A moment after Christine had finished speaking, it grew dark, but the candles had not gone out. The lighting in the dining room had not changed at all.

Rather, my crystalline containment was cast in shadow by some enormous objects that flew in and pressed against its outer walls. Their blockage of light cancelled out some of the refraction effects, giving me a clearer picture of them. It was the giant pads of two fingers and a thumb. I could tell they belonged to Jennifer, because a wall of white keratin extended over the end of each pad; fingernails long enough that they identified her apart from the other two ladies.

I was so small that, lying longways, I could have fit into the shadowy gap underneath the nail, against the tip of the finger, and been held in place there, by the pressure of the nail’s underside. I knew this because she had even floated the idea with me as a means of carrying me while keeping me from harm, shielded by one of her fingernails; this was at least before she got the ring which made that idea redundant. To my secret gratitude. Because, I associated the underside of the human fingernail as the place where dirt and other particles got trapped, even if she maintained her nails more diligently than most. I had no interest in sharing lodgings with those dirt particles and potentially being mistaken for some of them.

The length of each finger pad was double my height, and reddened with the pressure applied against the panther head. As they gripped the transparent rock’s polygonal outer walls, there was a grinding sound, and the clear, tessellated walls began to glitter as they revolved around me; slowly at first, and then, rapidly, before, in a couple of grinding rotations, the entire rock lifted straight up into the heavens and seemingly vanished.

The refraction cleared, but having been exposed to it for over an hour, my vision now blurred like I’d just taken off 3D glasses. Blinking until the outlines of things merged again, I then stared around.

I was standing on the pedestal of the ring base, with the black band curving down around the finger beneath me, out of sight. Jennifer’s ring finger extended out before me like a pier, the minute – but to me, blown up – creases of her skin even resembling the wood grain of planks, which ended in the polished diving board of her ring fingernail. Below that was the interlocking weave of a black fabric tablecloth which seemed to run away in every direction until eventually dropping off into space.

Across the table, a distance some football fields away, stood a couple of wine bottles  stretched up like smooth glassy skyscrapers, the glass of one showing up its contents: plum red so dark it was almost black, while the other was clear and pure, transparent. Far beyond the black tabletop, the warm glow of candles floated in at me like distant wildfires from out of the shadowy gloom hanging around the corners of the room like faraway night sky. Taking a deep breath as someone about to jump off a cliff, I then forced my gaze upwards, as high as my neck would allow.

Interspersing my view of the blurry room walls, were four titanic sentinels, evenly spaced at the edges of the table, far out beyond me, each covered in the interwoven railroad texture of black fabric clinging to their forms. Each immense human shaped tower was comprised of rolling black fields suggesting the curves and bumps of muscles and fat deposits. There was no pretending not to notice the females’ busts when they were scaled up like hills and my neck creaked painfully trying to find their faces above. Anyway, I could not even see faces properly; they were glimpsed from below, at the angular jawlines like jutting cliff ridges, and up the twin dark culverts of nostrils. Not the most flattering angle, therefore I diverted my eyes from faces and focused on the black clothed bodies.

The four of them in my sight were not merely big but seemed supernaturally big, like gods and goddesses convening for a celestial meeting at the ends of this wide black plateau. Unimaginable that each figure was so big they were capable of effortlessly grasping up the skyscraper-sized wine bottles, displacing them from the tabletop and making them levitate in the air – from my point of view this notion seemed to break a law of physics somehow – even though, if anyone infringed any physical laws, it should have been me, at my diminutive size.

Looking at even a single one of the black sentinels made me light-headed as my eyes got lost amidst the expanse of endless fuzzy black landscape. Relative to me, the weight of each person was unfathomable, an accident of gravity on their part would have caused me to pop at the speed of light under a misplaced hand, foot or backside. With a small shiver it occurred to me that everyone in the room – except me – was at least a little tipsy.

Unseen, behind me, was seated Jennifer, at one end of the table, with the other four seated along the long ends.

