Shortly after being rescued I was carried to the living room where I had to endure another ordeal related to my current size. I stood in the middle of Justine’s vast palm as the magnifying glass loomed above me. She was adamant in looking me over for any injuries I may have suffered through the morning.  There were none, fortunately, except for the humiliation of being examined under the glass like an insect, all the while being naked. At least Maddie seemed to enjoy the moment, even more so when, after the examination was over, Justine let her hold me for a bit. It was hard to even stand on her sweaty, trembling hand, all while seeing her grin over me. She even tried to touch me with her other hand’s fingertip and laughed as I ran around her palm to avoid it. At that point Justine decided Maddie had her fun and plucked me from her hand using her fingertips. Back in the bigger, more stable hand I had to stand and listen to the girls commenting on my condition and wondering how it will change our routine. They asked me questions which I could not answer, as my voice had now become inaudible to these giant beings. Even when Justine brought me close to her ear she couldn’t catch anything other than single words. It seemed our communications would prove impossible from that point on, or at least much harder. On the bright side it spared me from having to explain myself about this morning’s ordeal.

I was surprised how quickly the girls got over my recent shrinkage. Having seen me dwindle the whole week, I supposed it longer phased them. It was then settled that life would continue as usual, with me having the liberty to go as I like around the place and them watching their step. With that settled, Justine placed me on the coffee table and stood up to get her sewing kit. I watched as she moved around the room, amazed by how gracefully can something, or should I say someone, this big do so. Even from the table I could hear the thudding sounds her feet made with each step. It didn’t take her long to craft clothes for me from a piece of purple fabric and she was content to see I liked them. She placed her open hand on the table and waited for me to climb onto it, then took me to the kitchen where we had dinner. I sat on the edge of her plate, nibbling on a single grain of rice and when we were done she offered me some tea by dipping her fingertip in it and letting me scoop some from it, in my cupped hands. At least the food would last me forever. We returned to the living room as Maddie proposed to kill the time by playing monopoly, which we haven’t done in ages. She dusted off the old edition of the game we had and set the board on the coffee table. Since I was too small to roll the dice or handle the money, Justine offered to do that for me. I could count on her to do it right. And since I was too small to move (or even push) my token I had to act as one, moving around the football field sized board as much as the dice had me to. We played well into the late evening hours and in the end Justine won the game. She then carried me to my room, even though I could’ve walked the distance on my own, but at this size she would not hear my protests anyway. I fell asleep on a piece of a tissue, which she put on the floor by my bed, so that I don’t have to climb all the way down from the bed in the morning, or wait for someone to pick me up. Which I was grateful to her for, as the top of my bed seemed hundred feet high now.

And so we had to get used to the state of things. I, in particular, had to get used to long voyages from one room to the next, to the ground shaking beneath me every time one of the giantesses passed by, to the constant feeling of being on the edge as they did, as just one wrong step from their part would mean the end of me. In other words, I had to learn how to live beneath them, unheard and unnoticed until one of them remembered about me and looked all the way to the floor to notice a speck of purple cloth scuttering about. They also had to learn how to live with me, to leave food for me, check up on me, make sure I’m nowhere near where they step and talk to me, knowing full well they would not receive any answer. What they learned rather quickly was just how fragile I now was, and how to apply just enough pressure to pick me up without doing me harm. Soon I’ve grown accustomed to being lifted a thousand feet in the air without a warning and placed in the floating island of one of their hands, as their enormous eyes examined me with curiosity or glee. Sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder whether they still considered me their roommate or whether they switched to seeing me as their pet. But I couldn’t really complain. I was safe and well-fed by two women who, despite their differing attitudes about me, still cared for my wellbeing. The only thing I could truly complain about, other than being so minuscule, was the boredom. I had nothing to do other than roaming the apartment, being too small for any kind of entertainment other than the one the girls would provide me with. Every now and then Maddie would make me watch the series with her or let me walk around her body, finding a certain form of amusement from seeing me scale her legs or trying to stay standing on her belly. Justine picked that habit as well, though in a much more restricted form, But,  abandoned it altogether after I got lost within her long hair, having to spend a long time just to find and untangle me.

Our idyll, if one could call it that, didn’t last long. A month or so later I woke up to an unearthly sight of stars twinkling in the night sky. But as I came to my senses and looked around, noticing I was naked, I realized what it meant. I was now within the layers of my clothes, the stars being none other than holes in the fabric through which shone the morning light. I shrank again and I was now trapped inside my own tunic. It took me a long while to crawl out to the surface and when I finally did I was greeted by a world unlike anything I could imagine. A world of pale, rugged plains of wooden floor tiles stretching to the horizon and beyond, of thick, long ropes that once were strands of my hair, scattered around, of dark fog in the distance of all the dust that gathered under my bed. But the most terrifying sight of it all was that of a mountain range in the corner of the room, of flesh-coloured hills and cliffs rising hundreds of feet into the air which soon turned out to be nothing other than Justine’s bare foot. How small I was, I couldn’t tell for sure, but just from that one glance I knew I had become microscopic and that I would never be found. Which turned out to be true; despite their best efforts in scanning every corner, every spot of the apartment, the girls could not see me anywhere as I was now too small to ever be seen. Eventually they gave up on their search and I had to once again adapt to the life among giants, surviving on monstrously big crumbs that would fall from their table and lake-sized drops of liquids that formed on the floor, my expeditions through the apartment lasting days, even weeks. Surviving was the only thing on my mind, to survive until I come up with an idea of what to do next, or at least to pass the time until the next shrink spurt pushes me into the sub-atomic level of existence.