We venned each other into two bodies each, normal-size and small, but this time the smaller ones were tiny — about an inch or two high.

I walked home from work; both Sophia and Meredith were at work, and Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey were still on their anniversary trip, but Caleb was home. I said hi to him and went to study with my doll-self; we quizzed each other on material for tomorrow’s American Literature final.

After Meredith and Sophia got off work and we ate supper, Meredith and both of me went to the library. First my doll-self went in the machine alone, and vanished, so I (in my dragon-girl body) felt the rush of two weeks worth of memories and experiences.

“You okay?” Meredith asked as I stumbled.

“Yeah, I just need a minute to integrate all these memories.” Going to school, staying home and studying, making out with Jada, the interview, our first couple of days on the job, Jada flirting with me right in front of her grandma and sister... all of it was me.

We went in the machine next. Meredith called up my history, and before I had finished assimilating all the two weeks of divergent memories, I was back in my everyday body.

* * *

I was as well prepared for finals as I’d ever been, if not better. Jada and I made plans to go out Saturday evening after finals. Meredith was going to be going out with Hunter that evening, too. And of course we had other, more collective celebration plans for after graduation. Lily was hosting a graduation party at her house in the afternoon after the ceremony, and Lisette was hosting a smaller get-together around the same time; both invited me, but I declined Lily’s invitation because I didn’t think I would have fun at any party with that many people.

Saturday evening, about two hours after I got off work and half an hour after Jada got off, she picked me up for our date and we went to the library to venn each other. She’d had a daring idea which I was a little nervous about at first, but willing to try.

We venned each other into two bodies each, normal-size and small, but this time the smaller ones were tiny — about an inch or two high. We didn’t quite get the scale even, so when I looked at her small body through the eyes of my small one, she looked about eight feet tall. We scooped up our tiny bodies with our big bodies’ hands and deposited them in a nest of pillows and blankets that Jada had made in her back seat, then rolled down the windows so it wouldn’t get too hot, and while we waited in line again with our big bodies, our small bodies played in the pillows and blankets like a giant labyrinthine bouncy castle. We couldn’t help constantly giggling with both bodies, apparently at nothing, and I’m sure some of the people waiting in line with us thought we were daffy.

We didn’t change each other’s normal-size bodies much; we’d mainly gone in the machine again just to split our minds across our two bodies. I made sure Jada still looked enough like her driver’s license photo to drive us, just making her slightly taller and lengthening her hair; she was a little more free with her tweaks to me, making my breasts larger and more sensitive while giving me scales over my midriff, back and butt, but making sure my face was human enough to kiss well.

“Whatever will the tinies get up to without us to chaperone them!” Jada exclaimed, fanning herself. I giggled nervously.

“Let’s go check on them,” I said as we exited the machine. But we pointedly didn’t; we just got in the car and drove off without looking back at our tiny selves. We could hear their soft high-pitched giggles now and then as they chased each other through the labyrinth of crumpled blankets.

We got tacos and burritos at a taco truck in the Walmart parking lot, and ate them in the car with the windows rolled down, feeding one another bites and setting aside a little for our tiny selves.

“Hey, little squirts, y’all ready to eat yet?” Jada asked.

“Already eating,” came a muffled, high-pitched version of her voice, followed by a giggle and moan from somewhere in the mass of blankets. I blushed bright red.

“Oh, right, they brought their own tacos,” Jada remarked. I spluttered and sprayed bits of bean and beef across Jada’s dashboard; she laughed and handed me some napkins to clean it up with.

“Should we go for a walk and give them some privacy?” Jada suggested when we’d finished eating (except for a couple of bites we’d set aside in the wrappers for when our little selves cooled off enough to notice how hungry they were).

“Sure,” I said. She drove us over to the nearest park, which was a tiny patch with a playground and a tennis court, a little way south of the library. We walked around the park and then the neighborhood around it for a while, holding hands. When we got back to the car, we kissed and made out in the front seat, listening to the first episode of an audio drama podcast I’d gotten into recently and wanted to introduce Jada to. Suddenly, just at a dramatic moment when the heroine was free of the silencing spell the villain had put on her and was about to tell her girlfriend who she really was, I felt a sudden something plop onto my shoulder and then into my cleavage, and I squeaked. Jada yelped a moment later. In the dim light, I couldn’t see clearly at first, but Jada turned on the overhead light and I saw a tiny Jada snuggling in between my overly-sensitive breasts. I glanced over and saw my tiny self teasing Jada in the same way.

“Boarders!” Jada exclaimed. “Don’t let them get away!” She squeezed her breasts together, eliciting a gasp and a delirious sigh from my tiny self.

“No!” the tiny Jada in my cleavage squealed, “anything but that!”

I was a little worried I might choke or crush her if I squeezed too hard, and I was already extremely distracted by simply having her there, much less squirming around like she was doing now, so I squeezed gently and gasped in unison with my tiny captive.

We didn’t hear much more of the podcast after that, though it kept playing until she had the presence of mind the turn it off.

Later on, when we merged and shared memories, I remembered how we’d continued playing tag among the blankets and pillows while our big selves drove to the taco truck and got their supper. We stopped, out of breath, laid down in a crumpled fissure of blankets and kissed. My heart was pounding, and not just with the exertion of playing tag.

“You ready to do more?” Jada asked.

“I — yes,” I said, but even though it felt good when she put her hands under my blouse and ran her hands along my side toward my breast, I thought about my big self for a moment and felt uneasy, too. I added, gasping, “But not all the way. I know what we planned, but... I think I want to be one whole person when we do that.”

“Okay,” she said, pausing and taking her hand away. “I have an idea how we can get privacy for that without having to be split. For now, though, how far are you comfortable going?”

I tried to think; it was difficult with her lying snuggled next to me. “Um, let’s say... above the waist?”

“I can live with that,” Jada said with a grin as she nuzzled into my cleavage.

A few minutes later, big Jada asked us if we were hungry. I was too busy nuzzling into Jada’s chest to think of a reply, but Jada called back, “Already eating.”

I giggled. Big Jada, not to be outdone, quipped “Oh, right, they brought their own tacos.”

That led my mind places I wasn’t ready to go yet and after another couple of minutes, I whispered, “I think we’d better stop or we’ll go farther than I’m ready.”

“Okay,” Jada said, stroking my hair. “That’s fine with me. But listen, I’ve got another idea for how to prank our big selves.”

Jada had left climbing equipment for our tiny selves to use in case we fell off the seat onto the floorboard — needles and strong thread we could use to climb back up to the nest of blankets. So we used them to climb the backs of the front seats and coordinate a leap off the headrest onto our shoulders and then into our cleavage. That kind of overhang might have made a nigh-impossible climb on rock at human scale, but our tiny selves were stronger in proportion to their mass than normal humans. So it was a challenge, especially since I’d never done any serious climbing before, but not something requiring a well-prepared team of professionals to attempt. And stabbing needles into upholstery is probably a lot easier than chipping handholds into rock with whatever kind of tool real mountain climbers use.

My new novel, The Translator in Spite of Themself, is available in epub format from Smashwords and in epub, mobi, and pdf formats from itch.io.

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