“You did what?” Becky squealed with voice-cracking disgust.

            “You heard me,” Mark grunted, burrowing his face casually in his fists. It wasn’t helping to make this situation any less unbearably embarrassing, but he imagined that maybe, just this once, his immediate surroundings would be willing to conjure up an invisible barrier and bar him from sight, if he willed it hard enough.

            “You… you bit my toe?” she choked out, her upper lip wrinkling. “That had to be so gross. Are you okay?”

            “Yep.”

            “I’m proud of you, honey,” Joy said as she reclined back on the high-backed kitchen stool, her posture more relaxed than it had been in the previous hours. She regarded her two-inch son with a reassuring smile as he stood on the dappled countertop, sliding her hand across its surface toward him. “I know it’s not always easy to follow through when it’s… not pleasant, but it shows a lot of maturity on your part to do whatever’s necessary to keep yourself safe.”

            “Do you want a mint or something?” Becky piped in helpfully, jamming a white gummy nub under Mark’s chin she’d retrieved from her purse, the candied morsel easily accounting for something the size of a bowling ball to the boy.

            “I’m… good, thanks,” the shrunken inmate said, swatting it away in hopes that his sister would drop the matter of his sampling her toe sooner rather than later. He smacked his jaw a few times, lapping awkwardly at the roof of his mouth.

            That rubbery, salted flavor still lingered as he’d feared it would. The sooner he could get access to his makeshift toothbrush, the better. And maybe a backup gallon of alcoholic mouthwash as well.

            “Feeling any bumps? Bruises? Anything?” Joy questioned, scooping her fingers around Mark and delicately collecting him into her palm. Ordinarily she would’ve waited for him to load onto her digits himself, but the teen could tell she was still just impatient enough about this whole matter to forgo manners.

            “Nope. I’m good,” he grumbled as his mother’s enormous fingers probed at the padded segments of his sweat-slicked black wetsuit, half-heartedly fighting off her jabbing thumb when it neared his thighs like the day before. “This thing worked well. Maybe I should just wear it all the time.”

            “Really?” Becky gawped. Her blue eyes broadened.

            “No.”

            “Oh,” she snickered, catching on. “Good. Cuz you’d look pretty silly if you did.” Seemingly satisfied at last, the girl grinned, bouncing her blonde locks from cheek to cheek and extended a hand toward her parent. “Can I have him now, Mom? For the car ride?”

            “Car ride?” Mark queried, shifting his gaze from his sister’s suddenly looming palm to his mother’s face far above.

            “While you were down there, I told Becky we’d go get some ice cream after we finished up here. I thought we could all use a cooldown. Especially you.”

            “No kidding,” the shrunken sixteen-year-old muttered. After gnawing on his monumental sibling’s foot flesh, slurping up some mint chocolate scoops would be a welcome follow-up.

            “Although…” Joy sighed. Her eyes darted from her miniature son down toward the hardwood floor below, where her house slippers happened to be crossed over one another under the wooden pillars of the stool, and in an instant Mark knew where this was headed.

            Or rather, where he was headed.

            “Mom…” he groaned. Already he felt the cushy expanse of his mother’s palm descending down toward her lap. A foregone conclusion.

            “I’m sorry, hon,” she said, biting the corner of her lip and furrowing her brow. She leaned forward toward the ground, snatching up the fluffy periwinkle footwear with her free hand, crooking a finger into each of the fur-lined mouths. “We just have to be absolutely, positively sure that we all know-”

            “C’mon, Mom,” Becky cut in, patting her fingertips against her palm and reaching further over the counter until her dancing digits were blotting the kitchen lights above Mark’s tiny head. “Can’t you take your turn after we get ice cream?”

            “Well…” the woman said. She dangled the slippers from her fingers, letting them swing breezily like the imposing pendulums they were. “Mark? Think you’ll be able to stay as focused as you were just now for when we get back from ice cream?”

            “Yes!” he breathed.

            Joy nodded, taking in the exasperation in her son’s voice. “All right. We’ll take a break. Becky, can you go grab my keys from the hook?”

            “Uh-huh!” the girl replied cheerily, bobbing her head as she sprinted toward the laundry room. “But I wanna carry him on the ride there!”

            “Fair enough, hon,” Joy said, returning her attention once again to her older child still huddled awkwardly in the center of her palm at two inches tall. She pursed her lips, dipping to a gentle whisper, her wispy words warming the boy’s already overheated skin. “Just make sure you do whatever you have to when I take my turn with you, Mark. I’m serious. I’m going to do whatever I have to to keep you safe down there, but you have to do the same for yourself. Including… you know… whatever you need to do, like with Becky. All right?”

            The boy nodded, getting her full meaning, and wishing he hadn’t really. Though at least Joy seemed to do a more thorough complete-body wash when she took showers, unlike his sister.

            He squeezed his tongue against a back molar. In the silent process, he felt a fleck of toe-grit from Becky’s skin still lodged between his teeth, its waxen texture grinding against his muscle. Nearly hacking up a lung at this realization, the boy wrestled to push the microscopic clip of congealed dry skin and foot grease back toward his lips to spit it out, but only succeeded in getting the errant reminder of his unfortunate survival instincts adhered to the underside of his tongue.

            Mark sighed as he was deposited into the eagerly awaiting peachy palms of his sister and shrouded in a wave of soft, curling fingers on the way to the car.

            Safety first, after all.