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Chapter Six

Tegon and Sollox walked the campus side by side, both clad in zipped-up hoodies. Tegon wore a gray one with the university seal embossed over the chest, and Sollox a charcoal Mass Effect-inspired "N7" one. Sollox had his hood up, but Tegon kept it down. Each cupped a warm tumbler of tea. Over the last few weeks, as the calendar transitioned into October, the temperature became more erratic and a relatively warm day could be followed by a cool, chilly one. The two reptiles were unfortunate enough to be suffering through one of the latter days that morning.

"I was playing a lot of Bioshock on Saturday," Sollox said. He smirked as Tegon's features tightened. Although both had a love of video games, Tegon had an irrational hate for that franchise, and Sollox knew it. "But before you throw your cup at me, I had enough time to take a look at Phayon's research."

"And? Did I really fuck up this time?" Now Tegon's face drooped. It was clear to Sollox his friend was mentally running through a nightmare scenario of being roped into working with a mad scientist.

"Cheer up, man. Hey, Morty is way better off with Rick, and Tegon is gonna be the same way with Phayon. Hey, I just realized those two names rhyme." Sollox placed a thumb and a finger to his chin.

"Two things. First, you're getting off track, bud. Second, Morty was kind of a loser in the first episode. So what are you saying about me?" Tegon deftly stepped around a puddle of rain, then tried unsuccessfully to shove his friend into another.

"Easy there friendo," Sollox maintained his balance. "You know what I meant. But getting back to the research. As you know I have some contacts on the deep web."

"You mean some nerd from another college who knows how to install Tor," Tegon scoffed into his tea.

Sollox responded with a snap of his fingers and a cheesy grin. "Exactly." The duo shared a laugh. "But it's interesting, because Dr. Phayon's research reminded me of a conversation I had with that guy last year. It was fascinating, really. He was strung out, I thought, but claimed to have been able to harness the power of the 'multiple worlds' theory. He said there was a way to trade snatches of space and time between similar enough universes. Like a universe where everything was the same but fundamental constants differed."

Tegon clenched his cup. "Like Planck's constant."

"Yes, as an example. Now, if this guy wasn't bullshitting me, and that's one very gigantic 'if,' pardon the pun. Put that together with Phayon's research and I believe you have two scientists discovering the same concept at nearly the same time." Sollox watched his friend leap into the air, surprised to see him so animated. But it wasn't a leap of triumph, but rather a bicyclist sneaking up on them from behind.

"Use the road, you loser!" Sollox told off the cyclist as he steadied Tegon on his feet. His friend was beaming despite almost being run over.

"That's it! Phayon's explanation didn't make a lot of sense to me. I took a look at a book she wanted me to grab from the library. She's still thinking within the mindset of our own universe, and trying to explain the phenomenon from that angle. She probably discovered a way to tunnel between universes and didn't even realize it."

Sollox grabbed his friend's sleeve, as Tegon began to speed up his gait and the shorter lizard's strides couldn't keep up. "Hold up. I never said I buy that explanation of what's going on here. As a reptile of science I have to see some evidence. Remember, when I heard this guy last year it just sounded like stoned ramblings."

Tegon shook off his friend and shrugged. "Well, now I'm a lot more motivated to work on her projects. You might get your proof sooner than you think." Now Tegon was the one yanking on an arm, dragging Sollox into the university's convenience store. "I need a snack. Science makes me hungry."

"And I'm just glad you didn't pull my tail instead. That hurt." Sollox wasn't paying attention while scolding his friend and the door to the store did indeed slam on his tail. "Motherfu--" Sollox whipped his head back, but noticed with the chime of a bell a familiar attractive female scalie coming in behind them. "--udge."

The drake ignored Sollox and strode past a short line of fidgeting undergrads waiting to check out. He rifled through several different types of chips, packages of every color of the rainbow lining the back of the store. Tegon tossed his prize to his unprepared friend, who juggled it in his grasp.

"I don't get how you like this junk, Tegon. 'Lava Hot' doesn't sound very appetizing."

"Are you kidding me? Nothing better than singeing your taste buds on it. It's in my blood. We dragons love the taste of fire in our maws."

"Drake," Sollox corrected.

"Lizard," Tegon shot back.

...

Despite the weather, Dr. Phayon wiped sweat from her brow ridge. She was dressed for jogging, and the phone attached to her upper arm piped a steady stream of music into her ears. Initially, she didn't notice her graduate assistant as she briskly walked towards the back of the store and pulled a chilled water from the cooler. Then she caught a snippet of his voice over in the next aisle as a song was tapering off. She paused the music and pulled on the earbuds until they dangled in her grasp. Making use of her height, the saurian professor's head peeped over the top of various chip bags.

"Tegon!" Phayon's head feathers slid back as she smiled and peered at the two over the aisle. Tegon flashed a genuine smile and placed his hands on his hips. She tossed the water bottle back and forth in her hands as she spoke. "Who's this with you?"

Sollox was rolling the crinkly rim of the chip bag between his fingers, waiting for this moment. Unlike the unobservant Tegon he had seen her coming and wanted to introduce himself. The two couldn't directly shake hands over the rows of snacks because of the height difference, so he raised his other hand in a half-wave, half-salute. "Sollox, ma'am. Nice to meet you, professor. I'm working with Dr. Rathkor this semester, so you might see me around the chemistry building."

Phayon looked him up and down for a moment before continuing. "Yes, I think I've seen you darting around from room to room before." She checked an electronic bracelet on her wrist. "Well, I have to keep my heart rate up, boys, so I will see you around, Sollox, and you later today, Tegon."

"Bye," the two said in unison. They stood there as she turned and made her way to the register. Her tight workout pants floored them, as they had never seen her out of a demure lab coat. She paid for her water and continued on her way at a quick clip.

"So damn sexy." Sollox cupped a hand over his mouth and shook his head. "I couldn't get any work done in that lab, that's for sure. I see it now. Dropping a pencil and letting it roll by. 'Oops, Dr. Phayon, could you get that for me?' I don't even care if she's wearing a coat, that ass would shine through." His hands mimed cupping a phantom behind.

"Yeah." Tegon was already feeling Alix watching over his shoulder like a specter, but he silently agreed with Sollox's reaction. He snapped his fingers, eyes widening. "You just reminded me. I should bring up what that friend of yours said to Phayon today." The drake snatched his chips back and marched over to the checkout line, which had grown since they were staring agog at Dr. Phayon. When it was his turn, Tegon swiped his credit card and thumbed the store's verification pad. Sollox waited for him by strolling around the store and pausing at a colorful display of imported candies. He picked up a rainbow-tinted lollipop in the shape of a dragon's paw. Naturally, as Tegon would see it, the line had cleared and he was last, so Sollox quickly tossed the cashier a bill and they were on their way.

Tegon wasted no time in pulling apart the package, which opened with a pop and sent red specks floating into the air. He shoveled the heavily-seasoned, fried snacks into his mouth, one after another. They were still standing just outside the convenience store, so desperate was the drake's desire for heat. Sharp-tipped fangs made short work each chip, and after a few he sucked on his fingers to make sure none of the spiciness got away from him. Under Sollox's nose appeared the nearly empty bag. "Wah saa?" Tegon's tongue lolled out as he panted, the drake already sweating.

"No thanks. Let's keep moving." Sollox jerked away, repulsed. Instead he pulled the cellophane wrapping from his treat and sucked away. The wrapper went into his pocket, while the stick danced around in front of his eyes. He walked with his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. Tegon angled the bag up to his snout before crumpling the empty husk into a ball and compacting it further with his fist.

