Hi I’m new I don’t even have an icon yet but g/t knitting
GT KNITTING
Tinies making blankets, but it’s barely the size of a dish rag for a human.
Giants making dish rags and they’re the size of blankets for humans.
The difference between the hole sizes and the needle sizes oh my gosh. Being able to like crawl through the holes in a giant’s blanket and thinking the tiny’s blanket is factory made because DANG where are all the HOLES?
I just like knitting okay and this was a beautiful concept to me
Marcy left the room to get some paper and pencils, setting up on the dining room table. Colin sat with Thistle in the living room for a few more moments, helping him calm down. Marcy sat shame-facedly at the table, listening to the hushed voices in the next room, feeling like absolute shit.
After he’d gotten Thistle to stop crying, Colin knelt down in front of his castle. “Here, take a few minutes in your private space to calm down. Come out when you’re ready, okay?”
Thistle skittered out of Colin’s hands in a flash, disappearing instantly into the interior of the castle. He did not even have the wherewithal to close the door right away. A hand emerged after a second to draw the door shut behind him.
Colin joined Marcy in the living room after that. Marcy desperately wanted to talk to Thistle, to dump all her thoughts on him at once, to plead for some understanding, but she knew he would only feel better if she left him alone for a little while.
“He saw me doing dissections,” said Marcy, rifling her papers absently. “I–I guess I just got engrossed in my work and forgot that–that if he saw that, he’d–”
“Doesn’t matter now, Marce. What happened already happened.”
She wiped her eyes. “It kinda–I mean I know I should be focusing on how he feels, but it kinda hurts that he still thinks I’d do that to him.”
Thistle heard the two humans continuing to murmur to each other from the next room, crouched in his castle with the door shut. He’d drawn down the blinds to cover the windows as well, leaving him in darkness. He spent the first minute balled up in the corner, before he remembered his belongings and sat on the chair he had, which was enough of the right size for him to sit on. His hands worked at the rubber clownfish like a stress ball.
Was he overreacting again? He was thinking with his prey brain, and not his person brain.
Marcy was kind and gentle, or at least she tried to be. She wouldn’t torture small animals unless there was a really good reason for it.
…right?
What could possibly be a good reason to do that?
He thought back to her lab, the place he’d gone to the first night, the bugs held prisoner in the fridge there. Who had set that all up? And to what end? Why had she brought him there, then suddenly reversed course and taken him home? Nemo had said She studies things… What exactly, and how? And how did she intend to study him?
Was he finally going to find out? And the nagging question of…what if he didn’t like the answers?
He waited until the suspense and anxiety of not knowing became too much to bear, outweighing his fear of facing the humans. He’d come this far. He’d survived. Maybe he could face this, too, and come out all right.
He opened the door and walked out. From the fishtank, Nemo hovered towards the bottom, hands on the colorful gravel. He mouthed something at him, but Thistle couldn’t read his lips.
“Shut up,” Thistle whispered. “You’re not helping.”
Marcy and Colin stopped talking as the drawbridge to the castle lowered, and Thistle walked out, hands clasped together in front of him. Marcy stood, clearly intending to go pick him up, but Colin quickly hissed, “Let him come to us.”
Thistle stopped once he was in the doorway of the dining room, looking up at them both silently.
“Come on up, bud,” said Colin, tapping the table. “If you’re ready to talk.”
He leapt up, catching the edge of the table and scrambling to pull himself up. He sat cross-legged on the edge of the table. Out of easy grabbing range, Marcy noticed. She also noticed his tiny frame was still occasionally shaking.
That filled her with a strange sense of pride. He was clearly still very afraid, which made her sad, but he was brave enough to come up here anyway. Well, let’s see if we can reward his courage by showing him there’s nothing to be scared of.
Not that this was going to be an easy task. This was definitely going to be an unprecedented test of her science communication skills. The voice of professors from years bygone hammering into her over and over that the average American only has an eighth-grade reading level echoed in her skull… But she’d explained her work to elementary-school children before, at outreach programs. She just had to take it down one step below that.
“I’m going to explain my work to you,” said Marcy. “What I do at work. Is that okay?”
Thistle nodded mutely. He vibrated his wings, perhaps as an involuntary reflex to accompany his chest trembling.
Marcy slid a piece of paper over and drew some squiggly lines with a green colored pencil: the approximate shape of trees, bushes, plants. “You know how humans grow food, right?”
He nodded. “Farms.”
“Right. We cultivate–We make a space ideal–we make a space good for plants to grow, and put a bunch of seeds in there, and let them grow so we can eat them later.”
“You do this?”
“Well, not me personally. Other humans. They do it for everyone as a group. Well, in exchange for money, but let’s not get bogged down in details here. I’m just trying to explain a very simple version of things here.” She drew some wiggly critters at the foot of the plants. Worms. Flies. Bugs. “There are lots of creatures that want to eat these plants, since we grow them specifically to be big and tasty for us to eat.”
Thistle hesitated, then nodded.
“So, to keep other animals from eating them while they grow, we put….things on them. Poison.”
“Poison?”
“They’re called pesticides.” She drew some purple drops on the plants. “These are special chemicals that hurt bugs that eat them, but don’t hurt humans.“
Thistle’s face scrunched up a little. He tightened his grip on the hem of his shirt.
“Does that upset you?”
It did, a little, but he supposed it shouldn’t…. It’s not like he didn’t kill bugs, or the hive didn’t harm predators who got too close. That was just nature. He shook his head. “We poi, ko… keep others from our food, too. But–I–I am…”
“Yes?”
“Worried, because…” He cringed. “I–ahm–took this food sometimes.” He ducked his head down, as though he expected her to be mad at him. “Not much very! Promises! Nobody ever notice it, that’s how small I took!”
“Relax,” said Colin. “Me and Marcy don’t care if you take food from farms. Like you said, it’s such a small amount.”
“But–But the bugs too take such a small amount, and you kill them.”
“That’s because there’s so very many of them,” said Marcy. “If we didn’t use pesticides, they would eat practically all of it. You understand how to share, and take in moderation. Like you said, nobody ever even noticed.”
“So…” He flicked his wings. “So you–you did not catch me from outside because I was stealing food?”
Marcy put her pencil down, reaching her hand out towards him. He finally, finally didn’t recoil from her touch, letting her take a hand with one gentle finger. “No. Of course not, sweetheart. And pesticides aren’t a punishment for ‘stealing.’ It’s just a matter of business. We need the food, so we keep bugs off of it. That’s just nature.”
“My family…” he said, eyes watery. “Cui ea seuaj? Mais citon? I take apples to them sometimes. I…” He made a chopping motion with his hands. “…cut for them to eat. The…babies. Is safe? I poison them? Safe?”
“I’m not sure,” said Marcy. “If they’ve never gotten sick, I wouldn’t worry about it. There’s no way to know what effect it would have on them. But it could be harmless.”
"Harmless?”
“Safe.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“I know you’re worried about them, but please don’t blame yourself. It’s really not your fault.”
“It’s okay.” He was starting to seem a little more at ease, being pulled out of prey mode by the conversation and the concern Marcy was showing.
Marcy picked her pencil back up. “Okay, this is where I come in. So these big groups of humans are all growing all these different plants for us to eat, and using all these pesticides…And there are different kinds, and some work differently than others.” She drew some blue and red drops on the plants next to the purple ones. “Does that make sense?”
He shook his head uncomprehendingly.
“Hmm…What I’m trying to say is… Well, are there things your family avoids because they’re poison?”
“Yes.”
“Can you name some?”
He perked up at this. Marcy knew he’d spent quite some time poring over the encyclopedia entries about plants, trying to put English names to everything he knew. “Poison Ivy. Nightshade. Inkberry. Hemlock. Hogweed.”
“Right,” she said. “What happens when you eat these plants?”
“Poison Ivy….rash…and I can’t breathe. Nightshade, you can’t move yourself. Very sick. Inkberry, you shake.”
“So they do different things, right?”
“Yes.”
“That’s because they’re different kinds of poison.”
He nodded.
“It’s sort of the same thing. There are different kinds of poisons, different kinds of pesticides we use on our food. Get it now?”
He nodded.
“Right. Okay. So, we have different kinds of pesticides, and some people claim that the ones theyuse are better than the ones other people use. We have to have some way to test that.”
“Better how?”
“Well, for example, what we want a pesticide to do is kill bugs that eat the plants, but not harm other creatures. These poisons can persist in the environment–They can go into the bodies of other animals, and harm them. For example, if a caterpillar eats poison, then a dragonfly eats it, it can harm the dragonfly. That dragonfly gets eaten by a bird, and that bird is poisoned now.”
The gears in Thistle’s head were visibly turning. “But…Why…Why do you care that? Why do humans care if it kill birds and dragonflies? Isn’t it for the food?”
“You sound like a Republican,” Marcy muttered, before raising her voice and correcting quickly, “Well, that’s something that humans argue about a lot. Some of them think it’s fine if other creatures die, but a lot of humans–like me–think we need to make sure we aren’t harming the environment, and all the animals, and ecosystems and whatnot.”
Thistle blinked at her.
“Does that make sense? Don’t your people also want to minimize the harm–not destroy nature?”
“Well, yes,” said Thistle. “That is just common sense. If you destroy your home, you will have nothing.”
“Yes!”
“I just…didn’t think humans…would also feel that.” He broke eye contact, again as if expecting her to be mad at him.
“Why not?” she said gently.
Thistle looked over his shoulder, at the living room, at the fish tank. “I didn’t think humans…would care about others.”
“A lot of us do. We love nature, and animals.”
“But…You are killing these creatures to help them?”
“Ah! Okay! We’re almost there.” She scribbled out some other creatures, dragonflies, mantises, birds, lizards. “So the people making these poisons, and the ones using them, claim that they don’t hurt the environment and the other animals. Some people claim that they do. It’s my job to figure out who is right. Because if I prove that they’re poisoning the environment, that gives other humans the evidence they need to make them stop using them. But if it’s true that they’re harmless, then they can keep using them.”
“So you’re–You’re like a–Kind of a guardian of nature?”
Colin watched as Marcy’s pride swelled her head immediately. “Sort of,” Colin interrupted before she could get too many grandiose ideas about herself. “Marce, explain what exactly you were doing with the bugs.”
“Oh, right! Well, you see, we can tell whether pesticides are harming native ecosystems–see if they’re hurting the creatures around– by seeing if it’s accumulating in the guts of native species–seeing if it’s–If it’s in the bellies of the creatures around.”
