Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

My name is Rosa. As far as looks go, I’m pretty average. My hair is short, only to about my shoulders, and brown. My body has average proportions, though I must admit I have a nice butt. You could say I was completely normal. Except for my height. I’m a whopping 14 centimeters. That’s around five or six inches to Americans. Also Liberians and… people from Burma, whatever you call them. Burmans? I’m getting off-track. Various complications pre-birth resulted in this short stature, though I won’t get into that right now.

Today is my eighteenth birthday, and I’m excited because it means I can finally get out of this heckhole of an orphanage, pardon my language. I’ve spent the last nearly 18 years as nothing but a doll for the other kids, and I am plum sick of it. I’d long given up hope of being adopted due to my “unique disability”, and I don’t even care where I go. I just need away from here.

So I suppose you’re now caught up to the present, more or less. Here I am, wandering the streets, trying to avoid getting stepped on. Goodness, how I wish I’d made arrangements, or at least some sort of plan… But I can’t get hung up on hypotheticals. This is the now. All of this is happening, and I am in legitimate danger. A large blue heel stomps down right next to me and I’m frozen for a moment. It passes by an instant later but it felt like ages. The reality of the situation suddenly hits me all at once. I need to find shelter, or at least someone big to help me.

I try calling out to some of the people walking by on the sidewalk, but they all seem to either not hear me or ignore me. Oh well, they all seem to be in a hurry anyway, and I would hate to bother them or keep them from an important place. There’s a slight lull in foot traffic, no doubt caused by the crosswalk currently going in the other direction, and I use this as a chance to try to take shelter in one of the buildings on this street.

I walk right up to the front door of some sort of store or office. The sign is too high up for me to get a readable look from this angle. I try to push on the door, and nothing. I try to pull on the door, and I have significant trouble getting a grip.

“These doors were not designed for the vertically challenged…” I say to myself. I step off to the side to think over my next move, when a woman and a child, likely her daughter, come up to the door. The woman opens it with relative ease, making me realize just how small and weak I actually am. The door stopped mere inches, or rather millimeters, from my face, and after a half a second to process it, I snuck in behind them. Looking around, I realized I was in a toy store.

“This is perfect!” I said to myself. “There’s a whole bunch of stuff scaled right to my size!” I walked down an incredibly pink aisle, looking up at everything in awe. “This is an unrealistic expectation for women.” I say, comparing my own body to a nearby Barbie doll.

“Hey, why is this doll out of its box?” I hear a voice say. I’m frozen in fear. I’ve been caught. This is the end. What will this person do to me? I slowly turn around to see a large (relatively speaking) hand reach for me. I’m pulled up quickly to see the face of the child from before, the one I followed into the store.

“Put that back, I’m not buying you a doll today” her mother says. With a disappointed look, I’m slammed into a display of a Barbie Dreamhouse. My heart pounding, I slowly stand up once I’m sure she’s gone. I look around the house, thinking that under other circumstances this could be a perfectly acceptable place to live. It’s nice, and pretty dang big in comparison to me. But I know I can’t live in a dollhouse inside a toy store; that would be rude and probably illegal. I think it’s considered trespassing. I decide to wait in here for a while while I plan my next move.

Through the windows of the Dreamhouse, I can actually get a pretty good look at the front of the store. I see people come and go from the building, buying things and generally browsing. There are a few close calls, I’m almost spotted inside the house, though I’m luckily able to keep hidden. From the bits and pieces of conversation, and visual cues, I figure out that the clerk, a cute girl who seems to be in her early twenties, is my best option for an ally. She’s the only person who remains in the store long enough except for the manager, and he kind of scares me. But from her customer service skills, she seems really nice. I only hope I’m a good judge of character, and she does help me…

After what feels like hours of hiding in fear, I decide it’s time for action. I walk out of the Dreamhouse when there’s a lull in business and the aisle is empty. I didn’t even realize until now just how high up I was. I was on one of the upper shelves, probably about four or five feet up. Of course, to me, that felt like fifty or sixty feet. Nervously, I scale down one of those things in the middle of the aisle that they hang products on. You know what I mean, those ones that hang down toward the floor. I don’t know what the proper term is.

It stops only a couple of inches off the ground, and I drop down to the floor. I cautiously make my way to the front of the store. There she is. The only person that can help me at this point. Leaning over the counter with a slightly bored look in her eye. It’s understandable, the store is empty except for me and the people working. I slowly approach the counter.

“Hey!” I yell. Nothing. No reaction. I sigh, and make my way around the counter to reach the side she’s standing on. I tap on her pant leg. Still no reaction. I realize now just how insignificant I am. I cannot even get this girl to notice me. Literally, I cannot let her know that I am here at all. She can’t see me. She can’t hear me. She can’t even feel me, at least through her pants. I punch her leg as hard as I can, yelling “Hey you!” as loud as I can. She shifts her leg a bit, reaching down to itch the point I hit her. I’m so dang weak, pardon my language, my punches feel like tickles. While I’m standing there, cursing my lack of muscle mass, I don’t realize I’ve actually been spotted.

Slowly, she reaches down for me. I’m snatched up in a fist quickly, and pulled up to her eye level before I even have time to react. She stares at me, wide eyed and focused, turning me over to get a look at every inch of me, all five of them.

“I didn’t know we sold dolls like this…” I hear her mutter under her breath. My mind wants to speak out and correct her, but my body is too scared to let it. I never realized how much bigger she would seem up close.