Her voice hailed down at me as if from the clouds, like the voice of some Goddess of thunderstorms:

“JERRY, DON’T BE SHY.”

It was every bit as loud as it had been inside the panther head, but now, at least, lacked the painful chiming echo.

I didn’t move.

“HE’S VERY SHY,” she emphasised, as if to assure them it wasn’t their fault for being so big and terrifying, but my fault for being so dinky and delicate.

No one spoke for a long time. I felt like I was standing in a stadium with an unseen audience waiting for me to score the winning point. It only occurred to me now that I was naked. In fact I hadn’t worn a single article of clothing since being ultra-miniaturized a week ago. Having somewhat accustomed to the lack of clothes, I had to remind myself that being naked on a daily basis wasn’t normal. But what was ‘normal’ anymore—?

—I was the size of a grain of rice.

Stepping off the ring base, the soles of my feet came down upon the soft foamy flesh of the back of Jennifer’s straightened ring finger. Even at their magnificent sizes, the long feminine shapes of her fingers could be appreciated, given the illusion of further length by the sharp extensions of the nails.

She took good care of her body, and if anything, since my height had taken another hit, her self-grooming programme had become even more meticulous and exact. She wasn’t ashamed of her body; it wasn’t that she worried dirt and sweat would be unsightly to me, but that they created potential obstacles for my passage over her skin; making me slip or get stuck. Her natural terrain provided enough obstacles as it was.

In my path was a crease of flesh big enough to trip over; I stepped over it and continued along the springy flesh, heading towards the fingernail. The skin sunk underfoot like memory foam, reforming immediately as I lifted my weight again. It was so supple it would have been difficult to walk on such a surface at normal size, but my negligible weight made it easier for me to keep balanced, as gravity had less pull on me.

I carried on down the length of her ring finger. The creases on her skin were like thin shadowy lines in a sand dune. It even felt a little like walking on desert sand, or maybe the surface of a giant leathery balloon filled with sand; the skin sunk – if only minutely – under the soles of my feet with each step. Up close, the texture of her soft skin was grainy with the shedding of microscopic skin flakes, like sand particles. Treading over her flesh, my feet inadvertently kicked up these gossamer flakes, sending them swirling up into the air like road dust on a dry day, and sucked away again by the shifting air currents, whilst papering the soles of my feet.

The thermal activity of her blood vessels radiated warmth up through the epidermis contacting the soles of my feet. To her, this warmth was largely imperceptible as it was quickly wicked away by the surrounding air, but at my close proximity, her flesh was tropically warm, and sometimes had a tropical slimy dampness, too, from the shining dots of perspiration and sebaceous oil that oozed from the pinpricks of her pores.

The finger trembled, shifting minutely, too quick to have been deliberate. I dropped into a crouch, grabbing thick fistfuls of skin to hold myself steady.

“I HATE THIS,” came Jennifer’s voice, muttering through what sounded like a grim smile. “IT TICKLES.”

I froze. I already knew Jennifer hated being tickled, but gulped at the reminder. Attempting it could earn you a slap. And now I imagined she was doing everything in her power not merely to slap me but to flick me clean into space like an insect. I only prayed reason prevailed over her trigger-sensitive impulses. But she was naturally an impulsive person.

Now came the voice of the other female guest, Katie, which I distinguished only for sounding higher in pitch than either Christine’s or Jennifer’s voice.

“JENNIFER, CAN I ASK: HOW DO YOU PICK JERRY UP?”

Before Jennifer could answer, Christine suggested:

“YOU PLUCK HIM UP BETWEEN YOUR FINGERTIPS, SURELY?”

"I DON'T PINCH IF I DON'T HAVE TO," Jennifer said, adding dryly: “I’D PREFER TO NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS EARLY DEMISE IF THAT’S POSSIBLE.”

“BUT,” said Christine, “WHAT OTHER WAY IS THERE? APART FROM, PERHAPS, A DOT OF DOUBLE-SIDED TAPE ON THE END OF A PENCIL TIP.”

