One boy picked up a large shard of broken glass, took off his coat and wrapped one end of the glass in it, so that he could hold it without injury, and then thrust the exposed sharp end into Fatwoman’s hand.
Her scream was like a titanic roar to all of them.
“You little brat! You’ll be lucky if my teeth don’t do the same thing to you, except that you’ll taste better going down whole without dribbling blood onto my tongue!” she called.
The boy who liked her saw how serious the wound was. It was very deep and Fatwoman was losing a lot of blood. The curtains had all been open when the Spiteful Four had arrived, and had not been affected by Fatwoman’s attack. The boy quickly pulled one off the rod, threw it out the window and said, “Use this as a bandage!”
“Thank you,” said Fatwoman, “but don’t think that saves you.”
“No … I don’t,” he said.
Fatwoman took a few minutes to wrap the curtain around her hand like a tourniquet and tie it tight, with the help of the Gobbler, whom she diverted from an assault on the 11th Grade building. Then both giantesses resumed their attacks. This time Fatwoman used her protected hand, and reached into the classroom again.
“That thing can’t cover all your hand!” called the boy with the glass sword, and thrust at her again.
She quickly withdrew her hand and got up and seemed to disappear from view.
Suddenly they heard glass smashing behind them and realised that she’d gone around and palmed her way into the windows on the other side. They retreated to the centre of the room and let the boy with the glass sword keep her at bay. However, this time Fatwoman made no attempt to reach in for them. She just put her fingers part way through windows on both sides at once and then began to tug hard.
The students saw the side walls and roof being ripped off the building, and then saw Fatwoman place the roof on the school oval and smile down at them triumphantly. She picked up what remained of the seat she’d broken and held it above the boy with the glass sword.
“If you don’t throw that thing outside now, I’ll bring this down on you and your little weapon at crushing speed,” said Fatwoman.
The boy complied. Then the boy who liked her saw an opportunity.
“I’m the one who helped you bandage your hand, and in so doing I put us all in danger again,” he said, “Would you take me first, so the others have a bit more time before the end?”
“Whatever you say, Sweetie,” said Fatwoman and opened her hand for him to walk between her fingers.
She lifted him up and brought him close to her wide open mouth. He looked inside in admiration and was very glad that the others would think him a hero. Fatwoman would think of him fondly too as she gobbled him down, and he would be the only one to relish the experience.
She slid him into her mouth, which was clearly lit by the afternoon sun, and savoured the taste of him for several minutes, before she gulped. He went down happily, unaware that his sacrifice had bought the other students a lot more time than he’d planned.
Into the scene stepped Enlarger Girl, aiming a devastating roundhouse kick to the Choker’s hips. The Choker staggered back and fell down onto the school oval. Fatwoman rose to her feet and stepped towards Enlarger Girl, planning to use her bulkier build to fight the average built Enlarger Girl like a bear. Enlarger Girl dodged a wild punch from Fatwoman, ducking to the side, pivoting, and cocking her leg to send a powerful side kick into the side of Fatwoman’s body, just below her armpit, while the punch had exposed that position. She had recalled that Wooss had taught her that every martial arts technique that one performs must inevitably open oneself up to a counter act, by exposing something previously guarded. In this case, Fatwoman’s punch had stopped her arm from protecting the side of her body.
“Hit and run with a larger opponent,” she thought, recalling the way that Wooss had done so with her, after they’d practiced in his lounge with her expanded to eight feet tall.
She had gained one strike. Then she dodged quickly again, grabbed Fatwoman’s retreating punch arm with both of her hands, and was now in a position to kick her hard in the back of the leg.
That move brought Fatwoman to the ground. Slowly digesting inside her, the boy who’d willingly saved his friends felt the fact that she was now on her side. Soon he felt nothing at all.
Rash Old Girl had taken the longest, with only the strength of a 55 year old giant woman to use, in getting the roof of the classroom she’d attacked. Being the oldest, she had gone for the 12th graders, as, even not taking her 12 centuries of life into account, she was still nearly 4 decades older than the 12th graders. She took the opportunity to stuff as many of them into her mouth and gulp them down, swallowing each one quickly, while the Gobbler was the next to engage Enlarger Girl in unarmed combat.
