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My spring semester abroad had come to an end, and after a whirlwind it was time to say my goodbyes.  The past several months in St. Petersburg had been some of the best of my life, and I was sure to remember them fondly for years to come.  Before catching the plane, I stopped by to see the hosts and other students I had made those memories with.  We exchanged contact information, and some of them had heartfelt letters for me recounting our times together and expressing their exaggerated feelings.  Despite their flowery words, I was certain they would all blend together soon enough, as I would for them.

 

There was one exception who stood out, and she deserved more than a two-minute conversation over her threshold.

 

I stood outside Ilyona’s door and inhaled deeply to steady myself while I built up courage.  This was going to be a rough conversation.  After several breaths, I felt sturdy enough to face this.  I knocked on the door twice, and as the sound of my rapping knuckles dissipated I felt an intense desire to run around the corner and disappear.  It would be the coward’s way out, but as long as there was no closure, it would be like our time together never ended.

 

The door swung open, saving me from myself.  When her blue eyes lit up, I knew I had made the right decision.  She deserved a farewell at the very least, and our promises to keep in touch would be more than empty words to salve the stinging pain of being separated.

 

“Ilona, hi,” I said.  I never knew what to say at times like these and defaulted to the simplest words.

 

“Hey.”  I was worried our last time seeing each other would be these awkward greetings until she continued, “I was wondering when you’d get here.  You’re last person, you know.”  She had a dusky voice enhanced by her thick Russian accent, which ensured I would be putty in her hands from the start.

 

“You’re the last one for me, too,” I told her, rubbing the back of my neck.  Was I saying the right things?  Could anything I said even be right, or wrong?  We had so little time left.  I wanted to pour my heart out and tell her everything, but also keep it as relaxed as we had the whole time.  My instincts were pulling me in so many directions at once, and I had no idea which one to follow.

 

“So, we both have no one else to see?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.  It sounded like I made the right decision, and I knew it when she smiled and stepped aside.  “Then please, come in.  We will spend as much time together as we can.”

 

I eagerly accepted the invitation, and she swung the door shut behind me.  Now that it was just the two of us, I stepped forward and brushed a hand over her pale, rounded cheek and ran it through her blond hair to place it securely over her back.  Mere inches apart, I leaned in to kiss her, and she reciprocated, sliding her hands around my waist.  We stood there, kissing passionately for I don’t know how long, but our lips parted too soon.

 

“I don’t want to leave you,” I said, staring deeply into her eyes. 

 

“Then don’t,” she replied simply.  “You will stay here, with me.”

 

“I have to, though.  If I miss my flight, I’ll overstay my visa and be a criminal.”  As I spoke, I noticed she seemed a little taller than me.  Maybe she always had been, and I had simply never noticed.  It was an inch at most, anyway.

 

“You cannot get on your flight,” she insisted.  “I forbid it.”  I loved it when she was playfully controlling, but this did not seem like the time.

 

“I’ll think about you the whole time and send you a message as soon as I land, I promise.”  No matter how insistent I was, she kept her arms solidly wrapped around my waist.  If anything, her grip was getting stronger.  Even stranger, I was now looking right at her lips.  I was not the most observant person, but I would have noticed if I were this much shorter than her.  Standing on my toes to kiss her would have been an early hint.

 

“No, you will not.”  Her words were those of a jilted lover, but she wore a playful smirk, and her demeanor was unusually bubbly.  She gripped me tightly with one hand and titled my head up with the other so I was no longer looking at her chin.  “You will think about me while you are here, with me.  There will not be much else for you to think about.”  Ilyona leaned down and kissed me again, much more forcefully this time.  Something strange was happening, but I did not want to break away from her.  I accepted her embrace and lost myself in the kiss, sliding my arms down to the small of her back for comfort.

 

Neither of us pulled away, but our lips nevertheless parted.  A quick glance told me she had simply grown out of it and would have to readjust if she wanted to continue.  I was looking right where her yellow shirt bulged from her breasts, and had to crane my neck back to look into her eyes.  Something was wrong: she was not a head taller than me when I walked in.  She leaned in, but before her lips engulfed mine I set my hands vertically on my shoulders, stopping her from making contact.

 

“Ilyona, wait,” I said.  “There’s something we need to discuss.”  She looked at me quizzically, as though everything were normal, so I decided to be blunt.  “Is there a reason you’ve grown over a foot since I got here?”

 

She gave me a mercurial grin and tightened her one-armed grip around my waist.  “Do you remember dinner last night?”  I did not see how that was relevant, but she was growing so fast now that I could see her getting taller before my eyes.  “I added something to your plate.”

 

I simply stared up at her blankly, hoping she would elaborate.  My eyes were almost down to the waist of her pants, and as I watched she seemed to be growing faster.  She no longer needed to have an arm wrapped around me, since a single hand on my back stretched the whole space between my shoulders.

