The Longest Swim

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This is an old story from several years ago I thought might interest some people.

Chapter 1
Janet Billingsley was one of St. Petersburg’s most beloved hometown girls. From the suburban swimming clubs where she first took to water, the girl became a powerful swimmer with explosive grace and shapely thighs. She became a gold medalist and distance champion at 14, and was idolized by the town, a beguiling intersection of feminine beauty and power. The love continued, as she grew into a 5’9" woman and won two more gold medals. Now in her mid-twenties, her swimming career nearing its end, she decided to take on one last challenge – not for a clock, but for distance. Janet was going to swim the length of the Gulf coastline of Pinellas County, from Fort De Soto Island, at the mouth of Tampa Bay, all the way up to Howard Park, in Tarpon Springs – a distance of over 25 miles. It would take about ten hours, and would tax her to the edge of her existence, causing her to lose several pounds in the journey. That was what Janet thought about her little undertaking. She was half right. It would tax her to the edge of existence, but would end up taking a lot more than ten hours – and a lot more off her figure than a few pounds.

Janet had a support crew in a boat that would track her every move. There would also be helicopters and Coast Guard units dispatched to help the swim go smoothly. It was designed to benefit a charity fund named for her grandmother, who had died of breast cancer. The timing couldn’t have been better in one sense. It was early April, it was warm, winds and seas would be light since this was the driest time of the year, and she would be swimming more or less with the current. On the other hand, it was personally not a great time for Janet, who had just broken up with her boyfriend. Janet was planning to work out a lot of aggression on that swim.

7:30 a.m. on April 3rd. The team is ready. Janet decides to make a dramatic dive off one of the Fort DeSoto piers to start the swim. A pistol fires, she’s in the water and off.

The first few hours of the swim were uneventful. Arms and legs parted the water rhythmically, breaks at scheduled times, up through the beach towns and the Intracoastal. She passed Clearwater Beach around two o’ clock, and she could hear people cheering her onshore. It was on past Dunedin, and Janet fully expected to be climbing up onto the shore at Howard Park around five o’clock that afternoon. She was passing Honeymoon Island when she saw a bulbous bluish-white form in the water.

She knew to avoid this – a Portuguese man-o-war. It was a little early for them to pop up on the beach, Janet thought, though it has been warm. Its sting could ruin a day at the beach, and could do even worse to a swimmer in open water. She swam to her left, away from the coast, to avoid the creature. She figured that would be enough. But for some reason, the man-o-war was still coming toward her. In fact, its movement seemed awfully fast and purposeful. Janet began to zigzag away from the creature. No use. It kept coming closer and closer. She opened up her waterproof radio to talk to the crew.

“Guys, I’ve got this man-o-war… I can’t shake him…(gasp)…if he stings me, I need you guys to be ready to pull me out fast…” the boat turned and headed closer in to Janet’s position.

As she turned around, there was the creature. “It’s almost as if this creature has intelligence” was her thought as it stung her, once and firmly, on her left shoulder. Janet yelped as the pain invaded her and quickly grew stronger. “Guys… help me…” she cried over her radio. “What’s happening…” The crew on the receiving end thought they heard the transmission grow fainter, and Janet’s voice go a little higher in pitch than it normally did.

Janet didn’t perceive those changes. Instead, her pain seemed to dissolve into a hallucination, a dream, or like one of those things you see or feel after sex. The toxins in her body seemed to be telling her that she was… too large? An image of a big beached whale flashed in her brain for a moment. It was replaced by the image of a lithe, tiny fish skittering through the sea. Then Janet noticed her body getting lighter, her buoyancy increasing in the water. The waves, light as they were, seemed to be growing heavier. The poisons working their way through her body seemed to communicate an intelligence. Janet got a sense that what was happening was natural. She also felt a vague sensation in the pit of her stomach, as if something very deep within her had been touched.

A flash of sensation as her breasts touched the sea told Janet that her skintight swimsuit had suddenly gotten very large and bulky. In fact, it seemed to be retreating from her flesh. Janet considered her modesty for a moment before darting out of the suit and going au naturel.

Once she was free of the suit, Janet paused and swam in place. Strangely, the pain was gone. Looking around at the horizon, it was as if the whole world was retreating from her, becoming farther away and bigger, as if Nature itself were trying to readjust her place in its cosmos. She turned back to look for her rescuers – and saw instead an apparition. It looked as though a ten foot version of the Portuguese man-o-war was bearing down on her, as if it was somehow going to… EAT her?