Enlarger Girl noticed a tall flagpole in the school courtyard, ripped it out of the ground, and held the rope and flag in her hand. She was now able to swing the pole in a manner similar to the use of what some Sydneysiders referred to as ‘numb chucks’, the slang for what was actually a prohibited weapon in Sydney Australia. The pole caught the Gobbler solidly in the side of the head and made a few other strikes.
Having been taught to remember that a person who comes at you with a weapon is not only going to use the weapon, Enlarger Girl made use of the distraction to aim a fast forward kick straight at the Gobbler’s chest. Within the Gobbler’s stomach, the two boys that the giantess had managed to swallow felt the impact and were jarred a little before continuing to be digested. The Gobbler went down too, landing in the courtyard.
“It’s just you and me now, Rash,” said Enlarger Girl, stepping towards Rash Old Girl.
“You won’t take me down that easily. I did command my own trained fighters until recently,” said Rash.
“And I was trained by the best,” said Enlarger Girl, as the object of her assertion, namely Smartman, stepped out from the concealment of her hair and onto her shoulder.
Enlarger Girl began looking for openings, as she and Rash began to exchange a series of strikes and blocks. To her surprise, Smartman dived off her shoulder and down the inside of Rash’s neckline.
“How can he prefer her breasts at a time like this? I thought he loved me!” thought Enlarger Girl.
It gave her a rush of anger fuelled adrenaline, and she struck Rash harder than ever before. Although their skills were roughly evenly matched, Rash had the body of a 55 year old woman. Brandi Gold was younger and fitter and faster. Rash went down too, and then Enlarger Girl saw Smartman dragging another normal sized man out from under the neckline of her dress.
“I saw movement in there that your larger eyes would have missed and went in to capture the only one who both would and could have busted the Spiteful Four out of Smoked Ham Asylum,” said Smartman, “Meet the Dwindler.”
“And I thought you fancied her!” said Enlarger Girl.
“No. But he needs a special cell he can’t shrink out of. This time we should be able to keep them all inside. You head over and tell the police that they can move in now with the Gland Bands.”
The students and their teachers came out of what remained of the school buildings and stood beside the fallen villains. One boy was closest to the Gobbler’s face, when she suddenly opened her mouth wide and lunged her head at him. He ran back from her until he was sure that she was too injured to get up and pursue him.
With Enlarger Girl’s help, the Spiteful Four were forced to reduce to normal size and submit to the Gland Bands once more. Then Enlarger Girl picked Smartman up and was about to carry him back to the Smartmobile, when a group of costumed characters, all currently normal sized, met them at the edge of the school grounds.
“I’m code named Mr Mensa,” said their leader, “Could you shrink down so we could talk more privately in the paddocks behind the school?”
Enlarger Girl shrank back to normal size, and Mr Mensa explained that he was a scientific genius, and the leader of their group, which was known as D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97. It was a covert group of male vore fans and the very few giantesses who reciprocated their fantasies. Having seen the news bulletin, he had gathered his team and headed for Rural Dural Boys High School and arrived just as the two new super heroes were leaving.
Mr Mensa invited Enlarger Girl and Smartman to join D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97. The two accepted, and enjoyed a few months of being accepted by their own kind.
One day, Mr Mensa called a meeting of D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97 in order to show and distribute his new invention.
“This is called Time Bubblegum,” said Mr Mensa, “Once chewed, it will project the user 1500 years into the future, and leave them in that future time, until it has been spat out. After that, it’s useless, but I can always make more supplies. It’ll be of great value to our group. I’ve often wondered what the future holds for the giantess and tiny men community.”
They decided to all use some Time Bubblegum together, and were carried forward into the very late 35th Century. There they met a man called Billy Blink, who introduced them to some of the incumbent giantesses. Then Billy took them to the Blue Mountains just outside the far west of Sydney. At Medlow Bath and Blackheath, there were a number of high escarpments that could never have been traversed by normal sized humans. Yet, since the 20th Century, several giantesses had easily stepped from them and built a giant city named Giantessopolis. The upmarket section of that city was now known as the Region of Supermodels.
Normal sized men were welcome in Giantessopolis too, but would have to live in giant dolls houses or stay in suitable visiting quarters. At last the giantesses had the convenience of being able to retain their giant size for as long as they liked. By the 35th Century, many earlier giantesses had married normal sized men and had children with them while at normal size themselves, creating a much higher population of women with the gts gene. Many of them had giantess gobbling fantasies about men. To meet their needs, Billy Blank had exposed himself to a radioactive formula, which he named Smother-I. It had given him the permanent ability to clone himself at will. He was now also known as Project OMUCH (One Man Unlimited Clone Hero). Many of his clones made themselves available to be eaten by keen giantesses, so that the rest of the population were not at risk of being eaten too.
