No sooner had she made that ominous pronouncement than she put me (birdcage and all) down on the carpeted floor. Following which, Courtney lifted Ted out of her jewelry box. She unwound the bracelet chains binding him with sadistic slowness. Starting with the loop that she had used to gag his mouth. And, ending with the one around his ankles. Letting him dangle upside-down, from the latter, like a side of beef in a butcher shop!
She laughed as he tried to protest this. Although, he failed (due to the blood rushing to his head).
A moment later, she removed that last bit of chain and threw him in the birdcage with me. She then put the cage on the top shelf of her closet.
"Sorry, guys. I have to go to another class. But, don't worry! You can use this quality time to get reacquainted!!"
She laughed again, before shutting us both in darkness. But, at least it wasn't total darkness. There was just enough ambient sunlight coming through the wooden slats of the closet door that I could make out Ted slowly sitting up. His back to the cage bars while he wiped his bleeding mouth off with his left hand.
"So!" I began: "Fancy meeting you here."
Ted looked me at me for a second, like I had lost my mind or something. Then, he grinned...before laughing his head off, altogether! The kind of laughter that relieves all of one's pent-up fears and tensions.
"Forgive me, tovarisch," he finally managed to say: "I have missed your sardonic wit."
"I think you mean 'sarcastic.' But, thanks just the same. It's always nice to be appreciated by one's peers," I replied: "So, tell me something. I get why she did what she did to me. To keep me from finding out about you, on my terms. But, why shrink you, in the first place? I mean; thanks to her magic potion, she's gotten what most people spend their whole lives vainly wishing for! A second chance to make their dreams come true. So, why risk blowing all that over a forty-year old grudge?"
Now, he looked at me as if I'd grown a second head.
"How...?"
I shrugged: "Now, that I've accepted the fact I'm not imagining things, my brain is back to normal. And, it tells me that she could easily have kept her mouth shut. That is; she could have passed off her 'resemblance' to Svetty as meaningless coincidence. So, I repeat: why didn't she? The only answer that makes any sense is that she's still super-pissed at you for defecting, back in '68. And, for not taking her with you!"
Ted shook his head in mild amazement: "You are half-right, tovarisch. She was still angry with me. Although, not for the reasons you hypothesize! My weight-lifting coach, in 1968, was a Slovak named Milan Sokolnik. Twenty years earlier, he attended London Olympics as sparring partner for welter-weight boxer--and fellow Slovak--Julius Torma. That is the same Olympics in which Gymnastic Federation President Marie Provaznikova (also from Czechoslovakia) defected to the West. In protest of former's post-WWII Communist government."
"Milan went on to become assistant boxing coach for both Anatoly Porov and Lev Mukhin; assistant wrestling coach for Bohumil Kubat; and assistant weight-trainer for Yuri Vlasov.* Of those four Olympians, three earned medals for the Soviet Union. The same Soviet Union that invaded Milan's homeland in the summer of 1968!"
"When he told me that he was going to defect in protest, I impulsively told him that I would go with him. You see, he was like second father to me! And, when he found he could not dissuade me, he wearily smiled and agreed. So, the night before I was to first compete, we did not report back to our dormitory for curfew. Instead, we went to the American embassy in Mexico City and requested political asylum."
What happened next, you already know. But, what I didn't know was what Courtney/Svetlana, herself, had told Ted following his shrinkage and capture.
"Her mother died, in Siberia. From pneumonia. Her father soon followed; from suicide. That is why she has risked self-exposure, tovarisch. In her eyes, I as good as murdered her parents."
tbc
Giantess World
Author's Chapter Notes:
More facts come to light.
Chapter End Notes:
* Anatoly Porov: light-heavyweight boxing medalist (USSR); 1952 Summer Olympics.
Lev Mukhin: heavyweight boxing medalist (USSR); 1956 Summer Olympics.
Bohumil Kubat: heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestling medalist (Cze.); 1960 Summer Olympics.
Yuri Vlasov: weight-lifting medalist/hwt-class (USSR); 1964 Summer Olympics.
Lev Mukhin: heavyweight boxing medalist (USSR); 1956 Summer Olympics.
Bohumil Kubat: heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestling medalist (Cze.); 1960 Summer Olympics.
Yuri Vlasov: weight-lifting medalist/hwt-class (USSR); 1964 Summer Olympics.