Butterflies in my stomach. That's the cliche, though it feels more like a wolverine with insomnia rolling around, pawing at my guts. Finally, I'm going to do it. I'm going to get small for a night. They warn you not to.

The PSAs are so odd. Warnings against drugs are easy. “This thing feels really great, but it's unhealthy long term! Even once can get you addicted!” Okay, fair enough. Make something sound appealing and warn me off it in one go.

Anti-shrinking PSAs don't seem to understand their target demographic. They think the idea is to shrink down and jump from your dresser onto your bed, like extreme sports without all that costly equipment and training. That makes the warnings fall a bit flat. Could someone sit on you? Could something heavy fall on you? Sure. But compared to actual skydiving? Out of a plane? It's safer!

That's what I keep telling myself as I walk down the hall, glancing up at the lights in the ceiling, counting off the numbers in the door.

I finally get to door 281. I think about turning back, but I'd come this far. People knew to expect me. People knew I was coming. I'd have to admit to chickening out if I ran. I knock on the door and wait, looking around.

I wish they'd open the door. In my head my academic advisor's heading down the hall or my parents are coming for a visit (in the wrong dorm? Sheesh. Paranoid much?) and they'll see me…standing in front of a door in a dormitory.

‘Calm down, Ido.’ I tell myself, shifting from paw to paw.

Finally the door opens. There's a squirrel about half a meter shorter than I, with fur of speckly brown and grey and small, rounded ears.

“Hi there!” he says. He doesn't move to let me in. I have to say the password. There's a sheet hung up behind the door so I can't see into the room behind him.

I only realize how dry my mouth is when I speak and my voice cracks. I breathe, swallow, and lean in to whisper, “Hi. I'm—I'm a friend of Alice. She said I should come here for a drink.”

The squirrel grins at me, “You heard right! Come in!” He beckons for me to follow and pulls the sheet out of my way. He pats me on the back as I walk in. He's trying to be reassuring, and I hope he can't tell how nervous I am. I follow and close the door behind me.

I look around, expecting something strange, but it's just a nicer than average dorm room. Beds up on lofts to make sure there's room on the floor, though the mattresses have been set in one corner for the evening. There's a couple desks, a beat up, orange love seat under one loft, beanbags and piles of cushions heaped up. There's some music in the background. Relaxing stuff with bird songs and wind and flowing water with chimes and choirs. There's Christmas lights on everything and a couple lamps pointed at the ceiling.

My eye gets caught by a white pinprick of light, and I look toward a grey mouse. She smiles at me, too. Everyone's so friendly here. She's got her hand over something on her knee. Something moving—Someone moving, flashes of light showing between her fingers.

It's real.

It's really real!

I'd never seen someone tiny before. Heard about it. Seen it on TV. I kept wondering if it was a trick. An urban legend. Some joke everyone was playing at my expense, knowing I was the one weirdo who wanted to try it for real, all waiting to jump out and point and laugh if I fell for it, but…

I must have been staring. The squirrel brushes his tail against my side, asking, “First time?”

I nod silently, and he walks to the connecting doorway to the bathroom corridor leading to another room. The music coming from that side is quick, sharp, catchy…like something that might accompany a chase in a video game.

He calls out, “Nate! Door duty while I get our new friend—” he looks at me and says in a softer voice, “Coyote…you…Ido?”

My attention snaps toward him, a hint of surprise, but I nod and say, “Yeah.” I don't know why it caught me off guard, I'd let them know I was coming and sent a picture.

A grey tabby comes out of the connecting bathroom and pats me on the shoulder. I notice he's got an iron ring on his little finger. “Hey!” he says. He's about my size.

For now.

That thought gets the wolverine rolling around in my belly again.

Nate reaches one hand toward me, wiggles his fingers, giving me a chance to signal whether I actually want him to touch me or not. Instinctively, perhaps craving the reassurance, I lean forward and brush my muzzle against his fingers. He grins and rubs under my chin, stroking his hand down my neck to my shoulder. “Oh, you're a friendly one. Our squirrel's going to have fun with you. Don't worry, you're in safe paws…and under them before long!”

I feel my ears heat up with a blush and suddenly wish for an excuse to run off and hide.

