Hannah was playing with her toes, crushing vehicles here and there with her big toe.
“What if – she began – I mean, what if there is no turning back?”
“What do you mean?" Mitch asked meeting her eyes.
“What if it is permanent? I mean, we would be bound to be this big, like for a long time. Maybe for ever! What would we wear? What would we eat? What would school meetings be like? What about ... everything?”
Mitch was worried at least as much as Hannah but those last questions made him laugh.
“Why are you laughing? What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. Sorry. It’s just ... Are you worried for school meeting?”
“What? … I’m serious!”
“Ahahah ... I don’t know, you could just present, take the school hall in your hand and follow the meeting like it was a match on your smartphone.”
“Yes! Or I could just say I prepared cupcakes. They are outside because they were bigger than the school, sorry!” Hannah joked back.
“But I’m serious, Mitch! What would we do? It would be a hell of a problem just eating and drinking! Speaking of which, I am starving. Like, literally. I am not just hungry, I can feel cramps in my stomach since a while now.”
“Yeah, me too. Maybe those sandwiches were not enough.”
“mmmf, probably not even those grew with us!” Hannah completed with a sad look at the sea. Mitch wanted to console her. In a sort of way he was still the householder. He was supposed to provide food for his family, no matter how hard it looked like.
“Well – he started – we may try out trees. I mean, they may be like salad.” He didn’t believe it himself, neither he performed the best presentation of the dish.
Hannah looked at the tree in disbelief, but the cramps made her reconsider the offer.
“We can eat candy bars!” Jo interrupted them both.
“What, sweety?” asked Mitch not sure of what he heard.
“We can eat candy bars! They are there at the harbor. - She pointed in the direction of the southern coast. - They are of different shapes, some are … rectangular with all kind of fillings. Some other have different shapes. I’ve eaten some before. Most are tasty, a green one was terrible, I had to spit it out.” Hannah was concerned and looked where her daughter was pointing. “Jo, what are you talking about? What candy bars?”
“Over there, mom! – the girl tried her best to point as precisely as she could – You see? Plenty of candy bars and sweets! We can eat them … for now.” She concluded hesitantly.

Hannah and Mitch looked where their daughter was actually pointing. Finally they recognized what she was talking about. On the side of the harbor there was the enormous storage area. It was filled with containers. Beyond that, there were boats, out of the water.
“Jo! - called Mitch – Did you eat those rectangular … bars?” The girl looked at her dad puzzled.
“Yes, dad! I know they were not mine, I am sorry. They shined, they seemed nice. I wanted to try out some.”
Hannah interrupted her. “Sweety! Those are not candy bars. Those are containers. There is the stuff that comes with the ships in there. You can’t eat them. They are made of metal. You will damage your teeth.”
Jo looked confused. “No, mom. They were crunchy but easy to chew. They can’t be made of metal, at least not a strong one. I ate more than twenty of them. And also the boats! The boats were tasty!”
“What?!” Mitch exclaimed, worried for his daughter.
“Yes, dad. Trust me. They are tasty. We can eat them.”
“Sweety, no! They are not made to be eaten, they could hurt your tummy.”
“No mom. They don’t. I was a little hungry and so I decided to try them. I know that people don’t eat boats. But monsters do. And since we are now monsters, I thought we could eat them. So I tried. And I was right!” She concluded closing her eyes in an expression of victory.
And then she started again, seeing her parent far less then convinced. “You don’t believe me! You think I am crazy!”

Here it was. All the signal of an incoming tantrum. Luckily they both knew the tactics to deactivate the bomb before it exploded.
“But no, sweety. I … I want to trust you. If you say we can eat boats and ‘candy bars’ we’ll try. Is it okay?”
Hannah knew she now had to show her good will to dismantle the argument of her daughter. She looked down and saw a truck abandoned at an intersection. She took it from the ground, it was very light. Mitch observed his wife, suggesting with his eyes to drop the poker face and renounce to her game. Hannah persisted. She looked reassuringly to her daughter and proceeded to insert the truck in her mouth. When it was completely inside, she played a little with it with her tongue. Then she closed her eyes, collected all her forces and bit. Hannah could not know that the truck was carrying a full load of paint. For her it was like biting a small chocolate with a creamy filling. She expected to be disgusted, but she was surprised. It tasted … fine. Not a triumph of flavors, but it was kinda good. She finished chewing it. The metal opposed very little resistance. And she gulped it down. “How was it, mom?” Hannah looked her husband with the most worried look in her eyes.