With his eyes freely watering, Tegon gave a thumbs up. "Nothing like that first chip. Deliciously spicy and your tongue isn't even melting yet." His jaw hung slack and he huffed into the air. "Regret not having a drink right now, though." He glanced around for a water fountain or vending machine, but not seeing any he simply kept panting and wagging his tongue.

"Mmm hmm." Sollox's tongue slithered around the lollipop and mapped out its texture. His saliva coated it as he tasted primarily cherry, but also some odd floral tastes possibly owing to its foreign origin. He probably wouldn't buy it again. The scalie popped it out of his mouth. "Tegon, look at you. Those chips are killing you." He dragged a claw across his own throat. "Too much living on the edge is gonna kill you one of these days."

They laughed and continued on their way.

Chapter Seven

Tegon split up with his friend after realizing it was almost time to begin working with Dr. Phayon. Unlike last time the hallway to the second floor of the chemistry building was busy. Tegon was forced to navigate through it right in the middle of a class change. He ducked around and dodged the swinging wrecking balls of a few students' backpacks and made it up to the lab without incident. At the door, he rooted around in his pocket and found his wallet. Under the rather dim fluorescent lights lining the laboratory wing, he slipped out his ID card and swiped. By the time he entered the room Phayon had finished her jog, showered, and was setting up their workspace. The drake unzipped his hoodie, hanging it on a clothes hook and cursing Sollox under his breath. Phayon's back was turned to him and Tegon's eyes couldn't help but linger on the callipygian professor. His friend was a terrible influence on his thoughts. Tegon shook it off, distractedly donning a lab coat as well as the required protective gear before falling in next to his saurian adviser.

"I'm almost finished combining everything we need for the compound, Tegon," Phayon muttered. She hummed along to a popular song as her body swayed, but apart from that humanizing action it was clear his adviser was in the zone. Her attention was focused on selecting the right chemicals from her store and measuring out the proper quantities.

"That seems pretty quick." Tegon slipped out a test tube of clear liquid from her rack and rolled it between the pads of his fingers.

Phayon blushed and looked up, her next words flowing out in a constant stream. "Careful with that. I pulled another all-nighter to have it ready to go for today. I'm so excited about the possibilities for this stuff I just can't help it. Are you judging me? You're judging me."

Tegon faked a knowing smile. He would be the type to spend his extra time on the couch at home, not putting in more hours in the lab. "Who can fault dedication?" She hemmed and went right back to work, continuing to hum her tune. Tegon picked up where he left off on his own precursor, grabbing a squirt bottle and preparing to mix chemicals. He looked up at her. "I had you pegged for the classical music type. I didn't know you were a top-40 kind of girl."

Phayon's feathers shook. "Hey, I was a lab geek in school, sure, but I wasn't that bad."

Tegon chuckled. "I guess not." He swirled his test tube to make sure all of his reactants were thoroughly mixed. Then he sniffed and turned away from her, looking out the windows on the far wall out into the quad. "You know, I should confess something."

Phayon's piercing brown eyes drilled into Tegon's. "Oh gods. You were the one who stole all those benzos from the medical lab."

"W-what?" Tegon stammered.

"Kidding." Her features immediately softened and she cracked a smile.

"Oh, of course." The drake felt flush. He fumbled with his test tube as he thought about what to say. "No, I wanted to say I wasn't too sure about our research when I started at the beginning of the year, but now I feel like we really could be making a difference."

Phayon set her Erlenmeyer flask down, rapped her finger claws against the smooth top of their work station, and sighed. "I don't blame you for feeling cautious at first. This sounds like mad science, doesn't it? But think about what they were doing at the turn of the twentieth century. In the scientific world it must have felt like a new revelation was coming down the pipe every week. I just want to bring a little of that flavor into the twenty-first, is all."

"Dr. Phayon, you," Tegon devolved into a fit of giggles. "You are a total nerd."

She went deadpan. "Gee, thanks." Phayon poured the contents of her flask into Tegon's test tube, and handed the mixture back to her assistant. "There. The compound will begin production immediately, but we'll have to wait overnight to see a mass quantity develop."

Tegon held up his hand. "Before we break for the night, I wanted to talk to you about the theory behind this compound." He considered the best way to phrase the drug-addled ramblings of a stranger.

"Tegon, look out!" Phayon gasped and pointed to the tube he had held in his right hand. Without thinking he had tilted it enough for some of the liquid to escape and slide down his uncovered arm. "Shit." The professor snatched the tube and slipped it back into the rack before channeling her inner running back, throwing her weight into Tegon's back and pushing the stunned drake to the emergency shower. "Wash your arm, quickly."

Tegon snapped out of his stunned silence and scrubbed his arm raw. "Oh no, oh gods, how toxic is it, doc?"

Phayon eyed the tube, sitting snug in its rack now. "Not at all, at least not in the form it is now. If it had fully reacted to become the compound, well, I haven't tried anything on a living creature yet. You should be okay, thank the gods. I don't think it would have reacted enough to do anything to you yet."

Tegon whimpered as he cleaned his scales with a special bar of soap until they bled.

Phayon shut off the emergency shower. "Stop, Tegon. You're doing more harm than good now." She led him back over to his hoodie. "Take the rest of the night off. If you feel ill, even for a second, call me. Here's my cell." She jotted her number down on the back of a scrap of paper and slipped it into his pocket.

Tegon meekly nodded and dried himself off as best he could. His mind could only think back to all those horror stories they tell undergrads about lab safety, about that one freshman who lost her eyesight, or that scientist who died after spilling a few drops of a volatile compound. He took inventory of himself as he carefully descended the chemistry lab staircase. He felt alright, for now. His arm burned, but that was from the scouring he had just done. Since nothing was due the next day, he figured he would just head back home and try to sleep off any bad feelings.

In the heart of the quad there were only a handful of students hanging out in the late afternoon. A stall was set up with some students passing out pamphlets for whatever cause. A few undergrads were leaning on its frame, sipping on coffees and chatting. Tegon really wished he was in a position to shoot the breeze now. He hoped the spill wouldn't result in some cancerous mutation. The drake just had to keep telling himself that despite all of the nasty chemicals that went into the compound, his adviser assured him the liquid product would be relatively non-toxic. Until the solid precipitated out, that was. Neither truly had any idea what kind of effect it would have on a living, breathing creature.

Tegon was about to cross the street to leave campus before he realized he had left his bicycle chained up on the side of the chemistry building. He liked to cycle there in the mornings and leave it there upon arriving for the day, making his return trip at night shorter. Since it would have taken longer to walk all the way back, he decided to worry about it the next day.

Chapter Eight

Back in his own lair, Tegon sprawled out on his couch. He was dressed in only a pair of sweatpants. One of the drake's feet dangled just above the floor, and his toe claws picked at his carpet's gangly fibers. A hand provided impromptu shade for his eyes, and another rested on his stomach. The latter moved rhythmically up and down as he breathed and watched his ceiling fan spin endlessly above his head. This relative calm continued for some time. At times he would drift out of consciousness only for his whole body to jerk when snapping back awake. Amid this his phone vibrated, rattling the coffee table upon which it rested. A message from Alix appeared on his lock screen, below the time. Blip.