The squirrel emits a sharp a chrrt of reproof and glares at Nate, “No teasing the newbies. Once somebody's a little more at ease? Sure. But it's his first time.”

Nate says, “Sorry, sorry. Cat. You know.”

The squirrel offers me his hand and when I take it he leads me to a the love seat. Then he says, “I'm Wade, by the way. Shoulda' introduced myself sooner. Sorry about that.”

I can tell they're all putting in an effort to keep me at ease.

“Nate's actually a sweetheart,” Wade says, as I sit down. “Loves to chase little critters like you, well, future-you, around. But he wouldn't hurt a fly. You should see all the work he puts in to setting up rides. He came up with most of our safety rules.”

I listen, nodding. The moment keeps getting closer, but I'm so tense. Actually being shrunk can't possibly be more stressful than everything leading up to it. At least once I'm small, I'm just small until it wears off. That I can still back out and keep having to decide not to is nerve wracking.

Wade sits down next to me, asking, “You don't mind if I touch you, do you?”

I really hope he does, and everyone else here. I don't know if I'd be able to run up to someone on my own when I'm small and ask them to.

“Yes! …I mean…no! I mean…I don't mind. The opposite. Please do.”

He nods, “I figured. But! Remember. You can always change your mind. There's no shame in it. If you start to feel overwhelmed or things get to be a bit too much for you, you're allowed to ask people to back off, give you some space for, be a bit more gentle, whatever. If you change your mind and want to head off right now, that's okay too. If anyone makes fun of you over it, I'll hunt them down and smack them with a wet noodle.”

I laugh a bit at that, suddenly feeling a lot less like running off.

“Okay.”

Wade says, “Good. Good. So. Safety rules. You sober? Not on anything stronger than caffeine? No booze. no pot. Not that I have anything against booze or pot, but we want everyone alert and paying attention.”

“Haven't even had any coffee.”

“Two. See this?” He holds up a few strips of plastic with something electronic attached. “You have to put this on and keep it on the whole time you're small. Once you finish shrinking, of course.”

He holds it out to me and I take it in my palm. I could wrap it around my finger like a ring if I wanted. I stare, but don't object.

Wade takes it back and continues, “It's got a light so we can better keep track of you. See that red strip? Pull it out and a buzzer will go off. If you feel scared, endangered, lost, anything where you need help, pull it out and we'll come save you. Don't feel like you have to tough it out, either. I'd rather have you sound the alarm because you're scared over nothing than have something actually bad happen.”

It feels like that bit in a movie where they brief everyone about their mission. I'm an astronaut getting ready to head out on a new world: The Planet of Giants.

“Okay.”

Wade continues, “Third. Someone knows you're here? Now? Never really was relevant, but it's anti-paranoia. You don't show up tomorrow people will come looking for you.”

I nod and say, “Yeah. The person who told me about this…event? Jesse.”

Wade said, “Party! It's a party where we invite our friends over to get very, very small. Jesse's nice, too. Okay, last rule. Less a rule of ours than just a fact of life: The one thing you can't back out of is, once you shrink, you'll be small until it wears off, probably before sunrise. If you seriously freak out and can't stand to wait, let us know and we'll give you a partitioned off spot away from all us giants where you can wait it out and maybe try to sleep. Okay?”

“Okay.”

I hope I don't freak out. I'd be so embarrassed.

“You all put a lot of thought into these rules.” I say.

Wade shrugs, stands up, and smiles down at me. I look up, imagining I'm already little, or at least starting to shrink, watching him from my new perspective. “We just wanna' make sure everyone has fun. Or at least that nobody has an awful time. People who are close, one on one, who know each other really well can have different rules. I didn't even go over the ones for the people who aren't getting smaller, no need to overwhelm you. But for something semi-open like this with people who don't know each other? Folks trying it for the first time? We take extra safeguards.”

The squirrel steps back, grinning, seeming almost as excited as I am, now that the lecture is done. “So, my soon-to-be-little coyote. Are you ready to turn ‘soon-to-be-little’ into ‘little’?”

