Frances carried him out of the house after lunch and let him ride on her shoulder, holding onto her hair for stability and comfort, while they descended the hillside.

“I asked her if she’d do this for us on the morning of our first picnic date,” said Frances, “She agreed straightaway. Do you think any less of me for being her friend, knowing about the others?”

“It never occurred to me.”

“I believe you,” she said, and stopped for a moment and turned her head to kiss him.

The feel of her gigantic lips was the sweetest thing he’d ever known.

When they reached the far end of the forest, she concealed him in her dress pocket, so that she could head home without anyone seeing a tiny boy perched on her shoulder. Once inside she took him out and talked with him on the couch for some time. After dinner, she took him to her bedroom and sat up in bed and asked, “May I lick you now?”

“Oh yes. I loved it before.”

She slid her huge perfect tongue over his shoulders and face a number of times and then left the moisture on him, while she lay down.

“Are you chilly at all? Do you want me to dry it off now?” she asked, reaching for a box of tissues.

“No, it feels nice to have your tongue water still on me,” he said, and snuggled against her cheek on the pillow.

They talked eachother to sleep, and awoke the next morning and spent the Sunday playing board games, with Nathaniel acting as one of his own pieces in each game. That night, in the bedroom, he climbed onto her face, while she was on the pillow, and lay down on her chin and lower lip.

“When I had Miss Balfour for science, she showed us a cutaway diagram of the human head and neck. The tongue actually starts down in the throat, but the lower part of it can’t be seen, only what’s in the mouth. Could I climb into your mouth and slide down into the top of your throat and lie there against the concealed part of your tongue for tonight’s sleep?”

“Oh Dollipop, aren’t you sweet to ask! I’d adore that!”

She opened her mouth, making sure that her lower lip reached further than her teeth. He started sliding over her lip and into her mouth, until the top half of his body was resting against her tongue. Then he put his hands against her lips again and pulled himself back out.

“You don’t have to do it, if you’ve changed your mind. Our original agreement was only for licking.”

“I can’t wait to do it. I just realised it would be easier to let myself down into your mouth, right side up,” he said, and lay on her chin and lower lip, facing towards her tummy. He eased himself backwards, into her mouth, and slid slowly over her tongue and then into a horizontal position at the top of her throat. Holding tightly to her back lower teeth, he was able to look out at her tongue, still lit up by her bedside lamp, looking resplendent above him, and then her lips slowly closed, and he was in darkness.

If she wanted to, she could sit up and swallow him with one deliberate gulp, and there’d be nothing he could have done about it, he thought, as he recalled Miss Balfour’s stories about Patrick, Henry, and Stanley. He wondered if she might even swallow him with an accidental gulp, but he trusted her judgement, and was happy to take the risk for the sheer thrill and comfort of being in there. Even if she did accidentally swallow him, he had already enjoyed so much happiness with her. He would take this risk as often as Miss Woodfield wanted him in there.

He lay there, with the feel of her soft moist tongue pressed against his face and shoulders, and slowly dropped off to sleep.