The train ground to a halt. It was a behemoth compared to a regular
train, each carriage several times wider and longer than the standard,
and by reaching heights over twenty storeys, over 2,500,000 Lilliputians
could be carried by just one of these vehicles. All of this space to
transport what would amount to two, maybe three, mouthfuls of one
Brobdingnagian meal.
I exaggerate, of course. That would be
assuming the Brob had decided to fill their maw with nothing but
(relatively) speck-sized people like me, but that is hardly the
recommended method, unless as a party trick. We’re mostly relegated to
being seasoning.
The doors opened, with the same shudders as
always, and the people filtered out, while some employees in transparent
cubicles took down our names. Mine is Maya, by the way. I was on the
16th storey, so I had the pleasure of experiencing one of the better
views as I walked down the staircase to ground level. Of course the
train itself, like a massive metal wall with thousands of windows and
hundreds of staircases and ramps extending from the sides at an array of
heights, but the real prize was our destination: workstation 3 of this
restaurant’s kitchen.
______________________________
“I’ll
have a carrot and coriander soup, please”. The waitress noted the order
and walked off to report to the chef. Amelia settled into her seat,
finally alone with her thoughts. It might not be the fanciest dish in
the world, but the wind had picked up outside and she just wanted
something nice and warm. Familiarity was also a factor in her choice.
Maybe she could change things up a bit…
As the waitress was walking away she waved her over, “oh, and I’ll take some Lillies with mine, thanks.”
______________________________
Saying
the kitchen was overwhelming might be an overstatement now, but it
never failed to at least intimidate, even after all these times. The
countertop we stood on stretched for miles, with knives longer than our
largest skyscrapers and chopping boards that could hold -or crush-
sizeable chunks of my home city. But the main attractions were the
chefs. All Brobdingnagians, standing at around 3 kilometres tall in our
Lilliputian eyes, the simple act of walking place to place was something
to be marvelled, let alone their skill and surprising deftness at
cooking. I felt the familiar thuds, outside of the current orchestra of
clattering pots and working chefs, approaching. The waitress, towering
over us at literally mountainous heights, was talking to the chef. She
talked to the one closest to us, not bothering to acknowledge the
millimetre-tall specks swarming the countertop waiting area. Despite
being so far above us, her speech was booming -not deafening, thanks to
the standard jabs every Lilly takes before entering mixed society-
though still comprehensible, she was listing the customers’ new orders.
Several required our “help”.
______________________________
“So!
Table 4 they want a shepherds pie with Lillies, Table 2 wants battered
cod and chips. No Lillies, no nuts. Allergic. Table 7… she wanted carrot
and coriander soup. No Lilli-wait. Yes Lillies. Sorry. Table 5 wanted
calamari as dessert? I told her I’d ask but I know Alex is pretty rigid
about “starter is starter, dessert is dessert”- you know what, just let
them handle it.” Priya apologised again to chef Janet before leaving.
The swarm of Lillies on the counter was throwing her off. They triggered
her trypophobia, badly. Made her face itchy. Bleh. No like.
______________________________
I
looked around the crowd on the table, far too large to find any
familiar faces, though that could be arranged, but I did see familiar
groups. About half were regulars, labelled with orange wristbands and
calm expressions. This was a day job for them. The rookies, keeping the
orange armbands but having a much harder time masking their excitement, a
few frozen in awe at their surroundings. Ugh, Fivers. Sometimes a
fancier restaurant than this would overestimate itself, and order too
many ingredients, generally sticking to Lillies that have been trained
and selected at classy facilities to give the best customer experience
blah blah blah. Very snobbish, considering that they’re rejects,
re-rented by a “lower” restaurant. Ah, tourists. White armbands,
otherwise indistinguishable from the rookies apart from the constant
picture-taking and tendency to move in packs. Whichever Brob employee
thought up the idea of getting them to pay for the opportunity to be an
ingredient, rather than being payed, is a genius.