I sit up straighter, ears at attention. I feel like everyone must be watching me, but when I glance around everyone's busy with their own affairs. The mouse is holding a tiny creature—a dog? Maybe?—in the palm of one hand. Nate is sitting on a sofa, looking down at a tiny weasel who's under one of his paws, seeming to have fun wrestling and play-biting at his toes.

I look back up to Wade and say, “Yes. I'm ready.”

It's happening. I can almost feel the ground dropping out from under me. It's like I'm on a rollercoaster that just crested the hill and is about to go barreling down.

…and down and down and down and down. I guess ‘down’ describes where I'm going pretty well

I giggle to myself and watch as Wade fills a bright pink balloon with gas from a canister. He pads back over and holds the nozzle between two fingers, up to my lips. “All right. Breathe slowly and deeply. In through your mouth, hold for the count of three, and then slowly and calmly out through your nose. I'll hold the balloon because…well…you'll see. If you feel bad or anything just shake your head. Okay?”

I nod and say, “Okay!”

I'm actually starting to feel comfortable, at-ease with the situation. The strangeness makes it feel like a dream, a game, rather than part of my real life. I take the nozzle between my lips, nosing into the squirrel's hand. Wade eases one finger so the nozzle untwists. I breathe in slowly, as instructed. The gas tastes oddly sweet on my tongue. I hold the breath for a silent count of three in my head.

I feel like I'm breathing air, apart from the taste. I wonder if it has oxygen mixed in.

Suddenly I realize Wade's hand fills my vision, the way it would if he were my size or maybe even a head taller. My eyes widen. I'm not upset, just shocked. I can see why he wanted me to let him hold the thing, I might have let go from shock otherwise.

He giggles softly. There's something odd about the way his voice sounds. The gas shouldn't be affecting my perception. Is it my smaller size? The adrenaline coursing filling my veins?

The squirrel says, “Don't forget to breathe. You doing okay?”

I nod a little and inhale again, deeply and slowly, but this time letting my gaze wander over the room. I can see the loft seem to move up like an elevator. The room seems to grow—no. The room and everything else grows around me, no seeming about it, becoming more luxurious with added scale. As I hold my breath, Wade sits down at my side, switching the balloon from one hand to the other without ever letting go. He's stronger, bigger, my ears don't quite reach past his shoulder, now, and he pulls me into his lap with his newly free arm. I settle back, facing away from him.

I would have emptied the balloon before now, except my lung capacity gets smaller with every breath. Still, this feels like the last of it. I breathe it in. It's shocking, feeling myself get smaller against the squirrel, his fur moving against mine, his arms becoming heavier. Stronger. I press the back of my hand into his free palm to feel it grow. He closes his fingers and takes my paw entirely in his. As I hold my breath, my perspective rushes down again. This time I'm expecting it. Watching for it. If I didn't know what was happening I might not even realize I'd shrunk at first. It feels more like a change in lighting or angles, different stuff at my eye-line.

The balloon empty, I pause, waiting a moment for instructions, then open my mouth to let it go. My heart's racing. I feel scared, but not. Comparing it to a rollercoaster is underselling it. It's more alien than that. It's more like the earth moving out from beneath me and someworld other stealing its place. I know intellectually that I've changed, but I feel like I've been mysteriously transported to some warped reflection reality.

Wade hugs me and I settle back in his fur, thinking think it's an awfully nice, warped reflection.

He rests a huge hand on my head, tousling my fur, rubbing one of my ears with his thumb. I still can't help but peek up and gape at how big his hand is. He teasingly covers my eyes, then he parts his fingers to reveal his face; he's leaned forward and bowed his head to smile at me upside-down.

“How are you feeling, my little 'yote?”

Being called ‘little’ suddenly makes everything so much more real. Still good, but I'm at a loss for words. Eventually I manage, “Good. Really…uh…it's good.”

I can't help but smiling, feeling kind of silly. For something that's supposed to be all physical change and no mental effect, my mind sure feels affected. I turn around and try to hug the squirrel, my arms not being able to get around his torso now. He helps, holding me in one arm as he stands, giving me a squeeze against his front before lowering me to the ground.

I stand up, but I feel unbalanced. I'm so light, so much lighter compared to my strength. I feel like I could leap and bound about, though I'd probably faceplant from my reflexes not matching my strength to my mass.

