I woke up on the floor of an obviously artificial environment.  Everything being the right size for me was the first tell, but when I slammed my feet against the floor to stand it sounded and felt just like hollow plastic.  All the wall decorations looked like decals, some of them partially peeling off from the bottom, and the furniture looked wan and dainty even to me.  Once again I had been relegated to a doll house, and a cheaply made one at that.  In all my time being tiny, I had never been made to stay in whatever place was available.

A pair of strong arms draped over my shoulders from behind, wrapping me in a loose embrace.  They pulled me back into a large, warm body, with my head resting on something very soft.  “Good morning, sunshine,” Fulda greeted, running a hand up and down my chest.  She leaned down and planted a kiss on my scalp, then spun me around to face her.  I was looking straight at her chest, but some fingers lifting my chin remedied that.  Fulda still looked resplendent in her wedding gown, but looked at me as though I was her whole world.  Without a word she leaned in and pressed her lips against mine, locking me in a passionate embrace for as long as she wanted.

Three tremendous thuds pounded against the wall, pulling our attention away from each other.  “Hello in there, my little people!” a voice boomed, making us both start.  “I hope you’re all okay, since it’s like you’re all family now!”  A shock of blond hair flashed passed the window, then the pane was filled by a deep, clear blue eye.  Its pupil retracted while it focused on us, only to be replaced by the long, broad lines across a palm.  The building rattled while the roof’s latches were undone, then it was torn away so our new captor could stare down at us.

Jessica’s soft features brightened when she saw us looking back up at her.  She gave us a quick wave and said, “Sorry about the lame place, this was really short notice and we didn’t have anything better ready to go.”

“Where are we?” I asked.  “It’s all just a blur after Gina showed up.”

“I’m not surprised you don’t remember,” Jessica replied.  “Things got pretty hectic, and you took a pretty bad fall at the start of it.”  She recounted the events, and my memory began to come back.

Gina had Fulda in her clutches, and she was taking time to gloat.  “I’m going to break every single one of your bones before I make you go pop,” she declared, opening her hand.  She let out a rumbling chuckle and the ground felt like it was on the verge of splitting apart.  To my surprise, the bride’s maids were circling around to hide me from Gina while someone figured out how to deal with her.

Veronica’s arm shot across overhead and grabbed Gina’s shirt by the collar.  “I’ve had enough of this!” she proclaimed, jerking Gina toward her.  “For months you haven’t shut your mouth about this, but I can’t let you go through with it!  It’s wrong, you’re crazy, and I’m going to stop you.”  Gina eye’s widened as she began rapidly reducing in size and losing control of the situation.

In response, she reached out and grabbed Veronica’s shirt as tightly as she could.  The two titanic blonds were shrinking each other!  “I made you a giantess and I can take that away!” Gina shouted when she was half of her former size.

“I didn’t want to be one in the first place!” Veronica retorted.  “I wanted to have my own life, set the world on fire, be a star athlete, but you took it away from me when you included me in your stupid games!”  They were around the sizes they had been yesterday, and their bodies were pressing against the wall.  “I’m taking it back and making what I can out of it, and that starts with getting rid of you!”

The walls cracked then burst inward, spraying debris over the shattered room and each other.  “Treating you like an equal was a mistake,” Gina growled.  “I thought you were different than the others, but you’re just a weak coward afraid of what you could be when the only thing you should be is a flattened corpse smashed under my shoe.”

Veronica’s response was to body slam Gina onto the ground.  Her hands reflexively opened when her body went limp, making Fulda bounce into the air.  Mia sprung into action, catching her before she hit the ground, and Helen dashed to secure Gina with a knee on her stomach.  Jackie scooped me scooped me off the ground with her slender fingers while Jessica focused her concentration on Gina.  Veronica, still several feet taller than the average woman, used the confusion to get out the door and make her escape.

Mia walked over to Jackie and slid Fulda into her hands beside me.  She was unconscious, so I slid my arms under her armpits to hold her steady.  Despite her shrunken state she was still much larger and heavier than me, so it was more for my comfort than hers.  Jackie formed a protective cage around us to help, leaving just enough of a gap between her fingers so I could see what was going on.

Gina began to dwindle again and quickly became small enough that Helen had to get move to avoid crushing her.  In seemingly no time at all she was about my size, little more than a vague splotch on the carpet indistinguishable from a stain.  Helen and Jessica stood around her looking down, trying to decide what to do.  I could see the muscles in Helen’s ankle twitching while she fought the urge to summarily execute her.  “You want to do it, or should I?” she asked.

“I can’t, and you won’t,” Jessica answered.  “She’s done some terrible things and let her obsessions get the best of her, but she’s going to live… the same way she made hundreds of others live.  Swiftly stomping on her would be too easy.”