“CLOSE ENOUGH,” Jennifer said cryptically.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?” said Katie.

A seat groaned – the sound of boulders grinding together – as Tyler leaned forward.

“IS IT POSSIBLE TO DO RIGHT NOW?” he said, his voice lit by a spark of eagerness, and maybe a trace of morbid curiosity.

“YOU WANT TO SEE?” Jennifer ventured dubiously. “IT’S KINDA WEIRD AND A TINY BIT GROSS."

"NO ONE'S JUDGING YOU, JEN," Christine rumbled in earnest. "I THINK WE'RE ALL A LITTLE IN AWE THAT YOU COME UP WITH THESE WORKAROUNDS."

From previous experience, I already knew what Jennifer was referring to but wished I didn’t. Unnerving that she was asking their permission to have it exhibited to them, but no one was asking whether I wanted to be the exhibit.

My feet were planted into the flesh bordering the long pink plank that was the fingernail.

Finally, I turned in a circle to face my girlfriend.

Before even a hope of meeting her eyes, my gaze was forced to scale, bit by bit, the flowing shape clothed in tight black that was her upper half. Her bust projected over my head, the globes of her prodigious breasts stretching against the black slim-fitting dress. At normal scale, Jennifer did not have whopping breasts, though they were tight and attractive. Technically Christine’s were bigger – as far as I could tell – but I had to score Jennifer the point for having the sexier overall figure up and down, an enviable hourglass that, in motion, arrested the eye with the hypnotic roll of her hips. But of course you say that about your own girl.

At the summit of this suggestively-shaped rolling black mountain, a gargantuan object covered the sky, like some great, sculpted moon. It was so big my eyes were slowed to a crawl, labouring to make the features out one at a time.

Closest to me there was a pale jutting ridge of skin which, further up, was split horizontally by two plump curving protrusions which shone a slightly darker shade than the surrounding skin. These were overshadowed by two round dark caves built into the underside of a long pointed vertical ridge that divided a pair of eyes like two big windows, or giant curving TV screens depicting the brilliant green irises, framed above by the dark strips of thorns that were the eyebrows.

The hair of this colossal vision was pulled back in a long neat ponytail, except for the thin whiskers of long loose strands hanging below the temples, just in front of the ears. The rolling field of hair framing the head was dyed midnight, becoming a gradually platinum blonde-tipped tail running unseen down the back. The scalp must have been like a plain of black cattail rushes, but never-ending in length and stretched longways as if wind-flattened. If I had been standing on her scalp, her hair would have been dense enough for me to get hopelessly lost in like an endless forest.

From my position, viewing close from directly below, she was so big that I had no hope of appreciating her whole face as one consolidated whole. It was a suspended landscape of disconnected geographical markers. My eyes had to rove around in wide panoramic arcs just to put together the full picture of her expression.

The planetary head was tilted down for the eyes to survey me. The long black curled pickets of eyelashes – each lash roughly as long as I was tall – shining with a faint coat of oil, batted softly as the inky black pools of the two pupils penetrated me; their abyssal night somehow even more blinding than bright suns. Her all-seeing gaze was calmly fixed on my tiny naked body and there was no escaping it. I’d burned through my solitary hours spent inside the panther head, and now my privacy was all gone.

And if I didn’t do something soon, she was about to steal the rest of my dignity as well.

Her eyes drifted away from me briefly as she began to lift one tremendous hand up off the table. I knew any second now it was going to start coming for me.

 “Jen!” I squealed, jumping up and down and waving my arms above my head, “Jen! Jennifer! Hey! Down here!”

Oh Christ, this is ridiculous, I thought, my stomach plummeting with shame. I sounded like a little kid trying to get his mother’s attention.

She didn’t tilt her head down but her pupils found me beneath her long lashes. She watched me jumping up and down for a second without comprehension, and then, smoothing the sideburn whisker strands of her hair back with her other hand, she turned her head sideways and inclined it down over me.

