“Yes,” she said, “And I think I’ll have to do it again, although I don’t expect to find someone so willing in the future. You’re a very special boy.”

“Well by then I’ll be part of your tummy. So I won’t have to be jealous of the others.”

She turned her face to him and kissed him again, and then looked at her watch.

“It’s 4:25 and the sun’s going down,” she added, “We’d better get started, unless you’d like to come home to my dining room instead.”

“I’m really very much ready now,” he said.

“Thank you, little boy. So am I then,” said Colleen.

She clasped him gently in her hand and licked his face several times. It was all of his wildest dreams come true.

“That was the very best thing ever!” he said.

“I hope you’ll still like the rest, although I’ll be doing it anyway, even if you change your mind.”

“Lovely beautiful Miss Balfour, I would never change my mind about this, not for anything!”

Her lovely lips smiled affectionately right in front of him.

“I believe you. I’ll pop you in now. You can move around and when you’re comfortable and ready for the gobbling process, just tap on my tongue twice with your hand, and then expect some big developments. Do you have any questions about it?”

“Will the gobbling process be just like in my story?”

“Of course, you couldn’t have put it better when you wrote that.”

“So you’ll be swallowing me whole?”

“Of course, little boy. That’s one of the main benefits of reducing you.”

“I love you. I love you. I really really love you! You can put me into your mouth now.”

“Farewell then, and have an enjoyable trip down,” she said.

She opened her mouth, and put out her tongue, placed him onto the front, and drew him into her mouth along with her retracting tongue. He slid around for a little while, and lay down flat. Then he lay there for a little longer, and then tapped her tongue twice. He felt her tongue moving, and felt himself sliding into the top of her throat. Then he felt the most incredibly powerful gulp, and he dropped a little down. Then came another gulp, and he was carried right down to her stomach.

In this timeline, Colleen again told Frances about Stanley and Henry. Nathaniel again asked Miss Frances Woodfield on a date, and events concerning both of them proceeded in exactly the same way as the previous timeline, with Nathaniel reduced and renamed Dollipop, and secretly licked on his face at her home where he lived from then on. The only difference was that Miss Woodfield’s decision to have Nathaniel reduced to the size of a lickable lollipop was based only on what Colleen had told her. In the previous timeline, she’d been given the chance to lick Henry a few times, before Colleen ate him.

Colleen had gone on her same sabbatical and employed and reduced Patrick, albeit with the already portable reducing machine, and eaten him in the office where she’d hired him, rather than at her home. So the leprechauns never caught up with that aspect of the timeline, and had no knowledge that the need to warn him had arrived.

There had effectively been the same two disappearances of Henry and Patrick, from the perspectives of those who had reported them to Dick Flanigin, Private Investigator. His events repeated themselves from the previous timeline, right down to Brenda Leesil eating him in the forest.

Since Edith’s experience with Connor had occurred at the school and her house in the previous timeline, and neither the leprechauns nor Colleen had known what she had done anyway, the same scenarios played out, right down to the inside of Edith’s stomach.

Stanley was still living with the leprechauns and pining for his full sized romance with Colleen. A simple butterfly effect result on this timeline, which flowed from the existing changes, meant that Tarquin was never in the public gardens to stare at Colleen the day she was eating her lunch there, and was thus never reduced and eaten.  This one the leprechauns had seen coming and considered it an unqualified success. With the foreknowledge from the previous timeline, the leprechauns were careful to stay invisible in Colleen’s house, and to remember the need to disconnect all video and alarm wires before attempting to rescue shrunken young men from her clutches.