______________________________
Amelia
stopped herself scrolling through her social feed. Mentally scolding
herself, she forced an attempt to observe her surroundings, “live in the
moment” as Kate keeps saying. Outdoor seating, same as always. That
waitress she talked to was new, though, I guess Jenny finally got her
acting job. Or the sack. Um, napkins. Still got napkins. Oh! The Smaller
seating area has been cleaned up, it looks less like a spare table with
tiny chairs dotted around and more like its own, roofless, restaurant
accommodating the two smaller races. The Gullies’ got new chairs (ugly,
bright orange things), and the Lilly section had a small barrier facing
the door, probably after the Christmas Eve Incident. She wasn’t there,
but Jenny had told her of a delivery driver that opened the door on a
particularly windy evening, sending the Lillies tumbling across the
table. No deaths, those durability jabs are serious business if her
Lillie-obsessed roommate is to be believed. Jenny had made a point about
this happening on the 19th, not the 24th, I guess the “official” name
rolls off the tongue better. Wait, where’s the soup?
______________________________
I
was suddenly pulled out of my headspace once the immense metal knife
landed in front of us flat on the countertop, and the chef directed us
to walk onto it. The soup was almost ready to be served, it just needed
several thousand final ingredients. She carefully moved the knife over
the bowl, only dropping a few in the process, and waited. The orange sea
beneath almost glowed under the light, with colossal coriander leaves
dotting the surface like alien trees. A spoon, insignificant scratches
obvious to my eyes at this scale, stuck out from the soup like an
ancient shipwreck. The-
______________________________
Oh, get on with it, Janet thought as she tipped the knife, letting the Lillies drop into the soup without so much as a splash.
______________________________
Standing
up in a thick, inconsistent liquid is hard enough without the gigantic
waitress rhythmically shaking the bowl with every step. If the surface
tension of this soup was any lower, I’d have sunk underneath and been
thrown around by the waitress-made currents like plankton in a tsunami.
Winds howled over the bowl as she moved at speeds I could only hope to
achieve in a supersonic jet, my body somehow not being liquified and
sucked into the void by the rushing air. A coriander leaf ahead of me
broke free of the soup and barrelled towards, then over me. I could
swear I saw some Lillies carried along with it as it crashed back into
the orange plains behind me.
______________________________
“One carrot and coriander soup, with Lillies. Here”
Amelia
took a second to reactivate her social skills before responding, “Hmm?
Oh, thanks. Thank you!” The new waitress was already walking away. She
sighed. Was she too quiet? Well, I guess I’ll have to worry about this
random waitress thinking I’m rude later, she thought to herself as she
picked up the spoon. She briefly wondered what it was like for the
Lillies in her bowl right now. Oh, she forgot to ask for extra
coriander. Damn it!
______________________________
Freeing
myself from the soup, dusting (souping?) myself off a bit, I took a seat
to catch my breath. I looked up. The titaness took up almost my entire
field of view, seeing one of her kind up close always seemed like
looking at a natural event, like the northern lights, or a supercell
storm. I felt like I could hear nothing other than her deep rumbles of
her breathing, and her piercing gaze almost broke my seasoned guard. She
was looking right at me. Could she see me? She spoke! “Damn,” a quiet
whisper but it was something! She probably saw some of us being tossed
around by the wind and sinking into the soup. I wish I could tell her
she had nothing to worry about. It’s sweet that she cares so much for
us.
Her hand, with fingers the length and width of skyscrapers,
twisted around the shining, scratched handle of the spoon. The submerged
portion of the spoon raised from the soup like a titanic submarine
breaching the surface of the ocean, and continued rising high into the
sky.
______________________________
Amelia picked up the spoon.
______________________________
The
trajectory of the massive object suddenly changed, as it swooped back
down towards us like a chrome meteor. It broke through the soup, diving
underneath, surely dragging hundreds of my fellow Lillies with it
(durability jabs grant an inhuman ability to hold your breath,
thankfully), and tore through the golden plains like an icebreaker ship
towards me. The edge of the spoon cut upwards right in front of me,
carrying, thousands of gallons of soup, along with hundreds of people. I
saw the customer’s mouth open, and I heard faint, distant cheering,
maybe screaming, probably the tourists and rookies. Then, I didn’t.
______________________________
Huh, it’s not so bad without the extra coriander. I’ll remember that.
______________________________
The
swallow probably didn’t echo through the entire room, but you could
have fooled me. The Lillies on the soup fell silent, just for a moment. I
fell to my knees, only mostly from the shockwave of the spoon stabbing
into the soup once more, this time around a hundred metres to my left.