"paw time <3"

Alix used the phrase to refer to Tegon's routine, which would always begin with a paw massage but usually devolved into something much lewder. His emotional state felt too fragile that night to entertain a guest, so through bleary vision he snatched the electronic brick and hammered out his reply. His languid fingers had some trouble typing everything out correctly. "sry not feeliog it tonnight"

A few moments went by. Blip. "aww :("

"ttyl"

Blip. "love you"

"<3"

At that point Tegon snapped a switch on the side of his phone to mute it and slid it back on the table. Because of that he missed a final message from her.

"I'm boredddd. Cumming over anyway."

Now that he was definitively awake, and with little else to do, one of Tegon's idle hands quested under the waistband of his sweatpants. He also fished under the pillows of his couch until he found an artificial tunnel for his personal satisfaction. It was a penetrable sex toy for male scalies, purchased on a lark a few months prior when an online posting recommended it for lonely reptiles during mating season. It had come in handy during the rare times Alix wasn't in the mood. Cleaning it was a hassle, but he had to admit it was much better than using his hands.

Before considering Alix in his fantasies, Tegon had no choice but to relieve the sexual tension between himself and his adviser. He imagined Dr. Phayon there, straddling him in those workout clothes. She would have just finished her workout routine and be glistening with sweat. Her voluptuous ass would cradle the mound his cock would create trying to spring free. It would feel heavenly, but he knew it wouldn't be enough, that he would have to get inside her, to feel what she was like. His hands would only feel bare flesh, fingering away until she soaked her pants. After he would peel them off he would have no trouble slipping between her cheeks and bottoming out. In reality, Tegon thrusted into the artificial vagina. He wondered as he worked his cock whether pulling back on those head feathers would hurt. His lips would slip around her nipple while she moaned. Tegon figured she looked like a squirter too and would drench the couch's cushions. Since it was a mere fantasy he had no qualms imagining finishing inside her, although he was able to keep his real-life orgasm at bay.

Next, with his most pressing desire sated, he had a primal fantasy, one of pinning down an Alix in heat and going bareback. What every male dragon dreamed of doing at least once. No pills, no condoms, no material dulling the sensation in the slightest. The risk and the idea of the potential consequences made him painfully hard. In his vision Sil joined in with them. She squatted over Alix, riding his love's face while she ate her roommate out. Tegon wrapped his arms around Sil and fondled her breasts while they made out. That mental picture was enough to make Tegon orgasm, and he fired his load into the silicone tube. It quickly slipped off of his shaft and fell to the floor, but it wasn't because of a lack of friction. Tegon had felt a sharp pain in his belly.

"Ow, fuck." The pain came on suddenly and built to a crescendo after a minute, almost sending him heaving before abating for a few minutes. It would continue on like this in waves, until he begged for the relative bliss of a dull throb. His mind was too tortured to consider the events of the day as a cause of his pain. All he could do is sit in place and whimper. He curled his body up and shivered despite the room's comfortable temperature. There wasn't a fear of dying in that moment, but rather an obsession to ameliorate the pain in any way he could.

A thin fleece blanket was draped over the couch. Tegon pulled it close and covered his body. With every ounce of his strength he grabbed a remote for the television from the coffee table. A show could divert his attention. He feverishly moved his fingers over the rubber keys until he found the largest one for power and pressed it. Even with some random show on the screen, the waves of agony were all he could focus on. His eyes squeezed shut, and the scalie tried to force himself to sleep. The drake knew from experience that a sluggish, sleepy mind wouldn't possibly expose him to as much pain.

To counter the accompanying waves of nausea, he focused on the voices from the television. He listened more to the quality of the noise than the content. The volume, the pitch. Oddly enough it sounded a little lower from when he switched it on. His eyes snapped open. Come to think of it, his sweatpants felt a little looser. Looking around, he was hit with a sensation of vertigo. Everything seemed wrong. The television seemed farther away. The couch felt larger, and his paw no longer touched the ground. He groaned to his feet, and his pants immediately slipped to the floor, leaving him nude.

If Tegon had to guess, he had lost a few feet in height. Not only was he getting shorter, but the width of his body decreased in proportion. The idea that this was the splash on his arm's doing finally hit him. He had to call Dr. Phayon. No medical doctor could help him now. The drake pressed at the button on his phone to turn it on but his fingerprint wasn't recognized. As he swiped at the phone's screen to put in his code he noticed the coffee table was reaching his waist. The shrinking was accelerating. His addled mind tried to remember the code, used only as a backup if the fingerprint reader wasn't working.

6653? The phone shook no.

6635? Again, no. He was running out of time. Under normal circumstances the bargain-store coffee table would have splintered under his weight, but he could now climb on top of it without much protest from the furniture. He was probably a foot and a half tall.

6553? That was it.

Phone app.

It opened to the keypad, waiting for Tegon to dial a number. That was when he realized after all the fuss at the lab, he never bothered to save Dr. Phayon's number in his phone. Her digits were still scrawled on that scrap of paper in his hoodie pocket. The hoodie rested on its hook near the front door to his apartment. Considering how fast he was dwindling down he could be subatomic by the time he ran over there and back. He would have to settle for Alix and trust she wouldn't write him off as a joke. Sollox was too risky because his friend hated to talk on the phone and preferred to use text messaging.

He had to use both of his hands to select the tab for contacts, just so it would register the proper amount of force. With the last of his strength, he threw his whole body on her name. It began to dial.

One ring. He was about half a foot tall.

Two rings. A couple of inches at most. The ring deepened in pitch and the phone's corresponding vibration started to shake his whole body.

Three rings. Now he would give an ant a run for their money. The sound of the ring was just on the edge of being painful.

"Hello?" Alix's voice crackled from the phone's speaker. Her voice was significantly louder and did hurt. He covered his ears with his hands and screamed.

"Alix!"

"Hello?" She hadn't heard him. Tegon tried to get closer to the microphone. The adrenaline coursing through his body cast aside any doubts of his fitness from the earlier pain. He skidded on oils left on the glossy screen by his previously normal-sized fingers to the mesh-covered hole on one end of the phone.

"Alix!" He cupped his hands around his mouth to increase the volume as best he could.

"Tegon?"

"Yes! Alix! Help!" Tegon's heart skipped a beat as he heard her voice again. She would get him to Dr. Phayon, who would know how to reverse the shrinking process.

"Tegon, I can't hear anything. I'm coming over. I'm going to hang up now." So she hadn't actually heard his voice. He had confused a question with recognition. Two beeps marked the end of the call, and the defeated speck could finally take his hands away from his ears. The television wasn't turned up loudly, so it sounded like a dull rumble of thunder in the distance. The phone's display, a plane stretched out before him, lit up as it kicked itself back to the home screen with the end of the call. But Tegon knew his feeble hands couldn't get any presses to register. Additionally, it would lock itself in a few minutes and he couldn't hope to get around that.

His present stature made his phone, and thus remaining there for any longer, useless. The only upside he could think of was that the shrinking appeared to taper off. This made sense, as Dr. Phayon already noted it reduced size by a certain factor. If he was to get help, he would have to reach the only person who could understand his predicament: his adviser. Sollox knew about the theory, true, but Tegon suspected his friend thought it was junk science and would be more likely to mistake him for a bug.

It wasn't far to the edge of the phone from the microphone, but even with a razor-thin piece of technology the gap between the phone's surface and that of the table encouraged him to slide partway down the side before hopping off. He landed in a trough of wood fibers, from which he surveyed the first stage of his trek.

