“I think this next one will be more fun if I don’t tell you what it is first,” Sarah said, giving me a coy grin.  “Your reaction will be a lot more natural, and I’ll definitely have a lot more fun.  You, though… you’ll have to let me know afterward.”  If she thought I would not revel in any situation where she towered over me, she was mistaken.  Even if she were a little rough, that would be exactly what I expected.

“Anyway, I need to walk up for this to work in my head, so just stand there and I’ll be back in a few secs, all right?”  Sarah turned around and took several quick steps away from me, stepping lightly on order to not upset the floor too much.  When she was a good distance away she stopped and stood stock still.  “Okay, and I’m in character in 3, 2, 1… now!”  For emphasis she snapped her fingers, letting the sound and her last syllable linger in the quiet room.

Sarah slowly turned back to me, and when she stopped she scanned the floor a moment as if she had forgotten where she left me.  When she spotted my tiny body among the carpet she sprouted a smug, almost mischievous grin, and began walking toward me.  Her movements were slow and deliberate, with each step a long, thundering stride that made the ground quake beneath her feet.  She stopped when she was almost on top of me, the toes of her forward foot perfectly in line with me.  The other foot came forward and set down in line with the first, both of them roughly the same distance from me.

She looked down at me haughtily and leaned forward, then a smirk slowly spread across her face.  “There you are, my little friend!” she declared.  “I was starting to worry someone else had gotten to you before me.  Tell me, what’s it like being so tiny?”  I opened my mouth to answer, but as soon as she was done speaking she raised her foot and, quick as a lighting strike, brought it down just beside me.  A tremendous boom rang out from her foot slamming into the ground and a tremor emanated from the point of impact, causing my knees to go weak and knocking me onto my back as it continuously washed over me.  “Ha!  That says it all, doesn’t it?”

Sarah let her foot linger beside me, digging her toes into the carpet with a constant, unpleasant grinding sound.  “You’re probably wondering why I shrank you, huh?”  She paused, either realizing she was getting ahead of herself, or having put that in as part of her script.  “Oh yeah.  I shrank you.”  The glib, purposeful nod while she spoke made me think this was all something she had run through her head dozens of times before.  “It was me.  See, I’ve loved looking down on you, imagining that you were a bug at my feet.  You were already so small it wasn’t that big of a leap for you to be bug-sized.”

When I finally got back to my feet Sarah swung her foot toward me, slamming into my whole body with the ball of her foot.  I was thrown from my feet and briefly flew through the air before coming down hard in a cluster of carpet fibers.  Sarah’s foot continued its journey, crossing over her other ankle while she looked down at me scornfully.  “Ha!  I love it!” she proclaimed.  “Just like I imagined, you’re powerless against me!  And since you’re the size of a bug, it would be weird if I didn’t treat you like one, right?”  Hurriedly I got back to my feet and looked up at her for clarification, which came in the single word, “Squish.”

Sarah let out a long chuckle, never taking her eyes off me.  “We’ve been friends for a long time, so I’ll make you a deal: if you can avoid getting stepped on for a whole minute, I won’t squish you.  But if you mess up even once you won’t get out from beneath my foot.”

“What if I don’t accept?” I asked, finally able to get a word in.

“Well then I just step on you!” Sarah replied.  “I’m giving you a chance, though you were never that great at sports so I’m not sure how much of a shot you really have.  You’ve always been a fighter though, so maybe you’ll surprise me!”  She waited a beat, blinking her big gray eyes at me.  “You should probably start running now.”

I looked around for somewhere I could escape from her, and nothing seemed to offer the refuge I would need.  All of the furniture was behind her, and running back into the kitchen would make this bit of roughhousing turn fatal fast.  Staying away from her feet for even a minute would be difficult in a crowded room, but on wide open carpet it seemed impossible.  Sarah was going to catch me almost immediately.  Why would she invent a game she wouldn’t win, anyway?

The vast space to her right was the farthest from her feet, so I decided to start with that.  I took off running, trying to go around her while stepping over the ankle-high carpet.  Sarah casually unhooked her ankles and swung a gargantuan socked foot overhead, casting me in its shadow.  She let it hang above me for a moment before bringing it down in my path close enough that I ran into her instep.  “Aw, I missed!” she proclaimed, brushing me away with her foot.  While I stumbled backward she turned her foot forward, and from its sheer size alone I knew she missed on purpose.

I turned and ran the other direction, trying to run between her feet.  She watched me scurrying along the floor, patiently letting me get closer, then another shadow flew over me.  A wall of cotton set down in my way, blocking me again.  “Missed again!” Sarah declared.  “You’re better at this than I thought!”  Clearly she was toying with me, and I was having a blast. 

