaction and said aloud

"Delicious and gobbled up at last."

She went into her bedroom, changed to her nightdress, got into bed and lay awake thinking that she was still happily a giantess, and looking forward to enjoying the rest of her life, with her captive finally accepting that he would not escape her stomach. She was his destiny.

One Saturday afternoon Harold went for a walk into the high forest, and passed through the portal into Edith’s garden. Then he saw Edith walking through her garden, now a giantess, and the sight amazed him. He’d always admired her at school, but had heard that she had a boyfriend.

She drew closer and looked around, apparently choosing a good place to sit down and read the book that she was carrying.

He ran towards her, calling “Edith, I’m here!”
“Hello!” she said, and sat down beside him, “It’s good to see you again.”

“There’s a lot more of you to see,” said Harold.

“Would you like to climb into my mouth, so that I’ll have something to taste, while I read my book?” she asked.

“Oh wow!” he thought, “I’ll be sitting on that beautiful tongue of hers!”

He nodded his head, and she picked him up gently. She put him into her mouth and closed it.

He was now sitting on Edith’s tongue. He lay down on his stomach, and rested his head on the back of her tongue. It was the most arousing thing he’d ever felt in his life. Even though she had a boyfriend, it was worth doing what she wanted to have this experience. She was the fulfilment of all his dreams at this size, and she seemed to be reading his mind and doing all of the things, which aroused him.

After ten minutes, Edith opened her mouth wide and yawned. It let in the light, and he could see the lovely tongue all around and beneath him. Then he sat up and turned around and lay down facing the front of her mouth, to look out at her lower lip and the garden beyond.

Soon Edith closed her mouth again. He lay on her tongue, grateful to her for allowing him to gain such a lengthy pleasure. For over an hour he lay comfortably on her tongue, even drifting off to sleep with pleasant dreams of the experience for 14 minutes. 

Outside, Edith had read several chapters of her book, and was enjoying the feel of Harold on her tongue. He lay there and rested his arms in front of his head, and enjoyed the feel.

Suddenly Edith arched her tongue upwards a bit, which caused him to slide into her throat. He got into a horizontal position to stop himself from falling down any further. He estimated he was halfway down her neck.

“Quickly lie down, so gravity will help me to climb back out of here,” he called, wishing she hadn’t made such a careless reflex action with her tongue, while he was still in her mouth.

Then he felt her throat moving with incredible pressure. Edith was gulping! He suddenly realised that his fall into her throat had not been an accident. She hadn’t put him into her mouth to please him, but to enjoy the taste of him before she gobbled him down.

Even if he could get back up into her mouth, and out of it, he wondered what chance he stood against a huge relative giantess of a woman. The pressure of her gulping was incredible. His greatly reduced leg muscles were having trouble standing against it.

Edith gulped even more strongly, and he slid further down her throat, and lost his position. Edith gulped him down inside her, and he was gone. He felt movement and guessed that she must be standing up and walking back through the garden to her giant house. It was all over, just like that, not for her, but for him.  

Colleen had told Frances that she could assume ownership of the vacant lot which had been Colleen’s home in the hills. Frances had had a model house built with timber and cement, and then taken it to the vacant lot, used the reverse setting of the reducer to enlarge the model house to the size of a real house. Then she’d simply had electricians install power points connected to the power supply, and asked plumbers to do the same for the water supply. She now had a holiday house in the hills. Today, however, Frances Woodfield was running late for one of her visits to Colleen in the giant world. Since eating Stanley, Colleen had told Frances about the portal which linked Colleen’s garden to the valley woods behind the school, and let her leave by that portal, so that she would emerge in the valley woods and know where the portal was on that side in the future. She would not need to go all the way up to the high forest and then use the portal that only took her as far as Edith’s garden anymore. However, she had been occupied with Dollipop II, and gotten so carried away that she’d delayed herself. She dropped the reducing machine into her backpack, along with a water bottle and a camera, so that she could take some pictures of the giant land, while Colleen took her on a walk and then have a drink before heading back to the village.