Unlike the relative smoothness of his phone's glass surface, the natural wooden finish of the coffee table was totally uneven. He hopped from one peak in the grain to the next, windmilling his arms to maintain balance. Tegon avoided areas where sharper slivers of wood jutted out, looking like they could cause a nasty injury. He figured if he were able to get to the sidewalk outside his apartment, he could hitch a ride on a fellow college student back to campus. It would take at least a few hours to get into position, and that was if he didn't stop and sleep for the night. He tried to push the possibility of getting squished out of his mind. As long as he didn't irritate any giants, they weren't likely to notice him trying to bum a free ride.

About three quarters of the way to the edge of the table, he heard a boom separate from the noise of the television set. It was like a clap of thunder on the next street over, without any of the warning of lightning. Still having the mindset of a creature much, much larger than himself, he thought there must have been some sort of an explosion. When it happened again, and again, and finally threw him off-balance onto his rump, he realized the mundane had now become the extraordinary. It was simply Alix knocking, arriving as she had promised on the phone.

There, sitting on a splinter of cheap unfinished wood, Tegon had to make a snap decision. Should he risk revealing himself considering it were possible Alix would mistake him for a pest? He decided to take the risk. After all, he was much more intelligent than an instinct-driven insect, and felt confident he could avoid any swatting should it come to that. He resolved to halt his progress and stay on the table to get her attention closer to eye-level. Being near her feet would carry enormous risk, since a foot was much more difficult to dodge than a finger. Once she recognized he was no mere bug they could set up a system of communication and his problems would be quickly solved. Easy.

When she threw open the door and stepped in, Tegon was surprised to hear his relatively new door groan as it swung in and displaced a whoosh of air. Normally it was silent enough for him to be surprised by her sudden appearance in his living room. Her footsteps were also foreign-sounding. They thudded dully like her knocking, but unlike the rapping they made the ground underneath his body vibrate. They stopped for a few moments, then she called out his name.

"Tegon?"

At his scale it certainly didn't sound like his name. Her voice's pitch was affected so Alix sounded like some masculine monster. His name was pronounced as a low, continuous growl. The comprehensible sound of her voice on the phone call belied how sapient giants truly sounded at the size of an ant. Any sort of communication would have to be nonverbal on her part.

Tegon stood up, on guard as her body appeared at a distance and moved across the room. He thanked the gods she didn't immediately head for him, because at this scale, she was frankly frightening. His mind had created an image of what she might look like, but it was impossible to imagine a skyscraper that cut through the air so effortlessly. Alix disappeared into the next room, and Tegon panicked. In his mind he was imagining a giantess maybe a few times larger than himself. One that he could interact with. Alix was actually an otherworldly size. He would be trying to get the attention of a sentient planet, more or less. He eyed the floor, wondering if he should instead go back to his original plan of hitching a ride sight unseen on the shoe of a random person. Lacking nerve, he simply hopped back across the wood grain of the table and cowered under the shadow of his cell phone.

Alix strode back into the room before coming to a stop. Her eyes narrowed at the television, and the sound that escaped her lips was another hellish snarl. Then her face seemed to turn towards him. Had she spotted him? Tegon stood stock-still against the phone's rim. This became increasingly more difficult as she neared, each footstep forcing him to move slightly to avoid being crushed by the minutely-shifting phone.

Without craning his neck up, Tegon only saw her waist from this distance. A hand cut through the air, and the drake whirled around to see it descend with a grace heavy machinery of a similar size couldn't hope to match. It wrapped around his remote, and quickly lifted it into the sky. That created a rolling puff of air that forced Tegon to hide behind his phone again. The gust that blew by a few seconds later would have otherwise pushed him right off the edge of the table.

Tegon drew his knees up to his face, waiting for fate to deal him what it would. The background noise of the television disappeared suddenly, leaving the scene eerily quiet. The only sounds came from Alix's body. Her stomach churned and digested, and her joints and bones groaned as the remote was placed back on the table.

Her face, annoyed and disgusted, then unmistakably stared right at Tegon. This was it. He would be seen as some kind of metallic green fly, and summarily crushed under her dainty finger. Just one slight press, and his guts would come spewing out. Tegon trembled in the gap of a flaw in the wood and prayed this wouldn't be the end.

Alix's hand came in closer. He could smell the lotion she moisturized her skin with. The sky of smooth blue flesh resolved itself into the individual ridges and whorls of her handprint. But the hand spared him, instead reaching for his phone. Under the shadow of her wrist he sighed and sobbed.

But he wasn't entirely safe. When she picked up the phone, the gust of air was more like a hurricane now. The hapless drake was blown clear of his hiding spot, and tumbled across the knobby surface of his coffee table. His armored scales saved him from everything but a few scrapes and bruises, but soon he ran out of space. Tegon desperately clawed at anything to slow him down, but he skittered off the edge and began falling through the air.

In one of the few benefits to his size, Tegon would have fallen slowly even if he didn't splay his body out to slow himself down. In fact, his terminal velocity was barely double that of a walking pace. He floated below Alix's knees, then her legs, and past the twisted fibers marking the top of his carpet. The drake came to a stop after tumbling across the thatched floor. Tegon kept his apartment clean, but even the powerful suction of a vacuum couldn't always reach down to the base of the carpet. Tiny clouds of accumulated dust and crumbs were kicked up with his arrival.

Much farther above, almost farther than he could see, Alix was holding Tegon's phone, seemingly considering it without actually using it. He brushed himself off and looked ahead. Flattening the fibers ahead of him was her almighty foot. Of her three toes, the middle one stuck out slightly more than the ones on either side. All three shifted constantly as she clearly concentrated on some important thought. Her three claws speared through the carpet fibers, but Tegon had no doubt when she moved they would provide no resistance.

Tegon had never given her the code to his phone, so he knew she would get bored of playing with it soon enough. When she did, her body sprung to life. A few individual carpet threads tangled on her claw tip were ripped clean out as her feet pivoted. Her hips effortlessly twisted to toss the several-ton phone onto his couch. It sailed through the air and bounced on a cushion. Tegon heard the springs ripple and protest before rebounding.

Like a forest breathing a sigh of relief, the carpet fibers caught under Alix's tread rustled as she lifted her foot slightly into the air. It began moving forward, towards Tegon, but he wasn't afraid this time. Firmly among the fibers, it was impossible for her to crush him on this surface, even if she tried. He simply admired her sole from this angle. It would take him an afternoon to massage it, much longer than the few seconds he was used to.

Her foot fully passed overhead before it hit an obstacle. The earth-shattering shaking knocked Tegon to his feet, as her foot retracted and returned to its original position. He saw she had nearly stubbed a toe on his sex toy. He had forgotten all about the thing, still lying there from when he dropped it and first felt that terrible pain. He hoped she would simply ignore it and continue on her way, so Tegon could focus instead on devising a new plan. With the safety of his current position his mind was quickly drifting on how to satisfy a dragoness that large.

Alix didn't leave his toy alone. Her frame creaked as she bent over and lifted the whole thing into the air. Tegon watched it zoom up under her eyes. Her fingers began turning it around. He screamed despite there being no hope of her hearing him. She obviously didn't understand what it was.

Nearly over his head, the entrance was tilted down. His seed, as with all things, obeyed gravity, and several drops seeped out and fell. The silvery globs splattered all around him, with most of the precipitation falling right to the thatched floor. The remaining clearer goop oozed down the twisted fibers.