Comprehension was dawning on Thistle’s face. “So you have to…”
“Remove the belly, and the organs, so I can test if there are pesticides in them. If all the bugs I’m catching are loaded with pesticides, that’s dangerous to the birds, and rodents, and even the people around.”
“Mie keas. No…You’re killing them to help them. The sacrifice of a few for the good of the many?”
Marcy put her pencil down. “Does it at least make sense? So you know I don’t spend all day killing helpless animals because I think it’s fun? It’s not like I’m not sad about it–I wish there was a way to do it without hurting them. I don’t like hurting them. It’s just necessary to do what needs to be done.”
He looked up at her for a long while, then nodded. “Yes. It make sense.”
She let out a breath. “Good. Good, good. So, do you feel a little better about it, now?”
“Yes…but…”
“Go on.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
That caught her off guard. “Huh? Well, nothing I guess.”
“Then…ni ko…Why did you pick me up? And take me away from the field? It wasn’t because stealing food.” He put his hand on his stomach. “I still have my belly, so….you’re not interested in…pesticides in my belly. Why am I here? What do you want to do with me?”
Marcy tapped her pencil on the desk, chewing on her lip. “Ah… Well, well I…I didn’t expect to see anything like you in the field. I didn’t think you existed.”
“Right,” he said, face darkening. “Humans don’t really know we’re here.”
“Right. And well…I just got excited. I wanted to study you, too, before I realized you were a person and it would be wrong to do that to you. That’s when I took you home, because I didn’t know what else to do.”
Thistle curled up, his head in his knees.
“I’m sorry, Thistle. It was a careless, heartless decision. I was curious, and excited, and wanted to know more.”
It was all an accident. Somehow, he hadn’t considered that possibility. She’d ruined his life completely by accident, because she was just a bit careless. She had the ability to get a little too excited and completely change the course of his existence without even fully thinking through the consequences. Without even noticing that she was doing it. It really drove home just how powerless he was compared to the creatures whose hands he stood near. It made him feel smaller than ever.
His body started to tremble with sobs.
“Come on, bud, it’s okay,” said Colin. “This is all good for you, right?”
Marcy drew her hand around him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. If I could take it back, I would… I…I did try to take you back and let you go outside. Remember? But you didn’t want to go.”
Thistle sat up, wiping his eyes with the palms of his hands. He looked up at her, absolutely fuming, and pushed her hand back. “Yes, I remember! Reorun! Esimeoras, kai akorute nevolin predemi io! Liam didrasis ko ni ne ous ri, ke hoi vi ses mienilin! A ci mao, kiun i faas aci! Ko prie? They always say, ‘You can’t lead eanto…predator…back to us! You can’t have them follow you!’ Because of this! Because you can hurt so, so much even if you don’t want! What if you were trying? What could you do to my family?”
Marcy withdrew her hand, biting her lip.
Colin leaned over. “All right, buddy, I think you’re getting worked up again. You just had a lot dumped on you. Why don’t you take some more private time to process your thoughts?”
“Fuck you!” Thistle yelled, then his head swiveled towards Colin. “And fuck you, buddy!”
“Go,” snapped Colin. “Go to your castle.”
Thistle turned and dashed away, leaping down and sprinting across the living room floor into his house. The door slammed shut behind him.
Marcy lowered her head down onto the table, groaning. “Oh, Colin…”
Colin sighed and sat back in his chair.
“I fucked up.”
He patted her back. “We all fuck up sometimes.”
“Yes, but I’ve never fucked up this bad before.” She moaned again.
The chime on the front door sounded, indicating someone was coming in. Marcy propped herself up on her elbow.
Teddy walked into the room. She had a plastic bag in one hand. “Mm-hmm,” she said.
“What?” said Marcy.
“Yep, I knew my alarms were going off for a good reason. I had a premonition that we’d need some cheesecake on the way home.” She set the bags on the table and unwrapped several plastic takeout containers. “Nothing miserable people like more than cheesecake.”
****
Teddy and Colin eventually went upstairs to watch TV in their bedroom. Marcy stayed in the living room. Dusk settled on the room as the sun went down, the previously unneeded lights still sitting off. Marcy just sat outside the castle, head propped up on her curled-up knee, staring at the little door, the blinded windows. The quiet hum of the water filter was the only sound, the lights in the aquarium casting faint shadows in the room.
She so desperately wanted to lay eyes on him, but if she even once broke the sanctity of that space she’d promised was private, he’d never feel secure in it again.
She reached out a hand, hesitated, then moved it the rest of the way to the door. She tapped on it lightly. “Ardo? Will you please come out now?”
The blind in one of the windows went up. His face peered out from the darkness.
She brushed the tip of her finger against the little saucer she had by her knee, upon which was a piece of cheesecake she had painstakingly cut out from a regular-sized one and whittled down so it was appropriately sized for him. “I have something for you, if you feel like coming out.”
He gazed at her, then at the proffered food. Then he disappeared back into the castle, and the drawbridge came down. He came out, looking haggard and hunted. But he did have a tiny fork, taken from the set of miniature silverware replicas they’d gotten from the craft store, in one hand.
Marcy backed up a little to give him some space. He wordlessly crawled up onto the saucer, crossing his legs, and digging in. Tears filled his eyes after a few bites. “Oh…”
“Everything okay?” Marcy said softly.
He nodded. “This is…really good.” He put his fork down, lip wobbling.
Marcy held her hand out, and he rushed forward into it, hugging her palm. She gently closed her fingers around him, rubbing his back. “Shh…It’s all right. It’s OK. It’s gonna be OK.”
Thistle pulled back and wiped his eyes. “Th-thank you. This is very good.”
She crouched down, trying to get on eye level with him, trying to make herself as small as possible. “Are you feeling any better?”
He nodded. “A little. Yes. Thank you for telling me about it. Your work. It’s more sense now.”
She could still see the shiver up his spine, the fear in the words. She curled her fingers around him protectively. “Listen…I know we’ve…Well…I know you’d rather be with your family than with me. As much as it would pain me to see you leave, as much as I’d miss you….if there is any way I can make that happen, just say the word. I’ll take you back, I’ll– Whatever it is you need that would fix things for you.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
“Iwant to understand. What is the actual danger? What do you think is going to happen?”
He swallowed. “We have always kept away from you. Humans. They can dangerous for us. So if we get seen, or handled, we can’t allowed to go back to the others, because someone could follow us.”
“But… Surely there must be a way to get around it, right? You know I’m not going to follow you back to your family.” Oh God, maybe that was too bold of an assertion to make. She trucked past it, ignoring the obvious discomfort on his face, not wanting to press it further. “What if I just put you back down where I found you? I could leave, and you could make your own way back there. They don’t need to know we ever interacted.”
“It’s too late, Marcy.”
“But–Butwhy?”
How to explain? He had more tools to do so now, but it was still hard. Even if he was sure it was perfectly safe…the guilt would be with him forever. He couldn’t keep something like that secret from his family. He had to put their security and safety above his own comfort. Not only that…but he wasn’t a good liar. “They will find out. I am…not good at secret. And they. Would upset.”
“But–But Thistle, please understand from my perspective this seems like such a non-issue to –to completely ruin your life about.”
He clenched his fists. “Just as before. The sacrifice of a few for the good of the many. That is our way.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“It does!” His chest heaved, his hands shook. “I would do anything to keep them safe! I would suffer anything! Torture, if I had to! I would die! I would live here forever even if I hated it and you were cruel! Any risk is…for me is…big no!”
Marcy sat in silence, watching the resolve on his tiny face, the anger, the dedication. She reached a finger out and placed it on his chest. “That’s very noble of you. And kind. And if that’s how you really feel, I won’t push it anymore. Just know if you change your mind, I’ll make it happen if I can.”
“Th…Thank you.”
She withdrew from him, laying down on her side, propping herself up. “Ardo, I… I understand completely why seeing what you saw me doing would upset you, but… I have to admit, it kind of hurts that even after all this time, you still won’t trust me. It’s hurtful that you see me as a big scary monster that would torture you just for fun, and hurt your family. I can’t believe you still think I would do that to you. I thought we were past that.”
He broke eye contact. He was still sitting on the saucer. He poked at the cheesecake. The kinds of monsters who would do that to him existed, and in numbers far too great for his comfort. His kind had to be quick to spot them. “It is…instinct. As you say. Bad things can happen to me. Very fastly. If I don’t careful.
“But… What more do you want me to do? I made a mistake, yes, but I’ve done everything I can to try and make it right. I saved your life, I gave you back the ability to fly, I would make the rest of your life here comfortable if that’s what you want–”
“What?”
“Assuming you wanted to stay here, that is…”
“No, what was that…saved your life?”
“I saved your life?”
“You think you saved my life?”
This one sentence smacked Marcy in the face like someone had just swung a sack of batteries at her. “Well…Yeah?”
“When?”
“When I found you in the field? You couldn’t fly? When we first met? I know I’m scary, but I thought you might at least be a little grateful for that…”
Thistle raised his hackles. She’d been congratulating herself this whole time on saving poor little Thistle from death in the cabbage field when they’d first met? That sent him into a rage he’d never experienced before, because she’d been the last thing standing between him and getting back to the hive. If she hadn’t scooped him up, he would have made it back to them as soon as he’d crossed the cabbage field and made it into the tall grass. And she was lecturing him on how he should be grateful for the wing? That was part of why he couldn’t go back! Because they’d take one look at him and know he’d been handled, or at the very least demand to know where he’d gotten it from!
“Kia dablo! Esimeoras, kai akorute nen pemi io! Lim diaie ko ni ne ous ri, kei vis mienilin! Aca, i faas aci kiu! Kai prie!”
Marcy stared at him, speechless.
Thistle’s anger boiled over. It was a struggle to string together sentences in English, while trembling with rage. “I was almost home! If you’d left me in the field, I wouldn’t die, I would have made it back!” He turned his shoulder, flickering his wings pointedly. “And this–these stupid wing you’re so proud of yourself–is why they will know! They will know you had me!”
“You…you mean I…”
“Kia dablo! You think you can ‘fix’ me and make everything better, but you know nothing! Who did you do this? For me? For yourself? Did you want helping me, or did you want to see if you could do it?”
The labyrinth of logic Marcy had put together to convince herself she wasn’t that terrible of a person–That sure she shouldn’t have scooped Thistle up from the field like that and taken him away, but hey, at least she’d saved his life! At least she’d given him back his ability to fly!–collapsed instantly at this revelation. She had nothing to defend herself, nothing to cushion the blow, the fall of who she thought she was to who she actually was. In this ego’s death throes, Marcy could only lash out in anger at what had hurt her.
