Her ass beckoned to him, and he followed. Before long, he found himself scaling the tight fabric of her yoga pants. He felt a soothing heat radiating from the skin underneath, more than offsetting the musky, heavy odor.

What exactly brought him to do this? He supposed it wasn’t all that weird to be attracted to a woman’s back end, but this one was the size of a hot-air balloon. He could hardly associate it with a person.

And yet, when he thought back on Emilia’s smiling eyes, his stomach fluttered. He couldn’t be falling for her, could he? Kaleb told himself that any feelings he had for her were a result of Stockholm Syndrome.

The rounded hills lurched underneath him as Emilia began to turn over. Kaleb, still unaccustomed to how fast things could move at his size, didn’t react at all until she was laying on her back, her butt pressed into Kaleb’s tiny body. The pressure constrained his movements, keeping him from poking Emilia and maybe getting her to notice him. The generous volume of her cheeks surrounded him. It was warm and soft. Comfortable, actually…

Kaleb spent the night under Emilia’s right ass cheek, somehow breathing comfortably, despite the immense weight stacked on his chest. She sifted in her sleep, working him ever more comfortably into her butt. He was still out when she got up the next morning, and didn’t wake up until she’d already started her day.

He was partially stuck in the crack, and so he didn’t fall out even when she started walking. The experience was less than pleasant, being suspended by just his arm in the musty folds of fabric. He squirmed a little, and successfully attracted a probing hand.

Emilia quickly extracted him, and held him up to her face to make sure what she’d felt was right.

“What the hell are you doing in there?!” she yelled, surprised and a little angry.  

Kaleb was utterly humbled by the power of her voice. His ears rang, and he was unable to respond. His mouth flapped open and shut.

“Oh shit, I didn’t mean to shout…” she said. “God, I’m sorry.”

She put me down and made sure I was okay. “It was my fault,” she said, looking apologetic. “I shouldn’t have fallen asleep while you were still on me.” Looking around, I noticed we were someplace I didn’t recognize at all. There were hundreds of huge cardboard boxes, and harsh fluorescent lights above.

“I forgive you, don’t worry about it. What is this place?”

“Oh right,” said Emilia bashfully. “I went to work, and never even noticed you were hitching a ride. I didn’t even check your box at all. Wow, I feel bad.”

Emilia picked him back up and hurried through the aisles.

“Here, I’ll put you in my bag for safekeeping. Just promise me you won’t get mad or anything because of all the shit I’ve put you through today.”

Kaleb agreed and watched as she flung open her locker and pulled out a small gym bag. She zipped the bag open and moved to put him inside.

“Wait. I bet it’s pretty rank in there.” She pulled out a small toiletry bag and put him inside. “That should be a little better. Here I’ll leave the zipper open just a smidge so you can breathe, even if the air isn’t all that great. Sorry again!”

Before Kaleb could respond, he was tossed into the gym bag, and swallowed by near complete darkness. After some erratic motion and shuffling, Emilia was gone, and silence set in. Alone again.

She wasn’t lying. The smell inside the bag packed a stronger punch than even her own transient musk. It had a complex texture to it, leather, body odor, the sour-sweet reek of old socks. Not very pleasant, but there wasn’t much Kaleb could do about it. He made himself a place to rest in the bottom of the bag and lay down.

The hours passed in darkness. Kaleb didn’t have a way of telling how soon he might be let out, and the boredom soon caught up to him. By the time he got up and climbed out of the toiletry bag, his nose had already grown accustomed to the musty cocktail, and he was interested in testing just how bad it could actually get.

The moment his head cleared the zipper on the toiletry bag, Kaleb realized just how much it had been protecting him from the environment inside the gym bag. The smell was qualitatively the same as before, but several times thicker. He had some difficulty breathing. Nonetheless, Kaleb soldiered on.

Tumbling out of the bag, Kaleb slammed into the ‘floor’ of the bag, then rolled for a bit before coming to rest on a large plastic cylinder. Unable to see it on account of the pitch darkness, Kaleb got up and traced it, getting a general sense of its size and shape. It soon became clear that he was standing next to a can of deodorant. Hilarious irony.

Kaleb continued to stumble around the gym bag, using his nose to lead him. The dominant smell in the mixture seemed to change as he moved around; it was currently the cheesy, stinging foot-smell that he’d become so accustomed to. It wasn’t long before he ran face first into a wall of damp fabric. His face was immediately assaulted by a thin layer of raunchy sweat. Trying to rub it off just aerated the stuff, intensifying the smell and getting it all over his hands.