What Alix said next he wasn't sure, but the intensity with which she said it deafened him. Never this close to him had she spoken, and he hadn't prepared himself by covering his ears. His eardrums immediately ruptured, and he took a finger away from his ear to see blood. In truth, with all of the sounds happening around him, he was surprised it didn't happen sooner. Sound wasn't as important a sense for a mite, but that wasn't to say his ears didn't hurt quite a bit.

Alix eyed her feet, then regarded the drops, and unknowingly, Tegon himself, with a scowl. Her arm stretched out with the toy, and released it. Tegon braced for its impact, and sure enough when it fell atop the carpet it was not unlike the stern of the Titanic splashing into the water just before it sank. Once again the wind was impossible to fight against, and he tumbled sideways until the light blue wall of one of Alix's toes stopped him suddenly. It was like hitting a brick wall. He was winded, and groaned as soon as he caught his breath.

While still clinging to her toe she began to move again, lifting her foot into the air once more. He wanted to let go at first, but then noticed she was moving in the direction of his front door. It was a perfect way for him to reach his goal in no time flat. He scaled to the base of her toe claw and wrapped his arms around the ivory protuberance. With his miniscule weight he had no trouble hanging on. The rapid changes in altitude were a different story. It wasn't unlike an amusement park ride where those looking for a thrill are slung up into the air. The edges of his vision darkened and he had to concentrate to avoid blacking out.

Alix came to a stop in front of a pair of what had to be her shoes. They were black-and-white canvas low-top shoes, worn to the shape of her feet and caked with mud on the sole. Even after a few minutes of lying bare they still emanated some heat from when she had her paws in them last.

Tegon dangled as she lifted each one up and folded the heel down. She placed them so her feet were facing the appropriate shoe. Tegon figured if he jumped off now he'd still be close enough to his front door to sleep for the night and reach it the following morning. Before he could drop from her toe claw, however, she quickly slid her feet into the shoes. Tegon was sealed into darkness as her toes wriggled to fill out the footwear.

As she walked the sensation of movement up and down became slightly less nauseating. Since he was in pitch darkness, Tegon had trouble staying latched onto her toe claw and fell onto the surface of the shoe. Here, the fragrance of her paws was stronger, but he had to be careful. If he were to roll into a depression, one of her toes could make short work of him. He tried to feel out the shape of her toes and where he was in relation to them as they slammed down.

Suddenly, all hell broke loose. Tegon, who was standing between two of her digits, was crushed as they slammed together and rubbed over top of one another. He tried to gasp and loosen himself, but the grip was too tight. Light streamed in as Alix began to withdraw her paw from the shoe. As it lifted out of the footwear, he finally tumbled free of her grasp. He remained inside the shoe, but closer to the heel. Lying on his back and feeling sore, he looked up to see her examining her sole. He supposed he squirmed enough to irritate her, and now she was checking to make sure it wasn't a bug.

Finding nothing, Alix slipped her foot back into the shoe and continued on her way. Tegon was actually pleased to be in his current position, because in the back of the shoe he was far away from most of the motion of her foot. Plus, the fabric lining the inside had worn away here from the grinding of her heel against it, so he was able to protect himself in a way with the tatters.

After many minutes of thumps where Tegon was at the mercy of her movements, she stopped. He felt a vibration and a whoosh from above before there were a few more steps. Then Alix slipped off her shoes, the length of her foot passing overhead. Just before it left for good, Tegon hitched a ride on the dragging toe claw once more. If Alix were home, as he suspected, he was better off staying close to her. In the morning she'd be headed off to campus, and it was absolutely imperative he found Dr. Phayon as soon as possible. There was no guarantee she would use the same pair of shoes, either.

The fresh, perfumed air of Alix's apartment was a welcome scent for Tegon, who was used to the stifling and oppressive air in her shoe. The two women used a floral spray to distract from the dishes piled up in their sink and the clothes strewn on the floor. Instead of taking in the sights, though, he had to focus on staying conscious. The g-forces were still significantly affecting his vision. Alix would have made an excellent ballerina with the way she found gaps around piles of textbooks, papers, and clothes.

From what he could tell from his scattered memories of her apartment, she was heading to her bedroom. When she stopped, Tegon looked up to see her fumbling with the button of her jeans, and then he was plunged into darkness again. She was taking them off. With a familiar heady aroma, he realized that she was not only disrobing for the evening, but taking her panties off as well. The rough fabrics scratched at his back as her foot flicked them across the room and onto the floor. An oversized sweatshirt came off last, revealing that she wasn't wearing a bra. Then her feet lifted higher than before, and slid sideways as she got into bed. After walking that far Tegon figured she'd have gotten a shower first. He wondered what could be going on.

The drake crawled over the crest of her toe claw, giving him a vantage point of her entire nude body. He huddled low, ogling the mound between her legs and the much bigger mountains of her breasts.

She stared back at him, although he knew she couldn't possibly see him. Her head turned to the side, and a hand reached out as if to grab something. Then he saw it. In a cosmic way it was if she was getting back at him for his sex toy. This was hers, her favorite plastic dildo. He grinned and settled in. After all the abuse that night he was intrigued to see what masturbation looked like on a massive scale.

But Alix quickly foiled his plan on two levels. First off, she bent her legs so her feet rested against the surface of the bed. Tegon was left with an entirely blocked view. Next her toes spread and her fingers descended out of nowhere. They knocked him off of his perch and directly into the path of her finger pads. The oils made him cling to the ridge and he was hurdled through the air.

Filling his vision was Alix's clitoris, peeking out from its hood with her arousal. Tegon's back slammed into the sensitive organ, filled with the burning fire of her blood. The touch of her finger, and perhaps the texture of Tegon's back horns, which pressed into the somewhat spongy flesh, elicited a shudder from the giantess. The flesh was much too thick to be harmed by any of Tegon's numerous horns, so he was merely smeared across its surface by the finger. The heat unstuck his body from the finger, and he succumbed to gravity. He tumbled down the lips of her labia and became mired in lubrication right near the entrance to her vagina. His foot became stuck between her folds.

Tegon desperately tried to loosen himself, but the suction was strong. Her scent was also overwhelming, forcing him to breathe through his mouth. He jiggled and twisted his foot, but it only plunged deeper. Alix's dildo rumbled overhead, and cast a shadow over him. The drake knew he was running out of time. But his foot remained stuck, at least until the dildo pressed into his back and forced him into her.

The bullet-headed tip placed more and more pressure onto her labia until they relented and allowed it to intrude with a slurp. Inside there was a dim light for the first inch or so, mostly owing to the translucency of the toy, but it soon tapered away to complete blackness. When a fleshy fold opposed the dildo's progress, it simply bulldozed over it and stretched it flat. Since it was entering her for the first time, flesh pressed at Tegon's back, as Alix hadn't been loosened by the girth yet. The dull thud of her heartbeat could be felt in his own chest, as it strengthened the deeper he got. Tons of slick, ridged flesh were stimulated by the dildo's specially-crafted shape.

After what seemed like half of a football field at his scale it stopped, and with his momentum Tegon fell off into the chaotic morass of her vagina. Behind his head her sticky lubrication wasn't enough to hold the ceiling and floor together, and the chamber was widened to its fullest extent. He estimated he was pretty close to her cervix, but that was where his interest in exploring her body came to a definite end. The dildo subtracted much of the roominess by withdrawing, but the negative pressure dragged Tegon a bit back towards the light before Alix sealed up again. He fumbled around in heavy, syrupy air, not knowing which way was up and which way was down. Unlike in her shoe he was afraid he would suffocate in here before long.

