USA, 32 years ago…

Dianne was now 27 years old. For over two years, the couple had been trying to have children, and had been unsuccessful. Dianne finally applied for a series of tests by her doctors, and learned that she was not able to have children.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” said Jared, “We could have kept on trying, but we can still adopt someone eventually. It doesn’t have to be straight away. Maybe we need more time for ourselves anyway.”

“My sister Mary’s 36. She had a daughter the year before we met. Mary’s about to go back to teaching in an infant and elementary boys school, now that her daughter has started school.”

“Didn’t she want to be at her daughter’s school?”

“I think she did, but it was fully staffed. The boys school had a vacancy to be filled,” said Dianne, “It seems I am neither working nor having a baby.”

“Do you miss work?”

“No, not really. It was just an observation,” said Dianne.

Mrs Mary Parkin had spent most of the first year of her daughter’s schooling as a stay at home mother, and then returned to teaching towards the end of the second year. Dianne almost wished that she’d done a teaching course as well. At least being a teacher would have put her in the company of children during her working hours then.

Dianne and Jared began visiting the Parkins more often, so that Dianne could spend time with her niece. Mary encouraged double dating between the couples too, for the same reason.

England, present day…

Months and months went by, and Leanne and Tarquin continued to enjoy the unexplained unproven manifestation of their longings, with the limitation that Tarquin was never gulped into her throat, which he would have preferred, nor swallowed down to her stomach, which she would have preferred.

One day, Tarquin and Leanne returned to Australia and told Howie and Corinne of their experiences.

“We can’t explain it either, but it’s what happened to us,” said Howie.

“There is one other couple who might have been able to shed some light on it, except that they were never really a couple,” said Corinne, “I found a story which was serialized in a recent science fiction magazine by a middle aged widow named Christine Long. She was actually widowed at 29, became a school teacher, had a number of boyfriends, but never remarried. She wrote a story which seems to follow the pattern of experiences that you have had, except that the venues changed. There’s one other startling thing I uncovered when I researched the author.”

“This will blow you away when she tells you,” said Howie.

“I can’t wait,” said Leanne.

“Christine Long used her real name in the story. My research shows that, from the age of 30 to 31, she had a student who had the same age and name of the boy in her story,” said Corinne.

“That’s not so surprising,” said Leanne, “She probably based it on her dreams or experiences and chose not to change the names.”

“Here’s what’s extraordinairy,” said Corinne, “A month before Christine wrote and published the first chapter of the story, the boy disappeared from society without an explanation. Nobody in Sydney knows what happened to him. The story has circulated in such rarefied circles, that nobody has made the connection between the missing boy and the experiences of the boy in Christine Long’s story.

“How can we get hold of this story?” asked Tarquin, keener than ever to read it.

“You’d have to collect a run of rare issues of limited publication,” said Howie, “We’d be happy to lend them to you.”

“I wouldn’t want to risk anything happening to them,” said Leanne.

“Why don’t we all go to the library, and photocopy just the pages from each issue which contain Christine Long’s story, and then hole punch them and put them in a cardboard folder?” asked Tarquin.

The others agreed, and the quartet had soon prepared a booklet with the entire collection. As they had only copied a small percentage of each issue, the copyright regulations were not against them. Apart from that, they recognised that copyright was designed to protect the sales income of the authors’ works, as Leanne and Howie well knew. As they were unable to locate any more copies currently on sale, they considered that there was no intellectual property theft performed by duplicating the only accessible copy of the magazines held by the Kenvilles.

Tarquin enjoyed the story the moment that they were back at Leanne’s house. He and Leanne would take turns to read it, while the other was working on draft ideas for continuing their own story about Mrs Waye and the other giantesses. Christine Long’s tale went as follows:

Timothy Scribener got onto the specially hired bus after lunch. He was in 6th class in prep school, during the first term. The school hired busses to take the students to the large sports grounds owned by the school a few kilometres away. There were several fields for games of sport at the grounds. One of the teachers on the bus was Mrs Christine Long. She had graduated from a teachers college, with a diploma of teaching, over a decade earlier, at the age of 20, taught elsewhere for ten years, and had started teaching at his school at the age of 30, when he had been 9 ½  years old. Now he was due to turn 11 during the year of 6th class, and Mrs Long was due to turn 31. She had married at 21, had her son at 23 and her daughter at 29.

After school, Timothy decided to explore the outer boundaries of the playing fields. The field furthest to the back had a descending grass slope behind it, which led to a small nature reserve. He could see beyond it to the public field beyond. He went down the hill and into the nature reserve and started walking.