This hadn’t been a good idea.

Kaleb decided to make his way back to the deodorant and wait there, but quickly got lost in the darkness. He kept running into dirty clothes, and getting a good whiff of each of them. It was difficult to tell which was which, but he was fairly certain he ran into at least one pair of underwear, as the scent reminded him of his ill-fated experience the previous night.

Traveling around the bag and experiencing such a menagerie of odors, Kaleb’s sense of smell never fully acclimatized. Just as he was beginning to lose hope of ever getting oriented in the immense gym bag, the world shook violently, sending him head-first into a fragrant pile of clothes. For a time he lay there, entombed by the grungy fabric and forced to breath in the potent aroma. Then, a pair of enormous fingers grasped him by the waist, and pulled.

“Sorry about that,” said Emilia. She brushed some pieces of lint off his body. “My shift ended up running longer than expected. Hope you’re ok.”

Kaleb nodded drunkenly and watched as Emilia slipped him into a pocket. Coddled by the warmth and softness of her thigh, as well as her relatively sweet, amiable smell, Kaleb soon drifted off.

When he woke up, he was back in the shoebox, and feeling refreshed. Looking around, Kaleb quickly noticed that he’d shrunk again, and now stood at half an inch. The giveaway trembling came, and Emilia stood over him.

“Good morning, little guy! How’re we feeling?”

He yelled up at her, but she didn’t seem to hear him.

“Don’t bother, there’s no way I could hear you unless you were practically standing in my ear. I brought you something to eat!” She dropped some bread crumbs and a sliver of apple into his cardboard enclosure.

While Kaleb ate, Emilia continued to speak. “I feel really bad about leaving in that gym bag all day. All alone in the dark, gah, it must have been terrible! So I decided I’d let you crawl around for a bit free of charge! You don’t have to give me a massage or anything like that, just scurry around of your own free will.”

Kaleb wasn’t sure if that was the best idea, considering his current size, but it didn’t look like he’d have much input in the matter. Before he’d even finished eating, Emilia grabbed him and placed him at the edge of her bed. She followed him soon after, impacting the surface of the bed with cataclysmic force. He stayed on by the skin of his teeth.

“I still have to keep my eyes on you, though! Feel free wherever you want on the bed.” Emilia settled in.

From his current position, the side of her body was an impassable mountain range. She was wearing full clothes, so it would be possible to scale her flank if he tried, but it didn’t seem worth the trouble. Kaleb moved toward the head of the bed, hoping to maybe strike up some conversation with Emilia. By the time he arrived, she was asleep.

It was weird. Both tonight and last night, she’d nodded off in a remarkably short time, and with the light’s still on. Either way, her lightly freckled face had a calming influence on him, and he took some time just to sit and stare.

Eventually, he got bored of admiring the giantess and made his way back to the bottom of the bed. The panorama of Emilia’s prone body scrolled by, and before long, he caught sight of her socked feet.

Why was she wearing socks? The unspeakably old, holey ones at that. His question went unanswered but for the nauseating reek.

By the time Kaleb arrived at Emilia’s feet, he was struggling to stay conscious, weighed down by the thick, consuming effluvium. The bottoms of the socks were pockmarked and stained dark grey where they were once white. What little he could see of her feet was dirty and damp.

Despite all the signs pointing him away from these toxic peds, Kaleb felt himself drawn closer. He wandered between them, noting that her toes alone were easily taller than he was. The smell was cheesy and cloying. Truly disgusting. But he somehow felt good when he breathed it in.

Climbing on top of the upturned sole, Kaleb surveyed the immense plain of Emilia’s feet, felt the spongy, wet surface of the old sock beneath him. He reveled in it. Every now and then, he could feel the twitches and flexion of the great sole underneath him. On a whim, he found the nearest hole and clambered down into the warm, humid enclave that lay beneath.

Nestled in between Emilia’s toes, Kaleb was in heaven. He stewed in the viscous, aromatic liquid that seeped from her pores, felt the granules of spongy, linty toe jam, and breathed in the ambrosial miasma. He remained there, happy to stay in this filthy crevice, despite never having shown any such interest beforehand. This time, for whatever reason, his sense of smell never grew accustomed to the ripe odor, allowing him to derive continuous stimulation from it as the night progressed.

In seemingly no time at all, Kaleb felt the greasy appendages wriggle around him, rubbing filth onto his body. They seemed to pause and tense up, and Kaleb looked blearily up through the hole in the sock. He saw Emilia gawking back at him. After a moment’s time, she grinned.