“Mom, are you sure we can’t shrink him any smaller?” Becky pleaded as she gazed with bright eyes into the cushy center of the palm of her hand, where her older brother was curled into a defensive fetal position.

            “Honey, he’s already just three inches.  Isn’t that small enough?” Joy Roberts responded with an approving chuckle as she reclined in a kitchen chair.

            “No, it’s not.  I like him better when he’s even smaller.”

            “There will be time for that later.  But first we have to make sure you’re clear on safety,” her mother said as she crossed her arms, observing her children with a keen eye.  “Handling him is a big responsibility, and it’s important you understand how to act carefully.”

            “But Mom, you’ve been making him tiny for like three years.  I’ve held him a bazillion times when he was only one inch, and never messed up,” the fourteen-year-old protested, batting her light eyelashes as she glanced briefly up at her mother before returning her rapt attention to the tiny subject in her hand, who refused to respond with eye contact.  “Isn’t that right, widdle brudder?”

            Ignoring the adoring pet name that his sister decided for him whenever he was reduced in size, Mark still refused to look up as he nestled his cheek awkwardly against the soft give of the teen’s titanic pad of palm flesh.

            Even if the name wasn’t meant to come off as condescending from his sister, whose well-documented penchant for all things small extended comfortably into the realm of shrunken siblings, it burned a little too much to answer it directly.  He still had his pride, after all.

            Or some of it.  Probably.

            It was hard to tell sometimes.

            “C’mon.  Aren’t I always sooooo nice to you when you’re all little and bitty and cute?” Becky whispered after a few seconds of silence, her mouth a matter of inches from her miniscule brother’s head so that he could soak up every syllable.  The index finger of her other hand dug gently against his stomach and rocked back and forth, tickling him.

            “Yeah,” he relented, knowing it would probably be easier in the long run to cooperate.

            “Awww,” she cooed again, and puckering her lips, planted a soft peck on her sibling’s head that compressed his face harder into the doughy terrain of her palm again for a moment.  Then, as though this act of affection had confirmed it for her parent, the green-eyed short-haired blonde looked back up at her mother.  “Please?  Please-please-please can you make him one inch for me?”

            “Tell you what, honey.  Just pay attention and do what I ask while he’s at three, and then afterward, you two can spend some time together, and I’ll make him whatever size you want him.  Deal?” Joy offered cheerfully.

            “Deal,” Becky nodded, a goofy grin crossing her lips as she raised her eyebrows playfully at her tiny sibling.  Everyone in the room knew precisely what she’d choose.

            “Wonderful,” her mother answered, clasping her hands together over a crossed knee as she settled in.  “Now, I just want to make sure we go over everything, even if you think you know how to do it already.

            “Aw, Mom.  Don’t you trust me with him?” Becky wheedled, biting her lip as she drew her cupped palm closer to her stomach.

            “I do.  And I’m sure he does as well.  We just don’t want any accidents around here, do we?  Things are different now, especially since he’ll be staying at this size for at least seven weeks.”

            “Eight,” Becky corrected quickly with a smirk, clearly having been paying very close attention to this wonderful detail during her brother’s sentencing.  “The seven was just after the trial week.  And that’s only if the review goes okay.”

            “It will.  We all know it will.  Don’t we, sweetie?” Joy queried pleasantly as she leaned forward to peer at her son in the center of her younger child’s toasty palm.

            “Yep,” Mark said in agreement.

            “Of course we do.  Now, first things first: why don’t you go ahead and close up your hand over your brother?”

            “Okay!” Becky chirped.  Immediately, her fingers folded downward, pinning the tiny sixteen-year-old into her palm and shrouding him in darkness and the oppressive embrace of her soft fist.  He flinched at the sudden move, but he was clasped into a tunnel of her warm skin before it had the chance to be seen.

            “Gentle, honey, gentle!”

            “I am being gentle, Mom.  He knows it.  You feel good, don’t you, widdle brudder?” Becky asked as she brought her fist before her blinking emeralds to examine the tiny berry-sized form of her brother’s head poking out of her fist for air.  And indeed, despite the speed of the girl’s reaction to Joy’s request and the sudden immobilization Mark experienced, there was zero pain felt.

            “I’m fine,” Mark grunted, more out of embarrassment than effort.

            “All right, that looks okay then, as long as you’re careful.  Now, why don’t you show me how you’d hold him if you were carrying him somewhere?” Joy posed.

            “Moooom, I know how to carry him safe, I’m not a dummy like Grant.”

            “Honey, I know you wouldn’t do anything on purpose, but all the same, I don’t want to see anything like what happened with your classmate.  That was easily preventable, if he’d been holding his sister upright instead of upside down.”

            “Fine,” Becky groaned, impatiently tapping her bare left foot against the tile with a fleshy slap.  Her hand adjusted its position until her arm formed a ninety degree angle, her fist perfectly upright so Mark could stare ahead from his clamped perch between his younger sister’s controlling fingers.  In spite of her whining, she had the know-how to back it up.  “See, I can do it!  Is that all?”

            “Not just yet, honey.  Now we need to practice something else, so you’re prepared for situations where you’re not quite so aware.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “Like if you ever don’t see your brother, down on the floor, and you’re walking toward him.”