“Wow…” I whisper. I can't decide whether I feel giddy, awestruck, or scared-but-in-the-best-possible-way. All at once? Cycling between them? It's about then I notice that my eye-level is pretty low on the squirrel's belly. I poke my nose into a bit of cream-colored fur there, then lean back to look straight up at him, “I'm…still shrinking…?”

He looks down at me. Down. At me. I haven't seen anyone from this perspective since I was a young pup, and I'm still getting smaller. “Yep!”

He slides off the couch and crouches down to be closer to my level, which just makes him seem to loom even more. It's like watching a small building lower itself so I can peek in the second story windows. He takes a moment to pet me, big hand spanning my back. “You keep on shrinking after you're done breathing in the gas. You've got a good way to go still! Maybe twenty or thirty minutes until you're all the way down.” He gives me a smile and holds his thumb and forefinger a couple inches apart, then boops both sides of my muzzle between them.

My ears go hot once more, then I lean back, swallowing hard at a lump in my throat. I take his hand in one of mine, more try to guide it, palm facing me so I can trace the distance he'd shown against it. “That little, huh?”

Wade nods, then sits down cross-legged on the floor. I'd shrunk smaller still, to the point where even with me standing and him sitting I'm half his height. “You've got an exciting night ahead.” he says.

My tail starts up wagging on its own, I feel my heart speed up as I say, “I…I do. I guess.” I look around, and ask, “Can I…sit back in your lap?”

Wade chuckles and scoops me up, his hands on my sides, the sides of his palms under my arms, thumbs against my shoulders, and sets me on his knee. “Sure!” He starts to pet me, taking a moment to brush my fur smooth where it's got ruffled. “We're happy to hold you. Me, Becky,” He gestures at the mouse girl who glances over at us when she hears her name mentioned and says “Yep! Feel free to climb up on me if you want.”

Wade nods and gestures to the cat, “Nate there. Though he plays a little rougher. Won't hurt you but you'll get pushed around and paw-pounced and finger-wrestled a lot more. Piri, they're the fennec in the other room, any of us. We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't like little critters climbing around on us.”

He looks down at me again, resting his hand on my head once more. “And you're well on your way to being little, Critter.” He strokes down the bridge of my muzzle with a fingertip, then ruffles the fur over my chest.

I feel shivery, almost like I've become ticklish over my whole body. The excitement's making me hypersensitive to every touch, like sensory overload, but instead of wanting to squirm away, I grab his hand. I find that his entire palm is as big as my torso and I hug his paw close, nuzzling against his fingertips. I start to lick one, then feel mortified and let go, leaning back and saying, “Uh…S-sorry.”

He counters my desire to sink into the floor, by petting me and pulling me closer, his hand seeming to be bigger with each stroke…

No! No seeming about it. I'm still getting smaller. His hand really is bigger each time he touches me.

I've never felt anything like this. It's like a positive feedback loop. My sensory impressions are so strong, so different, so overwhelming I don't know what to do and retreat to thinking about it intellectually.

But the clear, crisply articulated reality of what's happening is so strange, so alien, that thinking about it makes it more intense and my mind retreats to a purely sensory focus. Back and forth, over and over.

I'm staring up at him, unthinking, when he breaks me out of the loop by leaning down to nuzzle the top of my head. He licks his own fingertip to touch my nose with it. “Don't worry! Coyote licks are cute.”

He's so nice, I finally settle down and burrow into his fur. Sure, he's big, overwhelming, and taking great enjoyment in teasing me, but he's makes me feel safe in my reactions, and I can calm down a little bit hiding in his fur. That it's him I'm hiding from doesn't make it work any less.

Wade pets my back with four fingertips. Then three. Then two. I can feel the number falling as they grow. Eventually I uncurl and peek up and around.

I'm not aware of the room as an indoor space any more. Not from this position. My comparison of the squirrel to a building feels more apt than ever. I'm sitting on his knee, his torso rising above me, his hand behind me…I stand, slowly, comparing my whole body to it. He can guess what I'm doing and turns it to point upward. I can, if I stretch, just peek over his fingertips. I stand still, waiting, counting seconds with swishes of my tail, until the shrinking brings me down enough that even stretched and craning my neck I can't quite see past the tip of his longest finger.