If you hate your wing so much, then maybe I can just cut it off for you.
Shealmost said it. She came dangerously close to saying it out loud. She physically bit her tongue to swallow it, the smarter parts of her brain kicking in to tackle that thought to the ground before it left her mouth. If she said that,afterthis… They’d never come back from it.
Thistle watched her face journey, reading the dark cloud descend, the spasm of anger and panic. He took a step back, his own face laced with fear, as though he knew what she was thinking.
Marcy let out a shaky breath. “I need a minute. I need to walk away for a minute.”
Leaving him standing there unsurely, Marcy went upstairs and shut herself in her bedroom. She took a few minutes to punch a pillow, let out her muffled screams into it.
She lay limply on the pillow she’d just unloaded on, sobbing. She was frustrated. She did want to study Thistle. She wanted it so badly it ached. She wanted to know everything about this amazing, impossible little creature she had found. But that very fact made Thistle uncomfortable and scared, so she’d worked so, so hard to reign it in just to make him feel better. And after that, he acted like she was careless and cruel and stupid?
From her perspective they’d be going agonizingly slowly, letting him set the pace. It was a far cry from their first day together, before she realized she needed to deny her scientific impulses, because her natural curiosity had led her to kidnapping and imprisoning him. Hell, the first day they met, she’d almost torn his clothes off just to see what he looked like. She’d come here from there, giving him all the room he needed, respecting his personal space, letting him rage and feel however he wanted, doing everything in her power to make it right. Could he really not see that? Did he really not realize the effort she was putting in, the progress she’d made?
But it still wasn’t enough. All it’d taken to destroy all their progress was for her to get just a bit careless while working, because she was stressed out and preoccupied. And it was frustrating, because it felt like nothing she did was good enough.
She let herself wallow for a while. She didn’t open the door again until she was sure she could interact with Thistle without hurting him.
When she shuffled across the room to open the door, her feet bumped the bracelet and anklet Thistle had dropped on the floor earlier. She bent down to pick them up, wiping her eyes and holding them gently in her hand, thumbing the beads and tassels.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed, elbows on her knees, still holding them, when he came up a while later. She glanced up and saw Thistle on the floor by her dresser, partially behind it, watching her. His face was splotchy–evidently he’d been doing his own fair share of crying.
She sat up. Just as that first time when they’d finally come face to face and she didn’t know what to do, she just waited. Waited to see what he would do.
He cleared his throat. “Ah…Do you…like them?”
She nodded, already tearing up. “Yes. I love them. I don’t want to make any assumptions…Can…Can I still have them?”
He nodded.
Marcy slipped one on her wrist, then lifted her bare foot up to slide the other on her ankle. “Thank you. They’re beautiful. It’s obvious you put a lot of work into them.”
He stepped forwards. “Thank you. They’re copies of mine. My mother’s mother made them for me…for us…my family…from the tree where I was born.”
Marcy swallowed. “That’s so nice.”
“I couldn’t make the big ones from the same tree, but…”
He trailed off as Marcy opened her arms, holding her hands out to him. He hesitated for a moment before finishing the walk to the bed and leaping up, landing in her outstretched palm.
She drew him close to her chest, cradling him with both hands. “Don’t worry about that. It’s perfect.” She sniffled, trying not to let the tears overflow her eyes. “It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful gift that you’ve given me. I’m honored.”
“I’m sorry for being too hard on you,” said Thistle. He settled into her hand, snuggling up to her chest, right over her heart. “It’s only natural to be excited about new and interesting things. I too am. If I met someone this much smaller than me, I might mistake the same.”
Finally,finally Marcy had the ability to communicate Don’t be sorry without sounding like she was still mad at him. She brushed her finger against his jaw, tiling his head up to make eye contact.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” said Marcy. “Everything you’ve done and said has been a perfectly reasonable response to my actions from someone who’s lost and scared. I’msorry for how my carelessness has hurt you so deeply. I meant what I said about doing whatever I can to make things right. If you truly feel like you can’t go back to your family, I’ll take care of you for the rest of your life if that’s what you want. As long as I’m around, you won’t have to worry about your safety, or your comfort, or getting food to eat. I won’t let anyone question your personhood. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you can thrive as best as you can, however you want.”
Just when she’d started to think that his little body couldn’t produce any more tears, he started crying yet again. “It’s frustrating, but I–but I can happy that if anyone was going to pick up me, it’s you.”
She lifted him up and gave him a kiss on the top of his head. When she drew him back, he was wiping his face. “Even though I got upset…it is better it was accident. Because I… ko va…afraid of you having plans. Wanting to do things to me. Waiting for something. Now I know you’re not. It’s better. I don’t know if I can ever not afraid totally. But that’s…how I am. It is nature.
“I wish I knew how to comfort you. Yes, it’s true, I could kill you or do horrible things to you. But that’s also true of me with Teddy and Colin. We live in the same house, we sleep with our bedroom doors open. There’s nothing stopping me from grabbing the biggest knife in the kitchen and stabbing them in the middle of the night. There’s a certain point, for everyone, at which you have to just trust that the people in your life who care about you won’t do everything that they’re physically capable of doing.”
He nodded. “Right… You’re right. Thank you. And–And I’m sorry about–these wing is good. Not stupid.”
“Yeah?”
Marcy’s fix of his wing wasn’t perfect by any means…He couldn’t generate enough lift to fly the same way, because the shape was different. His muscles weren’t strong enough to keep it up for too long, because they had to work harder. The glue started to pull away if he flapped too much. And he still got occasional stabs of pain from the wing itself where it was torn. But all things considered…it was nice to be able to fly at least a little.
He leaned over and flared his wings, splaying out the two sub-pairs. “It’s…really cool that you were able to do that for me.”
She wiped her eye. “I’m glad.”
“And it can happen that something come and kill me in the field. Somaybe you did save my life. It could.”
She stroked his hair. “I’m glad. I’m glad that I could at least do something good for you.”
“You do many something goods for me. You make me safe. And…I miss my family, but…if you don’t pick me up, I would never meet you.”
She squeezed him against her chest, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You are–You are too–too fucking–too fucking–”
“Breathe, Marcy.”
She sucked in a breath. “Sorry… I’m just overwhelmed by you.”
“You’reoverwhelmed by me?”
“Yeah. You’re incredible.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Thistle was processing being called incredible. He had never thought of himself as incredible. He’d always been jealous of the other pixies who were good at magic, who were the incredible ones in his mind.
Marcy rubbed her nose. “Well–Well listen, I’m tired. It’s OK for you to sleep in your castle tonight, of course, but I’ll leave my door open if you want to sleep with me.”
He peered up at the wall. “I…would like…but there’s one thing.”
“What’s that?”
He pointed to the shelf on the wall, where her collection of preserved insects stood on display. “They…they make uncomfortable.”
“They…oh. Because they remind you of what you’re afraid will happen to you?”
He nodded.
She seemed to think for a moment. “I’ll take them off the shelf. But let’s take one last look at them together, and then you won’t have to look at them anymore, okay?”
He nodded.
Marcy set him on the pillow, then stood up and plucked the knickknacks off her shelf. She sat back down, and Thistle climbed onto her lap, sitting with his legs dangling off her thigh.
“My dad got me these for my sixteenth birthday.” She picked up the block of resin containing the millipede, its body frozen in a wave, hundreds of legs stopped in time mid-undulation. “He saw how much I was getting into this sort of thing. He also got me a subscription to the ESA. The Entomological Society of America. I couldn’t really use it for anything, of course, but it made me feel cool.” She ran her hand over the smooth surface of the cube containing the millipede.
“You did not make?” Thistle said. He cautiously touched the resin.
She shook her head. “No. Well, this one I did.” She brought over the mounted butterfly, the one that had so frightened Thistle for its wings’ similarities to his own. “I caught this one when I was an undergrad. I worked in a lab that studied reproductive evolution. The PI helped me mount it and everything.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Thistle.
“Yeah. I was…at first I was disappointed that I caught one with a chunk missing from its wing, because I thought it was an imperfect specimen…before I realized the little differences that make each individual unique are just as natural and real representations of what they are as what they’re ‘supposed’ to look like.”
Thistle could see the love in the delicate caress of her hands, her voice, her face. She cherished these creatures, so much so that she wanted to have them preserved forever. She spent all her time outside the house working to protect the small creatures around her, even if it meant doing difficult things like killing some of them. She had done all this out of respect, out of appreciation, because she could not forge relationships with individuals, only the species as a whole.
“A-anyway,” she said, setting the butterfly aside. “I always thought the scorpion was a little scary…something about the venom freaks me out…but looking at this one helped me get over the fear.”
“They are fearsome.”
“And the wasp…I got stung by a wasp on the way to the park when I was little…Good thing I’m not allergic.” She turned it over and took the next block. “And this stag beetle…it was always one of my favorites. I tried raising these guys from grubs one time…Didn’t work, unfortunately. I think I got the wrong kind of soil.”
“I like its pincers.”
She took out a set of three small blocks. “These ones I found in a thrift store. Which was really strange. They don’t normally sell that kind of stuff. And based on the quality, they look homemade. I’d be really curious how they ended up there.”
An odd sense of comfort overcame Thistle watching her handle these dead creatures gently, reverently. This was how she cared for them. She preserved their beauty forever to admire them. This was all she could really do to appreciate creatures that did not think, feel, or care about her, that would die in a cosmic heartbeat and decay instantly without even being able to conceive of her existence next to them.
And in her mind, it would be inappropriate for her to do this to Thistle, because that was not how she appreciated him.
No, she appreciated him by doing the things she’d already been doing. Caring for him, feeding him, keeping him safe, handling him. He’d been so scared the whole time she’d do something for her own satisfaction, but he’d so completely failed to notice she’d already been doing exactly what she wanted to do to him. The way she fawned over him was the equivalent of putting these bugs in resin and keeping them on the shelf. Because to her, they were different kinds of creatures, so they were to be treated differently, and she was simply giving both kinds the highest respect she knew how to.
The pieces clicked together as she set them in a pile off to the side. “I’ll put them in the trunk in my closet, okay?”
“Wait.”
She had been in the process of gathering them to stand up, but she stopped.
“You…You can keep them out.”
“Oh? Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
She put them back, brushing aside the dust, and settled back into bed. “Ready to go to sleep, then?”