            “Why wouldn’t I see him?” Becky snorted.  “And when I see him, I’ll just pick him right up.  Problem solved.”

            “I know you would, but if you don’t happen to catch him out of the corner of your eye, and he happens to be right in front of you… well, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” Joy continued, obviously sugarcoating the horrible possibility as much as possible with a tilt of her head and another hopeful smile.

            “Mom,” Becky gaped, her jaw hanging open, and she cradled her occupied fist back against the fabric wall of her t-shirt.  “Are you saying I’d step on him?  I’d never, ever, ever, ever in a million years ever-”

            “I’m not saying you’d do it on purpose, sweetie, but it pays to be prepared, to know what it would feel like, and that way you’ll be able to recognize immediately when it’s time to stop,” Joy interjected, knowing perfectly well the reaction this would get from her overprotective daughter.

            “To… know what it feels like?” Becky questioned with a little less distaste, regaining her composure as she slowly took a seat in a kitchen chair next to her mother’s at the table.  She rested her forearm on the wooden surface, still keeping her fist upright, but her fingers remained possessively clamped around her three-inch sibling.  There was no point in him standing on the surface himself when she had a perfectly functioning limb to hold him, after all.

            “Yes, honey.  It’s no big deal, and I’ll be here to make sure you’re careful, but you need to know what it feels like to…”

            “To what?”

            “…to have your brother under your foot.”

            “Mom?” Mark drawled quietly with a frown, piping up on his own now.  He could feel his sister’s muscles in her palm and fingers tensing around him, though whether from nervousness or curiosity he couldn’t say.

            “Don’t worry, sweetie,” Joy immediately said in address of her little son.  Her right hand reached forth, her pinky finger extended, and she stroked tenderly along the top of his head.  It was a loving attempt at comfort, though all it really accomplished was momentarily burying Mark under the might of another family member’s gigantic finger on the last remaining body part not being squeezed by one.  “We’re just taking every precaution to keep you safe and sound, all right?”

            “Yeah but… but can’t she just… I mean, can’t she just know to watch where she’s walking?  Nothing like that’s ever happened before, she…” Mark rambled with increasing desperation, speaking more of his own free will than he had in the days since he’d been sentenced to two months of shrunken house arrest for his participation in the radical “redesigning” of the local high school’s auditorium.

            Though he recognized things were different now that he was going to be shrunken for the foreseeable future rather than just for an hour of discipline, Mark’s internalized shell of stoicism had been broken through by his mother’s casual statement.

            The household policy in years past had always been for anyone under the PMRD’s cursed shrunken effects to stay off the floor to avoid this very scenario at all costs.  For this reason, he’d never had occasion to be anywhere near someone’s enormous feet at this size, let alone his sister’s, which even at normal scale usually displayed the telltale signs of someone not particularly concerned with militant toe hygiene.

            A lump formed in his throat at the mere thought of being close enough to touch them himself, and now they’d be doing the touching, and more-than-likely near-smothering, if Becky took to stepping on her brother with anything near the vigor she used when holding him in her hand like a treasured trinket.

            He managed to add after a stunned pause: “…she doesn’t need to know what it feels l-”

            “I think it sounds like a good idea,” Becky offered softly, cutting off Mark’s protest and gently shrugging her shoulders.  She lifted her fist off the surface of the table and brought her brother back before her chin.  “Like Mom said.  It’s all about you being safe.  And you know I want my widdle brudder to be safe and happy.”

            “Becks, you know what I feel like already!” Mark gasped.  “Please, you don’t have to-”

            “I wuuuv woo,” the girl bubbled.  She thrust her sibling’s head back against the pillowy surface of her billowed lips, causing his words to be lost in the smack of her smooch that left a dab of moisture globbed across his face and hair as her hand descended from her face and down toward the kitchen tile.

            “I still don’t see how this is gonna help!” Mark shouted.  He became conscious as his sister gently opened his fist and allowed him to be deposited on the ground by her chair leg that he wasn’t so much afraid of his mother’s lesson as just positively mortified with humiliation and disgust.

            Who knew when the last time was that Becky gave her peds a thorough washing?

            “That’s it,” Joy said, looming above the now-semi-petrified three-inch convict.  “This is all part of learning to keep you safe, sweetie.  It’ll be over like that.”

            “Just hold still, and I’ll be suuuper gentle on you,” Becky instructed pointedly as she leaned over the chair and gazed down at her hapless soon-to-be victim.

            “N-No.  C’mon, this… this is…” Mark mumbled meekly in a last-ditch effort, knowing the argument was already lost before he’d had a word in.

            He jerked to attention as he watched his sister’s bare foot rise up from where it had been resting against the cool surface of the floor, her toes wriggling expectantly as it hovered a few inches above the ground, its shadow running along underneath it.  She lifted her knee up, until her appendage was poised above the nearly trembling little teen, her squishy digits squirming close enough that he could’ve reached up and pressed his fist into their doughy curvature.

            “Just… just give me a little warning before y-” Mark uttered, his throat dry, but was cut off as the fourteen-year-old’s titanic foot plopped and plastered him against the floor under the supple weight of her pinkish sole in a half second flat.

            A final “eep” escaped his lips before he was buried alive beneath his sister’s warm flesh.