As I lied down beneath Emily’s giant toes I seriously began to rethink my life.

Allow me to catch you up on what happened that morning. The girls woke me up by shaking my Cave to simulate an earthquake. I wasn’t scared, but I did fall out of bed and they assumed my scream of surprise was one of fear. I guess that’s better than them finding out I fell out of bed . . . not really, no. So, after waking up and having a delicious pancake breakfast, everyone except Tara said their goodbyes to me and left. Tara stuck around because Emily and her were going to work that afternoon. I took this as an opportunity to explore the entire basement with Joseph that day . . . Emily and Tara had other plans.

“No,” I said frankly.

“Yes,” Tara replied.

“Not going to happen.”

Emily sighed. “Look Peter, if you want to figure out exactly what happened to you, then there’s no better place to start than a book store.”

I put on a sarcastic voice. “Great idea Emily. I’ll just walk over to the bookstore, walk right up to one of the computers, search for a book on shrinking people, then check it out and take it back here to read in my cave.” I fixed her a level look.

“We can do that for you. Besides we think it’s time you get out of the house again. It’s almost been a week since the last time you went anywhere.” Tara asserted.

But I shook my head. “I think you two are overreacting. I don’t need to go anywhere, ok?”

Emily stood up and looked down on me from where I stood and the coffee table with her arms crossed. “Is that anyway to speak to two giantesses such as us?”

I looked up at her and held up a hand to her, not really feeling afraid though. “Now Emily listen-”

“I don’t think so,” she said, cutting me off. “I don’t think I like this attitude of yours. In fact . . .” A slow smile began to creep across her face. “ . . . I think you need a time out.”

And that’s how I found myself pinned down against her sandal beneath the toes of her right foot. The good news about this was that, because it was her toes I was under, I didn’t feel any pressure from her foot bearing down on me. The bad news was that I couldn’t wiggle my way out from under them. The good news was that I was lying beneath the toes of a freaking giantess! Her feet smelled like fresh lotion and her skin was as soft as silk. Emily was enjoying this just as much as I was, which made me feel good. She even called down to me during the car ride to the bookstore, she was in the passenger seat of course.

“How’re you doing down there Pete?” she asked.

I looked up at the crack of light coming from between two of her toes. “I’m surviving.” I called back.

It might have sounded a bit muffled but she heard me all the same. “Admit it, you like being there.”

“What’s your point?”

I heard her smirk. “I’m not feeling any kisses on my toes.”

“You’re just lucky I’m not biting any of them,” I replied. But then I propped myself up on my elbows and gave one of her toes a few kisses. In response her toes lifted up a bit and spread wide, she was flexing them. I fell back down on my back as I gazed up at them in wonder. I was struck completely dumbfounded by how amazing a sight it was. Emily’s toes, some of the smallest parts of her body, were as big as boulders to me. And yet all she was doing was stretching her toes out a little, a task so mundane and simple she probably didn’t even notice the meager portion of effort moving her toes required. There was no doubt in my mind that she could crush me right where I laid without any effort. It was a beautiful display of power yet Emily was completely unaware of it. For all of their games I could tell Emily and Tara only did this because they thought it was fun, and they knew I was really into it. They did this for me as much as themselves, not because they enjoyed feeling dominant and making me feel insignificant. It was a strange truth, even as I laid down beneath their feet I could trust these girls with my life.

Emily’s voice carried down from the heavens beyond my vision. “Mmmmmm, that feels really good. Do it again.”

So I smiled and began to kiss her toes again.

*****

Even though I was here for research Emily and Tara still had to work for a few hours. Once they were done we’d spend some time looking through books. Emily insisted I remain under her toes despite my please that I wanted to explore. I guess she enjoyed my kisses more than I thought. So I remained there while Emily worked the register, I didn’t have anyway of telling how much time had passed. Whenever I asked her if I could walk around she would just tilt her foot up so that I slid up against the ball of her foot.

After what I guess to be an hour I had an idea. I waited until Emily said “Hi” indicating she was with a customer. It took a few minutes because it was a slow day today. Once a customer did come up to pay for something I reached over towards the ball of her foot and began to run my fingers over her skin.

I heard her snicker from up above. I increased the speed of my tickling and she went from snickering to laughing. I grinned as I tried to picture the customers face.

“Is there something you find funny?” asked the voice of a man somewhere in his middle years.

Her laughter ceased instantly. “No no! Sorry!”

As she said this Emily lifted her foot a few inches above the ground and then stomped it back down. Because it was such a tight space under her toes I didn’t hit anything too hard, but my bells were quite literally rung.

“Sorry about that,” came Emily’s voice again. “I was just remembering a joke my friend told me and I couldn’t help myself.”