“Yes.” He crawled under the covers, snuggling under her hand. Despite the loneliness, the upset, the hurt…he couldn’t help but feel the warmth in his chest, and think that all things considered, this was really not that bad of a place to end up for a creature like him.
The humans he found himself among might not be the family he was used to, but they were becoming family enough.
Marcy left the room to get some paper and pencils, setting up on the dining room table. Colin sat with Thistle in the living room for a few more moments, helping him calm down. Marcy sat shame-facedly at the table, listening to the hushed voices in the next room, feeling like absolute shit.
After he’d gotten Thistle to stop crying, Colin knelt down in front of his castle. “Here, take a few minutes in your private space to calm down. Come out when you’re ready, okay?”
Thistle skittered out of Colin’s hands in a flash, disappearing instantly into the interior of the castle. He did not even have the wherewithal to close the door right away. A hand emerged after a second to draw the door shut behind him.
Colin joined Marcy in the living room after that. Marcy desperately wanted to talk to Thistle, to dump all her thoughts on him at once, to plead for some understanding, but she knew he would only feel better if she left him alone for a little while.
“He saw me doing dissections,” said Marcy, rifling her papers absently. “I–I guess I just got engrossed in my work and forgot that–that if he saw that, he’d–”
“Doesn’t matter now, Marce. What happened already happened.”
She wiped her eyes. “It kinda–I mean I know I should be focusing on how he feels, but it kinda hurts that he still thinks I’d do that to him.”
Thistle heard the two humans continuing to murmur to each other from the next room, crouched in his castle with the door shut. He’d drawn down the blinds to cover the windows as well, leaving him in darkness. He spent the first minute balled up in the corner, before he remembered his belongings and sat on the chair he had, which was enough of the right size for him to sit on. His hands worked at the rubber clownfish like a stress ball.
Was he overreacting again? He was thinking with his prey brain, and not his person brain.
Marcy was kind and gentle, or at least she tried to be. She wouldn’t torture small animals unless there was a really good reason for it.
…right?
What could possibly be a good reason to do that?
He thought back to her lab, the place he’d gone to the first night, the bugs held prisoner in the fridge there. Who had set that all up? And to what end? Why had she brought him there, then suddenly reversed course and taken him home? Nemo had said She studies things… What exactly, and how? And how did she intend to study him?
Was he finally going to find out? And the nagging question of…what if he didn’t like the answers?
He waited until the suspense and anxiety of not knowing became too much to bear, outweighing his fear of facing the humans. He’d come this far. He’d survived. Maybe he could face this, too, and come out all right.
He opened the door and walked out. From the fishtank, Nemo hovered towards the bottom, hands on the colorful gravel. He mouthed something at him, but Thistle couldn’t read his lips.
“Shut up,” Thistle whispered. “You’re not helping.”
Marcy and Colin stopped talking as the drawbridge to the castle lowered, and Thistle walked out, hands clasped together in front of him. Marcy stood, clearly intending to go pick him up, but Colin quickly hissed, “Let him come to us.”
Thistle stopped once he was in the doorway of the dining room, looking up at them both silently.
“Come on up, bud,” said Colin, tapping the table. “If you’re ready to talk.”
He leapt up, catching the edge of the table and scrambling to pull himself up. He sat cross-legged on the edge of the table. Out of easy grabbing range, Marcy noticed. She also noticed his tiny frame was still occasionally shaking.
That filled her with a strange sense of pride. He was clearly still very afraid, which made her sad, but he was brave enough to come up here anyway. Well, let’s see if we can reward his courage by showing him there’s nothing to be scared of.
Not that this was going to be an easy task. This was definitely going to be an unprecedented test of her science communication skills. The voice of professors from years bygone hammering into her over and over that the average American only has an eighth-grade reading level echoed in her skull… But she’d explained her work to elementary-school children before, at outreach programs. She just had to take it down one step below that.
“I’m going to explain my work to you,” said Marcy. “What I do at work. Is that okay?”
Thistle nodded mutely. He vibrated his wings, perhaps as an involuntary reflex to accompany his chest trembling.
Marcy slid a piece of paper over and drew some squiggly lines with a green colored pencil: the approximate shape of trees, bushes, plants. “You know how humans grow food, right?”
He nodded. “Farms.”
“Right. We cultivate–We make a space ideal–we make a space good for plants to grow, and put a bunch of seeds in there, and let them grow so we can eat them later.”
“You do this?”
“Well, not me personally. Other humans. They do it for everyone as a group. Well, in exchange for money, but let’s not get bogged down in details here. I’m just trying to explain a very simple version of things here.” She drew some wiggly critters at the foot of the plants. Worms. Flies. Bugs. “There are lots of creatures that want to eat these plants, since we grow them specifically to be big and tasty for us to eat.”
Thistle hesitated, then nodded.
“So, to keep other animals from eating them while they grow, we put….things on them. Poison.”
“Poison?”
“They’re called pesticides.” She drew some purple drops on the plants. “These are special chemicals that hurt bugs that eat them, but don’t hurt humans.“
Thistle’s face scrunched up a little. He tightened his grip on the hem of his shirt.
“Does that upset you?”
It did, a little, but he supposed it shouldn’t…. It’s not like he didn’t kill bugs, or the hive didn’t harm predators who got too close. That was just nature. He shook his head. “We poi, ko… keep others from our food, too. But–I–I am…”
“Yes?”
“Worried, because…” He cringed. “I–ahm–took this food sometimes.” He ducked his head down, as though he expected her to be mad at him. “Not much very! Promises! Nobody ever notice it, that’s how small I took!”
“Relax,” said Colin. “Me and Marcy don’t care if you take food from farms. Like you said, it’s such a small amount.”
“But–But the bugs too take such a small amount, and you kill them.”
“That’s because there’s so very many of them,” said Marcy. “If we didn’t use pesticides, they would eat practically all of it. You understand how to share, and take in moderation. Like you said, nobody ever even noticed.”
“So…” He flicked his wings. “So you–you did not catch me from outside because I was stealing food?”
Marcy put her pencil down, reaching her hand out towards him. He finally, finally didn’t recoil from her touch, letting her take a hand with one gentle finger. “No. Of course not, sweetheart. And pesticides aren’t a punishment for ‘stealing.’ It’s just a matter of business. We need the food, so we keep bugs off of it. That’s just nature.”
“My family…” he said, eyes watery. “Cui ea seuaj? Mais citon? I take apples to them sometimes. I…” He made a chopping motion with his hands. “…cut for them to eat. The…babies. Is safe? I poison them? Safe?”
“I’m not sure,” said Marcy. “If they’ve never gotten sick, I wouldn’t worry about it. There’s no way to know what effect it would have on them. But it could be harmless.”
"Harmless?”
“Safe.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“I know you’re worried about them, but please don’t blame yourself. It’s really not your fault.”
“It’s okay.” He was starting to seem a little more at ease, being pulled out of prey mode by the conversation and the concern Marcy was showing.
Marcy picked her pencil back up. “Okay, this is where I come in. So these big groups of humans are all growing all these different plants for us to eat, and using all these pesticides…And there are different kinds, and some work differently than others.” She drew some blue and red drops on the plants next to the purple ones. “Does that make sense?”
He shook his head uncomprehendingly.
“Hmm…What I’m trying to say is… Well, are there things your family avoids because they’re poison?”
“Yes.”
“Can you name some?”
He perked up at this. Marcy knew he’d spent quite some time poring over the encyclopedia entries about plants, trying to put English names to everything he knew. “Poison Ivy. Nightshade. Inkberry. Hemlock. Hogweed.”
“Right,” she said. “What happens when you eat these plants?”
“Poison Ivy….rash…and I can’t breathe. Nightshade, you can’t move yourself. Very sick. Inkberry, you shake.”
“So they do different things, right?”
“Yes.”
“That’s because they’re different kinds of poison.”
He nodded.
“It’s sort of the same thing. There are different kinds of poisons, different kinds of pesticides we use on our food. Get it now?”
He nodded.
“Right. Okay. So, we have different kinds of pesticides, and some people claim that the ones theyuse are better than the ones other people use. We have to have some way to test that.”
“Better how?”
“Well, for example, what we want a pesticide to do is kill bugs that eat the plants, but not harm other creatures. These poisons can persist in the environment–They can go into the bodies of other animals, and harm them. For example, if a caterpillar eats poison, then a dragonfly eats it, it can harm the dragonfly. That dragonfly gets eaten by a bird, and that bird is poisoned now.”
The gears in Thistle’s head were visibly turning. “But…Why…Why do you care that? Why do humans care if it kill birds and dragonflies? Isn’t it for the food?”
“You sound like a Republican,” Marcy muttered, before raising her voice and correcting quickly, “Well, that’s something that humans argue about a lot. Some of them think it’s fine if other creatures die, but a lot of humans–like me–think we need to make sure we aren’t harming the environment, and all the animals, and ecosystems and whatnot.”
Thistle blinked at her.
“Does that make sense? Don’t your people also want to minimize the harm–not destroy nature?”
“Well, yes,” said Thistle. “That is just common sense. If you destroy your home, you will have nothing.”
“Yes!”
“I just…didn’t think humans…would also feel that.” He broke eye contact, again as if expecting her to be mad at him.
“Why not?” she said gently.
Thistle looked over his shoulder, at the living room, at the fish tank. “I didn’t think humans…would care about others.”
“A lot of us do. We love nature, and animals.”
“But…You are killing these creatures to help them?”
“Ah! Okay! We’re almost there.” She scribbled out some other creatures, dragonflies, mantises, birds, lizards. “So the people making these poisons, and the ones using them, claim that they don’t hurt the environment and the other animals. Some people claim that they do. It’s my job to figure out who is right. Because if I prove that they’re poisoning the environment, that gives other humans the evidence they need to make them stop using them. But if it’s true that they’re harmless, then they can keep using them.”
“So you’re–You’re like a–Kind of a guardian of nature?”
Colin watched as Marcy’s pride swelled her head immediately. “Sort of,” Colin interrupted before she could get too many grandiose ideas about herself. “Marce, explain what exactly you were doing with the bugs.”
“Oh, right! Well, you see, we can tell whether pesticides are harming native ecosystems–see if they’re hurting the creatures around– by seeing if it’s accumulating in the guts of native species–seeing if it’s–If it’s in the bellies of the creatures around.”
Comprehension was dawning on Thistle’s face. “So you have to…”
“Remove the belly, and the organs, so I can test if there are pesticides in them. If all the bugs I’m catching are loaded with pesticides, that’s dangerous to the birds, and rodents, and even the people around.”