“Mitch!”
“What? Honey! How do you feel? You shouldn’t have gone this far to prove your point.”
“No, Mitch! - she interrupted him – You don’t understand. I think … I think Jo is right!”
“Wha-a-at?” He screamed.
“I think she’s right. Maybe we have really changed when we grew. Maybe we can eat … stuff.” She gulped again, now to swallow her last phrase.
“What, do you mean like trucks, and boats and shi...iips?”
Hannah shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a matter of try.”
Mitch looked at the city again fairly unconvinced either from his celebrating daughter, or his wife now gathering stuff from the streets. He identified a newsstand on the corner of the road his left foot was resting on. He eradicated it easily from the ground. Took a final look and commented: “Well, how do they say? Down the hatch!” And threw it into its mouth.

He started chewing, suspicious at the beginning then more and more convinced. In less than a minute all the three of them were collecting stuff from the streets to experiment. Cars, vans, street lights, traffic lights, newsstand and kiosks, benches and trees. Mitch also tried a trash truck. At first he repelled the idea of eating trash. But then he told. “We are giants now. Nothing is trash anymore.” And he was surprised again. A little bit seasoned but pretty good indeed.
“Hey Hannah, you have to try trash!”
“What?” She asked while pouring a raw of bikes in her mouth.
“Here, try this.” He passed her a bunch of big dark dumpsters. She took them and started tossing them in her mouth like pop corns.
“Hey, that’s good! Mmm, who could say they were going to throw this away.” She laughed and Mitch laughed back. They shared a kiss.
“Ew! Mom, dad!” Commented Jo, not disgusted to lick off a whole street packed with cars, but because of the kiss of her parents.

The world’s largest married couple gained enough courage to stand again and all three of them went around the city collecting all they could to try and eat. After a while, Mitch thought it was the turn of a new flavor. He looked a little around and located his next prey. A small, yellow, two story-building. He could hold it with one hand, but it used them both in order to preserve it from crumbling. He managed to eradicate it from the ground with little effort. Then the giant turned the construction upside down and started biting the walls. The bricks pulverized in his jaw. It tasted like pastry, or cookies. His new favourite kind of cookies. When he finished the first floor and started attacking the second he made an unexpected, and still pretty expectable, discovery. It was inhabited. The building at the ground floor was a shop. At the upper floor it was an apartment. Probably the house of the shop owner. And there he was, the owner with his wife, both looking up at the gigantic monster that was devouring their home. He felt a little ashamed and said “Sorry!” Then he took the sofa thay were hiding behind and put it on the street in front of his feet. Then he proceeded eating the rest of the building. The man and his wife were shocked but recovered fast and started running away. The left foot of Hannah, also looking for a good building to consume, decided their fate soon after.

Jo was not as merciful as her father. She saw people in the vehicles and stuff she was eating but she didn’t bother that much. She observed her parents and they seemed not to care too much about whatever ended flattened under their feet. She deducted she could not bother about people as well. After a while the lunch finished. A whole city block had disappeared. Partly trampled but mostly eaten.