As her enormous head expanded even bigger in my direct view, eclipsing the flickering candelight in the horizon, I tried not to flinch, fisting my hands and even curling my toes into her flesh as if to keep myself rooted to the spot. With her face turned, the huge fleshy shell of her ear loomed over me; whereas I was small enough to have crawled into the dark tunnel into the depths of the ear.

“SORRY, BABE,” came her reverberating voice. “DIDN’T CATCH THAT.”

Cupping my hands around my mouth I began to yell at her ear:

“We don’t need to—”

***BANG!*** -- ***BANG!*** -- ***BANG!***

A series of rapid booming crackles dazzled my senses to the point of waking seizure.

Oh God, the world is ending!

There was a sensation all through my body like pop rock candy, but on a blinding level, fizzing up my entire skull, auditory tunnels, and chest cavity with rattling, sparking noise. It was so demanding on my senses and attention that I lost track of where I was for an instant before the noise fizzled out, leaving me clutching my stomach and trying not to throw up.

Jennifer had lifted her head at the sounds and now her attention was back on the others.

“WHAT WAS THAT?” came Katie’s voice.

“THE NEIGHBORS PROCURED FIREWORKS,” Christine said dryly.

“YEAH,” said Tyler. “THE PEOPLE AT THE END OF THE STREET ARE HAVING A PARTY.”

As the crackling faded, their attention promptly returned to Jennifer.

“SORRY, JEN, I BELIEVE YOU WERE GOING TO SHOW US—?” Christine began expectantly.

Jennifer didn’t say anything. Instead, by way of answer, there was a soft wet smacking sound from right over my head. Soft enough that the others must not have caught it, but it was more than clear enough for me to make out.

I had no recourse; still catching my breath from the firecrackers, waiting for my throbbing skull to settle down.

“No, no, wait—!” I croaked. Before I could help myself, my eyes were darting all over the table, as if looking for an escape route. But there was no easy exit at my size, just a never-ending sprint across the black tabletop, devoid of the hope of getting anywhere fast.

As a long shadow deepened over me, Levi’s voice boomed from another corner of the table:

"IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE TRYING TO SNAG A PRIZE WITH THE CLAW MACHINE," he said with idle amusement.

"TRY PLAYING WHEN THE PRIZE IS THIS SMALL,” Jennifer retorted. She had fantastic reflexes and probably could have blitzed the claw machine if anyone could. But in that moment I only wished that I wasn’t playing the role of the prize in front of everyone.

A huge, round shape dipped down from the sky, seeming to materialize right in front of me. It was bigger than I was, and backed with a hard polished shell on one side, while the inside facing me was embossed with spiralling ridges, and the whole face of it glistening with a clear, bubbly film reflecting the wavering candlelights. Before I could react, the spiralling face collided with my front, knocking my feet right off the table surface, at the same time lifting me into the air because my chest and face had, in an instant, become hopelessly glued to the bubbly, watery goo, keeping me stamped in place while the finger – precisely, a pointer finger – rose again, separating me from the table just enough to demonstrate to everyone just how well adhered the front of my body had become to her saliva coated fingerprint.

“IF I TAKE HIM UP LIKE THIS,” Jennifer’s voice vibrated around me, for the benefit of the others, “I DON’T HAVE TO SQUEEZE.”

There was a silence that made it very clear to me that everyone was watching with keen interest, although I could not see anyone, seeing as though the majority of my face was pasted into a sticky puddle against her flesh. The saliva was awash with the dry tang of red wine.

Finally Katie’s voice broke the silence:

“HE MUST ABSOLUTELY ADORE YOU,” she observed, “TO LET YOU DO THAT.”

“JERRY IS A SHAMELESS CUDDLER,” Jen proclaimed. Her voice made it sound like she was repressing a smile. “HE’LL BEND OVER BACKWARDS FOR ANY PHYSICAL INTIMACY WITH ME.”

“AWW,” came Katie’s voice, “THAT IS JUST SO SWEET.”