She knew that humans weren’t on a man-o-war’s menu, and she knew they didn’t come ten feet high. Yet here there was one, and it was coming toward her, so she started swimming, away from her swimsuit, away from her radio, and away from her would-be rescue team.

The man-o-war sped up. There was no doubt now, it was stalking Janet, and no matter what its motives, that couldn’t be good. Janet swam for her life, added stress to an already exhausted body. The water seemed more buoyant than before, but it was also harder to swim through. The surface tension seemed harder to push aside. She gave it every last ounce of strength, and at last she gained ground on the monster. After a few more minutes it apparently decided this creature wasn’t worth the chase, and broke off to head back for shore.

Janet now considered it was time to do the same. She turned back toward the coast – and found that the beach was now an impossibly far distance away. Instead of a half mile, it seemed to be about 15 or 20 miles away. She could see helicopters circling in the area where she had been. What she didn’t see was the rescue team pulling out a swimsuit and headset, and finding nobody inside.

She began swimming toward the helicopters and boats, tapping into the reserve that would have carried her to Howard Park. All thought of that was off now. She had to get help. She wasn’t in pain from the sting, but that could be a hallicunation, along with her seemingly distorted view of things. Oh, what a stupid mistake to swim off without my radio, she thought.

A familiar roar came closer to her – a motorboat engine. I’m saved, Janet thought. She began waving and yelling in the water – and was shocked when an enormous wake, ten or twenty feet high, knocked her down. She fought her way to the surface, and couldn’t believe what her eyes saw. A small motorboat by appearance, but it was as tall as a cruise ship and almost as long! The engine appeared to be six stories high!

Janet knew she was losing it. She had to keep trying to get to shore. If she could just lie down and breath for a moment, it might help. She knew she was near giving out, and yet the beach seemed no closer. More helicopters and boats overhead. Must be the Coast Guard, she thought. WHY DOESN’T ANYBODY SEE ME? Her answer came when she saw it floating in the water. A beer bottle as tall as a five-story building. They don’t make them that big. That means… Oh, my God! I must have shrunk! Janet’s mind thought back to the feeling when the sting hit her. The feeling that Nature was… adjusting her SIZE?

She swam closer to the bottle to get a gauge of what had happened to her. She threw an arm around it and pulled herself up on the neck. Looking at its size, she figured herself to be about two inches tall.

The wake of another rescue cutter threw her back into the water. Now Janet was totally confused. Keep swimming for shore, but what would she find when she got there? She swam purposely for the coast, even if a part of her conceded it might already be hopeless. It was all she knew to do. Now her reserves were indeed giving out. She was cold without her swimsuit, and even though the Gulf waters were warm, they seemed to have gotten a lot colder since the sting. Janet knew she would lose consciousness soon, and place her fate in the hands of the seas. She said a prayer as she found the last bit of energy leaving her arms and legs. Another great wake swept water into her lungs. Goodbye, she thought, as another mighty wave swept her end over end… and into a large net.

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@ltltb Chapter 2
Janet found herself in a net, being hoisted off the ground, in the company of several thousand wriggling shrimp, all as big or bigger than she was. She fought her way to the edge of the net, elbowing some aggressive shrimp (she began to feel regret for all those seafood dinners of her youth). Once at the net, she saw herself and the gaggle being lowered into the hold of a ship. A shrimp boat, yet it was so huge! Janet climbed back into the pile, to avoid being crushed when the net loosened its cargo.

Janet’s pink, nude form was almost indistinguishable from that of a shrimp. She decided to take advantage of this, and crawled up the overflowing pile until she could leap to the actual hold of the ship. Once on its cargo deck, she started walking around. She figured the shrimpers wouldn’t notice her, and she could find a place to hide until she got to shore. An indentation in the floor seemed very inviting.

The now-tiny woman crept in and crouched underneath it. Instinct seemed to have kicked in, from the days when the ancestors of humans were tiny mammals walking among the dinosaurs, telling her to stay low. She was doing just fine at that, until the mouse that normally occupied the spot came home.