With some effort I shook my head clear, I’d taken worse hits than that in wrestling. Plus I had been through so much in the past two weeks I wasn’t about to let one little tremor stop me. I went straight back to tickling her foot, even faster than before. This time Emily tried to stop herself from laughing, which only made it worse. Seriously, have you ever heard a girl try and hold in her laugh? Not only does the sound manage to leak out, but it doesn’t even sound like laughter anymore. It sounds like the call of some animal we haven’t even discovered yet. Just listening to it made me want to laugh. Somehow Emily managed to check the customer out and he probably left with the strangest look on his face.

“Thank you and have a nice day,” Emily called out to him. Then she turned her attention to me. She lifted her toes up then tilted her foot forward so fast I fell right off of her sandal and onto the linoleum floor. When I looked up I flashed her an innocent smile, she just scowled.

“Fine, you can go take a walk around for a bit. Just be back here by five, that’s when I get off.” she said. “And I swear to God Peter, if you get caught and I have to save your ass I’ll drop you in a mug of water and stick a big ice cube inside.”

The image itself was enough to make me break out in goose bumps, but I refrained from shivering. “I know how to be careful now. I can handle myself without being seen.” I assured her.

She just nodded. “I’m still going to get you back for tickling me.”

Like I said before, it was a slow day at Barnes & Noble so I didn’t have to worry too much about someone seeing me. But that doesn’t mean I completely let my guard down, quite the opposite in fact. I had brought my knife with me since it would have hurt like hell to carry around my staff and lay on it with I was under Emily’s toes. I held the knife in my hands like I was expecting to use it while I walked along side the bookshelf, keeping my shoulder right against the shelf the whole time. Why did I do this you may ask? Well, they say boys never really grow up, they just grow bigger. I’m nineteen years old but still this was like a real life movie for me. I was the shrunken protagonist trying to fend for himself in a gigantic world. Using nothing but stealth and weapons to avoid detection and fend off insects. Even though that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing since day one I never really considered myself a superhero or anything. But now I was walking along slowly like a character from Assassin’s Creed or something.

The good thing about the shelves were that they each struck out about two inches. This meant that I could crawl right underneath and hide there. I actually had to do that a few times in order to hide from people, no one ever saw me though. Once they passed I went right back to exploring. After a while I heard my name being whispered.

“Peter . . . Peter?”

That was Tara’s voice. I looked up at the wall and saw that it was 5:30pm. I’m late for meeting up with her and Emily, oops. I turned towards my left, which was where Tara’s voice had come from.

“Tara,” I called out. “I’m over in the mystery section.”

My voice seemed to echo a bit as I froze at the sound of it. Then, very slowly, I turned around and my heart turned to water. At the other end of the aisle was a man somewhere in his late 20’s. He looked tall, even from my perspective, with short brownish hair and some scruff of beard on his face. He was also standing less than ten regular sized steps from where I was. Instincts told me to run under the shelf again. But the last time I did that Emily’s mom saw me moving and mistook me for a bug. I’d have to move slowly. The thing is, as I was moving away I noticed the guy never even glanced up when I called out to Tara.

According to the girls my voice sounds just like it did when I was normal sized, hell they were even able to hear my guitar clearly. I actually heard my voice echo a bit after I yelled, so why didn’t he look up? You’d think a guy who just heard a noise come out of thin air would be a little curious. He wasn’t even reading anything, he was looking at the covers on the shelves.

Before I could ponder it anymore I felt the vibrations from Tara’s steps signaling her approach. Just as she appeared in the aisle she froze as soon as she noticed the guy there. I waved my arms as I jumped up and down.

“Tara!” I whispered fiercely. “Down here!”

She spotted me and relaxed visibly before looking back to the man.

“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “I think he’s deaf.”

Tara gave the guy once last glance before bending down, looking at the books as if she was selecting one, and she grasped my delicately in her massive hand. I couldn’t really see anything through her fingers until she let her hand down on top of a table and opened her fingers up. As I stepped out I saw that we were in some corner of the store, Emily sat across from Tara. A small pile of books formed a wall that sheltered me from view. The spines were facing me and I saw they were all about mythology. Greek, Norse, Celtic, along with Chinese, and Native American. Each one was filled with old legends about each mythology.

“Why these books?” I asked.

“Well at first choosing to focus on magic as an explanation was just a guess on our part. But . . . but now I’m certain it was the right guess.” Tara explained.

I looked up at her questioningly. “Why’s that?”

She hesitated for a bit. “Peter, that guy who didn’t hear you yell? I served him coffee in the cafe a half hour ago. He’s not deaf.”