Helen chuckled.  “If that’s the way it has to be, then so be it,” she declared.  “I think we can do something more to her, though.”  A moment later Gina started decreasing in size once more until she slipped in between the carpet fibers.  Without needing to be prompted, Anni stepped out from behind the black altar and knelt beside Gina’s last known location.  She pulled out her pair of tweezers and lifted the unimaginably puny woman off the ground, then placed her inside her hand.  With a sense of finality she closed her fingers, sealing her inside a fist.

“And that’s how you ended up in this shabby little place,” Jessica concluded.  “We didn’t know where else to take you, so you’re back in the house.  You know the one.”  I did indeed, but without Gina menacing us I was fine with it.  “But there’s someone downstairs who says they know you!  Let me go get her for you.”  She scrambled away before standing so s not to loom over us, leaving me and Fulda alone.

Immediately I turned and wrapped my arms around Fulda, burying my face deep in her chest.  I squeezed her as hard as I could, relishing having the warm slab of muscle in my arms.  It was the first time I had actually been able to hug her whole body in six years, and it felt magnificent.  “I was so worried I’d lost you,” I said, tears welling in my eyes.  “I was…”

“I know,” Fulda cooed soothingly, squeezing me back when I couldn’t finish.  She brushed my hair back and gave me a light peck on the forehead.  “I was so worried I was going to die in Gina’s hand and all that would be left would be some unrecognizable mush, but… But worse, she’d get you, and you’d have to live with her torment for years.”  We both fell into a calm silence, hugging each other as though it could be the last time.

“Get your fucking hands off my boyfriend!” shouted a puny voice from the floor.  Reflexively we looked down for the source and spotted a tiny figure in black, capped with blond hair.  “And stop fucking around and make me big again!  I’m a giantess, and I deserve to look like one!”  Even at a fraction of an inch tall, Gina was still demanding.

Fulda pushed me away and turned all her focus to her youngest sister.  “Are you fucking serious right now?” she snapped.  “You tried to fucking murder me, all my friends, our family, and kidnap my fucking husband, all because you’re a damn lunatic who fixated on someone who was forced to be around you!”  The longer she went the more intense she was until flecks of spittle were flying off her lips.  “I can’t believe we spared you before and you pulled this shit at your first chance!  The only reason you’re not a flattened stain on the ground right now is because being this small must be the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to you and I want you to experience it all you can!”

“You can’t talk to me like that!” Gina squeaked in protest.  “I am a goddess, and I demand…”

“No you aren’t, and yes I can!” Fulda interrupted.  “You’re a delusional little girl smaller than my thumb nail who abused a skill I taught you to torture and kill hundreds of people, and you were stopped by your only friend getting as sick of your shit as everyone else!”

“I’m sorry, am I interrupting something?” asked a low, gentle voice from above.  We looked up and saw a pair of soft, nearly black eyes staring down at us amid a broad, smooth field of skin the color of parchment.  Akane smiled before continuing, “I figured I’d give you a little time to get oriented before you saw me looming over you.  So, how do you feel?”

“Never better,” I answered, wrapping an arm around Fulda’s waist.  “I’m married to the most wonderful woman in the world, and as soon as she’s back to her normal size we can get back to our lives.”

Akane’s smile disappeared.  “Um, about that,” she began.  “Fulda said it herself: she taught Gina how to grow and shrink people.  That means she’s culpable for all the pain, suffering, and death her sister caused, at least morally.  She’s the source of so many awful things that have happened, and she very well might cause more.  It’s better to keep her contained like this.”

Fulda’s mouth was wide open in shock and a single tear rolled down her cheek.  In her stunned silence, it fell to me to state her case.  “Akane, that was six years ago,” I stated.  “She’s a different person than she was then, the very fact that she came back for me – and you! – should be enough proof of that, but there’s more.  She took me in when I had nowhere else to go, making sure I was safe and cared for.  Hell, she married me, and I can’t imagine her ever hurting me.  She’s more than made amends for what she did to me, and you can’t reasonably hold her accountable for what Gina did while she was hundreds of miles away.  They’re two separate people, and in and of itself the ability to shrink and grow things is neutral.  Gina used it for malicious purposes, but I know Fulda can and will use it for good.”

A small smile came back to Akane’s thin lips, brightening the sky above us.  “You state a pretty strong case for her, little guy,” she said, “and you’re right, it’s unjust to condemn her for the actions of her sister.  The whole reason I kept her around was to try and redeem her, and while I never could, it sounds like Fulda really has changed her ways.  But I… I can’t make you big, too.  Everyone who knows how to do it has tried, and nothing helps.  We’ve all tried together, too, to no avail.  Don’t you want to be roughly the same size as your wife, even if you’re tiny?”

