Nadine Ross and Chloe Frazer woke up in a strange location, unlike any they had seen before, with odd white “poles” that reached hundreds of feet into the air all around them, obscuring their vision of anything else. The last thing the two treasure hunters remembered was having gone on an expedition to find a rare artifact supposedly worth millions, as they usually did, but as soon as they'd touched it, they had been knocked unconscious by some mysterious power.
As they familiarized themselves with their new environment, they began walking through the strange poles, which emerged from holes in the ground at strangely regular patterns; too regular to be natural. The ground was oddly smooth, too, and it reminded them both of some sort of plastic. They kept walking for several minutes, and when they finally emerged from the strange “forest,” they were stunned by what they saw. Stretching out beyond them was a massive bathroom, so big that it would have taken them all day to walk from one of its ends to the other. The also saw, close to where they were, a giant toothbrush, and then they realized that the thing they were walking on was itself another toothbrush, and the huge poles its bristles. That meant they must have been as small as a grain of sand.
What the hell had happened to them? And how could they get out of this situation? Before they could even begin answering these questions, they heard the sound of approaching footsteps and looked up to see someone approaching the bathroom door. Seconds later, a huge, blonde woman stepped into the bathroom. Chloe quickly recognized her as Elena Fisher, a reported she'd met years ago and the wife of fellow treasure hunter, Nathan Drake.
The titanic Elena walked over to them, her legs carrying her at speeds that were terrifying for the two tiny women, coming to a stop right in front of the bathroom sink they were on. She reached to pick up the toothbrush, prompting Chloe and Nadine to run towards the edge to try to jump off, but they stopped when they saw it was a hundred-foot drop off of it. They might still have dared to try it, but they hesitated just enough for Elena to grab the brush along with them. They were raised up at dizzying speeds, their bodies rolling down the toothbrush and falling into the holes that housed its bristles. Elena held the toothbrush still as she began applying toothpaste to it, giving the shrunken women just enough time to climb out of the holes they were in. Then, as she raised the brush to her mouth, the two of them fell off of it, tumbling down through the air.
At their size, a slight gust of wind was all it took to lift them into the air, blowing them about like a pair of tiny dust specks. The wind blew them this way and that as it traveled around the room. From an outside perspective it might had looked like they were being gently floated around, but for the two of them it felt like they were hurtling through the air at hundreds of feet a second.
The air flows brought the two of them up towards Elena's face, floating them around it, before finally depositing them just inside her ear. When they got up, the looked around and saw that it looked like they were in some giant cavern. Every surface around them was covered in what must have been earwax, a disgusting-looking substance that looked sticky to the touch. There were also a bunch of hairs that were as thick as tree trunks to them, though they were probably too fine for anyone normal sized to notice them without looking really close.
Nadine and Chloe tried to stay afoot, but the slight movements from Elena brushing her teeth were making the “ground” shake, bouncing them about the inside of her ear. Then Elena bent down to spit into the sink, causing the two women to tumble right into a pile of earwax. They remained stuck there even as she raised her head back up to examine her mouth and make sure her teeth were totally clean. Chloe and Nadine struggled to get out, but the earwax was too sticky for them at their new size. Chloe began yelling at Elena in desperation, calling for her to help them. Nadine joined in too, yelling at the giant woman in hopes that she would hear them. It didn't work.
After inspecting herself in the mirror, Elena saw some bits of food still stuck between her teeth, so she started flossing her teeth. As she did so, Nadine and Chloe slid slightly lower along the wall of her inner ear until Nadine saw that one of Elena's ear hairs was within reach. She grabbed Chloe by the hand, then she wrapped her other arm around the “little” hair and began trying to pull them out of the earwax.
For Elena, this felt like a slight itching in her ear, and so she slipped the tip of her pinkie into her ear and dug around until the itching had settled down, having gathered the glob of earwax that the two tiny women were stuck to under her fingernail. She pulled her finger back out and inspected her score, curling her lip in disgust. Chloe and Nadine tried to yell up at her to get her to notice them, but even from this close up they were completely beneath her notice.
Just before Elena flicked the piece of earwax away, her breath blew over the two women, lifting them out of their waxy prison and into the air again. Again they floated through the air, going down along her body until they both landed on her chest, miraculously surviving the fall, and managing to cling to the fibers of her shirt before they fell down all the way to the ground below.