 

“You are smart, you can guess.”  I still gazed up at her in silence, astonished when denim came into the bottom part of my vision.  While I had a solid idea, I did not want to say it and confirm my suspicions.  She was bursting at the seams to tell me anyway, so I decided to let her.

 

“I am shrinking you!” she blurted, and started hopping excitedly.  Each time she landed I was a little shorter, and by the time she stopped I only came halfway up her thighs.  “Soon, you will be very small, about this big.”  She held her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart, then lowered her hand so I could get a better look.  I looked at her digits in shock: I was going to be puny!  “So, you see, you cannot get on that plane.  It will not be safe for you.”

 

I looked up at her, struggling to find the words to express my confusion.  “But… how?” I finally managed after stammering for several seconds.  “And why?”  By now I was not even up to her knees.  At this rate, I would be lucky if it stopped where she predicted.

 

Ilyona squatted before answering, and I felt like she was subconsciously telling me I was now so far below her she could not talk to me normally.  Her knees and thighs acted as a frame for her face, which was now half the size of my whole body.  “Like I said, I put special object in your food.”  She was normally very soft-spoken, so her louder, deeper voice came as a surprise to me.  “When we kissed, it activated.  I knew you would not leave without one, and I did not want you to leave.  It was selfish, I admit, but I could not bear to think of you as simply another person in my past.  I hope you are not too mad.”

 

As I dwindled below the halfway point of her shin, I wanted to be furious.  She had taken my life and freedom away from me on a self-indulgent whim, and the larger she loomed the clearer it was I would never be able to get them back.  While I thought about it, though, I had to ask: what would I be missing?  A year chained to my desk writing a thesis, struggling to find meaning after finding somewhere I truly belonged.  It would be a year spent pining for her, the warmth of her arms, and a soft touch from her lips.  Even if I had gotten on that plane, too much of me would have stayed here to be worth it.

 

“No, I’m not mad,” I admitted.  “Though I wish you’d asked first.”  She had rolled the last few inches of her pants up, as was the style at the time, and I was now level with the lighter denim of the inside of her jeans.  That would put me roughly equal with her ankles.  If I was going to stop at an inch tall, shouldn’t it be slowing down by now?

 

“It is easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” she replied smugly.  Her voice had become a loud boom and shook me like a stereo with too much bass.  “I think it is you who taught me that.”

 

She had a point, and as her brown leather flats grew taller than me I considered that maybe the had taken to my lessons too well.  “I would be glad to stay with you at any size.  What will we do, though?  I don’t think it’s controversial to say that I won’t really have a normal life, and we won’t exactly have a normal relationship.”

 

“Of course, I will care for you no less, even if you are less,” she joked.  I was shorter than the toes of her shoes and still shrinking past what should have been the stopping point.  “You will move in with me and live in suitable container so I do not smash you on accident.  Then, I apply for grant from Russian government so you continue studies, phrasing it as experiment.  ‘Can tiny man graduate university,’ I phrase it.  You will get funding and succeed, and then stay with me.”

 

“Um, Ilyona?” I said, hoping I could still get her attention.  The soles of her flats were now twice as tall as I was, so that was questionable.  At least it seemed to be slowing down now.  “I seem to be getting smaller than you expected.”

 

“Yes, you are,” she confirmed, though I had to piece it together from the movement of her tremendous lips and the rumbling syllables that emanated from them.  “We were perhaps too passionate when we activated special something.  Do not worry, I prepared for this possibility.”

 

While she reached into her pocket, I finally stopped shrinking.  She fished around, and I looked over the vast expanse of wood between me and one of her shoes.  The sole of her shoe was four times as tall as I was, and they were barely a sliver.  When her hand emerged, there was a single coin pinched between her fingers.  Ilyona brought it to the floor and set it down in front of me, and a metallic ring assaulted my ears as it settled.  The coin itself was twice my size, with ridges large enough I could fit inside them, while her fingers were gargantuan.  Her fingerprints had enough space for me to build a house on them, and should one of them so much as graze me I worried I would be crushed.

 

“Do not go anywhere,” she boomed, and I shied away from the blast of her voice.  “You would not get far anyway.  The ruble is so I know where you are, please stay near it.”  This was my first interaction with a giantess, and I did not want to get in the habit of disobeying them this early.

 

When she stood, I stared up at her, aghast at how enormous she was.  Ilyona was over a mile tall to me now, and my brain did not know how to process a person of such immense size.  Her shoes alone were tremendous, skyscrapers if they were stood vertically, though even as she stood in them they were taller than most buildings.  The stockings, just visible on her ankles, would let me slip through the fine mesh of nylon pulled tight around her skin, and her jeans were a tremendous structure suited to protecting a village from a harsh winter storm.   Above them, her yellow T-shirt seemed to stretch forever, distorted by the vast distance, and though her chest was moderate it blocked much of my view beyond it.  While I could not see her face clearly at this distance, I felt both fear and excitement as I anticipated getting a closer look at her features.