It ripped through the surface towards me, scooping up maybe a hundred
and fifty people, mostly regulars like me. Then it rose, up and up…
______________________________
Do
moles eat carrots when they find them digging underground? Eh, I’ll
google it later, Amelia thought to herself as she brought the spoon to
her mouth.
______________________________
I was running
entirely on instinct as the spoon cut underneath me, the edges rising
through the orange muck, trapping me, along with dozens of others,
inside. I briefly locked eyes with a Fiver before we both collapsed
under the imitation of gravity caused by the cutlery rocketing into the
sky. Looking up, the customer’s face took up my entire field of view,
although I barely noticed any other part of it besides her closed lips. I
had almost pulled myself together and started to stand up when I felt
the spoon lower, she was taking her time with this particular mouthful.
Now, it was her neck that I could not avoid seeing. Her cheeks lightly
contorted as she manipulated the liquid currently in her mouth to
towards the back of her throat, no doubt pulling dozens of Lillies along
in the currents. The muscles of her neck contracted as they squeezed
the bubble of blended carrot and people down her oesophagus. From the
outside it was like watching a cliff of skin pulse. I can imagine what
it was like for the myriad of Lilliputians on the inside.
______________________________
Amelia
raised the spoon to her mouth. Out of the corner of her eye, she
spotted another young woman having much more fun than Amelia was. The
stranger her dish, some kind of pie, and was… talking to it? Amelia
tried not to stare too hard as the woman made a show of licking her fork
clean, and leaned towards her plate, speaking in a low, seductive
voice. Welp, can’t judge her for having fun, Amelia thought.
______________________________
Her
lips parted. It’s a cliché but it really did feel like time slowed down
as I watched her mouth open up, and the spoon smoothly travelled
inside. I could see many of my kind scattered around the mouth, relaxing
on her molars, trying to find footing on her tongue. A few were stuck
to the roof of the mouth, suspended in thick saliva. One wiggled free
and plummeted past the edge of the spoon just as the customer’s lips
began to close.
For a moment, the metal platform was suspended in
almost complete darkness. My Lilly eyes adjusted characteristically
quickly. There was a loud *clack* as her teeth gently tested the handle
of the spoon, her jaws closing as far as they could before the next
stage. Suddenly the massive muscle of her tongue struck into the
underside of the spoon, sending me to my knees once again. The metal
edges met the roof of the mouth, and although I couldn’t see it, I knew
the tongue was pulling away back down. The resulting suction drew the
soup, along with us, outwards in all directions, spilling over the edge
and across the roof of the mouth, briefly, before splashing down on the
tongue and teeth.
As I fell I as vaguely aware of the spoon
sliding out of the mouth, no doubt catching any lingering toppings at
her lips. Landing somewhere on her tongue, I began to rise to my feet,
pushing my palms into the soft, bumpy surface, my hands sinking into
orange liquid I had grown accustomed to. It was thicker than before,
some areas were more translucent than others. She was salivating.
______________________________
Amelia paused at a weak fizzing sensation on her tongue. It was like popping candy. Weird. Nice, too.
______________________________
On
the centre of the tongue, where the saliva-soup mixture was much
deeper, the Fivers were pulling one of their simpler gimmicks. Diving
under the surface, they charged down towards the tongue, smashing into
the tastebuds, and the surfaces in between. No small feat, swimming at
all in the thick muck was hard enough without the time limit of one or
two seconds, and of course the currents generated by the myriad of
muscles and glands surrounding us. Show-offs.
Oh, time’s up. The
edges of the tongue turned upwards, collecting all of us in the centre.
The tip touched the roof of the mouth, and the whole muscle undulated,
sending our “little” lake-sized bubble of soup, saliva and swimmers
towards the gullet. Any attempts at controlled movement right now would
be in vain. I could see, even in the darkness and chaos, first of our
mouthful flowing into the hole at the back of the mouth. I felt the
pressure in the air change before I was suddenly submerged, my vision
cut down to nothing as the translucent orange of the soup took over my
vision. I slammed into the uvula, bouncing off the soft flesh and
careening into the back of the throat.