They had landed some distance away from each other, and so the both of them began climbing towards each other, knowing that they would have to depend on each other if they wanted to make it out of this alive. They finally reached each other just as Elena finished flossing. The “giant” woman inspected her mouth in the mirror, totally unaware that she had almost been responsible for the deaths of two people, and then, satisfied, she headed out of the bathroom and went to her work desk, where she began typing out a new article for a story she was reporting on.
Meanwhile, Nadine and Chloe started discussing their next course of action. In the end, both of them had to admit that they were completely at a loss on what to do next, so they resolved to stay where they were and wait for a better opportunity to present itself. So they remained clinging to Elena's shirt, waiting hour after hour for something to happen, though nothing ever did. Elena simply remained at her desk the whole time. Eventually, about an hour past noon, Elena got up and stretched, the sudden movement almost causing the two tiny women to fall off, then left the room and headed for the kitchen. There she started making some lunch for herself: a sandwich. Nathan was away on business, so she would be eating alone, and she didn't feel like cooking anything fancy for herself. Once it was finished, she sat down with it and took a bite off it.
Breadcrumbs rained down on Chloe and Nadine as Elena tore into the sandwich, the tiny little things being the size of boulders to them. They managed to hold on all through it, but after the avalanche of crumbs had ended, they looked up and saw Elena frowning and looking down in their direction. The two tiny women saw a set of giant fingers appear, settle further up on Elena's shirt, then come rushing down towards them as Elena brushed off the crumbs that had settled on her shirt.
They fell thousands of feet, eventually landing on top of Elena's sandwich. As Chloe picked herself up and got her bearings, she heard Nadine's voice calling for her from a few feet away. She stood, looking around the vast, pockmarked landscape until she finally spotted Nadine, her body wedged in a little hole in the ground. She quickly made her way to the other woman, stepping around several holes herself, and when she finally made it to her, she grabbed her hands and began pulling her out of the hole she was in.
Her efforts became more urgent as she felt the earth give a shake and rise up. The sandwich had was now gripped between Elena's gigantic fingers, being brought up to her face where her huge maw awaited to devour them and the very land they stood on. With one last, heroic tug, Chloe managed to pull Nadine out of the hole, the two of them running as fast as they could away from the approaching ivory walls that were Elena's teeth. Said teeth bit into the earth still quite a distance away from them, tearing off a chunk of the sandwich before chewing on it, Elena's head bobbing slightly as she did so.
The shrunken women ran towards Elena's fingers, from where they hoped they could make it back down on to the table eventually. But before they could get to them, Elena's hold on the sandwich shifted and the piece of food rotated so that they were once again faced with Elena's massive teeth. This time they only barely managed to escape them, as those teeth came down right behind them deforming the ground they stood on and causing them to fall down onto the ceramic plate. They had fully expected to die on impact, but miraculously, they survived.
They remained on the plate for the next several minutes, dodging showers of yet more boulder-sized crumbs every time Elena took a bite of the sandwich, until, finally, it had all been eaten up. After that, the plate they stood on was picked up and they were carried along with it to the kitchen sink. Chloe and Nadine panicked as they realized they were about to be washed away in a monstrous torrent of water as soon as Elena opened up the water faucet. Before Elena could open the faucet, however, she sneezed, the force of the air she expelled sent them flying through the air, whirled around and around until the air settled again. Even then, they were still falling fast towards the ground, the wind blowing them this way and that so that they had no idea where they would eventually land. At last, the wind allowed them to land on top of Elena's bare foot.
By now, the two of them were starting to see how truly hopeless their situation was. They had no way of getting in contact with anyone at all, and were so small that there was no chance they'd be recognized unless someone happened to look at them through a microscope. Walking the length of even a single room would take them an entire day, and just about anything at all risked killing them. Still, they tried to keep their hopes up. Maybe whatever magic had caused them to shrink this size would wear off after some time. In that case, they would only have to survive long enough to be able to make it back to their normal sizes. They seriously hoped that was the case.
After Elena had finished washing her plate, along with all the other dishes that had accumulated since yesterday, she began walking again, and the two shrunken women were nearly thrown off of it, only managing to stay on because they ended up lodged in the valley where the side of Elena's toenail met her skin.