However, some giantesses were not satisfied with eating replicas of the same man over and over again, and insisted on attacking and eating other unwilling participants.
So in 3493, the following speech had been made by Project OMUCH:
“Carolyn Grimmalt, Leeza Bellino, Christine Bahlarti, Katey Panotso, Rebecca Kurkijn, Brooke Strain, Alexandra Sims, Hayden Smart, Jenny Limahughes, Gisele Christie, Natalie Agron, Sandra Cross, and the villainous giantess known only as Insaniac 55; you have all been found guilty of wilful cannibalism of unwilling men. It is the sentence of this tribunal that you be banished from earth to the size suitable uninhabited planet of Jupiter.”
So they were all deported to the unpopulated giant planet. There they built their own city just next to the Jade Jungle of Jupiter, and renamed the whole world Giantess Planet. Their new giant city was named the Region of Supper Villains. One of these banished Giantesses was a direct descendant of Rash Old Girl, the one who had taken the name Insaniac 55 and invented a teleportation device called the Star Snack and set it up in the middle of the Region of Supper Villains.
One day, during D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ‘97’s extended stay in the 35th Century, Mr Mensa had just stepped out of the shower and was putting his pyjama pants on, when he vanished from his bathroom and appeared in a gigantic jungle.
“But there’s very little of that bush left, now that Giantessopolis occupies the old spot,” he thought.
Then he saw a sign on the trunk of a giant tree. As he read it, he could see that it had obviously been posted low down on the trunk for the benefit of people his size.
Attention earthling. You have been brought here to Giantess Planet, formerly known as Jupiter, by means of a device known as the Star Snack. It is kept in the middle of the city known as the Region of Supper Villains. Any giantess can use its view screen controls to scan earth for a suitable man to eat, and then teleport him from earth into the Jade Jungle of Jupiter, which is just outside our city. You will in fact have arrived there instantly, while the giantess who sent you there will need time to walk into the jungle and start looking for you. She will hunt you down and catch you and eat you all up. The people of Earth responded to us with deportation. We now respond with teleportation. Run and hide well, small man. Your giantess is coming after you even as you read this.
This news was unbelievable. It also explained the rash of unexplained disappearances that D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97 had remained in the 35th Century to investigate.
“I’ll have to put a stop to this. She must have seen me in my birthday suit in the shower while she was calibrating that Star Snack device, whoever my giantess is!” he thought, “I wonder if this also explains the disappearance of Smartman. Enlarger Girl’s been worried sick.”
He concealed himself by climbing a hanging vine. Just as he swung on it, he looked down and saw the giantess Katey Panotso running into view. He recognised her instantly. All of the villains’ photographs were on permanent exhibit in the Region of Supermodels Museum, as a permanent warning to any other giantesses who might be thinking of eating unwilling humans.
She was older than him, younger than the 55 year old appearance of his own time’s villainess Rash Old Girl, and very beautiful. He let go of his vine in mid swing, caught the next one and used it to reach a branch. Then he looked back and saw Katey climbing the original vine with much more speed than his relatively small body had done. She swung to the next vine, and then over to his branch.
“That was a very innovative and original chase you gave me,” she said, “This will be the highest vantage point I’ve had while eating someone.”
“Not only that, but I also have the distinction of being the only 20th Century man you’ll ever have eaten. I’m Mr Mensa from D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97.”
“You can time travel! Even our people don’t have that ability in this time.”
She stuck out her tongue mockingly and then licked him with it.
The feel of her gigantic tongue was not in the least unpleasant. He waited while she satisfied it with the taste of him and then placed him into her mouth for a while and swallowed him. Before anything else could happen, he spat out his Time Bubblegum. It would disappear into her stomach acids below now, and have no more effect on anyone. For him, the effect was that of being instantly catapulted back in time to Jupiter 1997.