“Well, that was good! Wasn’t it?” Asked Mitch.
“Yay!” Roared Jo, patting her belly.
“Maybe we exaggerated a little.” Said Hannah talking to her husband.
Mitch looked at the devastation. “Yes, maybe we got a little too far this time.”
“It’s just – she immediately continued – I don’t feel guilty enough … maybe. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I think these poor people didn’t deserve all this. But, I can’t think of what we did as something totally bad! Am I a monster for saying that?”
“No … well, it’s just … it’s like Jo said. Maybe we are monsters, now. What made us grow is also transforming us. We can eat virtually everything. And also … before … when it was just the two of us, did you feel the same as me?”
“Yes, it was strange, but it felt so right. Everything is so strange but at the same time also very … normal. I mean, it’s been hours and I am not worried about being naked. Who cares?” She paused a moment. “You know … before, when I was holding the ferry. I was looking at the people on the boat. I felt compassion for them, a lot of pity.”
“Well it’s comprehensible.”
“No, I mean, I felt pity for them not because they were in that specific situation. I felt pity because they were … well … that size. I mean, they were just humans. It’s strange to say it aloud, but. Being human seems not such a big deal from this perspective.”
“I understand what you’re saying.” Then he looked at Jo which was playing with cars in a parking lot.
“So, how do we do it?” Mitchel asked.
Hannah called her daughter to her. “Jo, come here. We have an important thing to say.”
The girl raised her head smiling at her mother and threw the cars behind her back. “What is it, mom?”
Hannah tried to organize something meaningful in her head and then started her discourse knowing it was as much directd to Jo as it was to herself.
“Jo, sweet. You understand that all this is a new situation for all of us.”
The girl nodded without real signs of understanding.
“Now that we are big ... giants.”
“Yay! Giant monsters!” Jo interrupted her celebrating the acknowledgement of their new social status.
“As you wish! We are giant monsters in a world of humans. And so, you understand that at this dimension it is harder to avoid … accidents.”
The girl gave a puzzled expression and tried to counter: “But no, on the contrary! It is easier. We can’t drive now. There are no cars of our size.”
Hannah smiled and ruffled her daughter’s hair. “I am talking about small accidents, with … with people, human people.”
“Oh, I see. Mom? Are you upset because I stepped on some people? I tried to be careful but they are everywhere!”
“Of course not, sweety. This is exactly the point. Sometimes it gets very hard to avoid stepping on some humans. That is not a problem. - Hannah repeated those last words in her head once more to be sure she was actually saying "that" was not a problem. She still agreed with them. She was sorry for the tiny people, but they were bugs now. And you can worry for bugs just this far. Her priority was to avoid her daughter the trauma of feeling like a murderer just because she stepped on some ants. She had nothing against humans. But things were different now. Her first duty was to her family. The “people” now were those above the thousand of feet. Whoever below was not her enemy, but neither, completely, her problem. She started talking again: “Do you understand what I am saying?”
The girl nodded: “I think so, mommy.”
“But, we don’t want to hurt humans. They are people and we mean no harm to them.” The woman continued.
“Oka-ay, so …?” The face of Jo didn’t hide the now raging moral debate happening between her ears.
“So, we will do our stuff, and people will do their stuff. The only rule is that we must not harm them, and be careful not to harm them. If it happens that we step or squish some of them by accident, then be it. But please, sweety, just go easy on them. They are people, but they are more … fragile. Promise?”
“Promise!” The girl nodded convinced.
“So, the rule is: what happens under our feet, stays under our feet!” proclaimed Mitch.
Hannah smiled and nodded in agreement.
Jo nodded too and the deal was sealed.
“What now?” Mitch asked.
“Now we go home! We have to find out how we got so big and also we need to find your sister and Zachary.”
“Yay! Zach will be so surprised to see that now I am taller than him!”
Hannah didn’t join her daughter’s happiness thinking about her now colossal little girl playing with an ant-sized version of her older daughter and her boyfriend. But now, probably also thank to the full stomach, she was far more optimistic than before. They would have found a way to make it work, somehow. The family started moving hand in hand. Hannah was a bit worried at the start because they had to walk over a big portion of the city. But she didn’t want to recede so fast from her word. She walked ignoring the crunching sounds coming from beneath. She could distinguish people fleeing and suddenly disappearing under her soles, but she didn’t bother too much. After a while, it became even relaxing.