Elena went back to her room, where she pulled out a pair of socks and her old running shoes. As she put these on, Chloe and Nadine ended up trapped within them, finding their world growing darker and darker as each piece of clothing was put on, blocking off more of their light. Then, standing up, she went to the garage and grabbed the lawnmower, taking it outside so she could mow her lawn, whose grass was getting to be a bit on the long side now. As she walked, Nadine and Chloe eventually got dislodged from their position and sent tumbling along the inside of her sock. In the middle of so much motion, the two of them got separated, with Nadine slipping through a tiny hole in the fabric of Elena's sock while Chloe remained inside it.
Chloe found herself spending most of her time being bounced the space between Elena's toes, the massive mobile digits bending and curling with each step Elena took. As time went by and the giant foot became sweatier, Chloe found herself getting stuck to the skin of her toes, held in place by the effect of her sweat. Her dirty, salty sweat. The horrible liquid got into her mouth on more than one occasion, filling it with its awful taste. Meanwhile, she was being battered by Elena's toes whenever these brushed against each other, causing her to pass from one to the other and back again. If she had been able to make it to the space under her toenails, she thought, she might have been able to get a respite from all that, but she was plastered too firmly to the surface of her skin to be able to move at all, not to mention that amidst all this chaos she couldn't tell which way was up and which was down, not did she have any clue where exactly she was in all this darkness.
As for Nadine, she spent most of her time under Elena's sole, clinging to the part of her sock that was under the arch of her foot, where at least she was safe from being stepped on. Still, it was better than Chloe's position in that there was almost no sweat.
Once Elena had finished mowing the grass, she went back inside and stretched out on the couch, kicking off her shoes and taking her socks off, leaving them stretched out on the armrest next to her bare feet. The two women were able to use that respite to get out and find each other again. Nadine had ended up under Elena's sock, so she crawled through the spaces between the fibers and eventually managed to make it topside. Chloe, meanwhile, was still stuck to Elena's toes, but as the sweat evaporated off her foot, she was gradually able to get herself unstuck. As soon as she was free, she fell down, rolling along the sole of Elena's massive foot before landing on the armrest, next to the sock Nadine was on.
Standing on top of the sock, Nadine barely managed to spot Chloe as she fell down Elena's foot and quickly made her way towards the other woman. The two of them soon managed to meet up again in the shadow of Elena's foot. Then they both looked up at the huge monolith of flesh that stretched high into the heavens, feeling utterly helpless next to it. After spending time in Elena's shoe, a situation from which they could never have escaped by their own efforts, neither of them could pretend they could seriously hope to survive for long. True, their luck had allowed them to survive so far, but luck was a fickle mistress and not something you would want to depend on too much. Either they magically grew back to normal sometime soon, or they probably wouldn't make it past the day.
Even so, they couldn't just sit around doing nothing. They had to at least try to survive as long as they could. That meant seeing to their necessities, and right then what they needed most was food and water. But where to get it? As it turned out, the answer was practically staring them in the face already. Chloe was the first to say it, and though Nadine was appalled by the idea, she couldn't come up with a better alternative: they would drink Elena's foot sweat and eat from her dead skin cells.
The two of them walked up to Elena's heel, both of them on the lookout for any sign that the giantess was waking up. Once they made it to her foot Chloe was quick to find a sweat pore with a small droplet of the liquid for them to drink from. She had already drank some earlier, so she left its contents to Nadine while she went and found a loose patch of skin. Using her knife, she tore it off and bit into it. It was tough to chew and tasted awful, but she couldn't afford to be picky right then. Hopefully they would be able to at least find some food crumbs for their next meal. Assuming they lived that long.
Nadine soon joined her in feasting on Elena's dead skin, finding it just as tough to swallow as Chloe had. After they'd both had their fill, they discussed where they might go to stay safe while they waited for themselves to possibly grow back to normal. Chloe told Nadine about the idea she'd had before, about staying under Elena's toenails. Since they couldn't come up with any better one, they resolved to try getting up there. It would take maybe an hour of climbing; if they hurried up, they might just be able to make it up there before Elena woke up. So they went and started climbing Elena's sole, using the tiny ridges and imperfections of her skin to pull themselves upwards along her foot. It was a good thing they were both experienced climbers, or else they would never have had any hope of making it to the top. It was also good that the foot was tilted back a bit, so it wasn't a purely vertical climb.