There he found Smartman, who explained that he too had been teleported to Giantess Planet weeks earlier and eaten by Gisele Christie. He had had the same idea of escaping her stomach by returning to 1997, but lacked the knowledge to fashion materials and build a spaceship to return to earth. For Mr Mensa, this was child’s play, and the two of them got to work. Once back on earth, they obtained more Time Bubblegum and travelled forward in time to 3497. There they filled Project OMUCH, leading giantesses of Giantessopolis and other members of D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97 in on what had been happening.
“We’ll have to work together in two teams,” said Project OMUCH, “Giantesses from both D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97 and Giantessopolis will take on the deported giantesses in the Region of Supper Villains, while regular sized men from D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97 will team with me (and as many clones of myself as I may need to make) to sneak inside the Star Snack and plant enough timed explosives to destroy it. Once both tasks are done, we’ll have to bring Insaniac 55 back to Giantessopolis and imprison her, so that she can never build another Star Snack.”
As it turned out, OMUCH only had to make enough clones to occupy the eager mouths of some of the deported giantesses until the others had completed their assignments. Once the captive Insaniac 55 was safely locked up in Giantessopolis, Mr Mensa decided that it was time for D.A.B.B.L.E.S. ’97 to return to 1997.
“Thank goodness,” said Brandi Gold (alias Enlarger Girl), “I was getting tired of having that piece of Time Bubblegum wedged between my molars for safe keeping each time I went to bed.”
There was nobody else on the beach. It wasn’t a well used beach anyway, too isolated. That very thing was what Surfergirl liked. It was a week day, so she had the entire beach to herself. She reached down with both hands, pulling at her jeans until she was able to lift her legs out of them. Then came the shirt. It was a short sleeved clingy shirt with no pockets. Even with her jeans removed, the bottom of the shirt, which had been concealed when she’d had it tucked into her jeans, now still covered most of her G-string. She pulled it off and saw that her bikini was still neatly in place, dropped the shirt onto the discarded jeans on her rug, and looked at the water. This was her day. The whole scene was calm, serene, and uniquely private and hers, especially for such a publicly accessible place. She walked slowly down to the water, and into the surf, until she was up to her waist, and then dived into the next small wave and swam freely underwater.
Each time she surfaced, she could see the bright sun glistening on the surface of the water. She swam through even the most challenging conditions with ease, her supple athletic body well able to deal with any aquatic contingency. After over two hours, she came out of the water, walked up to the rug, and saw that there was still nobody else on the beach. She picked up her towel and rubbed herself down until she was completely dry, except for her hair. She was about to lie down and cover herself with a blanket, when she noticed a large shell, as large as her head in fact. It was fairly close to her position, and yet she hadn’t seen it when she’d arrived. Surfergirl walked over, lifted it and held it to her ear, waiting to hear the sounds of the sea that were somehow reproduced in the way the wind blew through the shapes of the interiors of shells.
Instead she heard a song, a song with no words, only a vocal sound. She recalled movies with such wordless vocal singing on the soundtracks, in particular a movie set both on a beach and underwater. The tune was delightful, and made her wish that there was a real person singing it. She wondered how a shell could capture such a perfect harmony and reproduce it like this. One thing was embedded in her thoughts. She simply had to take this shell home with her.
It was late that night, when she was lying in bed, with the beautiful shell resting on the cupboard on the other side of her room, that she heard the singing again. This time it was not necessary to put the shell to her ear. The sound was louder and carried clearly across the room. She leaped out of bed and ran over to the shell, picked it up and held it closely to her chest.
You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, little shell, she thought. Before she knew it, she’d actually said those words aloud. Here she was talking to an inanimate object, yet not a silent one. Suddenly she felt a slight movement touching her chest. It didn’t feel like a hard portion of the shell, and it had moved by itself. She suddenly pulled the shell away from her chest and held it to her eyes this time, rather than her ears. She saw a tiny man scurrying around the corner of the shell’s interior and out of sight. There had been a man inside it all along. It was he who had been doing the singing. She took the shell over to her bed, turned it around, so that the opening faced the ground, and shook it gently, until he tumbled out onto the blanket.
“My little marine musician,” she said, “You have a wonderful voice. I’d never have known you were in there, until you touched my chest.”
“It was the way you said you loved the shell. I wanted to physically touch you. When you held the shell to your chest, the opening was out of your sight. I reached out and touched. I hope you didn’t mind.”
“Not at all. Would you like to stay here? I could put you back on the beach, but somebody else would find the shell, and I want you here with me.”
