Madison was arguing. Her face was flush red with anger, scolding Matron Marian and the other giantesses around her. I was in her hand, suffocating slightly from Madison's uncharacteristically rough grip. I wanted her to know she was hurting me, but nothing I did seemed to rouse her from her anger.

“I knew this was a bad idea!” Madison shouted at the giant women who were taken aback by her sudden outburst. Those who were tending to her hurriedly backed away to a safer distance. Matron Marian and Claire looked on with a serious expression, but otherwise didn't move. Madison threw them a dirty look, and continued, “It took me four years to forget what this place was like, why I left. The North was never meant to-”

“Ah, Miss Madison,” Stephanie interjected. She had crept up behind Madison, tactfully avoiding her field of vision.

“What?!” Madison shot back in irritation.

“You may want to loosen your grip on Mister Eliot there,” Stephanie said calmly.

Madison looked at her hand, and saw that I was blue in the face, clawing futilely at her fingers to release me. I the world grew blurrier as Madison's stranglehold on me became too much for me to bear.

“Eliot!” Madison shrieked, releasing me as soon as she realized what she had done. I was halfway unconscious by this point, and just rolled onto Madison's palm lifelessly while only dimly aware of what was happening. I heard Madison muttering to herself in a scared whisper, cradling me as she knelt on the ground, “Oh no, oh no, oh no...”

“If I may, Miss Madison,” Stephanie interrupted again, “It just so happens one of my tiny charges is a doctor. I could bring him to her.”

Madison looked up to Stephanie, and said, “Then I'll take him there my-”

“No.”

Matron Marian was the one who spoke. She was seated with one leg crossed, leaning forward with her cheek resting in her hand. She maintained her serious face, looking down at Madison with stern eyes. It was hard to say if she was angry, but she was definitely out of her joyous mood.

“If there's one thing I can vouch for,” Marian continued, “It's that our care for the tiny folk is guaranteed. Stephanie shall bring Mister Eliot to seek medical aid.” Marian reached her hand out, clamping it on Madison's shoulder. With a single pull, she brought the giantess to her feet. “You, however, wish to express your dissent on our current arrangement. We will have our meeting now, Madison, and we'll not adjourn till we've come to an agreement.”

Madison looked at me with worry and fear, and looked back at Stephanie with doubt and distrust. Stephanie only smiled, stepping in front of Madison and holding up her wrist to Madison's eye. Around it was a thin golden colored chain with a little badge attached to its end. It was shaped like a golden footprint, with a building stamped in front of it. An urban giantess license.

“Don't worry, Miss Madison,” Stephanie said with pride, “I can take care of Mister Eliot.”

Madison bit her lip, looking down at me with a tender look of anxiety. Eventually, she passed me to Stephanie, and said, “Look after him for me.”

Stephanie smiled and caught me in her hands. I was still too worn out to move, but I managed to mouth the words, “...Maddie...”

“You'll be alright, Mister Eliot,” Stephanie reassured me as she walked out of the dining hall, “Tiffany's a good doctor, she'll have you fixed right up.”

“...Tiffany?” I vaguely recalled hearing that name before, but my head was swimming so fast that I couldn't conjure up enough strength to remember it. I just slumped over and continued lying motionless in Stephanie's palm. I hadn't noticed that despite the cold, I was sweating profusely, and my drenched clothes began absorbing the cold air outside. Inevitably, I let loose a sneeze, prompting Stephanie to inspect me.

“Oh dear,” Stephanie said, poking at my chest, “You'll catch a cold like this, Mister Eliot. I'll put you somewhere warmer.

I felt the world tilt up as Stephanie slid her hand down me, gently plucking me from her palm and held me like a ragdoll. Carefully, she opened up the small jacket she was wearing and lifted me inside, where a small, sewn pocket lay. She placed me inside, taking care to load me entirely into the pocket before letting go, and put her jacket back on. I was right underneath her breast now, in a little safe zone where there wasn't much swinging from her motion, but not close enough to her breast that I would run the risk of being squashed against it with any callous movement. It was dark, but the wooly texture of the red jacket quickly lulled me into a deep, warm slumber...

The next time I woke up, I felt my headache fading away from me. I got up and blinked, and saw that I was in a bright white room. A room proportional to my own size. I was in a clean white bed under thick blue blankets, with my clothes replaced by a tidy set of white pajamas. Hospital divider curtains were placed around my bed, so I could only see what was immediately beside me at the moment. There was a roof that reached up to no more than a floor up with a bright florescent light installed on it, and a bedside table made of oaken wood had whatever personal belongings I took with me on top of it.

It was a normal sized clinic it seemed. I got up and rubbed my head, trying to feel if my brain was still in one piece. I let out a groan when I felt some bruises along my body, prompting me to slump back down onto the bed.

Somebody must have heard me because I could hear a person coming toward me. It was strange, though. This person didn't have the natural tip tap, tip tap of footsteps, it was more like a tap then a click. Tap, click, tap, click. The footsteps drew closer, and the dividers were pushed aside. The person came into plain sight.