He seems almost proud of this outcome, bending that finger to rub my head. Without really thinking, I lean forward to rub my head and my cheek against it, leaning into his palm. The squirrel speaks…his voice isn't exactly loud.

It isn't low and rumbling.

But it's big. It comes from above, seemingly all around, filling the space I'm in.

I'm so distracted by the quality of his voice I almost lose track of what he's saying.

“You are a cute one, practically a natural. I'm glad you came today, you're awfully fun to have around.”

I smile and bow to rub the top of my head and my ears lower down against the knuckles at the top of his palm.

“Thank you.”

And with that Wade scoops me up in his hand, bringing me to eye-level.

His sparkling eyes are brown, but his regard is bright enough it hits me like a spotlight.

The force of his attention hits me almost like a physical force. There's something skew-symmetric about it. Having someone who's everything in your local vicinity, who you can't help but see wherever you look, and feeling them focusing on you, purely because they want to.

Not that I'm not interested and delighted by the squirrel, too. I lie down in his hand, inspecting his fingers, running my hand over his palm, following the curves and lines in it like a high-precision fortune teller.

I shake my head and mumble, “This is so strange. So, so strange. I'm kind of mad at myself for being too scared to try it for this long.”

Wade pets down my side, from the top of my head to the side of my shin with a single motion of his finger. “Don't worry about it! You can come back any time.” He regards me, rolling me back and forth in his hand, maneuvering me down into his palm and wiggling his fingers.

I suddenly realize I almost—almost, but not quite—fit completely within the his palm. “We're getting there.” he says, “Then we can get you all harnessed up and you can explore if you want.”

He adds, as an aside, “Don't get me wrong. I'm holding on to you because I really like holding on to you. I'll happily keep doing so. But it's also the rules. While you're shrinking, especially when you get down past a foot tall or so, you've got to have someone paying specific attention to you, knowing where you are, so you don't get lost or in trouble before you get kitted out.”

I nod silently. I guess I should take a look around in my new state, but it hadn't occurred to me. With one person suddenly on the scale of living, breathing architecture, there seemed enough to see without going anywhere.

Wade rests a fingertip against my chest, giving me a playful tickle, and in failing to swat his digit away, I realize my entire hand doesn't even span his fingertip. Overcome with the thought, I hug that digit to my chest with all my might, holding my breath. Eyes closed, I concentrate on my proprioception, my sense of touch, waiting to find out if I feel the inexorable movement of my body getting smaller against his finger. I say after a few moments observation, “I…I think I'm done shrinking.”

Wade nods, then turns me sideways. My entire height is, perhaps, two thirds the width of his palm. “Yeeeah.” he says after a moment. “I think you are.”

He lowers his hand to the floor. Even with his gestures slow, careful, and steady, I feel as if I might be lifted right off his palm by the acceleration. He tilts his hand, but doesn't try to push me out, and his palm is uneven and soft enough I don't slide out at such a shallow angle.

“Stand up, please.” he says, and with a bit of trepidation I climb down his fingers to stand on the floor.

It's a wooden floor, a bit scuffed up. The grain is more apparent than ever, but the main thing I notice is how the varnish looks like a shallow lake of frozen amber poured over it, filling hollows in the texture and gaps in the grain.

Wade hands me the harness and says, “You've got tinier fingers than I. You can do up all the straps.” Then he giggles softly and says in a sing-song, “Tiny fingers for a tiny 'yote.”

He keeps his eyes on me as I figure it out. One strap goes around my chest, and two others go over my shoulders to hook into the first. They're made of a very fine woven elastic netting, with breakaway points at every meeting. Once it's on it's a like a backpack, but instead of the pack, there's a bright white LED chip on my back that starts to glow as soon as I buckle the chest strap. I notice the little red strip he mentioned, almost like a parachutist's pull cord, dangling from the right chest strap.

Once the harness lights up, Wade says, “Good. Good! Now you're free to wander around, explore. You don't have to, though! You can come right back to me. I'll be happy to keep you until someone else comes to the door.”