I looked up at Fulda and smiled, giving her waist a long squeeze before going back to Akane.  “I like being able to hold her like this,” I explained, “I really do.  But it’s not the life she wants, and it’s not the life I want to have with her.  She may not be as obsessed with it as Gina is, but she likes being big and powerful, and to be honest, I like her that way too.  It may sound odd to you, but I like really tall women, the taller the better.  I want her to really tower over me, and… I love being bug-sized in comparison to her.  There’s nothing sexier than her literally having me in the palm of her hand, and while I love her like this too, I don’t love that she’s like this.  So please, make Fulda her normal size again.  For both of us.”

Fulda grabbed me around the abdomen and hoisted me up like a ragdoll.  Her arms nearly crushed my sides while she squeezed me in a bear hug, and I wrapped my legs around her.  She leaned in and pressed her lips to mine in a passionate kiss which I eagerly returned.  We went back and forth, trying to match and surpass each other’s energy, until Fulda finally pulled away and pressed a finger to my chin.  “Thank you,” she whispered with a wavering voice.  “That’s why I love you, little guy.”

Akane cleared her throat, bringing us back to the situation at hand.  “If you love birds are done, I’d like to get you out of the house before growing her.”  We remained still, clutching each other as though we were life preservers, while Akane reached in.  Her fingers settled on the floor in front of and behind us and gently pinched, pressing us together.  Slowly she carried us out of the plastic dollhouse and over the wall, where she set us down on the carpet beside her.  Fulda then lowered me to the floor and stood back as tall as she could.

“Hey!  What about me?” piped up a tiny voice.  “I’m still trapped in here, and everything’s too big for me to use!  Get me out and make me big too!”

Akane’s eye twitched and she glared back into the house.  “You have to be the most oblivious, stubborn person who has ever lived,” she growled.  “You had six months to reform and instead you lied to me and went on a rampage the first chance you got.  There’s no word for how dumb I’d have to be to give you back even a fraction of an inch, let alone set you loose on the world again.  You’re going to spend the rest of your life tiny and under my watchful gaze so you never hurt another person.”

 With Gina put in her place, Akane turned her attention back to us.  “Are you sure?” she asked me.  “And are you ready?”

“Yes,” we answered simultaneously.

“Hold tight, then,” Akane said.  She pressed off the ground with her hands and stood, looking down at us from on high.  I turned around to look at Fulda and we both smiled at each other, then she took a step back.

Focusing on her while she grew was practically indistinguishable from being shrunk.  Gradually my gaze slipped downward along her body while she expanded, and this time I eagerly looked upward so I could watch.  She looked back down at me, her smile getting larger too as I shrank from her waist to her knees.  With each relative inch I lost her joy increased, and by the time I was looking up at her ankles she was beaming.   My apparent shrinking slowed as it took more inches for her to double in size until it finally stopped entirely, with me looking up at the caps of her shoes.

Fulda looked around, overjoyed to be back at her original size.  “I’m big again, I’m big!” Fulda exclaimed, unable to contain her excitement.  “Thank you so much, Akane!  I’d hug you, but, you know, don’t want to crush the little guy.”  She inspected her arms and legs, showing a toothy smile the whole time.  “Am I even taller than normal?!”

“Yeah, I bumped you up to seven feet even,” she answered.  “Think of it as a wedding gift from me.”

Fulda’s eyes widened with a mix of surprise and happiness, then looked down at me between her shoes.  “Fee-fi-fo-fum, my tiny husband,” she boomed, “what do you say we get out of here so I can take off this wedding dress and get into something more comfortable?”

“Don’t ask questions when you know the answer’s yes,” I replied, marveling up at her still.  The only way I wouldn’t get a thrill out of gazing at her from the floor is if I were dead.  I could scarcely notice the four more inches, but we knew they were there. 

“Cheeky,” Fulda chided, leaning over me.  She stopped when her magnificent face was the only thing I could see, and it was already the only thing I wanted to look at.  “Sounds like someone’s getting too big for his tiny little britches.”  Her hand descended toward me with thumb and forefinger extended, and she pinched them around my body.  Excitedly she plucked me off the floor and stood back to her new, even more impressive height, and lifted me to her eyes.  With her free index finger she gave me a light tap and teased, “I’ll have to see about bringing you back down to size.”

Fulda hopped down the stairs and left the overly large house to wait for a ride.  The whole time we looked at each other adoringly, as though we gave each other sustenance.  We were together now, free to build our lives without worrying about ever being separated again.  Amazing as it was, we were one, and she had always been right about me.  And we couldn’t have been happier about it.