They had made it halfway up the sole when they felt they couldn't go on anymore. Their muscles were terribly sore and they had no hope of climbing any higher without at least a quick break. So they climbed into one of the crevices on Elena's sole to let their weary muscles rest. They were so close now. Just 20 more minutes of climbing and they could make it to their destination. But they wouldn't be able to make it there, as while they were resting up for the next stretch of the climb, Elena's foot moved suddenly, throwing them back down to the ground, where they landed next to the giantess's shoes. Whose soles were still covered in pieces of dirt and cut grass. Far above them, they heard Elena yawn and begin to stir. They looked up and saw her waking up. The giant blonde rubbed her eyes, put her socks back on, and then went to put her shoes on as well.
She raised her foot to take a step, the sole of her shoe swinging forward until it hovered right above the two tiny women's location, threatening to step on them as indifferently as it stepped on any other speck of dust. There was no hope of escaping its descent by running; it would have taken them several minutes just to make it out from under its shadow. As such, when they saw it coming down on them, Chloe and Nadine hugged each other for comfort and fell to the ground. There was a terrible earthquake as the giant reporter's shoe fell onto them, but they weren't crushed. By another stroke of luck, they had ended up in the space between its treads. Seconds later, Elena took another step, leaving them behind on the floor. As the giant shoe departed, it created a gust of wind that sent Chloe and Nadine hurtling through the air after her, flying several inches this way. They landed and rolled across the floor, only managing to stick together because they were still clutching each other.
The scare of almost being crushed alive was still so great that neither of them could stand, their muscles feeling weak and shaky. It took several minutes before they got up again, prompted into activity by the sound of Elena approaching the living room again. When she came in, they saw that she wore what looked like a jogging outfit. Seemed she was going out for a run now. Nadine helped Chloe up and pointed out a nearby crevice on the floor that they could use to hide in until she left. There they would be safe from her steps. When they saw that Elena was coming towards the, they dashed for that little hole, only barely managing to jump inside it before the giantess's shoe came crashing down above them again. This time their location was right under one of her treads; they would have been crushed for sure this time if they hadn't found this hiding place.
Chloe and Nadine stayed in that little hole, bearing the shaking of the ground as best they could, until at last they felt Elena's steps disappear into the distance. Carefully poking their heads out of the crevice, they confirmed that it was safe to come out. Since Elena would likely be gone for a while, they decided to make use of this time to look around for food; hopefully they would find something more edible that dead skin this time. By the time Elena returned, they had gathered up enough food crumbs to get them through a day or two and brought it back into their hole. It wasn't good eating, but at least it was an improvement over their last meal. The only thing they had failed to find had been water. Where they might possibly find some they had no idea. Thankfully, this problem of theirs was solved for them by Elena, of all people. As she stepped back into the house, sweating after an hour of jogging, she wiped the sweat off her brow and tiny drops of it flew off and landed onto the floor. She paid them no mind, and soon departed into the rest of the house.
After she'd left, the shrunken women looked out and saw a drop of sweat glistening seductively just a short walk away. There was no time to waste; if they waited too long, the sweat would evaporate and leave nothing behind for them to drink. Thirsty as they were, and not knowing when their next chance for a drink of water would come, they had no choice but to go out there and drink their fill. That's just what they did, sharing the drop of sweat between them until they were satisfied. Its taste did not seem so awful this time; a sign they were already adapting to their situation.
No sooner had they finished drinking from Elena's sweat than she showed up again, changed into more casual clothing this time, wearing some shorts and a pair of flip-flops. Again she was walking towards them and again they tried running into their hideout, but this time they were too slow. Before they could make it there, her sandal came crashing down right in front of them, the impact knocking them up into the air and blowing them back until they landed back on the ground a couple feet away from where they'd been. The pair of them quickly looked around for another hiding spot, but they failed to find anything as Elena took another step towards them.
With the sole of her flip-flop being almost perfectly flat, there was no chance of them surviving by ending up between its treads as they had before. As it rose above them, threw themselves flat on the ground, hoping this might save them. And, indeed, it did. When the sandal came down, they still didn't die, instead ending up lodged inside a pair of tiny grooves on its sole, so small they would have been practically invisible to the naked eye. When the sandal rose up again, they remained stuck in the groove, and were brought along for Elena's next step... and the next one, and the next one.