______________________________
She
swirled the soup around with her spoon, fidgeting as she gulped her
latest mouthful. She made a game of trying to cover up individual
Lillies in a soup wave without submerging any others. Soup wave…
Soupnami? Tsupnami. Eh it’s more like an avalanche anyway, if avalanches
were dropped from massive flying spoons. She wondered if any of those
Lilly-vivarium folks have tried that. Oh yeah, there was that article
where some Lilly film director used something like that in a disaster
movie they were filming. Moonfall, right? Heh, Spoonfall.
______________________________
Blinded,
disoriented, submerged in a thick, hot mixture of spit and food, I
didn’t so much hear the gulp as feel it. The sound- the vibrations
reverberated through our soupy bubble, shaking us to our bone. Maybe it
went darker as the first oesophageal sphincter closed up behind us, I
couldn’t tell either way.
If I were a Gulli, the walls of this
pipe would have been squeezing me with a crushing, pleasant pressure as I
slid between them, propelled by peristalsis towards the
Brobdingnagian’s stomach. Funnily enough I could get a similar
experience from being swallowed by a Gulli. But being swallowed by a
Brob as a Lilliputian, that was unique only to us. Our contact with the
gullet walls was limited to brief scrapes, we were simply too small to
be caught in between them, more similar to crumbs than actual food. It
isn’t uncommon for Lillies to be trapped in a Brob’s oesophagus, either
stuck to the sides by residual spit, or simply not reaching the second
sphincter, the gate to the stomach, before it closed. They could wander
around at the bottom of the gullet, held captive by the fact that they
just aren’t large enough to be registered by the body as food. Of course
they’d be “freed” the next time the Brob swallowed, usually the next
bite of their meal.
Still suspended in the bubble, I saw the
aforementioned sphincter open up beneath us. We passed through
successfully, and for few seconds, we were in freefall, not that we
could feel the wind rushing through our hair or anything like that. As
the mass of liquid fell, it spread from the air resistance like a
parachute, deforming into a disk, then an uneven sheet, then a network
of soup globules connected by webs, releasing most of us from the
bubble. We tumbled onto the stomach floor, some sliding down the lightly
wrinkled walls, some still stuck in clumps of spit-soup mixture. None
landed gracefully, though. Ive heard many supposedly-impressive accounts
describing exactly that, but I’ve been eaten enough to know better than
to believe them.
Laying on my back on the wrinkled floor, I took
a second to catch my breath. My eyes readjusted to the new environment,
a dim, warm light with no discernible source stopping the place from
being plunged into pitch black. Seeing the sphincter above me gave me
the last bit of energy to move out of the way before she swallowed
again. Stumbling over the bumps and creases in the slippery flesh, I
stole a glance over my shoulder just in time to watch the tourists who
didn’t escape the blast zone in time. Maybe it’s part of the experience
for them, who knows. A few of them were laughing hysterically as they
resurfaced, so probably.
After several minutes of walking, and a
bit of sliding, I reached somewhere close to the end of the stomach,
maybe just over three quarters of the way in. Vast cavern, fleshy
chamber, you’ve probably heard what a stomach is like from the inside.
The growing lake of soup in the centre was still quite shallow,
apparently our host was making this meal last. Hundreds of little people
were swimming, playing, I even saw a few riding rafts of soaked
coriander leaves. Even from within the stomach, the distance between me
and them made them look almost like dots. The air was thick and hot, and
a thin fog over the lake was starting to become visible, stirred by the
occasional contracting of the cavern walls paired with a deep, guttural
growl. Her body hasn’t quite decided yet on whether we’re worth the
trouble of digestion.
Taking a seat, I watched them for a while
longer. A few daredevils were trying to climb the walls of the stomach,
some getting to heights that could rival a Lilliputian skyscraper before
gliding down the slimy surface, guided by the creases back towards the
“beach”, or directly back into the orange sea. Every couple of seconds,
the ring of muscle embedded in the roof of the chamber would open up,
pouring more soup and its toppings into the sea. Sometimes these would
be announced by a a few strands of drool dripping from the hole, or even
a small spray, but most of these additions would come all out at once,
without warning apart from the approximate rhythm that the customer had
found, spoonful after spoonful. The sea was catching up to me, I imagine
her bowl was becoming empty. She was almost finished.