With a mischievous chuckle he adds, “But just so you get the full impact of things…” and with that the squirrel stands. Suddenly. It's like a mountain of fur and flesh thrusting itself up higher out of the ground. Each huge footpaw thumps into place in front of me, one to the left and one to the right, toes flexing and spreading against the ground with every minute change in his balance; legs like pillars rise up further than I can see standing this close. I circle around one foot, pausing at the outside to measure myself against it, and I see his ankle-bone above my head, just at the limit of what I could reach were I to stretch as far as I could.

All I can think is “Wow…” Overwhelmed, I press flat against the side of his paw, arms outstretched in a hug and look straight up.

It's not like he isn't a person, precisely.

And it's not like he's alien, he acts just as I'm used to seeing people act when playing with a pet cat or rat.

But my new perspective makes the way I think of our interaction different. Instead of thinking of a single squirrel reaching here, walking there. I find myself thinking of huge hands and feet, a gigantic tail like a waterfall of fur, bright eyes and rounded ears all acting separately under the direction of a shared mind.

A mind I relate to and like, and nothing about that description is incorrect at normal sizes, but when you're below ankle level you can't hold a giant's entire body in a single thought. I found myself thinking of him as something I could navigate, hiking along one leg, climbing his tail.

Ever-considerate, he gives me a chance to get my bearings. Eventually I let go of his foot and step back. I can't see his face but I can imagine him smiling as he tilts his paw back, pivoting it on the heel to lower it atop my head, awkwardly stroking my ears and face with two toes. “There, little one. Just as Nate promised: In good paws, and now under them.”

Then his rubbing becomes a bit rougher, more playful, to tousle my fur. I look up, take a moment to admire the smooth brown skin of his toepads and the curve of sole and arch beyond, before nuzzling up against the underside of his digit, “Both sets of paws are pretty good, yeah…”

Then he slides his paw back to stand upright on both once more, leaning down far enough to look at me more closely. When I look straight up I can see him smiling again, eyes sparkling. Squirrels really do have the cutest smiles, even when they're a bit terrifying.

Wade looks down and pets my cheek with the back of one finger, “You going to be okay if I let Nate go back to the other room and man the door myself? You can still hang out with me, but I'll be distracted now and then. And if someone comes in, I'll have to focus on shrinking them down.”

I nod, then realize he might not be able to make out such a small gesture so far away and say, “Yeah! I'll be fine!”

Wade pets me, just one finger down my back, but even a gentle touch almost pushes me off balance, like a wall behind me sliding forward to give me a shove. I turn and push my cheek against his fingertip. “Cool. Just so long as you're okay.” he says, before he walks back toward the door. I see his paws lift several times my height with each step. Still overwhelmed I look around at the room, which seems more like an outdoor space at twilight now. Listening to the sound of the giants' voices, I'm overwhelmed enough by how vast and distant they sound to really pick up on their conversations.

I stand in a reverie for a moment, staring at the mountain of beanbags, cushions and blankets, when seemingly out of nowhere a huge grey form looms over me. One paw thumps down next to me, the soft pad making it almost silent, even with me being so small and an inch or two from ground zero. Though my legs wobble as the floor shakes beneath me, the air from something so big moving so fast blows my fur around and I stagger back. Looking around wildly, I see the mottled pink and black pad of another paw coming down. Before I can react, it lands next to me. Unbalanced I fall back against one fluffy ankle.

My adrenaline is spiking, but I can tell how precise and controlled the creature's—the cat's—movements are. I grab on to the side of his foot and feel the bones, muscles and tendons move beneath the skin, his impressive weight shifts forward and his heels lift as he squats down. I still have trouble making out his face from the angle I'm looking up at, but I see his bottle-green eyes twinkling merrily.

Just then I hear Wade call out, “Nate! Stop spooking the newbie! Save it for the Scary Room!”

Nate smiles sheepishly, reaching down, holding two fingers just behind me, offering to pet me again as he says in a soft, purring whisper, “I wouldn't ever hurt you. Not in a million years, I promise.”