She put Dollipop II in her dress pocket, until she’d reached the woods behind the school, and then took him out and set him on her shoulder, while she made her way to the portal and met up with Colleen. They went for a long walk on Colleen’s shoulder, and the size comparison between Dollipop II and Colleen was mind boggling to Dollipop II, who was only tiny sized compared to the normal sized Frances Woodfield.

As they were returning from their walk, they stopped for a rest. Frances reached into the bag for her drink bottle, and then noticed that the reducer seemed to be missing.

“Oh no!” she said, “I was in such a hurry, that I’ve used the backpack with the hole in it, that cost me all my food the time I had to eat Nathaniel the first Dollipop on that camping holiday we took. The machine must have fallen out in the forest. I’ll have to head back as soon as possible and retrace my steps to find it.”

“I thought you were going to take special care, so that you wouldn’t need to eat me in a hunger driven emergency,” said Dollipop II.

“I meant to find time to sew up the hole,” said Frances, “I did tell you to be prepared for the fact that I couldn’t anticipate every eventuality.”

“Well I can give you plenty of food for the trip back, even though you weren’t planning to eat until you got home,” said Colleen, “I’ll quickly sew up your backpack with a giant needle and thread, which should work on a normal sized backpack.”

“Okay, then we’d better be going,” said Frances, “I’ll have to search those woods well.”

But the reducer hadn’t taken that long to fall out through the hole in the bottom of the backpack. It had actually slipped out, while Frances had been crossing the school grounds to get to the first walking track that led eventually to the woods.

Ellie Blish was an 18 year old girl from the school, who often came in on Saturdays to take walks through the grounds. So it was that she found the fallen reducer machine and wondered what it was. After experimenting with the default setting buttons, she saw it reduce a fallen branch to the size of a stick, and then to the size of a twig as she kept pressing the button.

She practiced on some other objects and learned to control the extent of the reduction, by turning it off sooner when needed. Ellie had no idea where the device had come from, but she saw the potential for having a lot of fun with it.

Her own walk to school took her through the public gardens in the village. So on Monday morning, she happened to be on her way, when she saw someone sitting and reading a book. He was wearing a university jacket. She didn’t know that he was from the same university that Colleen Balfour had attended, although not at the same time. So the student and Colleen had never met each other.

The young man had not seen Ellie. So she hid in the bushes, and pointed the reducing machine through an opening she made by parting some leaves with her free hand, and aimed it right at the student. She pressed the button until both he and his book had dwindled to the size of one of the leprechauns.

She withdrew the machine and let the leaves cover her presence completely, while she looked at the shrunken student’s attempts to make sense of his situation. She giggled quietly to herself and then backed out through the other side of the bushes, put the machine into her school bag and headed for school.

The student began walking through the public gardens, and took the whole morning to get to the other end, where he saw a lady sitting and eating her lunch. She looked elegant and attractive, and somewhat older than him, and seemed to be the most likely person for him to approach for help. He walked over and stood in front of her and introduced himself. The lady leaned forward, picked him up and sat him in the palm of her hand.

“There was a light from the bushes, at least I think it was from the bushes,” he continued, “And the next thing I knew I was tiny.”

“Were you on your way to school?” she asked.

“No, I finished last year. I was studying a book before heading to university for the day.”

“I like walking through that university. My Bridge club rents one of the classrooms every Monday night, to play our card games. What course were you studying?”

“Journalism,” he said, while she finished the last of her lunch and wiped her lips with a disposable napkin, “I guess I’d have quite a story if I told my own memoirs after this. I don’t know how to play Bridge.”

“It’s a very complicated game to learn. It can take months to really master it, but the rewards are a far more interesting game to play. It remains interesting, week after week, and no two games ever play the same way,” she said

He wondered if he could join the club and play the game with her, if and when he worked out what had happened to him and how to undo it.