She was a gorgeous looking woman. Locks of auburn, curled hair fell across her fair face, dark green eyes rimmed with thick, long eyelashes stared brilliantly ahead of her. She had a plump pair of lips, but didn't put apply any lipstick to them, the natural pink complimenting her rosy cheeks. She wore a brown business dress under a white lab coat, typical attire for a doctor. But what got me was that she was leaning on a crutch, and where her right leg should have been, nothing came out under her dress. She hopped forward with one leg and moved her crutch forward toward me.

“How are you feeling, Mister Eliot?” The woman said with a smooth, silky tone.

“Urgh...” I said with a groan, “Everybody keeps calling me Mister. I'm still eighteen, just Eliot is fine.”

“Alright, Eliot,” The woman continued, “You're fine if you could talk like that. I'm Tiffany, the doctor of this clinic.”

I blinked. Everything was normal sized again. It's funny how quick I was to get used to things being so big in the North that I found it strange that everything was small again. Looking at Tiffany, I wondered why I found it weird to be within arms length of her and not have her fill my entire view.

“I'll just run some tests to make sure you're alright,” Tiffany said, pulling a stethoscope from her lab coat pocket, “Just sit up and roll up your shirt.”

As I tried to get up, the pain from my bruises returned. I winced and keeled over, hanging onto the rails of my bed. Tiffany pushed me back down onto the bed and rolled up my shirt for me. She touched the bruised area along my chest; five patches of dark blue which corresponded to where Madison held me. I flinched when her touch met my skin.

“Hrm,” Tiffany muttered under her breath ponderously, “This isn't like you at all, Maddie.”

“Maddie?” I repeated in surprise, “You know Madison?”

“Of course,” Tiffany said matter-of-a-factly as she plugged the stethoscope into her ears, “And I know about you too, Eliot. Now breath.”

I was left with a lot of questions, but I obeyed my doctor. I let in a breath of air and blew it out, almost as a sigh. Tiffany probed the stethoscope across my chest, listening to my heart beat, and seemed satisfied with what she heard.

“Okay, Eliot,” Tiffany said, picking up her crutch again, “Your body's in good shape, minus the bruises. I'll pick up some ointment for that, just lie down and wait.”

“Hey, um,” I called after Tiffany, “I gotta know, doc, how do you know who Madison and I are?”

Tiffany paused as she searched through a medicine cabinet, but continued after only a second of hesitation. She smiled, turning back with a yellow bottle in hand and propelled herself forward with her crutch.

“Firstly, about you,” Tiffany said, pulling out stool from near the table, “Stephanie told me all she knew about you. You're dating Madison, aren't you?”

I felt my cheeks flush. Even though it's pretty much public knowledge that I'm dating Madison at this point, I couldn't help but feel embarrassed every time somebody asked me. I looked away abashedly, and my reaction seemed to satisfy Tiffany.

“As for Madison...” Tiffany said, sitting down on the stool and applying the yellow ointment to a cotton cloth, “The last I've seen of her was four years ago.”

“Huh,” I said. I felt the cold, damp cloth swipe one of my bruised areas, stinging at first before building up to a small burning sensation. I gritted my teeth, letting the ointment settle into my skin. “Urk,” I complained, then looked back at the doctor, “Four years, huh?”

“Yeah,” Tiffany said, taking out a big roll of bandages from the table drawer, “I used to be from your town, even. Madison had just began living there, and I was her friend and guide of sorts then.”

Tiffany began wrapping me with the bandages, holding the cotton down onto the afflicted zone. “We were kindred spirits,” she said, with a hint of melancholy in her voice, “We used to go all around town, and I'd take her to some nice places that would fit her. She was still only had a bronze license, so she wasn't allowed to touch anything, but I remember she just liked following me around behind me.”

With a pull, the first bandage was secured around my chest, and Tiffany went to work on the other four. “She was just so excitable about our world. She loved how we managed to live our lives despite our tiny size, and was always curious about how everything in our world worked. Does she still have that dollhouse?”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“She said she wanted her own house, and decided to try and build one. An architect had to help her plan out the house and build some of the foundation for her, but a good portion of the house was built by her own hands. She placed and painted every painstaking plank, frame and window, and I helped her pick the furniture. It was our little dream house.”

“Oh,” I said, a sudden epiphany coming to me, “Inside the dollhouse was a guest book. One of the entries had your name in it, I think?”

“Yeah,” Tiffany said, her face suddenly glum, “That date in the book, that was the day I left her.”

I looked at Tiffany. She didn't say anything for a while, trying to focus on tying my second bandage. When she was done, she gave a sigh and continued, “I heard what happened in the dining hall. Madison's usually a gentle thing, but whenever it came to the topic of the North, she would change.”

A third bandage went around me, this time on my hip. “Has Madison ever told you why she went to live in the South?”

