Prologue

            Nami bolted across the floor as fast as her two legs would take her.  She could no longer fly as her small, delicate wings had been too badly damaged by the leviathan.  It howled noises which were incomprehensible to the tiny creature, filling it with a terror which seemed to penetrate the deepest recesses of its mind.  As she ran, Nami stumbled over a collection of artificially preserved plant matter which littered the room.  This is the same material which had once served as a floor in her tiny glass prison before the leviathan had tossed it across the room.  The entrance to her hideaway was so close, but Nami knew she would not reach it in time, nor did she want to, for if she did she would surely compromise the rest of her fellow Calculi.  Finally, out of a mixture of hopelessness and exhaustion, she collapsed onto her hands and knees and stared at the ground before her.  The light was immediately cut off by the looming shadow of the giantess behind her, which she could not see because her face was down.  Looking ahead, Nami saw the ground.  Her captor’s garments were scattered about.  She saw so many devices around her, all of which could be put to use by the giantess, and she realized she had no idea how any of them worked or what they were used for.  Far off in the distance, on the other side of a large tower lay the pulverized remains of her good friend, Xi, who had been killed by the leviathan.

            The sight made Nami sick, so she quickly looked away.  Above her the voice of the giantess boomed in an incomprehensible language.  Nami did not want to look up, because she knew if she did the giantess would see the defeat in her face, and would feel triumphant.  She was given little choice, however, as the round appendage which demarcated the periphery of her giant captor’s body smashed her tiny body into the floor and rolled it over.  The pain was unbearable, and tears began to welter around Nami's eyes.  The similarity in morphology between these two organisms was quite impressive.  They were both bipeds who expressed a bilateral symmetry.  The wet tissue which comprised the two orbs on either side of their faces seemed to serve the same purpose, to provide vision of the environment.  However, the eyes of the giantess were much closer together than that of the Calculus.  They contained a white sclera which helped to pronounce the darker pigmented iris which surrounded a contractile black pupil.  The sclera of the Calculus was a navy blue, but no iris surrounded its pupils.  Rather they took the shape of a clover and seemed to display more elasticity than the leviathan’s eyes.  As she looked up at her tormenter, Nami could make out the subtle movements of those enormous orbs.  The pupils slightly dilated as she looked back down.  Because of the consistency in body shape between the two, Nami could tell the leviathan was a female.

            Again the giantess spoke in her language, which Nami could not understand.  Her long, black hair shrouded the sides of her face and surrounded the wounded creature on both sides.  She had lowered her face dangerously close to Nami, perhaps to get a closer look or simply to savor this primeval victory.  A sharp pain struck Nami’s chest as her heart skipped a beat.  That face, with those horrifying features, was so close to her body she could feel its heat radiating down onto her.  The giant crease which formed her mouth was seemingly enveloped in the lush, moist tissue of the surrounding lips.  Another appendage, which was much more pronounced in her than in the Calculi, separated her eyes from her mouth.  As air traversed in and out of its musculature, Nami felt herself growing cold.  A teardrop rolled from her left eye down the side of her tiny head.   

            Most of her young life had been spent in the captivity of her giant captor.  During the daytime, when she was away, the leviathan would confine Nami to a little glass box which had unscented potpourri scattered along the bottom which served as a makeshift ground.  Before she left, the leviathan assured that a large cloth was thrown over her prison, further adding to Nami's feeling of isolation.  For a while her confinement was manageable because Nami shared her cell with Xi.  However, as the months pressed forward, the two of them grew more and more restless, and Xi began formulating methods of escape.  In one failed attempt, Nami was caught and severely punished.  As Xi watched helplessly from the confinement of the prison, the giantess first paraded a naked Nami outside the glass box for Xi to see, and then bent both of her wings in half, breaking them.  Nami screamed out in unrelenting agony, and promptly fainted.  Xi shuttered and fell backwards as the giantess dropped her unconscious friend back into the prison and finally threw a sheet over the two of them.  After that day, Nami never flew again. 

Now, several years later, a second failed attempt at escape seems to have proven the last chance for the long-suffering Calculus.  Her friend was gone, and Nami was too wounded, both physically and emotionally, to carry on her fight, for she knew it was in vain.  She looked up at her captor’s face, which depicted the sum of all evil in Nami’s small world.  She winced her eyes as the tears flowed; she had capitulated.  The giantess leaned upward, still looking down at Nami, and held her knees with her hands in a contemplative pose.  Nami folded her arm into a V and put it across her face, covering her eyes.  Her fingers, so strikingly similar to that of her captor, gently caressed the shoulder of her other arm.  She felt it with extreme precision.  Nami reckoned that when one is so close to death, they truly appreciate that which is easily overlooked in life.  Her shoulder, but more generally her body, had served as a more than adequate vessel which she had used for many years to carry out the function of living.  She stroked her arm with gratitude.  The thought crossed her mind that this would be the last opportunity she would have to feel it.  It was this though which caused her to break down completely and cover both eyes with her hands, so small and fragile, but meticulous enough to gently wipe away the tears.

The giantess rose, a dreadful colossus of power and destruction.  Her shadow extended over Nami’s body, as she went still, her blood cold.  She could feel her heart each and every time it slowly pumped hemolymph throughout her body.  Awaiting her fate, Nami’s tried to remember life before she had been captured.