The dildo wasn't finished by a long shot. It slid back in, affording him a few precious gulps of fresh air before any excess squeezed around it and out of her. It continued a rhythm of stretching her out and leaving a chasm, and Tegon made use of each snatch of light to crawl over the undulating flesh in the right direction. Along with the vibrations each plunge of the dildo created, a steady pulsing was increasing in intensity. The dildo whizzed by once more, pressing Tegon into a side of her flesh. Then everything tightened, and the pulsing became wild and irregular. The thud of her heartbeat came twice every second. She was orgasming.

He breathed shallow, short breaths, conserving his air while he waited for the height of her pleasure to pass. He straddled the underside of the dildo, too, and was pulled out from her vagina along with it when she finally released her grip. As soon as the toy was released from her clutches, along with a few trailing strings of her cum, Tegon launched himself off. He didn't care where he landed, only that he got away from his prison. He tumbled onto the fabric of her bed sheets, between her legs. He gasped and writhed, as above Alix hummed, using a tissue to wipe off her toy.

When she finished, her body tilted away from him. Alix rose to her feet with her back to him. Her swishing tail teased an awe-inspiring view of the twinned globes of her ass. Tegon didn't have much energy left, though, to be aroused. His girlfriend padded off to parts unknown while he sat there in a puddle of her fluids and collected himself. He was alive, humiliated and dominated to be sure, but alive. The drake had no broken bones as far as he could tell. Although marked through-and-through with her scent the cotton fiber at least sopped up some of the moisture. He was amazingly lucky, and vowed not to tempt fate anymore. He would play it safe at the foot of her bed, only approaching her when it was absolutely necessary.

Traversing the length of her bed began with his arms, pulling his body across the cotton threads until his legs regained their feeling. Then he began walking. By the time he reached a place he felt would be safe from her body, she had returned, smelling like her sweet shampoo. She must have taken a shower, and now she would be getting back into bed for the night.

Tegon settled in against the threads of her sheets, which acted as a sort of hammock to the ant-sized drake. His hand wiped any remaining goo off of his chest and smeared it on the ground next to him. He lay in the shadow of her feet; they rose above straight into the air, before curling slightly at the toes. Tomorrow would have to be the day he ended all of this. Even one more day of this hell, a hell he was forced to be alone in, would probably send him over the edge.

...

Alix rapped her knuckles against Tegon's door before resting her snout against its surface. She brought her face close to the other side of the peephole. She liked to freak out her boyfriend every so often when he went to check on who it was. When it was clear he was in no hurry to answer, she backed off and took in her surroundings. Overhead was the sodium-yellow glow of a light illuminating the outdoor sidewalk leading to each apartment. A gnat, or at least some type of insect, kept flying itself into the glass surrounding the bulb, and she snorted. For something so stupid, she thought, it had done a pretty good job of surviving the cold weather so far. Behind her, anchored in loose gravel, was a shared bike rack. She noticed Tegon's bicycle was not chained among the others, which was unlike the drake. When her boyfriend didn't answer to a second knocking, she slipped his apartment key out of the back of her jeans pocket and let herself in.

"Tegon?" Alix called around the corner, into the living room. While she listened for his voice she took off her shoes so as not to track mud across his carpet. Hearing only the distorted voices coming from the television, she continued forward. With no one in the main room, she poked her head into his bathroom and bedroom to confirm his apartment was empty. Cursing Tegon's wastefulness, she stomped over to his coffee table and picked up the remote. No matter what she did to encourage him to go greener, he would always waste twice as much energy as she saved. When she went to place the remote back down, she noticed the drake's phone was resting there. If the absence of his bicycle was odd, then the presence of his phone was truly strange. He was attached at the hip with it. Picking it up, she noticed his lock screen had her last text as a new notification, but nothing else. Putting the pieces together as best she could, she had to assume he was called into the lab for an emergency. She tossed his phone onto the couch.

Alix turned to leave, but her foot nudged something unfamiliar on the floor. It looked almost like a large plastic flashlight. Having spent many a night at his place, it was something she hadn't seen before. The dragoness bent over and picked it up, turning it over in her hands to figure out which way was up on the thing. As she tilted the side with the textured opening down, a few drops of Tegon's seed splashed near her toes.

"For fuck's sake, Tegon, clean up after yourself." Alix flipped it around to eye the unmistakable design of the opening and confirm her fears. Then she checked her feet to make sure none of it had gotten on her. When she was satisfied it only fell on the carpet, she let the whole thing roll out of her grasp and fall back on the floor. If he had left something like that out there in the open for her to find, she reasoned, he would have no qualms dealing with the cleanup.

Back in the foyer, Alix picked up her pair of shoes. She pressed down on the canvas rim lining the back of each of her low-tops, making them into slip-ons. The lazy dragoness was pleased they fit snugly enough to allow her to make use of the shortcut. She was even happier she didn't have to deal with socks that night; they were a pain for clawed reptiles to put on and take off, since holes for each toe claw were necessary to avoid shredding the fabric. While wriggling her toes to bring them closer to the tip of the shoe, her hand blindly fingered the wall behind her until it found a bank of light switches. After flicking off the last of Tegon's lights, she locked the door behind her and left for the night. It didn't register to her that Tegon's hoodie, necessary on such a chilly night, was still resting on its hook by the door.

On her way back to the place she shared with Sil, Alix swore she felt a crawling sensation between her toes in her left shoe. It felt so much like a bug that she stopped, stood unsteady on one foot while she slipped it off, and examined her toes in the moonlight. Nothing that she could see, apart from a hair and some dust. She shook the shoe in the air a few times for good measure and put it back on. The dragoness figured it must have been a phantom tingle.

Back home, she kicked off her shoes and went straight to her bedroom. Sil's door was already shut, and she assumed her roommate had fallen asleep already. Before showering, Alix wanted to work off a little tension. Sure, finding Tegon's pocket pussy was disgusting, but the thought of him growling, moaning, and dripping with sweat as his features contorted wasn't a thought to be ignored. She unclasped her jeans and slipped them along with her panties to her cluttered floor. Her sweatshirt followed, leaving her total nude. In her nightstand was just the tool that could come to her rescue: a translucent pink dildo. It didn't vibrate and there weren't any fancy features, but it got the job done every time. Coincidentally, the toy mimicked the feel of Tegon quite well, although it did have some length on him.

Alix's legs bent at the knees and spread apart. She splayed her toes and rubbed her fingers between them, stretching and limbering herself up. Her head settled down on a comfortable pillow, and her mind conjured up a wonderful fantasy involving a buffer version of Tegon taking a shower. A middle finger rubbed at her clitoris to get her going in a more physical sense, but in truth she was already wet. The toy descended down her body and slid across her moistened lips before plunging into her. Her hand gripped its base as she quested for her g-spot, riding the unyielding dildo until she found it. Her whole body shuddered as she pulsed around the stand-in for Tegon's cock. With the risk of Sil still being awake in the next room, she kept herself from crying out, but the blood rushing to her skin couldn't be hidden. When she released her grip, she pulled the toy out and wiped its length with a tissue in lieu of a deep cleaning. It went back into the nightstand, ready for its next adventure in what would probably be a few weeks' time. The dragoness stood up and stretched out with a yawn. The itch had been scratched, and now it was time to think about getting ready for bed.

Alix showered before heading off to sleep. Tomorrow she would hunt Tegon down and exact proper revenge for leaving his used sex toys lying around. A nice evening of pampering her feet while they watched a movie of her choice sounded perfect.