“Mie keas. No…You’re killing them to help them. The sacrifice of a few for the good of the many?”
Marcy put her pencil down. “Does it at least make sense? So you know I don’t spend all day killing helpless animals because I think it’s fun? It’s not like I’m not sad about it–I wish there was a way to do it without hurting them. I don’t like hurting them. It’s just necessary to do what needs to be done.”
He looked up at her for a long while, then nodded. “Yes. It make sense.”
She let out a breath. “Good. Good, good. So, do you feel a little better about it, now?”
“Yes…but…”
“Go on.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
That caught her off guard. “Huh? Well, nothing I guess.”
“Then…ni ko…Why did you pick me up? And take me away from the field? It wasn’t because stealing food.” He put his hand on his stomach. “I still have my belly, so….you’re not interested in…pesticides in my belly. Why am I here? What do you want to do with me?”
Marcy tapped her pencil on the desk, chewing on her lip. “Ah… Well, well I…I didn’t expect to see anything like you in the field. I didn’t think you existed.”
“Right,” he said, face darkening. “Humans don’t really know we’re here.”
“Right. And well…I just got excited. I wanted to study you, too, before I realized you were a person and it would be wrong to do that to you. That’s when I took you home, because I didn’t know what else to do.”
Thistle curled up, his head in his knees.
“I’m sorry, Thistle. It was a careless, heartless decision. I was curious, and excited, and wanted to know more.”
It was all an accident. Somehow, he hadn’t considered that possibility. She’d ruined his life completely by accident, because she was just a bit careless. She had the ability to get a little too excited and completely change the course of his existence without even fully thinking through the consequences. Without even noticing that she was doing it. It really drove home just how powerless he was compared to the creatures whose hands he stood near. It made him feel smaller than ever.
His body started to tremble with sobs.
“Come on, bud, it’s okay,” said Colin. “This is all good for you, right?”
Marcy drew her hand around him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. If I could take it back, I would… I…I did try to take you back and let you go outside. Remember? But you didn’t want to go.”
Thistle sat up, wiping his eyes with the palms of his hands. He looked up at her, absolutely fuming, and pushed her hand back. “Yes, I remember! Reorun! Esimeoras, kai akorute nevolin predemi io! Liam didrasis ko ni ne ous ri, ke hoi vi ses mienilin! A ci mao, kiun i faas aci! Ko prie? They always say, ‘You can’t lead eanto…predator…back to us! You can’t have them follow you!’ Because of this! Because you can hurt so, so much even if you don’t want! What if you were trying? What could you do to my family?”
Marcy withdrew her hand, biting her lip.
Colin leaned over. “All right, buddy, I think you’re getting worked up again. You just had a lot dumped on you. Why don’t you take some more private time to process your thoughts?”
“Fuck you!” Thistle yelled, then his head swiveled towards Colin. “And fuck you, buddy!”
“Go,” snapped Colin. “Go to your castle.”
Thistle turned and dashed away, leaping down and sprinting across the living room floor into his house. The door slammed shut behind him.
Marcy lowered her head down onto the table, groaning. “Oh, Colin…”
Colin sighed and sat back in his chair.
“I fucked up.”
He patted her back. “We all fuck up sometimes.”
“Yes, but I’ve never fucked up this bad before.” She moaned again.
The chime on the front door sounded, indicating someone was coming in. Marcy propped herself up on her elbow.
Teddy walked into the room. She had a plastic bag in one hand. “Mm-hmm,” she said.
“What?” said Marcy.
“Yep, I knew my alarms were going off for a good reason. I had a premonition that we’d need some cheesecake on the way home.” She set the bags on the table and unwrapped several plastic takeout containers. “Nothing miserable people like more than cheesecake.”
****
Teddy and Colin eventually went upstairs to watch TV in their bedroom. Marcy stayed in the living room. Dusk settled on the room as the sun went down, the previously unneeded lights still sitting off. Marcy just sat outside the castle, head propped up on her curled-up knee, staring at the little door, the blinded windows. The quiet hum of the water filter was the only sound, the lights in the aquarium casting faint shadows in the room.
She so desperately wanted to lay eyes on him, but if she even once broke the sanctity of that space she’d promised was private, he’d never feel secure in it again.
She reached out a hand, hesitated, then moved it the rest of the way to the door. She tapped on it lightly. “Ardo? Will you please come out now?”
The blind in one of the windows went up. His face peered out from the darkness.
She brushed the tip of her finger against the little saucer she had by her knee, upon which was a piece of cheesecake she had painstakingly cut out from a regular-sized one and whittled down so it was appropriately sized for him. “I have something for you, if you feel like coming out.”
He gazed at her, then at the proffered food. Then he disappeared back into the castle, and the drawbridge came down. He came out, looking haggard and hunted. But he did have a tiny fork, taken from the set of miniature silverware replicas they’d gotten from the craft store, in one hand.
Marcy backed up a little to give him some space. He wordlessly crawled up onto the saucer, crossing his legs, and digging in. Tears filled his eyes after a few bites. “Oh…”
“Everything okay?” Marcy said softly.
He nodded. “This is…really good.” He put his fork down, lip wobbling.
Marcy held her hand out, and he rushed forward into it, hugging her palm. She gently closed her fingers around him, rubbing his back. “Shh…It’s all right. It’s OK. It’s gonna be OK.”
Thistle pulled back and wiped his eyes. “Th-thank you. This is very good.”
She crouched down, trying to get on eye level with him, trying to make herself as small as possible. “Are you feeling any better?”
He nodded. “A little. Yes. Thank you for telling me about it. Your work. It’s more sense now.”
She could still see the shiver up his spine, the fear in the words. She curled her fingers around him protectively. “Listen…I know we’ve…Well…I know you’d rather be with your family than with me. As much as it would pain me to see you leave, as much as I’d miss you….if there is any way I can make that happen, just say the word. I’ll take you back, I’ll– Whatever it is you need that would fix things for you.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
“Iwant to understand. What is the actual danger? What do you think is going to happen?”
He swallowed. “We have always kept away from you. Humans. They can dangerous for us. So if we get seen, or handled, we can’t allowed to go back to the others, because someone could follow us.”
“But… Surely there must be a way to get around it, right? You know I’m not going to follow you back to your family.” Oh God, maybe that was too bold of an assertion to make. She trucked past it, ignoring the obvious discomfort on his face, not wanting to press it further. “What if I just put you back down where I found you? I could leave, and you could make your own way back there. They don’t need to know we ever interacted.”
“It’s too late, Marcy.”
“But–Butwhy?”
How to explain? He had more tools to do so now, but it was still hard. Even if he was sure it was perfectly safe…the guilt would be with him forever. He couldn’t keep something like that secret from his family. He had to put their security and safety above his own comfort. Not only that…but he wasn’t a good liar. “They will find out. I am…not good at secret. And they. Would upset.”
“But–But Thistle, please understand from my perspective this seems like such a non-issue to –to completely ruin your life about.”
He clenched his fists. “Just as before. The sacrifice of a few for the good of the many. That is our way.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“It does!” His chest heaved, his hands shook. “I would do anything to keep them safe! I would suffer anything! Torture, if I had to! I would die! I would live here forever even if I hated it and you were cruel! Any risk is…for me is…big no!”
Marcy sat in silence, watching the resolve on his tiny face, the anger, the dedication. She reached a finger out and placed it on his chest. “That’s very noble of you. And kind. And if that’s how you really feel, I won’t push it anymore. Just know if you change your mind, I’ll make it happen if I can.”
“Th…Thank you.”
She withdrew from him, laying down on her side, propping herself up. “Ardo, I… I understand completely why seeing what you saw me doing would upset you, but… I have to admit, it kind of hurts that even after all this time, you still won’t trust me. It’s hurtful that you see me as a big scary monster that would torture you just for fun, and hurt your family. I can’t believe you still think I would do that to you. I thought we were past that.”
He broke eye contact. He was still sitting on the saucer. He poked at the cheesecake. The kinds of monsters who would do that to him existed, and in numbers far too great for his comfort. His kind had to be quick to spot them. “It is…instinct. As you say. Bad things can happen to me. Very fastly. If I don’t careful.
“But… What more do you want me to do? I made a mistake, yes, but I’ve done everything I can to try and make it right. I saved your life, I gave you back the ability to fly, I would make the rest of your life here comfortable if that’s what you want–”
“What?”
“Assuming you wanted to stay here, that is…”
“No, what was that…saved your life?”
“I saved your life?”
“You think you saved my life?”
This one sentence smacked Marcy in the face like someone had just swung a sack of batteries at her. “Well…Yeah?”
“When?”
“When I found you in the field? You couldn’t fly? When we first met? I know I’m scary, but I thought you might at least be a little grateful for that…”
Thistle raised his hackles. She’d been congratulating herself this whole time on saving poor little Thistle from death in the cabbage field when they’d first met? That sent him into a rage he’d never experienced before, because she’d been the last thing standing between him and getting back to the hive. If she hadn’t scooped him up, he would have made it back to them as soon as he’d crossed the cabbage field and made it into the tall grass. And she was lecturing him on how he should be grateful for the wing? That was part of why he couldn’t go back! Because they’d take one look at him and know he’d been handled, or at the very least demand to know where he’d gotten it from!
“Kia dablo! Esimeoras, kai akorute nen pemi io! Lim diaie ko ni ne ous ri, kei vis mienilin! Aca, i faas aci kiu! Kai prie!”
Marcy stared at him, speechless.
Thistle’s anger boiled over. It was a struggle to string together sentences in English, while trembling with rage. “I was almost home! If you’d left me in the field, I wouldn’t die, I would have made it back!” He turned his shoulder, flickering his wings pointedly. “And this–these stupid wing you’re so proud of yourself–is why they will know! They will know you had me!”
“You…you mean I…”
“Kia dablo! You think you can ‘fix’ me and make everything better, but you know nothing! Who did you do this? For me? For yourself? Did you want helping me, or did you want to see if you could do it?”
The labyrinth of logic Marcy had put together to convince herself she wasn’t that terrible of a person–That sure she shouldn’t have scooped Thistle up from the field like that and taken him away, but hey, at least she’d saved his life! At least she’d given him back his ability to fly!–collapsed instantly at this revelation. She had nothing to defend herself, nothing to cushion the blow, the fall of who she thought she was to who she actually was. In this ego’s death throes, Marcy could only lash out in anger at what had hurt her.