“I do too,” said the little Marine Musician.
“Will you sleep by my ear and sing me to sleep with your lovely tune?” she asked.
He was glad to oblige, and waited for her to position him there, and then began to sing.
“It’s nice, although not quite as nice as when you’re in the shell,” said Surfergirl, “Not that you’d be able to sleep comfortably in there.”
“I could, with the bed of seaweed I pulled into it,” said the Marine Musician, “But I like it out here with you.”
“Why don’t you sleep on my mouth?” she asked, and lifted him gently and rested him on her lips, which meant that she would no longer be talking.
She lay awake, well aware in her own private thoughts, that there was one more reason that she had been glad to find such a small man in that shell. She didn’t think that she should tell him yet, if ever. Why ruin a good thing with spoilers? Yet she did want to find out for herself if things would be as good as she thought. She pretended to fall asleep and then waited a while. When the time seemed right, she suddenly yawned, and the Marine Musician fell into her mouth right on cue. She felt him against her tongue and loved the taste. She’d always like seafood, but this was beyond her wildest expectations. How she easily she could have sat up and gagged right there, until he’d been well and truly swallowed down. It wasn’t out of the question yet, but there seemed such a strong reason not to. She would miss that sweet little guy and his marvellous marine music.
The trade-off would dominate her thinking every day from then on. The urge to gulp and the yearning to keep the music available. She realised that she was having all these thoughts while he was still stuck in her mouth. She sat up, opened up and said ‘ah’ and took him out again.
“Sorry about that,” she said, “Perils of yawning.”
“You don’t really need to apologise,” he said, “I’ve loved being in my shell for some time, but it was much nicer in there.”
“I’m surprised and glad you like it,” she said, “I think I could sleep without gagging if you want to spend the night in there. It’d be rather wet though, but I suspect a shell man from the seaside is used to that.”
“I am at that,” said the Marine Musician as she helped him gently back into her mouth.
An idea finally came to her the next morning. She left him at home for a while and went out and came home with a brand new video camera.
“They make the best audio recorders, and I like to see you anyway,” she said, and spent weeks recording all of his songs, which he sung both from within the shell and out in view in front of it.
She would copy the films to a hard drive and burn multiple DVD backups of each one. Soon she had a collection of his entire repertoire.
“Thank you so much for doing all that,” she said, “Now I can always listen to your songs.”
“You can anyway,” he said, “I don’t plan to leave you.”
“I know,” said Surfergirl, “But I think it might be hard for me to hear them coming from my belly.”
He ran over her body and sat down on her belly and started singing. She reached towards him and cupped his head with her hand, to stop the song.
“Not quite what I meant,” she said, “The acoustics aren’t so feasible on the inside.”
“On the inside? I’ve never been that far down, just into your mouth.”
“It’ll be your chance to explore new territory,” said Surfergirl.
“Do you mean …? Are you going to eat me?”
“You filled a need that day on the beach, and ever since. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have had in my life, and yet the whole time I was in two minds about hearing your sweet music and eating you up. Now that the recordings are all made, I can have both.”
“You were just what I needed too,” said the Marine Musician, “I couldn’t be happier that we came together.”
“Even with the way it’s worked out?”
“I could just never dislike you.”
“I … Well words are awkward, I know. Let’s just get it happening,” said Surfergirl.
“Sure,” said the Marine Musician, “I mean, once I’m in there, you can start playing back the recordings I guess.”
“They’d make a nice backing track now, with the volume turned down low,” she said, and started one of the songs playing.
Surfergirl reached out from the bed, pulled the curtains open and looked out on the beach below, and the surf. It was almost as if she was sitting down there now and eating him in that location, the place where she’d first found the shell. She couldn’t understand his lack of panic, when she’d made her plan so obvious. Well she’d kept her secret long enough and only just revealed it. Maybe he had more surprises for her too.
She fed him into her happy maw and gagged with satisfaction as the music played on. She heard a slight noise from the shell, not a song, just a rustle. Maybe the seaweed had shifted in a brief draft or something. She would still keep the shell too, even though she never expected to hear another tune coming from the shell itself.
Within the shell, the Marine Musician listened for any movement from Surfergirl. He had returned to the shell with a slight noise of displacement, but wherever he’d gone in the world, that shell had always called him back, because of its own unexplained properties. Would he let her know that the shell was unbreakable? Would he let her know that he was no longer in her belly, but back in the shell? That was a decision for another day.