“She told me she was curious about, uh, us tinies,” I said.

Tiffany gave a muffled laugh, “That's how she'd put it, but she almost never tells anyone her second reason.”

This perked my interest now. Something Madison hasn't told me?

“The Madison I knew back then only disliked living in the North. Our kind weren't exactly treated well here, so Madison had ran off to the South as soon as she was able. When Madison confessed she had forsaken her home for a chance to live in ours, I tried to convince her to go back, that the North wasn't a bad place to be, either.”

Tiffany's face darkened, and she said in a hushed voice, “I may be responsible for what she's become now.”

The fourth bandage came around me, and Tiffany continued speaking, “Four years ago, unable to convince Madison that the North was not as bad a place as she made it out to be, I decided I had to prove to her otherwise. I moved to the North, where I was to learn to be a physician. I had heard there was a shortage of doctors in the North, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to show Madison that if I could live there, then there was no reason to dislike about the place. I tried to convince her one last time to follow me back to the North, but she refused. So here I am, a doctor for this Garden.”

I listened intently as the fifth and final bandage was applied to me.

“But things weren't as smooth as I hoped it would go. Adjusting to the new life was hard enough. Without being adopted by a giantess, we weren't allowed inside the Garden. Electricity was virtually nonexistent with nobody left to manage and maintain the power stations, and we were forced to live in the desolate remains of the old city here. The cold notwithstanding, we had to burn oil lamps and firewood for any sort of light and heat. Refrigeration was done the old way, placed in the ground with large blocks of ice. But supplies were probably our biggest concern. Without a stable provider for goods our size, we were pretty much perpetually in poverty. Did you know that giantesses almost never get sick? Their bodies are so big, no disease in the world could affect them long enough to have any sort of lasting effect. So for us doctors, medicine was almost non-existent here.”

“For the people who do get adopted, their daily necessities were pretty much handed to them by their mistress. That's why, despite the rather rough treatment here, people put up with the giantesses. Better to be living in the Garden than out. That's when I met Stephanie, who was busy trying to change that. We were fast to be friends, and I helped her to make the city around the Garden a better place to live. We went around town to hear the needs of the people, and Stephanie used her position as the North's liaison officer to procure goods for them to use.”

“All was going well, until...” Tiffany instinctively reached down to where her right leg should have been, “Until my accident. While delivering goods around town, I was too engrossed in a list I had made for each area's needs. The paper was blown out of my hands, and when I tried to grab it, I fell thirty feet to the ground. I was lucky that a thick layer of snow covered the land, but...”

Tiffany sighed, closing her eyes for a moment to calm herself. “Stephanie was too late to help me. I fell right in front of her, right into the path of her footfalls. She had managed to avoid most of my body at the last minute, but...” Tiffany touched her phantom leg, “I had to amputate my leg. They were low even on anesthetic, so they didn't give me enough. It's not a day I like to recall.”

“Jesus,” I said, wincing at the thought of being operated on awake.

“Madison got word of what happened,” Tiffany said, “At that point, her letters were nothing but demanding and pleading that I return South. She wrote back over and over, telling me it wasn't safe to stay here. But I continued to stay, despite this. Stephanie had adopted me as a way to apologize, and she's been very caring of me since. The North treated me well from then on, and I slowly found my place as a doctor inside here, too. I know I was making Madison unhappy, but I think I found something worth staying here for.”

“And what was that?” I asked.

Tiffany packed the leftover bandages into the drawer, and turned to give me a huge smile. “Just as Madison loved us tinies enough to live in the South,” Tiffany said, “I found myself loving the giantesses enough to live in the North. Despite their big, clumsy build, they're honestly trying to live with us. The South is content to simply ignore that giantesses exist at all, but only giantesses want us to coexist. Madison was the first one I met who wanted that, and Stephanie when I first came here. As I met more giantesses, I saw more and more that they were trying.”

Tiffany poked at one of my bandaged bruises, provoking me to yelp out in pain. “Some in their own ways,” Stephanie continued with a chuckle, “They're just big, giant softies who need to be taught how to properly engage with us.”

“Alright, Eliot,” Tiffany said, “Just rest up here, and Stephanie will be here to pick you up once the meeting's over. You'll be alright as long as you lie down for a while longer.”

I pulled my shirt back over myself and rolled back onto my pillow. “Say,” I said, “I get the feeling that you're telling me all this because you want me to convince Madison about the North being not so bad.”

“Hm, hm,” Tiffany said, picking up her crutch and standing up, “I thought if there was a person who could convince Madison to come back to the North, then he'd be able to convince her of that.”

“Yeah, well,” I said in protest, “Not when I'm bandaged up like this. I mean, she's probably going to say something like she accidentally hurt me because she was too angry about what the other giantesses did to me or some such. She wouldn't exactly be in the mood for forgiving.”

“I'll tell you a final little secret, then, that would surely convince her otherwise,” Tiffany said. She bent down and whispered into my ear, “Ask Madison about her dream.”