If you hate your wing so much, then maybe I can just cut it off for you.
Shealmost said it. She came dangerously close to saying it out loud. She physically bit her tongue to swallow it, the smarter parts of her brain kicking in to tackle that thought to the ground before it left her mouth. If she said that,afterthis… They’d never come back from it.
Thistle watched her face journey, reading the dark cloud descend, the spasm of anger and panic. He took a step back, his own face laced with fear, as though he knew what she was thinking.
Marcy let out a shaky breath. “I need a minute. I need to walk away for a minute.”
Leaving him standing there unsurely, Marcy went upstairs and shut herself in her bedroom. She took a few minutes to punch a pillow, let out her muffled screams into it.
She lay limply on the pillow she’d just unloaded on, sobbing. She was frustrated. She did want to study Thistle. She wanted it so badly it ached. She wanted to know everything about this amazing, impossible little creature she had found. But that very fact made Thistle uncomfortable and scared, so she’d worked so, so hard to reign it in just to make him feel better. And after that, he acted like she was careless and cruel and stupid?
From her perspective they’d be going agonizingly slowly, letting him set the pace. It was a far cry from their first day together, before she realized she needed to deny her scientific impulses, because her natural curiosity had led her to kidnapping and imprisoning him. Hell, the first day they met, she’d almost torn his clothes off just to see what he looked like. She’d come here from there, giving him all the room he needed, respecting his personal space, letting him rage and feel however he wanted, doing everything in her power to make it right. Could he really not see that? Did he really not realize the effort she was putting in, the progress she’d made?
But it still wasn’t enough. All it’d taken to destroy all their progress was for her to get just a bit careless while working, because she was stressed out and preoccupied. And it was frustrating, because it felt like nothing she did was good enough.
She let herself wallow for a while. She didn’t open the door again until she was sure she could interact with Thistle without hurting him.
When she shuffled across the room to open the door, her feet bumped the bracelet and anklet Thistle had dropped on the floor earlier. She bent down to pick them up, wiping her eyes and holding them gently in her hand, thumbing the beads and tassels.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed, elbows on her knees, still holding them, when he came up a while later. She glanced up and saw Thistle on the floor by her dresser, partially behind it, watching her. His face was splotchy–evidently he’d been doing his own fair share of crying.
She sat up. Just as that first time when they’d finally come face to face and she didn’t know what to do, she just waited. Waited to see what he would do.
He cleared his throat. “Ah…Do you…like them?”
She nodded, already tearing up. “Yes. I love them. I don’t want to make any assumptions…Can…Can I still have them?”
He nodded.
Marcy slipped one on her wrist, then lifted her bare foot up to slide the other on her ankle. “Thank you. They’re beautiful. It’s obvious you put a lot of work into them.”
He stepped forwards. “Thank you. They’re copies of mine. My mother’s mother made them for me…for us…my family…from the tree where I was born.”
Marcy swallowed. “That’s so nice.”
“I couldn’t make the big ones from the same tree, but…”
He trailed off as Marcy opened her arms, holding her hands out to him. He hesitated for a moment before finishing the walk to the bed and leaping up, landing in her outstretched palm.
She drew him close to her chest, cradling him with both hands. “Don’t worry about that. It’s perfect.” She sniffled, trying not to let the tears overflow her eyes. “It’s beautiful. It’s a beautiful gift that you’ve given me. I’m honored.”
“I’m sorry for being too hard on you,” said Thistle. He settled into her hand, snuggling up to her chest, right over her heart. “It’s only natural to be excited about new and interesting things. I too am. If I met someone this much smaller than me, I might mistake the same.”
Finally,finally Marcy had the ability to communicate Don’t be sorry without sounding like she was still mad at him. She brushed her finger against his jaw, tiling his head up to make eye contact.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” said Marcy. “Everything you’ve done and said has been a perfectly reasonable response to my actions from someone who’s lost and scared. I’msorry for how my carelessness has hurt you so deeply. I meant what I said about doing whatever I can to make things right. If you truly feel like you can’t go back to your family, I’ll take care of you for the rest of your life if that’s what you want. As long as I’m around, you won’t have to worry about your safety, or your comfort, or getting food to eat. I won’t let anyone question your personhood. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you can thrive as best as you can, however you want.”
Just when she’d started to think that his little body couldn’t produce any more tears, he started crying yet again. “It’s frustrating, but I–but I can happy that if anyone was going to pick up me, it’s you.”
She lifted him up and gave him a kiss on the top of his head. When she drew him back, he was wiping his face. “Even though I got upset…it is better it was accident. Because I… ko va…afraid of you having plans. Wanting to do things to me. Waiting for something. Now I know you’re not. It’s better. I don’t know if I can ever not afraid totally. But that’s…how I am. It is nature.
“I wish I knew how to comfort you. Yes, it’s true, I could kill you or do horrible things to you. But that’s also true of me with Teddy and Colin. We live in the same house, we sleep with our bedroom doors open. There’s nothing stopping me from grabbing the biggest knife in the kitchen and stabbing them in the middle of the night. There’s a certain point, for everyone, at which you have to just trust that the people in your life who care about you won’t do everything that they’re physically capable of doing.”
He nodded. “Right… You’re right. Thank you. And–And I’m sorry about–these wing is good. Not stupid.”
“Yeah?”
Marcy’s fix of his wing wasn’t perfect by any means…He couldn’t generate enough lift to fly the same way, because the shape was different. His muscles weren’t strong enough to keep it up for too long, because they had to work harder. The glue started to pull away if he flapped too much. And he still got occasional stabs of pain from the wing itself where it was torn. But all things considered…it was nice to be able to fly at least a little.
He leaned over and flared his wings, splaying out the two sub-pairs. “It’s…really cool that you were able to do that for me.”
She wiped her eye. “I’m glad.”
“And it can happen that something come and kill me in the field. Somaybe you did save my life. It could.”
She stroked his hair. “I’m glad. I’m glad that I could at least do something good for you.”
“You do many something goods for me. You make me safe. And…I miss my family, but…if you don’t pick me up, I would never meet you.”
She squeezed him against her chest, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You are–You are too–too fucking–too fucking–”
“Breathe, Marcy.”
She sucked in a breath. “Sorry… I’m just overwhelmed by you.”
“You’reoverwhelmed by me?”
“Yeah. You’re incredible.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Thistle was processing being called incredible. He had never thought of himself as incredible. He’d always been jealous of the other pixies who were good at magic, who were the incredible ones in his mind.
Marcy rubbed her nose. “Well–Well listen, I’m tired. It’s OK for you to sleep in your castle tonight, of course, but I’ll leave my door open if you want to sleep with me.”
He peered up at the wall. “I…would like…but there’s one thing.”
“What’s that?”
He pointed to the shelf on the wall, where her collection of preserved insects stood on display. “They…they make uncomfortable.”
“They…oh. Because they remind you of what you’re afraid will happen to you?”
He nodded.
She seemed to think for a moment. “I’ll take them off the shelf. But let’s take one last look at them together, and then you won’t have to look at them anymore, okay?”
He nodded.
Marcy set him on the pillow, then stood up and plucked the knickknacks off her shelf. She sat back down, and Thistle climbed onto her lap, sitting with his legs dangling off her thigh.
“My dad got me these for my sixteenth birthday.” She picked up the block of resin containing the millipede, its body frozen in a wave, hundreds of legs stopped in time mid-undulation. “He saw how much I was getting into this sort of thing. He also got me a subscription to the ESA. The Entomological Society of America. I couldn’t really use it for anything, of course, but it made me feel cool.” She ran her hand over the smooth surface of the cube containing the millipede.
“You did not make?” Thistle said. He cautiously touched the resin.
She shook her head. “No. Well, this one I did.” She brought over the mounted butterfly, the one that had so frightened Thistle for its wings’ similarities to his own. “I caught this one when I was an undergrad. I worked in a lab that studied reproductive evolution. The PI helped me mount it and everything.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Thistle.
“Yeah. I was…at first I was disappointed that I caught one with a chunk missing from its wing, because I thought it was an imperfect specimen…before I realized the little differences that make each individual unique are just as natural and real representations of what they are as what they’re ‘supposed’ to look like.”
Thistle could see the love in the delicate caress of her hands, her voice, her face. She cherished these creatures, so much so that she wanted to have them preserved forever. She spent all her time outside the house working to protect the small creatures around her, even if it meant doing difficult things like killing some of them. She had done all this out of respect, out of appreciation, because she could not forge relationships with individuals, only the species as a whole.
“A-anyway,” she said, setting the butterfly aside. “I always thought the scorpion was a little scary…something about the venom freaks me out…but looking at this one helped me get over the fear.”
“They are fearsome.”
“And the wasp…I got stung by a wasp on the way to the park when I was little…Good thing I’m not allergic.” She turned it over and took the next block. “And this stag beetle…it was always one of my favorites. I tried raising these guys from grubs one time…Didn’t work, unfortunately. I think I got the wrong kind of soil.”
“I like its pincers.”
She took out a set of three small blocks. “These ones I found in a thrift store. Which was really strange. They don’t normally sell that kind of stuff. And based on the quality, they look homemade. I’d be really curious how they ended up there.”
An odd sense of comfort overcame Thistle watching her handle these dead creatures gently, reverently. This was how she cared for them. She preserved their beauty forever to admire them. This was all she could really do to appreciate creatures that did not think, feel, or care about her, that would die in a cosmic heartbeat and decay instantly without even being able to conceive of her existence next to them.
And in her mind, it would be inappropriate for her to do this to Thistle, because that was not how she appreciated him.
No, she appreciated him by doing the things she’d already been doing. Caring for him, feeding him, keeping him safe, handling him. He’d been so scared the whole time she’d do something for her own satisfaction, but he’d so completely failed to notice she’d already been doing exactly what she wanted to do to him. The way she fawned over him was the equivalent of putting these bugs in resin and keeping them on the shelf. Because to her, they were different kinds of creatures, so they were to be treated differently, and she was simply giving both kinds the highest respect she knew how to.
The pieces clicked together as she set them in a pile off to the side. “I’ll put them in the trunk in my closet, okay?”
“Wait.”
She had been in the process of gathering them to stand up, but she stopped.
“You…You can keep them out.”
“Oh? Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
She put them back, brushing aside the dust, and settled back into bed. “Ready to go to sleep, then?”
“Yes.” He crawled under the covers, snuggling under her hand. Despite the loneliness, the upset, the hurt…he couldn’t help but feel the warmth in his chest, and think that all things considered, this was really not that bad of a place to end up for a creature like him.