Then I was being lowered again, and as the tabletop rose to my dangling feet, the big, hard end of a fingernail (from Jennifer’s other hand) moved in and delivered a couple of sharp jabs at my legs, until my face and chest detached from her fingerprint with a sick squelch, and I dropped onto my side on the tablecloth fabric.

My front immediately started to chill as my wet skin was exposed to the air; I wiped my palms up and down my face and chest to get myself dry. I could have wiped myself on the tablecloth, but I was trying to salvage a little dignity, even if I had only very little left.

From closeby, there were three loud thuds. I jumped up to my feet in alarm. After the firecrackers, my nerves were razor sharp.

It had sounded like a full size refrigerator being bashed against the floor, but was actually the sound of a pointer fingernail tapping upon the tabletop, resounding sharply with the wooden surface, though the tablecloth fabric blunted the sound, but not enough for my delicate ears.

The brisk knocking suggested it had been done to get someone’s attention. Mine apparently. I looked across and made eyes with the long, pale finger curled, balanced gracefully on its point. The finger belonged to Christine. Or it was attached to the arm resting on the table, belonging to the behemoth figure sitting in the place I identified Christine’s thunderous voice as coming from. The nail was coated in shiny opaque beige polish, and professionally squared off with a trimmer, shorter than Jennifer’s nails.

As I watched, the entire mass of the giant hand lifted off the tabletop and the towering finger wiggled at me as a form of wave. It was intended as friendly, but had the opposite effect; the last joint of her finger alone dwarfed me. If the circles of her fingerprint had been each painted a different color, I could have used her fingerpad as a fairground Skee ball target.

“WELL, LOOK AT YOU!” Christine’s beguiling voice thrilled the airwaves. “WHAT A PRECIOUS LITTLE THING YOU ARE. CAN YOU GIVE ME A WAVE?”

In response, I gave her a big sweeping wave with one arm, and she gave me a warm gracious smile in return, which only made my heart palpate in fright. From my point of view, the pair of gigantic, silken pink ridges curled back to reveal a row of pearly block panels, like an impassive fence.  I did not smile back, not only because she would not have been able to see it, but because I was unsure whether to feel anxious or relieved.

Lowering to the tabletop again, the giant hand rotated right around as the pointer, facing me, curled inward a couple of times.   

Being beckoned with this elegant, stunning sized digit was a surreal experience; but I couldn’t decide if it was flattering or ominous. I only hoped Christine was not interested in seeing if she could replicate the ‘finger glue’ action Jennifer had just demonstrated.

“WANDER ON OVER TO ME, DARLING,” came Christine’s great rumbling intonation, “COME AND MAKE YOURSELF KNOWN. I PROMISE I WON’T BITE.”

The fingertip dropped back down onto the tabletop, and as I stared at it, something large collided into my back, pushing me gently forwards. It felt like someone had walked backwards and bumped into me from behind, but it was in fact the flat surface of the nail of Jennifer’s index finger, coaxing me forward with the insistence of a police shield. The others let out sighs of amusement at the gesture.

Plodding ahead of Jennifer’s nail, my legs began to pump over the thatch weave of the fabric, Christine’s hand seeming to rise up as it came closer and closer. It wasn’t that I was eager to reach it, but thought that I didn’t make some speedy trails it might inspire an impatient Jennifer to make another attempt at snagging my body in the makeshift flypaper of a fingerprint slimed up with saliva.

Christine’s hand loomed before me, a creamy dome resting on the wrist and fingertips capped with nails shining like marble tiles. The palm was raised off the table, created a natural shadowy dugout that I could have crawled into for shelter. But the hand quickly rotated again, so the backs of the fingers stretched against the table surface, the lighter-colored palm exposed like a softly bumpy platform.