Surfergirl waited until the weekend came, and then picked up the shell and took a walk on a small path beside the seashore, which linked the nearest beach with the next. She came to a shop she had visited many times before, which bore the sign of its name ‘Ocean Treasures’ over the door. The owner was an old friend of Surfergirl and her mother, and was known to her close friends as The Wise Woman of the Seaside.
“Amy!” said the woman, eyeing the large shell, “How nice to see you again. Did you want me to purchase that from you and sell it in the shop?”
“Oh no, I’d never part with it,” said Amy, “Actually I just needed someone to talk to, Carey. I’m in a mixture of emotions about something.”
“I’ll close up and draw the curtains earlier than usual,” said Carey, doing so, “Now tell me what’s on your mind.”
“I don’t know how to say this exactly, but I … ate someone. He was a tiny little guy that I found in this shell. I didn’t hurt him in my mouth, and I really enjoyed it, but now I sort of feel bad. He sang so beautifully inside the shell when I first found it. I shook it and he tumbled out. We were friends for a while, and then I made up my mind and swallowed him.”
The Marine Musician listened keenly. Whatever was said next could have a major impact on his decision as to whether or not he would reveal himself.
“Do you miss him?” asked Carey.
“Maybe a little bit, but that’s not really it, since most of the time I keep wishing there were more of him, so that I could do it again with another one,” said Amy, “It’s just that I have brief moments of feeling sorry for him, and then I go back to thinking how much fun it was to swallow a completely helpless little guy.”
“You don’t need to feel bad,” said the Marine Musician, stepping out of the shell into view, “Ever since I found that shell, it always brings me back to it, whenever I’m in any trouble under the sea.”
Carey picked the boy up and looked at him closely.
“I have knowledge which could really enlighten both of you,” she said, “Let me start at the beginning. For centuries there has been a race of amphibious air and water breathing tiny people called the Ocean Mites. (Unlike the humans with the shrinking gene, the Ocean Mites were permanently tiny, having been born that way). One day some of the Ocean Mite girls found a half drowned 14 year old boy named Ivan lying in the water and sand on the edge of the surf. They used a modified sea urchin spine as a syringe, and injected a carefully concocted serum into his body. It reduced him to their size, having been derived from their own blood, and gave him the ability to breathe water as they did. He still retained his air breathing ability too. When they revived him, they explained that there was a shortage of males among their people, because there was a family line of women who always married men who were prepared to live at the seaside. This had gone on ever since the first of these women had discovered a tiny male ocean mite and taken to eating him. The women in that family line were all strong divers and swimmers, and never told anyone of the existence of the tiny Ocean Mites. Yet, inevitably, each new female would reach adulthood and discover them, while diving and swimming in the ocean. They would crave them with the same addiction as anyone who loved seafood. Prawns, lobster and calamari were as nothing in comparison to the taste of male Ocean Mites. The Ocean Mite girls told him of the way these women had created a shortage of male Ocean Mites for the girls to fall in love with, and asked him to choose one of them to date and eventually marry. The boy told them that he was already very much in love with a fourteen year old girl he’d been seeing for a number of months, and that he would return to her regardless of his loss in size. Ivan remembered the times he had seen the large freshwater swimming pool, which remained full because of a small opening underwater, that linked it from his girlfriend’s family’s backyard to the sea. He swam through the seaside until he came to the opening, surfaced in the pool and saw his girlfriend’s single mother lying on the grass beside the pool. He climbed out and told her what had happened to him, and that he hoped she wouldn’t now consider him inadequate for her daughter. The woman said that she didn’t find him in the least inadequate, but that it was no longer of any relevance, because, she explained to his surprise, she was in fact the middle aged generation of the family of women who hunted and ate Ocean Mites…”
Carey’s information was spot on, but she did not know the earliest origin of the Ocean Mites. Centuries earlier, earth was visited by tiny beings in a water filled spacecraft. They were travellers from another planet, who chose to make their home on earth. However, earth’s surface people were much larger than the visitors. So they chose to use their amphibious ability to breathe sea water, and lived most of their lives in the ocean. Hence the name Ocean Mites. However, they sometimes came to the surface and took the risk of being found by the relative giants, because they were still born with a love of both land and sea, just as they would have been on their home planet of Testamentia.