The humans he found himself among might not be the family he was used to, but they were becoming family enough.
I talked to some friends about how gator boy becomes hyper-needy for cuddles and for each cuddle he gets he gets bigger and more obsessive with love and friendship.
If you hear him coming, you better hug him or run.
I really needed my “little” boy to interact with the Azul gator. And when I saw him kaiju I was like: this is my chance lolol :D
i know i should be running for my life here but kaiju hugging?? i cant help but watch and yearn respectfully
To celebrate(?) the death of sex-positive tumblr tomorrow, I’ve created a new OC! Nash Whitetip: a pansexual shark alien boy, size-shifter, bodyboarder, and mech pilot. He can grow up to 120′ feet tall, and is quite the kinky fucker wherever he is: on land, in the water, or in the cockpit of his space-faring robot that comes with its own dick that his nervous system can tap into like it was his own. He’s a definite dom – pretty cocky and a complete ham, but he doesn’t get off on hurting folks. He definitely enjoys teasing and toying, though… but enough about him for now. So guess what I did folks? I figured out a way to enable anonymous asks on my WordPress blog! Follow the link here or click the one at the top of the site to send me your lewd requests and fantasies. (If there’s interest and it doesn’t turn into a spam magnet, I’ll write a quick guide on how I slapped it together.) I’ve also imported all of my motherfuckin’ tumblr posts onto here – a big unwieldy mess for now, but I’m slowly going through them to delete the shitposts and whatever else I don’t want taking up space with my host, and listing them under the Old Tumblr Posts category for posterity’s sake. dusts off hands My job there is done.
(If you like or reply to this and want me to see it, you’ll have to go to the website. This is just an autopost.) Post link
When you win a VIP package to meet some of your favorite NFL QBs, you may get more of a one on one experience than you were hoping for. (Originally Written in Sept 2020)
I had always been a big football fan, which is why I could not pass up the opportunity for a meet a greet with some quarterbacks currently playing in the league. It seemed too good to be true; all of the current NFL quarterbacks were all together for a media appearance, casually throwing the football, messing around with each other, and overall putting on a show for the cameras, and I won a VIP pass to the event with the chance for a private meeting with a group of them after.
Each of the guys more or less wore casual street clothes or gym type attire. Your typical high end designer sneakers, shorts, fitted t-shirts, and ball cap look. I watched from the sidelines as the guys slowly worked up a bit of a sweat doing the different drills. Though it wasn’t too hot of a day, their moderate activity was enough for them to noticeably glisten a bit. I looked around and saw the other VIP pass winners. The VIP pass says that each of us had the chance to meet with our own select group of the QBs, selected at random. I couldn’t wait until the event was over so I could see who I got to meet!
As the media event continued, I noticed that the QBs would talk with each other in between drills, looking at us VIP winners, and then to each other a few times as they did. It seemed almost as they were talking about us to each other - but we were nobody, and they were star athletes! They couldn’t possibly care enough to talk about us could they?
An air horn signaled the end of the event, and my heart jumped. It was finally time for me to see who I would get to meet! The group of QBs seemed to confer with each other a little before smiling at each other and giving each other high fives, slaps on the back - you know, typical football player stuff. The group dispersed, and started trotting over towards the sideline where us VIP members stood. The QBs seemed to scan us over, almost as if they were looking for something or someone. This makes sense though, because they were assigned to us, so they had to find they VIP winner to meet, I thought.
Suddenly, I noticed Baker Mayfield looking at me, a slight smirk appeared on his face, and then he approached me. “What’s up man?” Baker asked. I barely managed a wave back. One by one more guys followed suit - glancing or looking me over before trotting over to say hi. Josh Allen, then Mason Rudolph, followed by the rookie Joe Burrow. Then - could it be? I see two final QBs walking my way - the two who had played in the most recent super bowl: Jimmy Garoppolo and Patrick Mahomes! How lucky was I!?
With the group set, the meet and greet was ready. “Ready to get going?” Mason asked his fellow QBs. I looked at the other groups and noticed that they seemed to be meeting right there on the field. “Where are we going? Aren’t we just doing the meet and greet here? The others seem to be staying here on the field” I replied. “Oh yea, see you won the VIP of VIP passes,” Mason said with a slight smile, almost a smirk. “Yea - we are going to give you a special tour - you get to see the locker room,” Josh added. WOAH - I get this kind of special treatment!? It must really be my lucky day, I thought to myself.
“Come on, let’s get going,” Jimmy said anxiously. The group of us headed down the tunnel and into the locker room. There was absolutely nobody else around, which I thought seemed odd for an event like this. Whatever, more one on one time for me! The locker room was pretty elaborate - each NFL QB had their own space with their name on it. NFL players aren’t necessarily the neatest, so there were shoes, socks, underwear, shirts - you name it strewn all around the floor. Understandably, it smelled a little like a gym.
“So before we get started on the uh, tour, there is just one thing we should do first” Joe said while the others snickered. I didn’t even have enough time to register why they were all laughing the way they were before I saw a bright flash that blinded me for what felt like minutes. While I was waiting to regain my sight, I listed to the voices of the athletes that I had been with. I thought that maybe they were trying to figure out what had happened too - but as I listened I noticed their tone didn’t sound that of concern, but rather excitement and awe.
“Dude, it worked” one of them said. “I told you it would man!” another replied. My sight slowly started to come back to me, but as it did, it only left me more puzzled. Where am I? I recognized the color on the floor and walls, but everything seemed…..more spread out and, bigger somehow. I turned around to try and get my bearings, and I was quickly met with my cruel reality. Directly in front of me was a massive Jordan sneaker that towered above my head. I could see the detail on the leather directly in front of my face.
“What the…” I mumbled to myself, trailing off as my head followed the massive sneaker up. Above the sneaker was a black Nike socked ankle, that led to a leg, then to shorts, and then to - the face of SuperBowl MVP Patrick Mahomes. He looks down at me smirking. In that moment I look around and realize - I am surrounded by varying sneakers that lead up to smirking faces. The group of QBs are surrounding me, looking down, and clearly enjoying the view.
“Hey lil’ guy” Baker teased.
“Dude - he is like 2 inches tall” Josh said, almost laughing.
“Yea - almost the size of my big toe” Joe added, lifting his sneaker teasingly above me.
“Shut up rookie - nobody asked you,” Mason teased, “Besides, you gotta wait your turn.”
Mason pushed Joe out of the way and stood directly in front of me. He had a cocky, devilish smirk on his face that showed just a bit of teeth. He suddenly lifted his foot up and raised it above me. I could see the treads of the high-top grey vans that he wore. They were dirty, with specks of dirt stuck in some of the waffled treads. His face, along with the other onlooking athletes were eclipsed by this massive sole. I had been paralyzed by the impossibility of the situation until the shadow of the sole blocked out my light. I snapped into reality, and realized the danger of the situation. I screamed and tried to run. It was no use at my size. Mason’s sole met my tiny body and forced me onto my back so that my face was directly buried into his sole. He gently, and playfully rolled me a bit under his sole, slowly increasing pressure as he did. At first it was just enough to prevent me from moving, but as he increased pressure I started to have a hard time breathing, and was worried I would have bones start to crack. I couldn’t scream - hell, I couldn’t even breathe! Is this how it ends? So quickly, and under the sole of a cocky NFL player?
“Quit hogging him, man!” Jimmy said as he pulled Mason back. By the look on Mason’s face, Jimmy just saved my life. If he hadn’t pulled Mason away, I would be a smear on the floor and mush in those waffle treads. I was so thankful for Jimmy in this moment. That moment was short lived.
I heard a loud gurgley, sucking sound. I looked up to see Jimmys face above me with his lips pursed. Suddenly, a massive glob of spit appeared on his lips, and dropped directly onto me. I was absolutely drenched. I heard laughter from the guys as they witnessed my disgust. Jimmy took just the toe of the converses he wore, and gently smeared me in his spit. “You guys give it a try” Jimmy said to the others as he removed his toe from my tiny form.
One by one, each of the guys took their turn spitting on me. Baker spit an extra thick one. Josh the biggest, wettest glob of them all. Joe’s seemed to create a single strand from his mouth to my body. Mason teasingly gurgled his spit before drenching me in it. Patrick spit a few times, for good measure.
This was vile. Every fraction of my tiny body was immersed in this cocktail of athlete spit and mucus. The viscous liquid made movement hard. Not only did it cover every part of me, but the immediate area around me as well so there was no escaping it. I thought perhaps they were done - I was so wrong.
Following suit from Jimmy, one by one they took their turns smearing me in the spit with the soles of their shoes. Josh’s Nike Airmax’s. Mason’s Vans, again. Patrick’s Jordans. Baker’s Nike Airs, and Joe’s Allbirds. Each sole seemingly more dirty and worn than the last. Thankfully, nobody applied too much pressure - even Mason - but that didn’t change the fact that they each smeared me deeper and further into their spit. I was rolled in it, again and again. It was in my eyes. My mouth. My nose. Everywhere. I could taste it. Smell it. Feel it. There was no escaping it.
Finally, the last sole left me, and I was left - panting and pathetic on the floor.
“I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t really feel him under there. I think I want to give this another try…” Jimmy said as he removed his shoes. He placed his damp, socked foot directly on top of me and pressed down. I was forced directly into the damp fabric of his sweaty sock. Each of the other guys lit up, and began to remove their sneakers too. As before, they each took their turn burying me under their sweaty socks. Black socks. White socks. Dri-fit. No shows. Ankle height. All of the varieties felt the same from my perspective - sweaty, smelly, and nasty.
“I’ll do you one better,” Joe said. He removed his socks to reveal his bare foot. He mockingly wiggled his toes and then slammed his foot down onto me. Not enough to seriously hurt me, but enough to make an impression on the other guys. The guys loved this idea too, and began removing their socks. They took their turns using their toes to play with me, or rolling me under their soles. Their soles were soft to the touch, and left me with a salty taste in my mouth. The smell was exactly what you would imagine from an athlete that just finished running drills. It seemed to surround me. They continued to smear me in there spit, mucus, and now foot sweat for quite a bit of time. Finally, they seemed to be done.
“He looks fucking nasty man,” Josh said looking down at me in disgust.
“I dare you to put him in your mouth” Baker said to Josh, raising his eyebrows and smirking as he did.
“Man, that’s nasty - that is like making out with you all! Not to mention everyone’s nasty foot funk! No way!” Josh protested.
