Tai reeled, his body automatically trying to windmill his arms to counteract the feeling of falling backward. If it helped, he couldn't tell the difference. Actually, moving his arms like that was pretty uncomfortable, as they felt stiff and unresponsive. The world exploded around him, everything stretching and blooming in shades of green, white and blue. The sky seemed to shrink, chased away by rapidly growing white walls, and after a moment they too were chased away by an all-encompassing darkness. The last thing he saw was the azalea bushes through an oblong hole in the darknes, before the hole zoomed off behind him, becoming a tiny slit and finally disappearing.

It all happened so fast that he couldn't make sense of it. The old woman had clearly done something with her weird stick, something to him, but he was at a loss as to what it was. He tried to stand up to get a better look at his surroundings, but found that his body seemed heavy, difficult to maneuver. Tai stretched out his arms, then placed them against the ground and pushed with all his might. He felt himself coming upright. Bracing his knees, he tried to stand, but immediately toppled over backwards.

What is UP with this place? he wondered, flipping over onto his stomach with much less difficulty. What did that crazy old bat do to me?

Suddenly, Tai felt himself lifted upright, but not under his own power. In fact, he lifted right off the ground. It was too dark for him to tell what was happening, but the rising-in-a-elevator feeling in his gut told him that he was still ascending. After just a second, he felt resistance above him, as if someone had thrown a sheet of canvas over his head. Tai still had no idea what was going on, and this latest development did nothing to reassure him.

Before he had a chance to start thinkinging about what was happening, he stopped in mid-air and started shaking violently about. A moment later, the world exploded into color again, the darkness falling away. Tai tried to shield his eyes against the sudden brightness, but found that his hands weren't nearly large enough.

"AhaHA, there you are!" a voice boomed overhead. Tai looked up, and found himself staring at a large dead tree, floating in the air before him. "Nearly lost ya in the folds of that ghastly black shirt. Why do kids these days wear so much black, anyway? Ya goin' to a funeral or somethin', boy?"

Tai gaped. Holding what he had taken for a tree was the old woman, her torso extending thousands of feet above him. The closest he had ever come to seeing something so enormous was hanging his head off the side of a bench upside-down, imagining the vast green expanse of his grandparents' farmland as a mammoth tennis ball. He was overcome with an extreme sense of vertigo, which wasn't the least bit helped by the fact that he was still rising.

With a delicate twitch of her wand, the old woman brought Tai up to eye level, squinting to examine him. "Hmm... Yes, that's not half bad. Still kinda... Person-colored, I s'pose, but it's pretty good for the first tranformation spell I've cast in over a year."

She raised an eyebrow, bringing him within an inch of her eye. "Oh, don't you get uppity with me, magic is a tricky thing, boy. Boy? I guess you ain't a boy now, huh. DON'T YOU GET UPPITY WITH ME, ANT!" She whipped her arm about, swinging him through the air. "Ant... Boy... Ant-boy! Er... Boy-ant? ...Bouyant?" The old woman paused, apparently wondering if there was a joke in there somewhere, before shrugging it off. She brought Tai up to her face again.

"Kid, you gotta respect all creatures, large and small. Even if they look like, ah... Like burnt-up little match heads, they're still alive, y'know?" She stooped to scoop up his clothing, which was lying in a pile where he had been standing. "So, I'm leavin' ya here for a few days, to get some hands-on time with being the downtrodden. Or the trodden upon, if you're unlucky."

The old woman turned to face him again, tucking his clothes under one arm. "Now," she said, but stopped, having to cast about a moment to find where he was suspended in the air. "Ah, there you are. Now, this shouldn't kill you... I mean, it might, if yer stupid enough to wander into a spider's web or somesuch... but ants, they can handle a lot. Try to look at this like a... a learning experience, see? And, well, learn from it. I'll come back for ya in a few days."

With a curt nod, she turned and started walking away. Halfway across the front lawn, she paused, looking back. She stared at the area she had left him for a few moments, then, deciding his precise location didn't matter, spoke to the area in general. "And in the future, don't argue with a witch!" She nodded again, turned on her heel, and flicked her wand as she strode away.

Tai felt himself falling again, but this time he knew why... and this time, it was real.