As I stood back and silently demurred, Christine’s voice returned, now blaring out from directly over my head:

“YOU DON’T NEED ME TO DRAW A LITTLE TARGET ON MY HAND TO TELL YOU WHERE I WANT YOU?” she offered, a little facetiously. “FOLLOW THE LINES OF MY PALM. IT’S A ROADMAP THAT’LL TAKE YOU INTO THE CENTER.”

“DO IT, JERRY!” Tyler said in a ‘you know you want to’ voice. “GET ON UP THERE!”

Again, the prospect of slapping back against Jennifer’s wet finger came to mind – or worse, she might encourage Christine to try. I jumped forward against the soft edge of the giant creamy platform, at the outer point where the base of the pointer met the palm, and began scrabbling against the creases of her skin. It was a little like trying to climb a wall of firm clay; I had to dig my nails in and wrench myself up before the supple shifting skin loosened my grip. Then I hauled myself up onto the padded surface of swirling lines that was her palm.

As if by instinct, I followed her instructions, tracing my footsteps along the nearest crease which led me straight to the centre of her hand, where the crease intersected with others. Once I stopped, the fingers and thumb rose and curled inwards as the hand cupped, until the inside fingers were creating a padded fleshy awning shading over my head.

“NOW LET’S FINALLY GET A GOOD LOOK AT YOU,” Christine said, and with that, the palm was rising up off the table like an elevator, “GIVE ME A FACE TO PUT TO THE NAME. JEN HAS TOLD ME WHAT DASHING GOOD LOOKS YOU HAVE AND NOW I THINK I BETTER SEE IT FOR MYSELF.”

The air went cool as it rushed past, I threw my arms out for balance, trying to avoid letting my eyes wander up and outside the hand at the vertigo inducing surroundings.

The hand stopped in mid-air suspended some height over the table, the blurring air sharpened again. The shade lifted as the fingers stretched back, and my eyes flicked across the landscape of Christine’s magnificent face.

Her honey blonde hair was tied back elegantly, with a golden waterfall of loose strands draping down the side of her head. Her face was made up in subtle earthy colors, and her glossy lipstick was a shade of pink that was almost tan brown. A pair of earrings hung from her ear lobes like draping tapestries of tasselled crystal.

Only now, gazing into the foreign features, it properly hit me that I wasn’t in Jennifer’s possession anymore, but that of a complete stranger, who literally held my life in the palm of her hand. I trusted Jennifer, but I didn’t know if I trusted her trust of others, given her tendency to impulsivity and reckless disregard of risks – which, at times, nearly grinded my trust of her down to shreds.

The black pools of Christine’s pupils enlarged as they focused on me. As if in sympathy, my own eyes grew helplessly bigger, locked like an animal of prey in her all-surrounding target sight.

Remembering – again – that I was naked, I quickly cupped my groin. A moment later a hot, humid cyclone hit me front on, pressing in and shaking my body like a strand of filament. It was bitingly sharp with the scent of wine.

As the hot wind beat me forcefully, eyes shut and teeth gritted, I was reduced to staggering on the spot, blindly groping for balance. My arms had whipped out to my sides as I struggled to keep my footing. Exposed, my member was hit straight on by the next full force gale exhalation, and flicked around like it had been slapped. My hand reflexively went down to cup it again out of modesty, but the next monstrous breath pushed me back a step and had me whirling my arms up for balance like an amateur tightrope walker as my dick was being helplessly slapped all around my thighs. This forceful exercise got me erect quickly, and the increasing length and thickness only my member even more animated in response to each surge of wind.

Okay, I thought desperately. Can we say: introduction over? Put me down now.

I opened my mouth to say something, right as a tremendous vacuum of inhalation ripped the air out of my lungs. My mouth clamped shut again.

Christine’s blasting timbre rattled through my bones:

“OH. OH MY GOSH. JEN. THIS IS WHY YOU KEEP HIM IN THE RING; HE’S AN ABSOLUTE TREASURE. LOOK AT THOSE PETITE MUSCLES. I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M HOLDING HIS ENTIRETY IN MY HAND, ALL THAT BULK PACKED INTO SUCH A TINY PACKAGE, AND WEIGHS VIRTUALLY NOTHING.”