To his surprise, he suddenly found himself shrinking, and stopped at a height of less than two inches. Now the trees of the nature reserve seemed gigantic. He decided to head back towards the school playing fields, rather than get lost in the reserve.

When he reached the base of the grassy slope, which led up to the fields, he was relieved to be back on the school’s premises. If anyone had found him in the nature reserve, he might have been captured by strangers. The grassy slope was around 8 meters of fairly steep walking, to a normal sized person. He started up.

He was only a little way up, when he looked up and saw Mrs Long come into view at the top of the slope. She stopped and looked out at the nature reserve, using her hand to shield her eyes from the sun.

“Thank goodness she’s still here,” thought Timothy, “It’s well after 3pm now. If she just looks down, she’ll see me and be able to help me.”

Then he saw her head tilting downwards a bit. Mrs Long saw him and started briskly walking down the hill. She stopped just in front of him and towered like a giantess.

“Just what do you think you’re doing here, little creature!” she roared, while unzipping her handbag, “I don’t know where you came from, but this property belongs to a private school, and I am Christine Long, one of the teachers. You’re not supposed to be on this land, and you can think about that, while you’re sliding down my throat! Maybe you’ll be sorry for what you’ve done, when you’re getting settled in my stomach! I’m going to eat you for my afternoon tea.”

Timothy had still been recovering from the shock of his unexplained shrinking spree. Now he was going to be eaten by the person he’d hoped would help him. Mrs Long picked him up and put him into her handbag. He saw her hand withdrawing, and then she zipped her handbag up again, leaving him in darkness, while she began walking. He felt himself moving downwards with every step she took, and then on level ground.

“Mrs Long must have been headed for the nature reserve too. Then she saw me and stopped. She’s on her way there again now,” thought Timothy.

“Timothy! Are you in there?” he heard her call.

“She came looking for me!” he thought, “She must have noticed that I didn’t return to the change rooms with the other boys.”

She walked for a while, occasionally calling his name, and then seemed to be going back up the hill. After a few more minutes, he saw the handbag open above him, and could see that she seemed to be sitting under a tree at the border of two playing fields. Mrs Long’s fingers closed around him and lifted him out of the bag and up in front of her face. She tilted her head back and lifted  him a little more, so that he was held only inches from her mouth. Then she lowered him towards her mouth, as he saw her large tongue come out to receive him. It was a slippery pathway towards her throat. Once he entered her mouth, he would not be able to do anything to stop her from sliding him into her throat and gulping him down.

Her tongue made contact with him, and he felt her fingers preparing to slide him into her mouth. He quickly turned his head to the side, so that his mouth was free to speak.

“Mrs Long! Stop and talk to me! It’s me, Timothy Scribener, shrunken!” he called.

By now he was halfway into her mouth. Mrs Long slid him out again and stared closely at him, squinting with her eyes, to make out his tiny facial features.

“So it is!” she said, “How did you manage to do that?”

“I don’t know. It just happened in that nature reserve.”

“I wondered where you’d gotten to, when school sport finished for the day. It looks like I’ve found you after all.”

“Thank goodness you know it’s me now,” he said, “I need you to help me find out what happened and how to reverse it.”

“I can’t do that now, Timothy. Ever since I found you, I’ve been looking forward to having you for afternoon tea.”

“But you can’t do that, now that you know I’m one of the students! I’ve every right to be on this land.”

“I’m not saying you don’t, but you’re very tiny now, Timothy, and I’ve caught you. All the other teachers and students have gone home. There’s nobody here to see us. I’m sorry I didn’t realise it was you before, but I’ll have to say goodbye now. I’m not going to pass up a treat like this.”

“Couldn’t you just put me in your mouth, eat me a little bit, and then let me out again?”

“No Timothy. I’m going to gulp you down to my tummy.”

“You’re an awful cruel teacher!” he called, as his panic drove him on.

“The other students don’t seem to think so,” said Mrs Long.

“You’re not eating them,” said Timothy.

“I’m not going to sit here arguing with you, Timothy. Your time is up. Goodbye,” said Mrs Long, and opened her mouth wide just below him again and slid him into it.

He was facing the back of her mouth, as he felt her fingers releasing their grip on him. Then her mouth went completely dark. She had closed her mouth, which meant that he was trapped inside it, with no way to force it open again at his helpless size. Then her tongue moved under him, and he felt himself sliding towards her throat. He desperately tried to wrap his arms around her tongue to keep from moving, but it was hopeless. He slid into her throat, and …