I can hear the sincerity in his voice, see the care in his movements, and I turn to hug the tip of his index finger, pressing my cheek against the tip. Nate chuckles and says to Wade, though speaking in a softer voice directed toward me, “I prefer to call it the Chamber of Excitement.” He adds, with a chuckle, his voice becoming even softer as he pets me with his thumb, the pad spanning my back, “Not too skittish, I see. If you feel up to it sometime, stop by the other room. Nothing bad will happen, I promise.” I feel the cat brush the smooth, hard side of a curved claw over my head. “Sure you might get chased, but we're very kind when we catch you.”

I see him wink his eye, like a glowing green moon being obscured by a cloud blowing past. He pets me once more, down my front with the side of his thumb and down my back with two fingers before standing up and padding away. Each paw lifts, flying overhead, the departure of the cat's shadow subtly changing the world like an overcast sky clearing.

I look toward Wade, off by the doorway. From further away, my small size merely gives me a weird, extreme low-angle perspective rather than the overwhelming, piecewise sense I felt close up. I see he's talking to a raccoon who just entered, and I hike over the amber sea of the floor. I see the mouse, Becky, sitting cross-legged. Either she's watching for tiny folk like me (which wouldn't surprise me given all the precautions) or the light on my harness has attracted her attention, since I see her head move as she tracks me.

I walk closer to her and she waves to me with one hand. The other seems to be covering another small person who's in her lap. My steps slow as each movement forward makes her seem more unreal. The ball of her foot, under her thigh, rises from the floor to well above my head, and eventually I get an arm's length away. Even after the past couple hours, I still feel like this must be a dream, and before I think whether I ought to, I reach out and press the palm of my hand against her pawpad. It yields, warm and soft, but when I hear her light chuckle and her voice coming from overhead saying, “Hello, little…Coyote?”

I pull my arm back hurriedly and start backpedaling. “Sorry!” I call up, my heart racing, “I wasn't thinking!”

She's already leaning in for a closer look at me. I take a further step away and back right into a wall, soft enough that I feel it conforming to the shape of my back and head. Huge fingers curl around me, the palm wrinkling against my back, skin pressing sideways on my shoulders, hemming me in a bit more. The mouse waits for a moment, I imagine to check that I'm not terrified or struggling to escape, before she curls her fingers enough to pet down my chest with the tip of the second one, “Don't worry.” she says in a soft tone, “I wouldn't keep coming to these things if I didn't like tiny people touching me.”

I suddenly feel I'm falling backwards. The world tips over and her fingers tighten a bit more, her thumb across one shoulder and against my chest and the others wrap around me as I rush upward, looking into glittering eyes. Only one at a time, though. I keep glancing from one to the other, each dominating my field of vision now that I'm so close as well as so small. Some part of me feels awkward and a little worried that I might be snubbing half of her if I don't make eye-contact with both. Somewhere in the back of my head I wonder if I'm screwing it up somehow, inadvertently staring her down—what an absurd idea! Me staring down a giant! She must feel me tense up. Now that her hand is horizontal and I'm lying in her cupped palm she loosens her hold on me and pets over the side of my face with the pad of her thumb. The pink-tan skin fills my eyes and brushes over my muzzle, cheek, even one of my ears in a single touch as she says, “Shh. Don't worry. It's kind of cute seeing you so nervous, but you don't have to worry. I'm not going to get upset with you unless you really try hard to offend me.”

Her face looms more, until just her nose and whiskers and the tops of her incisors fill my vision. I can feel her breath like a hot, wet wind blowing my fur around with every sternly whispered syllable, the lower tones of her voice resonating in my rib cage, “But if you do manage it—” she continues in a lighter tone, “—we'll just make you wait in a penned off spot in the corner until you grow back and not invite you back.”

I feel her palm shifting against my back, the wrinkles smoothing out as she opens her fingers. She brushes her nose against my chest, the natural rhythm of her breath pulling then ruffling my fur in rhythmic succession. She lowers her hand and lifts her head, and as soon as her face isn't filling quite so much of my world, I realize my heart has been racing by how much it starts to slow. I catch my breath as she lowers me slowly toward her lap, petting me with her thumb the whole way down. Each motion makes her palm flex against my back, squeezing and rocking my whole body back and forth. The acceleration stops as the back of her hand comes to rest on her thigh.

