USA, 35 years ago…

After six months of dating, Jared Leslie proposed marriage to Dianne Archer. Six months later, they were married, and Dianne resigned from her position in the store. She would often still come into the city to have lunch or dinner with her younger husband, but neither of them wanted her to continue working.

The views of the city at night remained as romantic to the young couple as they had been on the night of their first dinner date.

Jared remembered their first lunch date in Central Park too. When Winter came around, he purchased ice skates for both of them from the store where Dianne had formerly worked, and they spent the early half of an evening on the ice, skating around.

“This is wonderful,” said Dianne, “I feel like a teenager in love.”

“I AM a teenager in love,” said Jared.

“How lucky for me,” said Dianne, remembering that he was still in that age bracket for one more year, “Can you go backwards?”

“Skating?”

“Yes.”

“I might fall over.”

“Just try slowly. I’ll show you.”

She demonstrated the foot movements, and explained how best to slightly bend his knees, so that they would not lock up in a perfectly straight position and cause him to lose balance.

“It feels a bit awkward,” said Jared.

“I’ll hold you and go forwards,” said Dianne.

She put her hands on his shoulders, which felt nice. He had looked after her in so many ways, and now she had the chance to keep him safe.

Jared edged slowly backwards, and could not seem to get up much speed in that direction, but enjoyed the proximity to his lovely wife on the ice.

After a few attempts to go a little faster, they went back to holding hands and skated around in a clockwise direction. Something about the beauty of the scene reminded him of things that he had seen in reruns of cartoons that were made long before he was born. Yet this was his reality now. Jared enjoyed it more than ever.

They had talked a number of times since then, about the day that they had first met. Dianne had been more open about the way that she had initiated their courtship, and this made Jared cherish her all the more. She could have gone on to marry the boys she had dated in high school, or the men she had dated since, but he had been the elusive quality of true love that she had been waiting for all that time.

England, present day…

Tarquin enjoyed the book so much, that he could hardly wait to talk about it with Leanne the next time he visited her.

“How would you like to meet him?” asked Leanne.

“In Australia?”

“Yes. I’ve been in contact with him, and his wife. As far as we know, they’re the only other couple who reciprocate each other’s fantasy. I can buy the tickets for whenever you can make the trip.”

Tarquin was very keen on it, and promised to go with her during the next school holiday break. They flew to Sydney and met Howie Kenville and his wife Corinne. They were able to stay for a few days at the Kenvilles’ home in the suburbs of Sydney.

“What could have caused just the four of us to have these impossible longings?” asked Tarquin.

“I don’t think that they are impossible,” said Corinne, “We just haven’t discovered how to make them possible yet. As for what causes it, I don’t know.”

“Maybe it’s already been possible, just not in any way we can prove,” said Howie.

“So who was based on Corinne, if anyone?” asked Leanne.

“Undoubtedly Lisa,” said Howie, “Though there were elements of the few I confided in unsuccessfully, that were worked into the personalities of Joanne and Rosemary.”

“So what did you mean by the idea that it might be possible but unproven?” asked Tarquin.

“It won’t make much sense, unless you end up finding out for yourself,” said Howie.

It was the above portion of the most significant of several conversations between the four of them, which remained in Tarquin’s mind forever afterwards. However, the visit to Australia came to an end, and he had still not understood what Howie and Corinne were driving at.

One day, Leanne woke up to find herself in an unfamiliar bedroom. She walked through an unfamiliar house and stepped out into an unfamiliar garden, which had many trees and flowers. The sky seemed extremely overcast, but there was not a drop of rain either falling from the clouds or resting on the plant life. She stepped slowly out onto the lawn and walked across.

As she drew near the flower bed, Leanne saw something which simply took her breath away.

There was a tiny boy looking up at her from the garden! She stepped closer and leaned down to get a closer look at him, and lowered her hand to make a grab for him. Then, all of a sudden, she found herself lying in her bed again.