 

She took a step, covering a half mile in a single stride, but it was not enough to protect me from her footfalls.  There was one tremendous crash when her heel landed, followed by another when her toes swung to the floor, and they each sent out powerful shockwaves from their impacts.  I was astounded that she could have such a powerful effect on me from so far away as the vibrations ran up through my body, turning my knees to rubber.  My legs gave out, and I leaned against the giant coin in front of me to keep from falling helplessly to the ground.

 

Ilyona rummaged through her purse, finally withdrawing a portable cosmetics kit that looked like it could contain all the makeup produced in a year across the world.  She clutched it to her chest and took a step back toward me, and I braced myself against the ruble.  The tremor hit me again, making my knees go week, and I slid into one of the grooves along the edge of the coin.  Her other leg swung forward, landing much closer, and I felt the full force of its impact.  My teeth rattled in their sockets as it passed through the metal and into my body, and I realized there was nothing that could protect me from her earth-shaking footfalls so long as I was on the floor.

 

She stood astride me before squatting again, and I could not bear to look at her.  It was one thing to know I was minuscule, but it was quite another to have it driven home by how titanic she was.  Compared to her I was nothing; most bugs were bigger than me, and I had seen her step on them without thinking.  It was only a matter of time before she did the same to me.

 

Her finger thudded on the coin, making the floor ring from the resonating metal, and she dragged it away.  My ears were assaulted by the sound of metal scraping over wood, and I fell onto the floor, just managing to avoid slipping into one of the grooves.  Ilyona slid it to the side so it bounced against the sole of her shoe, then set the cosmetics kit down between her heels.  She unzipped it and proceeded to withdraw what may be the three most humiliating items possible: a pair of tweezers, a small magnifying glass, and a glass vial that could hold a few milliliters at most.

 

Ilyona held the magnifying glass above me and looked through it, making her already gargantuan iris explode in size as it expanded to fill the lens.  Every line and fleck was like its own entity on the light blue background, and I was entranced by it while she brought the huge metal walls into position.  Burnished metal flanked me, limiting my vision to just the eye looming over me.  “Okay, now do not move for real.”  I felt the words more than heard them, but I understood them all the same.  “I do not want to crush you with tweezers.”  Knowing that was a distinct possibility, I stood stock still, not even daring to breathe.

 

Cold metal clamped around me, and Ilyona carefully lifted me off the floor.  Still holding my breath, I closed my eyes to keep from getting disoriented by the ever-changing view, though the movement alone made me queasy.  It took several seconds just for the movement to stop, and when I was brave enough to open my eyes, I found myself dangling in front of her face.  It was no wonder I felt uneasy; in such a short time and with no build-up, I had been moved several thousand feet.

 

The tremendous metal walls did not block my view of Ilyona’s face, and I studied every feature like it was part of an alien landscape.  Her soft pink lips were now the size of bridges, with crevices deep enough I could fall inside them, though I would most likely get trapped in the thin layer of balm she spread over them.  Before her nose had been wide and a little long, suiting her broad face, but now its base was the size of a meeting hall while the bridge could be my ski slope.  Her brilliant blue eyes were several times my height in diameter, with minute detail starkly visible, and even retracted her pupils were wide enough I could fall inside them.  When she blinked, I felt the breeze from her eyelashes waving, each of them wide enough for me to lay on and long enough to wrap me lengthwise from head to toe.

 

“You are so small!” she exclaimed, and my body trembled from the very sound of her voice.  “I will put you somewhere small to keep you safe.”  Several seconds later, the tweezers tilted to the side and metal clinked against glass.  She had positioned me over the tiny vial’s opening, though its neck was broad enough to accommodate an elephant of my scale without straining.

 

She eased her fingers the smallest amount and I slipped from between the tweezers.  I landed hard on the glass, but surprisingly nothing was broken.  It was not even an inch, I supposed, though it looked much longer, so I did not have any time to build up speed.  Ilyona held me before an eye, and the ginormous blue disc seemed to wrap halfway around me as the glass warped it.

 

“Hm.”  Even her idle sounds were like seismic events.  “I will put this on string and wear you around my neck.”  Her voice got inside the vial and bounced off the glass, distorting the sound even more.  “Then we will always be together.  That sounds good, right?”  I had to admit, that sounded pretty nice.  She held the vial between two fingers, completely covering it with skin pressed flat against the glass.  As I considered my situation, I realized that she completely enveloped me.  Ilyona was everything to me and, strange though it was, I was everything to her.  Life at a fraction of an inch tall would be difficult, but with her support it would be pleasant and worthwhile.

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