They remained stuck on the sole of Elena's flip-flop for what felt like hours, not daring to move lest they meet with an unfortunate end back on the ground. Here, at least, they were safe from being crushed, even though they always felt they'd be ground to a pulp whenever they saw the ground rushing towards them at dozens of miles per hour. Amidst all the commotion, they could just barely make out that Elena was sweeping the floor. Once she had finished sweeping it, she mopped it, leaving it all nice and clean. However, when she finished, she noticed that she had forgotten her phone on the opposite end of the room. Since the floor was still wet and she didn't want to dirt it by stepping on it with her flip-flops, she slipped these off, leaving them on the floor behind her as she stepped out barefoot, as she knew for a fact her feet were clean.
As she slipped off her sandals leaving them overturned on the floor, Chloe and Nadine took the opportunity to get out of the tiny groove they were in, falling back down to the floor again. They tried to get away while they had the chance, but before they could, Elena got back with her phone and used her feet to nudge her sandals over, leaving them upright again. As she was doing so, her foot happened to slide over the spot where Chloe and Nadine were standing. They ended up inside one of the grooves on the ball of her foot, getting stuck to it by the effect of the moisture they'd gathered after stepping across the just-mopped floor. They were still stuck to it when she put her sandals back on to go do more chores around the house.
For the next hour or so they spent their time stuck to Elena's foot, surrounded by the giantess's smells and the warmth of her body. Though Elena wasn't sweating as much as she had when mowing the lawn, there was still some sweat, and soon they were completely drenched in the stuff. Eventually, though, she came to a stop, taking a seat on the couch to watch TV for a while. She kicked her feet up on the armrest again, letting her flip-flops fall to the ground below.
When the two shrunken women realized where they were, they saw that, in an odd twist of fate, they were almost in the exact place they had been when they had last tried climbing Elena's foot. As if by some miracle, they were being given a second chance to climb up and hide under her toenail again like they had wanted to before. After carefully getting themselves unstuck from her foot, they went and did just that, climbing until they had gotten all the way up to the top of her big toe. Now their potential hiding place was only s relatively short walk away. However, just as they were about to reach it, Elena moved her foot, causing them to end up, not under her toenail, but on top of it.
Reaching over for her purse, which she'd left on the coffee table in front of the couch, Elena pulled out a bottle of yellow nail polish. She then pulled up the foot that Chloe and Nadine were on and, unscrewing the lid on the bottle of nail polish, she started painting her toenails, starting with the little one and working her way to the big one. When the shrunken women saw what she was doing, they began running towards the tip of her toenail, hoping to make it there in time to avoid being painted over. Lucky for them, Elena was content to take her time with her nail polish, getting distracted with watching TV for a minute or so in between each nail. Even so, they still hadn't made it off her big toe's nail by the time she started painting it. The first stroke of the brush passed them by, on their right instead of passing over them, the powerful smell of the nail polish almost making them fall over from how dizzy it made them feel.
By now it was clear to both women that, if they wanted to make it off before they were buried under Elena's yellow nail polish, they wouldn't be able to slow down to make it under her toenail. They would have to keep running as fast as they could, and hope that they wouldn't fall too far down. So, with the applicator brush coming up behind them again, they jumped off the ledge of Elena's toenail, falling through the air until they once again landed on the floor below.
Once Elena was done applying nail polish to the first foot, she lowered it to the floor. Two of its massive toes settled so that Nadine and Chloe ended up between them, inside what seemed like a huge canyon. Then she started painting the toenails on her other foot.
Here, Chloe thought, was another chance for them to go and hide under Elena's toenails. Despite the dangers and setbacks they'd encountered in trying to make it up there, she still thought it was probably the safest place for them to be. Nadine, whoever, had had enough of trying to make it there. She told Chloe that, instead, they should try to survive on the floor, finding themselves another hole to hide in and gathering provisions for themselves. After learning from their previous mistakes, she felt that was the surest bet.
Neither of them could manage to convince the other, however, so in the end, with both of them in a hurry to leave for what they thought would be safety, they bid each other good-by and good luck, each going her own separate way. Though both of them lamented having to leave each other behind, they both felt they had to follow what offered them the best odds of survival.