Chapter Nine

The next morning, Alix wore an outfit typical of those who were forced to dress up for the weather but weren't happy about it. That day she donned a school sweatshirt one size too big and matching yoga pants, but a fresh pair of flip flops. She hated the weather this time of year, but certainly appreciated the ability to get dressed quickly and not have to worry too much about her appearance. The dragoness had an early class that semester, but she was not an early riser. Instead, the professor was known to be more lenient on those who bothered to get up earlier to hear him lecture.

The humanities building was one of the oldest on campus and was tucked away in a corner far from most others. Alix's apartment complex was no exception, so she usually grabbed one of the circular buses and got there early. It had the added benefit of stopping just in front of her building. On her way out the door, she grabbed a cup of orange juice from the continental breakfast spread out for residents. To her chagrin, the bagels hadn't been put out that day.

The bus's interior lights were glowing on an overcast day. She scanned her identification badge, nodded to the driver, and made her way along the bus's length. Only a handful of reptiles were sprinkled among the seats at this hour. Alix took one of the empty benches in the back. On days when she had to take the bus, it was a pleasant fifteen-minute ride where she could just look out the window and let the sights roll by, mentally running through all she had to do that day. When her stop came she pushed the bell and hopped out. Her feet came down right into a puddle.

Save a frustrated growl, her voice stayed in her throat. But her lips betrayed the lack of speech, mouthing a four-letter word. As the bus rumbled off, she stood alone back up on a paved walkway, one hand on her hip, looking down and thinking what she should do next. Her other hand held the cup of orange juice, from which she took a long swig. Alix figured it wasn't as bad as getting socked feet wet, but open-toed shoes had to be a close second. The oily, greasy water slipped between her toes and sent a shiver down her spine. As quickly as she could she flung and stomped out as much water as she could on the sidewalk. Her only saving grace was the small package of tissues in her sweatshirt. She carefully mopped up as much moisture as she could, dusted off the grit, balled up the tissue, and threw it away.

She found a seat near the back of the classroom and yawned and stretched her body out, bringing her arms high above her head. A cup of orange juice sat next to her on the floor to give her some energy and flavor for an early morning class. She unstrapped her shoes and rested her bare feet on the polished metal of the desk in front of her. The cuffs of her pants drooped down to cover her heels to keep them pleasantly warm. She rifled through a few textbooks and notebooks in her backpack until she found the one for this class. It overflowed with study guides stuffed into random pages and reeked of highlighter fluid. She rested her phone on top until the room filled out and it was time to begin. A clock above the professor ticked out every painful minute of class. Her toes thrummed against their resting place, sticking ever so slightly to the bare metal. They squeezed as she processed all of the new material and filled up another page with notes. After the professor assigned that week's homework, the clock's short hand clicked to nine and class was over. She quickly dropped her notebook back into the backpack and slipped her flip flops on.

Now it was time to brave the elements. "The elements" being a term meaning any day the temperature dipped below balmy for the warm-blooded reptiles. Making the problem worse were the well-heated classrooms, on top of the natural body heat emitted by her classmates. On either side of the lecture hall there were swinging doors to the outside world. She drained the last of her orange juice from its cup before tossing it in the trashcan and getting in line to head outside. When a blast of cold air blew across her face, Alix slipped her hands into her sleeve and propped the door open with her shoulder for the classmate right on her tail. Her backpack weighed down on her back as she hunched over and scuttled her way to the chemistry laboratory. It was time to confront her boyfriend.

...

Tegon had a sleepless night. At best his situation was just as it was on the couch hours earlier, where he would briefly lose consciousness, but never for more than a few minutes at a time. No amount of pinching would end this nightmare, and Tegon certainly did a lot of that before sunlight streamed down from between her toes. Because he was deafened he couldn't hear her alarm, but assumed it must have gone off from the sudden movement and activity along the length of her foot. One foot withdrew as she bent it at the knee, and he began running towards it. He took his familiar position dangling from her toe claw as she touched down onto the floor, waking up and going through her morning routine.

His stomach growled, not having eaten since the day before. If he didn't find a way to reverse the shrinking that day, he would have to find some way to eat. It would have to involve the compound in some way, as he doubted his body would be able to digest normal sized-food. In fact, the only way he thought he could still be alive would be if the compound somehow created a space-time bubble around his body. Normal air molecules would be too large for his body to process as well.

The giantess dressed, and as Tegon guessed at the night before, she wore flip flops instead of her canvas low-tops. This made life a little easier for him, because he could instead wrap himself around the support post between her first two toes, protecting him both from the elements and the danger of getting flicked under one of those giant digits.

Things settled down somewhat for the rest of her journey. His body had gotten used to the constant motion up and down, and from his vantage point he was able to get a unique perspective of the world around him. Every time her foot came down he got a brief look at the floor. Although the material changed, each time it was a fascinating landscape that he was relatively insulated from. He saw grains of dust, shed scales, and even a few mites. Those bugs were quite bizarre, although they appeared pretty harmless.

Above, Alix reached a table near the entrance to her apartment building. He saw her pull back a cup filled with an orange drink, probably orange juice considering the time of day. He estimated it was the size of a small pond to him, as she emptied a few hundred gallons into her maw.

From there she stepped out into the world. He noticed each individual fiber on each blade of grass, a host of ants under Alix's tread diligently moving in single file rows, at least until her step undoubtedly squished a few and made the others crawl every which way.

She waited at the bus stop, her toes unsticking from the surface of the flip flop before smacking back down again. She was clearly impatient in waiting for bus. Every once in a while, Tegon got a blast of cool air to the face, but for the most part the body heat from her feet kept him warm.

The bus rumbled into view, and Tegon was choked by the acrid fumes it spewed. Alix stepped onto the bus and he took stock of the other pairs of feet onboard. Unfortunately for a paw fetishist such as himself, most of the other passengers were wearing closed-toed shoes, and regardless Alix sat far from anyone else. A constant rumble was under Tegon's feet for the duration of the trip, and he could do little but sit, wait, and watch Alix's toes bulge as they pressed into the flip flop's material, and go slack again as the pressure relented.

After a time, Alix stood up and walked to the front of the bus. Tegon would try to get a sense of his bearings to consider when the best time to jump off of her would be. Too soon, and he would be miles from the chemistry building, and could face any number of both macro and micro dangers. Too late, and he would be forced to spend another night as a tiny as she headed back home. He knew her schedule, and decided to stick with her for her first lecture at least.

As she stepped off the bus, Tegon's stomach flopped as her foot missed the curb. Instead of landing where he expected, her foot plunged into a deep puddle of icy cold water. His grip was ripped loose by the turbulence, but instead of drowning in that vast lake he was forced backwards into her flesh. As she pulled her foot out, the water drained out from around him. Sand and muck now covered the whole surface of the shoe, as well as her foot. Tegon tried to get back to the toe post. He was thrown into the air as she stomped.

Apparently the giantess was trying to dry herself off. Her foot rose into the air, then slammed down onto the pavement with the force of a wrecking ball. Tegon would float in the air briefly before being caught by the flip flop on its way back up into the air. Droplets of water sprayed out in front of the shoe and filled the air with a light mist. Apparently unsatisfied with her progress, Tegon watched her reach into her pocket and pull out a white tissue.

He dodged the tissue's clawing fibers, stabbing in between the toes before pressing in close and wicking up the moisture as well as any debris. Dirt and grass and oil were scooped up and away, after which Alix would fold the tissue and begin again. He slid under the tread of her toes; a risky move but his only option to avoid getting tossed in the trash. He only emerged when he saw her ball up the tissue above. He quickly got back over to the toe support before she started moving again.