______________________________
Damn,
I’m almost finished. I’m usually better at pacing myself with this, she
thought. The white of the bowl was visible through the soup now, and
the dots were moving much faster than before. Probably still swimming,
but they could definitely reach the “ground”. Slowly, she tilted the
bowl with her free hand, pooling the contents in the corner. Her brain
briefly put forward the idea of drinking straight from the bowl like a
cup, but she shot that idea down fast. Dipping her spoon into the pool,
she tried collecting as many Lillies as she could. Tiny, but way too
good to waste. After some sifting back and forth through the liquid, she
raised her spoon again. There were quite a few still in the bowl, but
this was the best she could do. Absentmindedly , she took a closer look
at the spoon.
Logically she has always known the truth about the
smaller races. “They’re people just like you and me” and all that, but
there was always a disconnect in her mind between the “people” Lillies
and the “buy them in the thousands to use as seasoning” Lillies. She
didn’t gasp out loud, it wasn’t exactly a groundbreaking revelation, but
something did click in her brain that there were people in her food.
Around one millimetre tall , barely visible enough that she could make
out limbs and colour, facial features imperceptible, but yep, there are
human beings in her spoon, her mouth, her stomach. Her maw flooded with
saliva, she let out a small chuckle as she passed the spoon between her
lips once again.
Swallowing them down with a new appreciation,
she smiled, then mentally sighed. Oh, if only she had realised this
before the last one-and-a-bit spoonfuls. Tilting the bowl again, she
made a few failed attempts at scooping the last Lillies up, before
setting the bowl back on the table, releasing them from the puddle of
soup. She watched them slide back across the plate with a renewed
curiosity. She wanted to eat these people. Fiddling with the spoon in
her hand, she had an idea. She placed her spoon in the bowl, tilting it
so the edge was touching the surface, and leaned in towards the
remaining Lillies.
“Hi, um, little- no. Uh.” Fuck. Talking to
people. Her one weakness. “Just… can you climb on please?” Oh, I meant
for that to be so much more majestic, she mused. It worked, though, the
little dot-people were all moving towards the edge of the spoon. She
leaned in closer, managing to single out individuals as they pulled
themselves up the thickness of the spoon and slid into the curved
platform, joining their fellow leftovers. She moved the spoon around the
plate, allowing any stragglers to climb on, without needing to take a
short hike first. She leaned in again to take a closer lo- oh, they’re
all looking at her. A good chunk of them waved at their devourer,
noticing that they were being studied much more intently than usual.
Amelia took the spoon away from her face, at eye level, and hesitantly
gave a quick wave back.
She considered giving the final spoonful
a more dramatic exit (entrance?) but ultimately slurped them up,
swilled them around her mouth for a bit, and swallowed them down like
the rest. She set the spoon down with a clatter and raised her hand to
grab the waitress’ attention, then asked for the bill.
______________________________
In
Amelia’s stomach, the idea of quiet relaxation had dissolved long ago.
The last of the toppings had arrived, and just *would not shut up* about
how the customer noticed them. Fortunately for Maya, they didn’t stand a
chance of being heard over the crashing waves, churning seas stirred up
by the rhythmic contractions of the muscular walls that surrounded
them. The muffled noises outside implied the customer was leaving, and
her movements certainly added to the mayhem inside. The Lillies were
tossed around, some even thrown into the air before splashing back into
the chyme. Maya was doing a decent job of keeping her head above
“water”, and was confident that now, she could at least decide when to
be submerged, unlike a few minutes before. Until the stomach decides to
empty itself into the intestines. She collected herself, she had a long
journey ahead.
______________________________
The bell on the
door jingled as Amelia stepped through, back into the outdoors. The
wind had died down, and her meal had certainly done its job. Maybe she
was imagining it, but there was a comfortable warmth emanating from her
stomach. She breathed in the fresh air, and breathed out. Then she
walked home.
=======•
Disclaimer: All events and
characters in this story are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real
world events is entirely coincidental, and a goddamn mystery to me. I
mean, how in the fuck-
Giantess World
Chapter End Notes:
(I'll probably be editing this for a bit, it’s my first story but feel free to leave a review, just so long as it’s exclusively filled with glowing praise)