They talked for a while, and then she got out of the pool and dried herself off by sitting in the sun on a deck chair for a long talk with him. When her swimmers were completely dry, she took him into her bedroom, lay down on the bed, and let him lie on her belly for soft comfort.

In the weeks ahead, she took him on secret picnics, watched movies on the television with him, so that they could talk their way through the advertisements, and played every board game she had with him, letting him act as one of his own pieces or tokens in each game.

Finally the day came for him to write his ambiguous farewell note to Melany.

He thought about how to word it and made it as simple as possible:

Dear Melany,

Thank you for having me

and looking after me,

but I really can’t stay

with you forever. I hope

you meet a nice boy at school.

Elmer.

He placed it on the door step of the dolls house for her to find, and then let Phillippa carry him up to her bedroom. They would have to make sure that Melany never entered the room and found him, he thought. She left him up there, while Melany came home and discovered the note. He heard Phillippa asking Melany why she was crying, and Melany saying that she couldn’t really tell. Eventually, she broke down and said, “I guess it doesn’t matter now,” and told her mother everything. Phillippa role played a semblance of surprise at the existence of a tiny boy living all these weeks in her daughter’s dolls house, and let her calm down.

“I guess it’s not so bad really,” said Melany, “Elmer doesn’t know that I have met a nice boy my own size at school. I would have kept him for a cute little pet anyway in the dolls house, but I’ll get used to things the way they are.”

Later that night, when Elmer was snuggled against Phillippa’s cheek, she said, “I feel better, knowing that she’s adjusting to the situation. I’ll enjoy having you more, in the knowledge that we haven’t plotted that much unhappiness for her.”

The next morning, Melany went to school as usual, and Phillippa went outside briefly, and came in with four spare house bricks from the shed. She sat down next to the closed front door and put them in front of it.

“I thought we might play a game of chasings in here this morning,” she said, “I’ll give you plenty of headstart, and I’ll only crawl around on all fours, while you’ll be free to run at your top speed at tiny size. This is the only door that has enough room for you to slip under it.”

“Well I guess we could have just made it a rule of the game that I wasn’t to go under the door,” he said.

“I couldn’t count on you to follow that rule,” she said, as she slid the last brick into place, “When I catch you, I’m going to cook you just enough to warm you up, and eat you for my lunch.”