Janet screamed at the sight of a rodent with a head three feet high. She screamed, in a range far above the hearing of any man aboard and maybe even of the mouse as well. She dashed madly through the cargo hold – and found two incredibly large fingers lifting her toward the sky.

“WELL WELL WHAT THE HELL HAVE WE GOT HERE?” Those words came from a fellow who had been at sea a long time, and looked the part. A wrinkly, leathery face, a scraggly beard, and snaggly, bent or missing teeth complemented a booming voice delivered in a Cracker accent with a raspy laugh.

Janet was terrified and closed her eyes at this giant apparition. The giant paid her no mind, and rolled her around in his palm. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU, MISSY? SOME LITTLE BARBIE DOLL FOR SHRIMP CHILDREN? SOMEBODY’S SEX TOY GOT AWAY AN’ SHRUNK IN THE WATER?”

“No, you bastard!” the swimmer yelled. “I’m Janet Billingsley, I’m a gold medal swimmer, and I want you to put me down and call the Coast Guard!”

The giant saw the tiny woman’s lips move, but heard no sound come out. He continued talking, the beginning interrupting Janet’s rant. “SEEMS LIKE I DUN CAUT MAHSELF THE LITTLE MURMAID HEER! TIME TO HAVE ME A LITTLE FUN…” and that raspy laugh kicked in, projecting the foulest smells in the direction of tiny Janet, whose undersized sensory organs were overwhelmed by them.

But worse was to come. The giant lifted a gnarly, fleshy finger with lots of dirt and who-knows-what-else under the nail. He began passing it slowly over her body, then began wiggling it between her breasts. Janet folded her arms to protect herself, but they were pushed away. She could smell his breath, and feel his fingerprints as she was worked over. She found herself becoming aroused in spite of the situation. But the giant overreached his achievements when he took that finger and moved it down to her pubes. Janet screamed, brought back to reality, and bit the finger.

“Why you little…” the giant brought his hand back to smash her against a table. But Janet managed to leap onto the table, then scampered down a power cord that went into the bulkhead of the ship to avoid the giant. Frustrated, the shrimper went back to other business. “ILL KUM BACK FER YOU LITTLE MURMAID”, he sang as he walked away. Janet knew that and wasn’t taking any chances. Janet decided that with her swimming skills, she was better off in the water than in the hands of horny old shrimpers. She scrambled up to the main deck, and leaped off.

Again, Janet struggled to fight the waves. She couldn’t seem to get any closer to shore. But just then a spoil island popped up in her view. For now, she thought, it was her best chance. She turned and swam in that direction.

Janet straightened up to a walk as the beach fell beneath her feet. Whatever else might be on this little island, it at least offered the possibility of food and shelter, and perhaps a respite from any lecherous shrimpers.

It was the first time her feet had rested on dry land since her shrinking. The magnified sights in front of her eyes were awesome. Sea oats that stretched twenty feet high, clumps of grass that reached eight feet, stretches of seaweed washed up from the water that were as wide as she was, and four times as long as she was tall.

Janet’s powerful thighs strode gracefully along a beach made up of sand mixed with rocks as big as the balls of her feet. Realizing her vulnerability, she crouched down, to avoid the attention of birds or other predators. I’d like to have a weapon in her hand in case of a confrontation, she thought as she crouched and crawled along the shore, looking for a safe spot in the reeds to duck into.

Janet was watching and listening intently for a bird or a snake. She was completely caught off-guard by what confronted her: a tap on the shoulder and a “Hello?”

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@ltltb Chapter 3

Chapter 3
Janet turned her head around to find a woman standing over her. This was more unsettling to her than seeing a crab or a snake or a bird would have been. Seeing this was Janet’s first realization that she was not alone as the only sentient being in this outsized world.

Janet stayed crouched to preserve her modesty. She also wanted a moment to get the measure of her fellow traveler in the land of tiny critters. The woman was in her early thirties, appeared petite, with modest breasts and a small butt. She had light brown hair, long, wet and held together with tiny bits of seaweed, that seemed to blow in the wind. She was dressed in an interesting costume. It appeared crudely woven together, perhaps with the help of the rusty sewing needle that she carried as one would a weapon. The costume consisted of bits of dried seaweed holding together bits of windblown fabric, dried sea plants, and what appeared to be dried and stretched bark, maybe from a nearby sprout. Tiny bits of gravel dangled around her neck as a crude necklace.

