“Relax.  Just let me have this one last bite, and I’ll make you bigger again before the picnic, okay?” Grace offered brightly, grinning as cheesily as possible.  A tiny bead of saliva to flicked out from her gums and plopped wetly onto Jay’s chest, punching him deeper into the ball of peanut butter globbed onto the end of the girl’s titanic finger.  “Now try not to make a big deal about it once I put you inside, okay?  If you move around too much, I can’t keep track of you, and then who knows what might happen?”

            This, too, was just a tease.  They both knew Grace was fully capable of transporting Jay back outside her mouth with a snap of her fingers no matter where he ended up in her throat or even lower, but it made him feel incredibly nauseous all the same, and the protection spell she’d placed around him ensured his oxygen wouldn’t run out, either.

            Such knowledge meant the girl had no qualms about not only letting Jay thrash about in the dank and cavernous hall of her mouth, but actually descend into her esophagus, the ribbed walls steadily squeezing him down into her digestive tract to a rumbling symphony of gastrointestinal gurgles.

            In fact, she hardly was required to swallow to do the deed: at his current size, a churning river of spit awaited him inside, and he would be passed into her gullet with nary a passing gulp of air.  He’d go completely undetected, like a lost crumb that had become lodged in a back molar for most of the day and then finally dissolved into the digestive tract while she slept, completely unaware.

            Certainly, if it weren’t for her concentration while toying with him, this would be the case, and this was something she loved teasing him about, too.

            All she’d have to do would be to place him under the shade of someone’s lettuce leaf in a sandwich, or too deep in the frosting of a cupcake for him to crawl up the slimy slope.  A friend, a sibling, one of his parents.  No one would think to check.  The next thing he’d hear would be the shredding apart of crumbs and tender terrain, followed by the squelching of hot saliva and teeth clacking together as the bite, and Jay along with it, were sent screaming down into the acidic void.

            Grace’s tongue, a monstrous pink serpent of a thing to the miniscule boy, slaked a gummy river of spit along her lips as she licked them back and forth several times for dramatic effect.

            The young warlock, in his intensive academic studies to in some part make up for his debilitating curse, had witnessed a number of hideous bloodthirsty beasts being handled with chains and powerful hexes: wolves the size of horses, two-headed predatory birds that spat venom, even untamed dragons that could scorch ancient rock with a single puff.  Still he’d harbored no fear in the face of these risks.

            Grace’s taste bud-coated muscle was a different story.

            “PLEASE!” he screamed, his voice going hoarse, as the familiar trembling settled in again.  Tears welled in his eyes, far too tiny to be observed by this titan of a witch.  “P-Please d-don’t?”

            “You’re being such a baby, little guy, you know that?” Grace sighed with the kind of piteous indignation one might use to address a misbehaving toddler.  Indeed, this probably would’ve been a promotion in her mind.  “You’ll never have any fun when we play together like this until you learn to calm down a little.”

            “It’s not f-fun.  I h-h-hate it,” he whimpered as loudly as he could, voice cracking, and closed his eyes, unable to keep staring into the massive maw that loomed before him.  “P-Please, Grace.  Please d-don’t put me in there.”

            “Such a scaredy-cat,” Grace sighed, shaking her head in disbelief.  “You’re lucky I’m such a cool friend to you.  And that you go so yummy with my peanut butter.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t keep you around.”

            And that was that.  With a final tap of her teeth, the girl parted her soft lips and drew her index finger into the black, muggy space.  A final wail of terror erupted from the diminutive boy inside her mouth as she dragged her digit along the rippling rivets of her tongue and through a snaking trail of hot saliva, detaching the salty glob from her finger and leaving it, as well as the entrapped Jay, to remain there, framed by the massive undulating cheeks.

            “Ahhhh…” Grace sighed with deep satisfaction in the taste and her own might.  She kept her mouth open as wide as she could, providing Jay with a final tantalizing look at the sun above.  She gave her tongue a final press with her finger to ensure every bit of the peanut butter had made it inside her maw.

            Jay watched, tears pouring anew, as Grace’s massive finger, having delivered him into spit-dribbling miasma, abandoned him atop her tongue.  The lips followed quickly, sealing together and leaving him to roast in the blackness, oven-like heat, blistering moisture of the nonexistent air, and balmy breath haunted by peanuts and bubblegum toothpaste.

            For a moment it crossed his mind to attempt a counter-spell.  Something.  Anything.  Transporting himself out, making himself larger, or conjuring foul-tasting objects to encourage Grace to spit him out.

            All of these had been attempted in past games, with Jay putting several minutes of concentration into pulling them off half-decently, and Grace countered them all with hardly a blink.  In fact, these rebellions were generally rewarded with a finger-wagging scold and an even longer time spent inside the squishy, nigh-infinite prison.

            So with a sigh and an awkward wiping of his damp eyes, Jay accepted his lot, like he always had to eventually.

            He could feel his feet sinking through the rapidly melting peanut butter and touching into the rubbery animal that composed Grace’s mythic muscle of a tongue, could feel the heat wrapping around him like a coiling cobra, could sense the undulating beads of the taste buds sampling his flavor, however insignificant.

            Another earthquake of satisfaction roared gently over every inch of the girl’s pink skin, fresh saliva bursting forth from the tongue and dribbling in generous cascades from the roof at the first taste of him.

            He was small, but Grace wasn’t just talking to make her dominance clear: she could taste him.  Wanted to taste him.  Needed to.  Inside, to know for herself just how above him she was.

            And who knew?  If the universe truly was content with handing him this curse, stripping him of all personal worth in a world of metaphorical (and sometimes literal) giants, then maybe he needed it too, and just couldn’t tell.  Nobody had all the answers, and least of all him.

            After all, what was he, in the scheme of all being, besides a pathetic joke of a warlock?  An amusing game to pass the time?  Something for a powerful witch to snack on?  A speck of dust to alight on her fingertip and respectfully kiss her skin, grateful that someone so mighty as her would keep him safe in exchange for her pleasure?

            Swallowing hard, Jay resignedly nodded to himself as he slid down the gummy slope of the magnanimously powerful being’s monumental tongue on a fever-inducing river of peanut butter froth toward the bubbling abyss, for what was assuredly not the final time.

            He should be so lucky.