Chloe went and made her way to one of the two toes that surrounded them, picking the smallest of the two as it would make for the shortest climb. Grabbing ahold of its surface, she started pulling herself up along it, going at a moderate pace as she was still exhausted from everything that had happened today.
Nadine, for her part, went trekking away from the toes, eventually leaving their shadows and coming out into the wide open plain of the living room floor, looking around for a good hiding spot and whatever provisions she could find. Unfortunately, all the tiny food crumbs that had littered the floor earlier on had been swept away or mopped up, leaving nothing at all behind. She would have to wait until some more fell to the ground. Unless...
Nadine thought there was still a chance that some of the food they had gathered into their previous hiding place had remained inside it, as it was too deep and narrow for the broom's bristles to get inside. It was far from certain, but it was the best hope she had right then of finding anything to eat, so she set out trying to find it, trying her best to remember where in the room it had been.
Meanwhile, as Nadine was looking for their old hiding place, Chloe had finally managed to make it up onto Elena's toe and crawl under her toenail. There was a bit of dirt there, but not much. More importantly, there were a number of sweat pores from which she would be able to drink whenever she got thirsty, and she saw a few different places from which she could get some dead skin to eat whenever she got hungry. It was maybe not the best place in the world, since she'd still have to deal with Elena walking around and all the motion that entailed, but for now at least, this seemed as good a place as any to park herself for now. She dug out some of the dirt that was at the very back and took its place, crawling as deep as she could reach until she figured she was as safe from getting dislodged and falling off next time Elena got up and walked somewhere else.
Her supposed safety was soon put to the test as someone rang the doorbell some time later. Elena stood up and went to open the door, her bare feet missing Nadine by only a few inches. Looking out from under the toenail, Chloe managed to see a pair of sandaled feet when the door opened. As it turned out, the newcomer was Elena's mom, Deborah. Deborah took a step closer and embraced Elena, who gladly welcomed her mother inside. The two of them walked around before taking a seat on the couch, their steps thundering all around Nadine, who still hadn't found their old hiding place, through she was sure she was getting close. She wouldn't be close anymore, though, as the impact of Debora's feet on the ground launched her into the air before having her settle on the giant middle-aged mother's toe.
Mother and daughter took a seat on the couch and began conversing about family, work, health, and various other topics. As they talked, Deborah took her sandals off, making herself at home, and, following her daughter's lead, kicked her feet up onto the coffee table, showing off her cherry-red pedicure which contrasted with Elena's yellow one. Both women went on idly scrunching and splaying their feet as they talked. Secure under Elena's toenail, Chloe was mostly unaffected, only being made uncomfortable by the slight tightening of the space around her as Elena moved her toes. Nadine, on the other hand, didn't have anything to hold her in place.
When Deborah kicked her feet up, the tiny woman had ended up right between two of her toes, wedged between the two massive walls of skin. She decided to get off of the woman's foot, down to the coffee table below, and so she started climbing down along Debora's sole. All the movement of her foot was making that difficult, however, as with every scrunching and splaying of her toes the surface of her sole was deformed, sometimes causing her to end up pinched between two folds of skin. When she was about halfway down the sole, Deborah adjusted her foot so that the sole Nadine was climbing pressed against her other foot. Nadine was now completely surrounded by the giant mother's skin, being pinned down so tight that she hurt all over and couldn't so much as move her arms or legs. She yelled in pain, her exclamation lost amidst the folds of Debora's foot flesh, unheard by anyone other than her. In her pain, all she could think was that she wished she had followed Chloe's suggestion and climbed onto Elena's toe instead. How was Chloe doing right then, she wondered? Better than her, she hoped.
In fact, Chloe was doing much better, though not without some difficulties. The movement of Elena's toes made her already-tight space even tighter, prompting her to crawl out a bit so she wouldn't have to bear the crushing force of being squeezed between Elena's skin and her toenail. So she crawled out from under Elena's toe for a bit, taking the opportunity to look around for any sign of Nadine. Had her partner survived the steps of the two giantess's feet? Chloe could only hope that she had found herself a nice little crevice and crawled into it before Elena and Deborah walked through the living room floor. There was actually a possibility that, if Chloe climbed down along Elena's sole, she would find Nadine's remains plastered to her skin, but she didn't want to think about that right then. Hopefully some day the two of them would meet up again—at their normal sizes, preferably. Until then, she had to look out for herself.