“Come on! Do it!” Joe said. “Yea, come on! Don’t be a pansy” Mason said. They each egged him on one my one until they all broke out into a chant of “do it, do it, do it!”
“Alright! Shut up already!” Josh said with his eyes locked on me. He squatted down and his massive hand came down to retrieve me. His huge, trunk-like fingers curled under me and allowed me to gently roll into his palm. His hand was surprisingly soft for a football player, with the exception of a slight callous where his fingers met his palm - from working out no doubt. His hands were warm and slightly moist. I looked up at his smile with his eyes locked on me. The others brought their faces in close too. This was all so surreal. The expanse of the palm of his hand was overwhelming. Behind me the palm led to his fingers shooting into the sky, with ominous faces of the others smirking down at me beyond them. In front of me, just beyond the heal of his palm, is Josh’s face, smiling playfully at me with his eyes locked on me.
Josh reached for me with his other hand. He picked me up between his thumb and forefinger and lifted me off his palm. He brought me up to his face and then slightly above. His mouth parted, revealing his soft pink tongue and rows of white teeth. He let go and I plummeted. It felt like hundreds of feet, when in reality it was only a couple inches. I screamed until I landed on the surface of his moist tongue. I looked up and out of his mouth, just in time to see the lips close, sealing me inside. I waited on his tongue in darkness for a moment. I heard and felt his breathing around me and there was a slight smell of gatorade. It was hot, and damp. Suddenly his tongue jolted to life. He began rolling me around his mouth - no doubt showing off to his buddies. I was rolled from cheek to cheek and pressed against the roof of his mouth. He made audible smacking noises as he did.
On the outside, the guys were enthralled with what they were watching - Josh actually had a tiny person IN HIS MOUTH! They watch the lump rolling around as Josh put on a show for them. Suddenly the rolling stopped and Josh tilted his head back, and his adam’s apple bobbed.
I screamed as I was rolled around. There had to be a way out! Suddenly everything stopped - was he finally going to take me out? Then, his tongue lifted up and I began to slide towards his uvula and back of his throat. Oh my god - is this it? Is he going to eat me? At the last minute, his tongue shifted me safely to his cheek pocket, but I still felt and heard an audible gulp.
“Dude…did you just….” Patrick asked Josh. Josh just smiled back.
They all stared in shock for a moment until Josh started to laugh, and spit me back out into his waiting palm.
“HAHA! I had you all going! You should have seen your faces!” Josh said laughing and teasing the others. “Since you are all so gullible, I think it is only fair that YOU all have to put him in your mouths too.”
There was a pause while the guys looked at each other. Finally, Mason walked up and unceremoniously plucked me up out of Josh’s palm and tossed me in his mouth. He made exaggerated slurping and sucking sounds as he played with me before spitting me out into his palm. His hand was similar to Josh’s in its softness and size. Then, Joe approached and picked me up from Mason’s palm. He lifted me up high and dangled me by my legs. He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and slowly lowered me in. I could see all the way into the dark abyss of his throat clearly. Once in his mouth, he toyed with me similar to the others. Patrick put his open palm out signifying it was his turn. Joe spit me out into his palm. Patrick lowered his face to me and wrapped his lips around my legs. He then slowly slurped me into his mouth like a piece of spaghetti. After he had his fun, he spit me out into his palm and Jimmy quickly snatched me. He held me in his palm as he examined me for a while. Then, without warning, he tossed me into his mouth like he was taking a pill. He pretended to chew me a little with his perfect white teeth. From the outside, it appeared exaggerated, but to me inside, it was just enough for me to feel his teeth, but it inflicted minimal harm.
“Alright assholes, it’s my turn” Baker announced. Jimmy spit me out into baker’s waiting palm. Baker’s palm was a little rougher than the others, but still relatively soft. His hands were also a little bit colder and slightly more clammy. Baker stared at me. He looked at me with his signature smirk that just didn’t seem to set well with me. He held me there a while seemingly contemplating something. He examined me closely, rolling me a round a bit in his palm. Then, to my surprise, he spoke….to me.
“Enjoying the meet and greet bud? Is it everything you dreamed of?” He said, the words evolving into laughter as he finished.
“Please - stop this! Help me!” I screamed back. I don’t know if they couldn’t hear me, or if they just didn’t care, but they did not even acknowledge my response.
Baker picked me up with his thumb and forefinger, and brought me to his lips. He mockingly licked his lips and snickered, which also evoked a laugh from the others. Again, this just didn’t set well with me and felt….somehow different from the others. Baker opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue as far as it could go. His stubbled chin was blocked by his elongated tongue, rolled out like a red carpet to greet me. I looked up to see his teeth - his front teeth with the slight gap in it and then darkness behind them. He placed me face first onto his tongue. His tongue was soft like the others, but seemed to be wetter, almost like he was….salivating. I then thought I heard a subtle “mmm” come from him. The other’s didn’t seem to notice.
I turned myself around so I could see out of his mouth. Beyond his teeth and lips, I could see the smiling faces of the 5 other athletes all huddled around to see me in there. Some laughed. Some seemed to pity my pathetic form. Others just stared with intent interest.
Baker’s tongue began to retract as I was pulled further into his mouth. His lips sealed and I was trapped once again. His tongue sprung to life as he rolled me around and sucked on me like the others had done. He pressed me against his teeth. Rolled me from cheek to cheek. Let saliva pool around me on his tongue, only to have it melt away and down his throat. This went on for a few minutes until…stillness.
Now baker opened his eyes again after enjoying tasting me and looked at the others.
I felt his tongue jolt to action again - he was speaking, though he was careful to keep me in his mouth.
“See, you wanna know the difference between me and you all?” Baker asked the others rhetorically. It was somewhat hard for them to understand him between the slurps, smacks, and him talking with his mouth full. “The difference is you all are pansies, and I am not” Baker continued as another one of his signature smirks appeared on his face with his eyebrows raised again. The others were confused at first by what he meant.
Inside, Baker’s speaking tossed me all around. I couldn’t understand what he was saying because it was too booming for me to interpret. Suddenly, his talking stopped. I felt his head tilt back, just like Josh had done before. I began to slide once gain. I could see his uvula getting closer. Unlike before, I still had the uneasy feeling in my gut, and I began to panic. I got closer to the uvula and throat. I kept waiting for his tongue to slide me to the safety of his cheek like Josh had done, but I just got further and further to the back. Then, reality set in: he was actually going to swallow me. I screamed at this realization and fought with everything I had. My face met his uvula and I tried to grab on, but it was too slippery. Then, I heard a gulp and felt the uvula push me down. I was forced into the small opening of his throat, but managed to prevent myself from going all the way down. With about ¼ of my body down his throat, another audible gulp, and more pressure from his uvula above. I am barely hanging on now. Finally, with one las hard and loud gulp the rest of my struggling, squirming, form slipped down Baker’s throat as he swallowed me whole.
On the outside, the others watched as Baker closed his eyes again. He tilted his head back and the watched as his adam’s apple bobbed once.
“Very funny, I already did that trick,” Josh said. Baker didn’t reply. He just gulped a second time. The others got in closer and looked at each other when they realized - he was actually doing it! He was swallowing the pathetic thing! Finally, they watched one more time as he did he final gulp - the biggest and loudest of the three. They watched a lump appear in his thick neck, and then disappear into his buff chest. Baker opened his eyes, and leveled his head again and smiled. He looked at the others, opened his mouth, and stuck out his tongue to reveal it was empty.
“See? I told you all. Pansies.” Baker said with a half smile.
The others erupted.
“OH MY GOSH!”
“HE REALLY DID IT!”
“DUDE HE ATE HIM!”
They all shouted to each other, shocked at what they saw, though clearly impressed.
“Weird man - I can feel him squirming in there” Baker said as he put a hand on his belly.
Inside, as I slide through his throat opening, I descended down the dark, slimy path to his stomach. It felt like an eternity, only made worse by me knowing what was waiting for me on the other end. Though I knew it was no use, I still struggled and screamed on the journey. Did this really happen? Was I actually the snack of an NFL QB? Is this how it ends? These thoughts all crossed my mind as I made my way to his stomach. Finally, I met the opening to his stomach. I squeezed through and was dropped onto the rigged, slimy surface. It was too dark to really see anything - But my other senses were quite stimulated. It was so unbearably hot, humid and stale in there. The stomach was surprisingly empty. I kept fighting to try and escape. This went on for several minutes until the stomach began churning to life - it was looking to digest me.
I felt my skin start to burn, and I got light headed. the stomach walls contracted around me, and it was getting harder to breathe…. I began fading away. Just before I lost consciousness, I swear I could hear Baker say “later, dude” followed my the laughter of the others.
Baker was a hero to the other guys - this was the first time they were able to shrink somebody, and he actually ATE him! They praised him, asked him questions about what it felt like, and talked about how pathetic and tiny I was to be swallowed by him for a while. Then, Baker let out a slight burp, looked down, patted his stomach and said “Later, dude.”
The others burst out laughing and they left the locker room.
Adriana is the stern commander of the defenders. She strategizes with the human generals and commanders before relaying the plan to the defenders that will be deploying. She has been in service for twenty years and has been the defender commander for eight. While she is very mission oriented, she puts the well-being of humans and her fellow defenders first. While the engineers don’t have ranks, Adriana’s engineer Ryan is the go to guy if any of the other engineers run into problems.
Read this cute Borrower Au fanfic for Ouran High School Host Club and had to draw something for it. Featuring a Tiny Haruhi and Tamaki so far, it’s so cute!
The date never changes but i like making these anyways. Little reminder that the G/t Hug Holidays are coming up. And what better way then some pixel art? and some nature sounds!
Hug a Giant day July 21st Hug a tiny Day August 11th
Hope you all have a great day! And if you want to join feel free to create some art, writing, whatever your creative minds want. Show your giant or tiny friend, or even shifter some appreciation!
Tol Kel give Sunny unexpected hugs. Baby boy doesn’t know what to do, so many overwhelming feelings. Does he hug back? Such warm feelings in his chest!
One of Guertena’s many fascinating art pieces. Though sticking your rose in a vase nearby it seems to have an interesting side affect….
Ib thought she was being helpful when she offered to place Garry’s rose in it for him. “Uhh…Ib…i think there’s something off with that water….” She heard him say behind her only….louder then before. As well as the large shadow falling over her. Oh boy!
You never know if they might outgrow it! Come on little human kick those little tail things of yours… ~ Koi Kelan returns while Mermay is still breathing…somehow. With a little Nole there.
