“You’d never been through the giant portal. I mean: you haven’t, have you?” asked Trudi.

“No. I didn’t even know about it,” said Daniel.

“I’ve never shrunken, and I didn’t think you’d ever been through the portal to giant land. So I really thought that we’d both be find to make the trip and come out at this end both normal sized,” said Trudi.

“Well I’m no scientist, but in my own poetic language, I like to know all the variables, before I try any experiments,” said Daniel.

“I’m really sorry. It just slipped my mind,” said Trudi.

“So how on earth did this ... Murray get his full size back?” asked Daniel.

“He didn’t. And he could only make one more short backjaunt after he’d gotten back to 24 year old me too,” said Trudi.

“Then where is he now? Roaming the streets of the village, passing himself off as an action figure?” asked Daniel.

“The night I met you, I lay awake in bed, trying to come up with all sorts of theories of what would happen to him if I came this far back in time with you, to a point long before Murray and I ever met,” said Trudi, “He might have gone into the giant land again. He might have avoided it, except that I figured that if he never met me, then he’d have discovered the giant land by himself, without the me of several timelines ago. If he went to the giant land by himself, got caught by a giantess and caged as a pet for two years, then he’d have eventually time travelled back two years to get to the Ireland side of the portal, only to find himself shrunken to tiny size in Ireland. That was my theory, but if the portal has nothing to do with the shrinking side effect, as your presence would seem to indicate, then maybe Murray would just get back to Ireland at normal size about 22 to 24 years from now.”

“Okay, but so what happened to him in the timeline when he came all the way back to when you were 24?” asked Daniel.

“I was getting around to telling you that. I put him in a pavlova with strawberries and set it down on the dining table,” said Trudi.

“How could he have eaten all that?” asked Daniel.

“He couldn’t, and he didn’t. I emptied the bowl myself, using a spoon for proper dining etiquette,” she said.

“It seems a bit pointless to have made him and his clothes all sticky in the first place. You would have had a time cleaning him up afterwards,” said Daniel.

“I didn’t need to, and it wasn’t pointless. I ate EVERYTHING in the bowl. The pavlova wasn’t the tastiest part. Neither were the strawberries,” said Trudi.

“So what other toppings did you put on it?” asked Daniel.

“None,” said Trudi.
“You’re making as much sense as you have by not warning me about the possiblility of accidentally shrinking myself,” said Daniel, “If all you had in the bowl was pavlova and strawberries, then what else could have been the tastiest part?”

“Him,” said Trudi.