She paused speaking, long enough to bathe me in another long surge of hot wind, only to chill my body as she sucked it back again. These constant reversals of potent air currents; first clammy and hot, then sharp and cool, then hot again, pushing, sucking, pushing, were enough to make me break out with fever, and confined to the levitating platform of her upturned hand, positioned directly beneath her lips, I was stuck smack in the maelstrom with no hope of escape.

Then, trying to lower her volume, she said to me:

“HELLO, JERRY. I HAVEN’T PROPERLY INTRODUCED MYSELF. MY NAME IS CHRISTINE.”

“I know!” I yelled. “Hi!”

I couldn’t say much else. Every time I opened my mouth, air was either vacuumed out of or shoved down my throat, constricting my lungs or swelling them up to near bursting point. Either way it was painful. My diaphragm ached as I used it to keep my chest wall firm. Therefore, I had to cram my speech into the slim gaps between Christine’s breaths when the air flow seemed to halt. It wasn’t clear if Christine even heard me or not. Maybe the roaring power of her exhalations blew my voice clean away, extinguished it like a candle.

She was speaking again:

“YOU DON’T FEEL SNUBBED BY ME, DO YOU? I WOULD HAVE KISSED YOU ON THE CHEEK COMING IN THE DOOR LIKE EVERYONE ELSE EXCEPT I DON’T THINK THE ENCOUNTER WITH MY LIPS WOULD HAVE ENDED WELL FOR YOU.”

She then asked me to turn around, giving her a complete view of my body. I obeyed, keen for an excuse to turn away from her intense gaze and even more intense breath.

As her hot breath pounded against my back, an odd, low, rumbling sigh escaped her throat, which made me think she was looking at my butt. The others couldn’t have known this – I would have appeared as a speck on Christine’s hand from where they were sitting – which gave the moment an unnerving kind of intimacy, like she’d flirted with me and it had gone over everyone’s heads.

“SWEETIE…” Christine said down to me. She sounded a little unsure now.

I swished around to face her again.

“Yes?”

“I DON’T MEAN TO ALARM YOU, BUT YOU KNOW YOUR KIT IS SWINGING AROUND AN AWFUL LOT, LIKE A TEENY LITTLE INSECT ANTENNA. IT DOESN’T LOOK NORMAL.”

“I know. It’s not,” I sighed, thinking, tell me which part of this whole shindig does look normal!

“DOES IT DO THAT OFTEN?”

I swallowed, then said:

“It’s your breath, Christine.”

“YOU’LL HAVE TO SPEAK UP FOR US A LITTLE, SWEETHEART. THAT VOICE IS TERRIFICALLY TINY. IT’S NOT MUCH LOUDER THAN THE BUZZ OF A MOSQUITO.”

I sorely hoped she was joking, but she sounded lamentably sincere. And besides, it wasn’t a fanciful comparison; I basically was the size of a mosquito.

“It’s your breath, Christine!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, and hoping this would not be interpreted as rude, “You’re blowing on me—”

The great golden strips of the eyebrows lifted and arched while the dark lips parted in surprise.

“HUSH,” she interjected with mock censure, “BEFORE THAT SLANDEROUS LITTLE TONGUE OF YOURS GETS YOU INTO TROUBLE. I HAVE ONLY JUST MET YOU; YOU’LL HAVE TO TOUCH RIGHT UP ON YOUR SEDUCTION STRATEGY BEFORE WE MOVE ANY FURTHER, DARLING.”

The others can’t have heard what I’d said, but going by Christine’s jesting response, they took it to imply I’d made a salacious pass at her. There was a ripple of laughter around the room. It looked like not only did Christine share Jennifer’s risqué sense of humor, but more or less everyone else in attendance did, too.

Normally, I would have been at pains to correct the misunderstanding, but I was worried this too would be misunderstood and twisted around at my expense. Blushing profusely, I kept my mouth shut.