With a hard push off her foot I turned around, moving to go around her again.  I wanted to put some distance between me and the foot that had stopped me, even though running away from her seemed counterintuitive.  After a few seconds of running, however, Sarah corrected that, and after a brief pass from her shadow the foot was in my way again.  This time she felt safe enough to stomp it down, making a great tremor that sent me staggering into the ball of her foot.  “I keep missing!” she exclaimed.  “You just might pull this off after all!”  It seemed doubtful, but maybe she had lost track of time.

I shoved off the barricade and ran the other way, angling between her feet again.  With how occupied this foot was keeping me I had not noticed how little forward progress I was making: I had not even reached the toes of her other foot, despite it being gigantic in its own right.  The only hope I had of winning here was if the clock ran out, and I never saw her set a timer.  By now I was starting to get tired, and with the extra effort of stepping over carpet fibers my legs had begun to scream at being forced to work so hard for almost a minute straight.

“Hm, time’s almost up,” Sarah boomed.  “Better be safe with this one.”  The foot I was running toward suddenly raised its toes, then the heel lifted off the ground.  In a flash it crossed the great distance to me and her heel set down softly on the carpet.  The sole of her foot hung over me, throwing a deep shadow on my body, and I looked up at the tremendous cotton ceiling pulled tight against the gentle curves of her foot.  I felt magnificently puny beneath her foot while it stretched before and behind me.

Sarah brought her foot down, closing the small gap quickly, and the tremendous weight of her foot knocked me on my back.  She gave a firm press, squishing me down into the carpet a little, and let out a triumphant “Squish!”  Her foot remained atop me for a second, pinning me under it in a show of her absolute superiority.  Briefly she raised it off me then set it back down, offering another, much lower and more drawn out “Squish,” once it had settled.  While I was pinned she rubbed her foot back and forth, nudging me along with it, and I reveled in her enormity compared to me.

Almost too soon she lifted her foot and set it down beside me, letting me settle in the well beneath her arch.  I looked up Sarah’s towering body, half of my view blocked by her foot, past her preposterously long legs to her overjoyed and smug face.  “So?” she began, grinning.  “How’d you like it, my little buggy?”

“Sarah, that was perfect!” I replied.  “It was everything I’d ever dreamed!”

“Hm, interesting,” she said with a sly smile.  “Acting I like I have no regard for your safety is exactly what you want.  Better be careful with that wish, or you might find yourself squished for real.”

“I’ll try to remember I’m talking to wishmaster,” I joked.  “But where did that particular fantasy come from?”

Sarah chuckled.  “Oh, that one?  Sometimes I worried you’d never get the hint and I would have to force the issue.  Dunno how I would’ve shrunk you for that, but you seem… eager enough that I could’ve come up with something.”

“So, what’s next?” I asked, wondering what else she had come up with.

“Right now?” she came back, then began easing herself to the ground with a great sigh.  The ground shook when her hand set down, then it trembled when her butt hit.  Sarah pulled her foot back from its position over me, then drew her other one close, and clutched her ankles close to her with her long fingers.  “I’m gonna take a quick break, actually.  Being a giantess is tough, you know!”  I must have looked disappointed, since she immediately added, “But that doesn’t mean you get to!”

My eyes lit up.  “Just say what you want me to do!”  I gazed joyously up her sock-covered shins to her flirtatious face framed between her knees.  If it was something only I could do, it had to be good.

“Well, I’ve always wanted you to climb me,” she started, and I gasped, “but you’re not exactly what I picture when I think of a climber, you know?  And I’m like a thousand feet tall to you or something, and the last thing I want is for you to fall off my knee and break your neck.”  She let go of one of her ankles and stretched her leg out straight, letting it come to rest next to me.  I was just outside her skirt, open like a colossal tent before me.  “So I’m gonna stretch out my legs and let you climb me horizontally!”  I was practically jumping for joy, and she grinned.  “You’ve wanted this too, I can tell.”

“Just tell me when to start and I’ll get on it!” I declared.  For years I had “joked” about wanting to climb Sarah, and now we were both clear: those had never been jokes, and I wanted to climb her even more than she wanted me to do it.

“As soon as you get down there, little dude!” she answered with a wink.  “Better make it quick, too.  I can’t very well put this leg down without trapping you under my thigh if you’re standing here, can I?”  She grinned and came to a sudden realization.  “Ooh, that does sound fun.  Later, though.  Go on!”

She did not have to tell me twice, and I sprinted the tremendous length of her leg in seconds.  Any fatigue I had felt before was gone, replaced by enthusiasm for finally getting to climb her.  When I passed her rounded heel I stopped and turned back to see that she was already sliding her foot toward me.  It ground against the carpet, making a loud scraping as it came closer, her leg dropping from an arch into a straight line.  When it was fully extended her feet were blocking my view, with just a little window between her insteps so I could see her face.

“Come on, little guy,” she beckoned.  “Put your money where your mouth is and climb me.”