The next time Tarquin came over, she told him the whole story, and he then shared an experience of his own. He had awoken on the same night that she had dated her own experience, and found himself out in a giant garden in the daytime, although on a very overcast day. He had walked for a while, until he had seen a gigantic Leanne Commons staring down at him. Just as she had leaned over and reached down, he had somehow been returned to his bedroom, and it had once again been the middle of the night.

“Your experience was your own point of view of the very same thing that happened to me,” said Leanne, “I couldn’t tell for certain that it was you. I just hoped it was. In another few seconds, I’d have caught you.”

“I might have backed away in time,” said Tarquin.

“I saw and felt everything,” said Leanne, “There’s no way that it could have been a dream. Yet it was too ethereal and temporary to be the kind of regular reality we’re used to. So it must have been something in between.”

“Could this be the possible but unproven experience that Howie and Corinne were alluding to?” asked Tarquin.

“I don’t know. You were shrunken, like Wally was in ‘Love and the Shrinking Male’, but we don’t know how.”

“I thought that you were a giantess, like Mrs Waye in your story.”

“But I never grew. I just walked out of the house and there you were.”

“I never shrank. I just found myself in a giant garden, and there YOU were.”

“I suppose we can’t say whether that was a giant house and garden, with my having been a giantess, or whether it was a normal sized house with you having been tiny.”

“No, we sure can’t. Neither of us recognised that house and garden.”

“Maybe we’ll go back there.”

That night they snuggled up together in bed, cuddling and kissing each other, until they dozed off to sleep. Tarquin awoke after a few hours, and found himself in the same giant garden again. He heard running footsteps coming from the house.

“It’s happening again,” thought Tarquin, “Only this time Leanne’s running.”

He backed into the garden and hid himself, and then wondered why he had done that. Had he not waited and wanted to be eaten by her for so long? Yet some instinct had made him duck back and hide. He saw Leanne come out and run towards the garden, and look down.

“I’ll find you,” she said, and began searching the garden.

Then, before he knew it, he was back in the bed, awake. So was Leanne.

“Did you go back there again too?” he asked.

“Yes. Were you hiding this time?”

“I was.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think I do. As much as you fantasize about the motions of being eaten, you still had the average boy’s innate self preservation tendency, when faced with a literal realisation of your dream.”

“If that’s it, I can get past it,” said Tarquin.

“You’ll need to,” said Leanne, “If we keep going back there, I’ll catch you in the end.”

A few nights later, he was at home again, when they had the same experience. This time Leanne caught him. He could actually feel her lovely fingers holding him. It was not a dream at all. She lifted him towards her mouth, and he saw her gigantic tongue extending in front of him.

Just before her tongue could touch him, he was back in bed.

His next telephone call to Leanne would confirm that she had had the reciprocal experience, but Tarquin knew that it would not be necessary. He had come that close to touching her tongue. If only the experience had gone on just a little bit longer, he would have been able to feel her moist gigantic taste organ sliding over his face, without being swallowed, if the experience ended before that could happen.

He began daydreaming of it recurring as far as taking him halfway down her throat and then ending. He would be happy for that to happen over and over again.

Before he actually met up with Leanne again, he had the experience again. This time she caught him and put out her tongue and licked him! He felt it! It had to be real! He could not explain what brought the experience to an end each time, but he could feel her tongue licking him.

They talked about it the next time he called her, and she claimed that she could taste him on her tongue at the time it had happened too.

The whole thing happened one more time, during which Leanne put him into her mouth. He lay on her tongue and waited to be gulped down, but the experience ended before she could do it.

From then on they had that experience again and again, and wondered what to make of it.

“We could try to vary it,” said Leanne, “You could run different ways in the garden to make the chase less predictable. I could come out of the house from a different door each time and approach the garden from a different direction. That way we’d surprise each other more and draw it out.”

“And you could take me to the kitchen before putting me in your mouth, if you get the time to cook me first,” said Tarquin.

“I’d love to,” said Leanne.

So it went on and on.