I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to get up or not. She must sense my confusion, as she gives me a gentle squeeze, saying, “You might feel a bit more at ease if you close your eyes.” She strokes down from my forehead to my muzzle, the tip of her index-finger more than covering my entire face, “At least for now.”

I look around and see the other tiny creature in her lap, a small fox settled under her hand, peeking out at me between her fingers. They wave at me with a smile, then curl back up once more, retreating completely under the huge palm.

The hand further away from me feels more real, or at least more mentally tractable, than the one I'm lying in. I still have trouble feeling, emotionally, that they were all part of the same creature, a person like myself…but then I take Becky's advice and close my eyes, lying down in her hand on my side, pressing my cheek against the bit of her palm over her lowest knuckles, where the curl of her fingers pushes her palmpad out, a bit like a pillow. I hear her voice from above, but now don't feel the pressure to try to look up toward the source, “See? There you go. Better way to ease into it.”

The flesh at the base of her thumb pillows out against me, and I feel the tip of her digit rub over the whole right side of my face, brushing the fur back. Instinctively I turn my head and nuzzle into it, asking, “Why…do you do this?” I ask, then feel a little worried about my sudden, curious outburst.

I feel a squeeze over my whole body as she curls her fingers and speaks, her voice light, coming from above. My ears twitch to track it, and I can tell she's leaned a bit closer. There's a slight shift in the leg beneath the hand I'm on, too. I start to think how strange it is that I'm so tuned in to the posture of the seemingly giant creature, from only the tiniest clues. She says, “I…like how you tiny critters look at me. How I seem like the most marvelous thing you've ever encountered.” A fingerpad presses against my chest, stroking down my torso, “Does that sound a bit self-indulgent?”

I'm not sure what to say, so I shake my head, nuzzling down against the side of the mouse's finger, then I wrap my arms around it, to hug it tight against my chest. She laughs softly and continues, “And I love the way I can feel…all of you—” She squeezes me softly again, “—in the palm of my hand. The rhythm of your breath. The way your whole body tenses or relaxes. Your posture, how you move. I was never good at reading facial expressions, so it feels like gaining a superpower.”

I open my eyes again and stare up in amazement. I see the undersides of her fingers, light shining in the gaps between, glimpses of the pattern of her shirt, “You can overpower me with a finger and that's the superpower you think you have?”

She tips me onto my back and rests her fingertip on my chest: not pinning me, not holding me down, but clearly communicating she can if she wants, then she scratches under my chin with the claw before stroking over my fur in a path from cheek to belly. “Why, when I can have you come right up to me? Speaking of which…why did you come here?”

I freeze, folding my ears back, then close my eyes again to save myself the worry of where to look when addressing her. “I…had always wanted to. I just wanted to try it. I thought I'd regret it if I never took the chance.”

She shifts me around in her hand, knuckles rolling against my back, fingertips pressing against my side, until I'm face down in her palm, muzzle nudged into the hollow between thumb and index finger. She strokes along my back with a fingertip spanning the width of my shoulders, asking “And did you like it?”

I nod…then, thinking she might not have noticed say, “Yes. I think so. I, uh, think it's really…it's really neat…” I trail off awkwardly. Calling it wonderful feels like an understatement, but this was worse.

She chuckles softly and keeps petting me from head to heels, more and more slowly. Soon my excitement and adrenaline start to abate and I feel myself dozing off.

I half-wake a few times during the night. I half remember being slipped from her hand into someone else's, who sets me down on a mattress. Later Wade, the squirrel, pulls a release to get my harness off as I feel it growing uncomfortably tight. Later still he comes back, only four times my height at that point, to half-pull, half-roll me over and off of the fox. We must've been lying too close as we grew.

I finally get woken up by Nate, shaking my shoulder, saying, “Wake up, sleepy. You're the last one here and we can't put these mattresses back while you're on them.”

I rub my eyes and stand up. I nod and say, “Thank you.”

He pats me on the back and says, “Come back any time. Maybe next time you'll be up for a chase.”

I pad out of the room and down the hall, feeling oddly content. Like I'd just woken up from a blissful dream.