The air warmed up when she entered the lecture hall. If he had shrunk during the summer, Tegon would have been seriously concerned about fighting droplets of sweat. As it stood he already had enough to worry about. Tegon breathed a sigh of relief as she settled into her seat and undid the necessary straps on her flip flop to slide her feet out. For someone obsessed about feet, he was awfully sick of existing under them. Her paws rested on a metal crossbar of the seat in front of her.

From his perspective, he was able to keep tabs on a clock on the wall high above. That told him how much time he would have to explore his options before Alix would be leaving the room. Finding another giant to cling to was out. This class was a liberal arts elective, so Tegon doubted anyone else would go anywhere near the chemistry building. Alix would have to remain involved, but staying near her feet wouldn't work anymore.

He jumped off the edge of the footwear and landed on his feet. The polished linoleum of the lecture hall wasn't too unlike the smooth surface of his cell phone, so it was comfortable for him to traverse. Here and there, there were scuff marks made at some point prior by another's shoes, still faintly smelling of rubber. Next to Alix's own pair was the tower of her cup of orange juice. He waited for a few minutes to see if she would take a sip, but she seemed engrossed in her note-taking.

Tegon ran up to the side of the plastic cup. He beat against the side and clawed to determine its strength, and it seemed very much stable for scaling. He thought about an outlandish strategy. A fall from virtually any height was not going to kill him, that much was clear. Pressure and biological processes were his only enemies. Being swallowed would certainly result in a painful death, but if he was able to take refuge somewhere higher up on her body, he could avoid the danger of something like the puddle from earlier.

He jogged around the side of the cup until he reached a point he judged would be opposite from where she would drink from, then began climbing up the side. His claws wouldn't pierce the plastic, but it could make divots from which he could hang. After a few minutes he reached the rim, below which was the placid surface of the juice. Small waves lapped at the sides of the drink. The air was permeated with the scent of citrus.

He hitched one leg over the side and straddled the rim of the cup as if he were riding a horse. He didn't have to wait long until Alix's slender fingers curled in one by one around the rim and lifted. Sure enough, he wasn't in any immediate danger of dropping into her maw as she drank from the opposite side. An Olympic-sized swimming pool worth of juice flooded into her mouth, crashing into her teeth until the sheer volume carried the liquid deeper to the black abyss in the back of her throat. She pursed her mouth shut, and then the whole thing was gone. A mist of droplets sprayed as she smacked her lips and ran her tongue across them to catch any lingering sweetness. He couldn't see the lump travel down her neck. The wide diameter of the cup meant he was brought up to her face above her nose, on top of her snout. There he jumped, and landed on her face as the cup was brought away.

The surface of her broad snout was covered in a sea of pebbly aqua scales. The texture made it easy for Tegon to remain in position while he considered his options. At the base of her snout, her brilliant blue irises floated on the white of her sclera. A slick squishing sound accompanied the movement of her eyes. As opposed to before, when he was too far away from her vision to be visible, here he was too close. If he hitched a ride on her eyelash, it would be no different from a bit of sleep getting caught in them. Two fingers would pinch him in half and flick the pieces away.

Tegon had no desire to communicate with Alix. Her voice deafened him. Her feet nearly crushed him. She would instead be a method of transportation, because only Dr. Phayon would immediately understand what was going on. As her head tilted back down to focus on her notes, Tegon was unprepared and began to slip. He righted himself in a haste because he didn't want to end up under her either of her nostrils. Being inhaled wasn't much better than being swallowed in terms of survivability. He had already experienced her insides and they were dark, slimy, and suffocating. From her face, Tegon wanted to get down to her shoulder. Covered in padding by way of her clothing, it would be much less sensitive than her face. One false move and he could go splat as she rubbed an itch.

Alix alternated her attention between her notes and the professor. When she looked up, her head moved further back, and her shoulders farther forward. Her fluttering eyelashes stirred up buffeting winds, which Tegon waited to wane before launching off of her face. Because of the length of her snout, her breathing didn't affect his path much. Like a sugar glider, he spread out his limbs to maximize drag and direct his descent to her left shoulder. He missed the dead center of his target, but his sharp claws and plenty of lint sticking up from her sweater securely attached him to her outerwear all the same. Tegon burrowed into the gaps in the stitching after searching for the best position and prepared to see a day from his girlfriend's perspective. From his perch the only disturbance was a gentle movement created by his girlfriend's rhythmic breathing.

The class ended with Tegon securely in position. He had slipped his entire arms and legs through tightly-woven threads and bent them at the joints so only a direct blast of air could knock him loose. It wasn't easy finding the perfect patch of fabric, because Alix had worn the sweatshirt dating back to her undergraduate years. An artificial forest of looser threads and balls of lint on wispy tendrils swayed in a constant breeze around him. The flow of air breezed past her neck and brought the smell of her perfume down to him. That was a smell he adored, and despite her numerous attempts to kill him, he knew when he was back to normal size he would love her all the same.

Along with the rest of the students, when the professor assigned homework and released them, Alix was eager to get out of there. She finished jotting down the last sentence in her notebook and entered the assignment in her planner before shutting both and slipping them back into her backpack.

One of the reasons Tegon picked her left shoulder when leaping off of her face was because he knew she wore the strap of her backpack over her right. In that way it might have been better the drake's original plan to ride a stranger didn't work out. Knowing a giantess's routines made her predictable, and predictability meant staying alive. The strap flew overhead, and as he had expected she slung her bag over the opposite shoulder. When she left the classroom and went back out into the cold, Tegon bore down. Not only were winds whipping at his face, but this time he wasn't protected by her body heat. Occasionally he would bury himself in fabric when his breath caught in his throat.

Other giant faces shuffled by, none familiar. So many omnipotent creatures triggered panic to creep into the edges of his thoughts. Once the panic was there, thinking about the panic only made it worse. Tegon figured his lizard brain was activating a long-dormant instinct to flee from predators. An intrusive thought encouraged him to leap off and run to cover among the blades of grass. Images of Alix swallowing all that juice, of unknowingly crushing insects, played in his head. He gulped down a phantom lump in his throat and tried to think of something a little less frightening.

Tegon wondered how he and Alix would interact if she knew what he really was, and if he could shrink at will. Would she think it were cute? Horrifying? Would she allow him to explore her body on his own terms? Or would she think he were a creep for wanting to crawl around her like a bug? The possibilities for kinkiness were nearly endless. She could drop him into her shoe or panties for the day and without fear he could see how much arousal he could generate before she finished her work.

Would he be tempted by the dark side of near-invisibility? He could use the compound to shrink himself outside a professor's office and steal the answers to a test. He could spy on sensitive information and use it to make money. Would Alix mind if he slipped into Sollox's room one night, just out of curiosity of what the male sex looked like magnified several hundred times?

The drake already felt like a voyeur to vicariously experience the world from Alix's shoulder. If she looked at someone, he looked at someone. If she went somewhere, he went there too. He mentally played song lyrics from his favorite band, which calmed him down whenever the tidal wave of panic threatened to overwhelm him.

Living as somebody else boy...

He blinked hard when she broke with routine and failed to take the normal route to lunch. Instead she seemed to be heading directly for the chemistry building. If Tegon's luck was abysmal for his first hours as a speck, it certainly seemed to be working in his favor as time went on.