As the two giantesses talked, eventually Deborah got up, excusing herself for a minute as she had to use the bathroom. As she swung her feet down from the coffee table, centrifugal force sent Nadine flying off her sole and back onto the floor. Picking herself up, the treasure hunter looked up to see Debora's massive, wrinkled sole rising over her, and it seemed to her right then that that terrible sight marked the end of her life. She had no chance of escaping the descent of that sole, and by now she didn't even want to try. She had lost any hope that she would ever grow back to normal, and she saw no reason to keep scrambling around, trying to stay alive at this minuscule size. A life as a microbe was not worth living. So, when she saw that monstrous sole descending on her, she closed her eyes and waited for the end, welcoming the embrace of death as the only escape she could think of from this nightmare.
But death still wouldn't come. She was so small that she was able to fit under between the ridges of Debora's footprint without being crushed. Even now, while she longed for death, her luck still wouldn't let her die. After the massive mother's foot rose up and left her behind, she collapsed to the floor, laughing hysterically at the absurdity of it allChloe, completely unaware of what had happened to Nadine, looked at Elena's mom as she left, then decided it was time she got back under Elena's toenail. But as she was crawling inside, Elena swung her feet down too, throwing Chloe off of them and onto the floor in front of the cough. Her massive foot came down not far from where the shrunken woman landed. As Chloe picked herself up, she saw Elena's toe not too far in front of her. She began walking towards it, anxious to climb back up onto it and get back under her toenail, completely ignoring the tiny crevice on the floor that she could have hidden in and which she passed by as she walked. Before she could get to the toe, however, Elena stretched her toes, lifting them up into the air, and then slid her foot forward a bit.
Her gigantic toe now hung above Chloe, threatening to smear her into paste. The tiny treasure hunter could do nothing about it. All she could do was stay still and hope that her luck saved her again, maybe by letting her end up under a wrinkle in Elena's skin. As it turned out, the massive foot slid back just far enough for her to avoid being crushed under its descending toe, leaving her utterly shook on the ground below.
It was at precisely that moment when the two women suddenly noticed that they were growing bigger. Very, very slowly, but still, definitely bigger. Was this it? Would they finally be able to make it back to normal?
Over the span of five minutes they had only just made it to a little over a millimeter, big enough to be able to see each other across the floor. Just then, Deborah came back in, and as she was going toward the table, she happened to glance at the floor and see Nadine's tiny form. “Ew, a bug,” she said, lifting her foot with the obvious intent of crushing Nadine underfoot. Chloe yelled at the other woman to run, and though Nadine couldn't hear her, she did just that, running out from under the descending foot, coming out right in front of her toe. Deborah frowned at having missed the bug, but she knew it wouldn't get away form her for long. Again she lifted her foot over it, when it came down this time, the tiny woman ended up right between two of her toes. Standing in the gap between them, she looked up at the giant woman and waved and yelled up at her, trying to get her to see that she was a human being, not a bug, but Debora's massive toe rose up above her to block her view of the giantess, coming down mercilessly upon her to crush her with all the mountainous woman's weight. It happened so fast that Nadine didn't even have time to feel anything.
Upon hearing her mom mention bugs on her floor, Elena leaned forward to look down at the floor. Not far from her feet, she saw what looked like a tiny ant scurrying around on the floor, going towards the coffee table. What she didn't realize was that the “and” was Chloe trying to find a place where she could hide so she wouldn't be mistaken for a bug and crushed like Nadine had been.
Without getting up, Elena lifted her foot over the tiny bug and tried to stomp it out, but she was just too far away to be able to reach it like this. So she stood up and took a step forward. Her massive foot crashed into the ground just in front of Chloe, cutting off her escape route. Looking up at Elena, the shrunken treasure hunter begged her to spare her. But despite her growth, she was still too small to be heard, or to be seen as a human. Frowning down at the little bug, Elena raised her foot and unceremoniously crushed it like she would any other bug.
Deborah and Elena then sat back down together and started chatting again. Neither of them knew that they had just ended a human life, and neither of them ever would.