“It sounds like it would be a lot of fun, if I could get the hang of it.”

“Well I must be on my way in a few minutes. It’s been nice to meet you,” she said, and put him into her opening mouth and closed it.

He was lying on her tongue after the brief views he’d had of it. He began to guess at the ramifications, and remembered one of her first questions, that hadn’t sounded as though it had been ideally worded, in terms of semantics.

She had asked him, “What course WERE you studying?”

He’d have expected the wording to be “What course ARE you studying.”

Her question had assumed that his days as a university student were over. At the time, he’d assumed that she was simply referring to his reduced size making university participation prohibitive. In fact she had already decided to eat him.

He remembered the sight of her sitting in the gardens eating her lunch when he’d arrived. He could picture her still there now, apparently at ease with what she was doing to him. She knew that he was not some sort of legendary leprechaun, but someone from her own people, who’d had the misfortune to lose most of his size, and was not influenced by this knowledge at all. He was trapped in her mouth, wondering how much time he had left (which would not have been more than the ‘few minutes’ she had mentioned just before popping him inside, and knowing that there was nothing he could do to get out or to appeal to her to look at it from his perspective.

He felt her soft moist tongue below him, and recalled the one second glimpse he’d had of her gaping maw, in that moment when she’d surprised him with what for her had been a simple gesture of her hand and mouth combined.

All of a sudden, she moved her mouth dramatically and swallowed him so rapidly, that he reached her stomach almost as quickly as he’d reached her mouth.

He felt her stomach begin to bounce a little, and guessed that she must have gotten up and started walking out of the gardens.

As she reached the street, Brenda Leesil felt as though she had overeaten a little, but that the taste of the last mouthful had made it well and truly worthwhile.

Dollipop II had been profoundly affected by the carefree attitude that Miss Woodfield was taking with his well-being. He thought back to when they were returning from their visit to Colleen’s house, and remembered the exchange of words which had passed between them:

“I’d feel a lot happier about our relationship, if I knew you wanted to take a lot more care to make sure that you won’t need to eat me one day,” he said, as a way of directly raising the subject.

“I can’t be worrying about that all the time,” said Frances, “I was able to replace Nathaniel with you, and lots of boys have crushes on me. If I need to, I can easily replace you with someone else, although I’ll have to ask Colleen to make me another machine, or perhaps instruct me on how to make one, while she supervises with a giant magnifying glass, since her hands will be too big to do the task herself.”

From that moment on, he had decided that he needed to escape her. He’d never thought of a way to do it before. However, that was probably because his heart simply wasn’t in it. She had left for school, and he was up in her bedroom, sitting on her bedside table next to the window, looking at the birthday card that she had given him. She had opened it for him, as it was full sized, on the day that she had presented it to him.

Dollipop II folded it into the shape of a hang-glider and used her nail file to poke two hand holds into it. He dragged it to the window ledge, and then pressed the electronic window switch to the open position. The window began to open. He waited until it had fully opened. Then he knew he had to time things well, if he wanted to gain the maximum advantage from his desperate gambit.

He pressed the button to the close position. The window began to close, and would not stop moving until it was shut.

He quickly launched himself out of the window, while he still had enough space for the hang-glider to make it through, and flew from Colleen’s upstairs window, over her garden, and up into the air further, as a sudden wind gust carried him higher. He did his best to take advantage of it, knowing that he would be much further from Miss Woodfield’s house than he’d expected, before he started to drop.

He flew and glided on the wind current until he came to the public gardens, which seemed like the best place to land, as he was finally losing a lot of height. He made a gradual descent into garden, and stepped out to gain his bearings.

A lady walked into view and picked him up and swallowed him without a word. It had all happened in a few seconds. First he’d been on the path. Then he’d been sliding and sliding down her throat, and he was now in her stomach.

Brenda Leesil couldn’t help wondering what had been causing all these reductions in young men’s sizes.