Janet took a deep breath and stood up, covering her privates. She was shocked to discover that she only came up to about breast-level on the figure of this petite looking woman.

The woman held out her hand. “Hi, my name’s Kim. Kim Columbo. I’m from Tampa, and I’m an investment banker – at least I used to be one.”

Janet smiled at the fact that Kim chose to reveal her occupation first, and did likewise. Extending her hand, she said to Kim, “Hi, I’m Janet Billingsley, and I’m a swimmer.”

Kim’s eyes widened with recognition. “Oh, you’re Janet Billingsley the long-distance swimmer! – My goodness, my daughter is a big fan --” Kim gasped and sighed, giving Janet the sense that a lot was left unspoken. Kim’s eyes got misty for a moment, and then a forced smile returned to her lips as she continued. “I’m so glad to see someone else here in my world! Well, how did you get here?”

“Wow! Um… I was swimming from Fort De Soto to Howard Park in the Intracoastal…”

“Fort De Soto to Howard Park? That’s the whole county. That’s like swimming the English Channel or something.”

“Well, it was part of a big charity event. I was swimming to raise money for charity, and… I was up to about Honeymoon Island, and I saw this man-o-war on the surface. It kept getting closer to me, and closer, and… then it stung me. The next thing I knew, my swimsuit was falling off, and everything was expanding away from me. Then it seemed as if the man-o-war was coming for me again, as if he wanted to eat me…? I swam away from it, and at the same time I was swimming away from my support team, so they never found me. I was actually swimming away from the mainland and toward the barrier island. I would have drowned if I hadn’t been rescued by this shrimper…”

“You were rescued? How come you’re here?”

“Because he was a creep. He saw me in the net and thought I was a little shrimp sex toy. I ran away from him and jumped back in the water. I kept swimming until I reached this little spoil island, and here I am.”

“What an escape!”

“So, Kim, how’d you get here?”

Kim’s eyes shifted down. She wanted a change of subject. Her eyes moved back up, and she smiled and put an arm around her visitor. “Let’s get out of the open. You never know when some predator might show up – and besides, we need to get some THREADS for you, Janet baby…”

The two walked back through rows of reeds, twenty or more feet high. A spirited conversation, though mostly small talk (no pun intended), A beer can the size of a gas tanker, the leavings of a day tripper, reminded Janet of her smallness. To Kim, though, it was more than a prop. It was where she stored her clothing supplies.

“Here. I was going to use these to make another outfit but I’ve got three already. Why don’t we get you outfitted?” Kim explained as she went along. “The seaweed can be used as a belt once it’s dried, and these little bits of bark fiber I beat into shape so they could be bound with the seaweed to make a halfway decent dress.”

She began stitching, a hard thing to do with a needle half as tall as you are, and before too long she had fashioned a useable costume out of these less-than-promising material. It fit the swimmer to a T – maybe not as well as her old swimsuit, but pretty good for the circumstances.

“You do really good work,” Janet laughed. “I’m just amazed at how confident you are here, and how COMPETENT you are here. How long have you been doing this?”

Kim’s eyes got big and sad. “Two years.”

“You still haven’t told me how you got here.”

“Uh, it’s a little intense, OK? I’d like to tell you, but, let me take my time about it, OK?”

Janet hit that wall again. She decided to change the subject this time. "Two years… that’s just it… I mean, you’ve got it down like you were BORN into this…

Kim took Janet’s shoulders into her hands, and a playful smile grew across her face, not unlike the one she saw from cute guys who would chat her up. “Listen, baby, I’m going to tell you every secret that I’ve used to survive in these past two years, but you’ve got to know the biggest secret first. Let me whisper it in your ear…” She leaned into Janet’s left ear… “You gotta know that you were MEANT to be two inches tall…just like I know that I was meant to be two and a half inches tall.”

Kim answered Janet’s confused look by stepping back, putting her hands back on Janet’s shoulders, and resuming normal speech. “You won’t be able to survive unless you can FEEL that what has happened to you was an act of Nature or God. You’ve got to know in every part of you that shrinking was your DESTINY! Because you know what? If you can believe that, then you know that Nature or God wouldn’t leave you out here without the tools to survive! So you got to believe that what happened to you is as natural as getting your grownup teeth, or having your first period, or having your first man… You got to know that it’s destiny, and it’s foolish to try to change it… that your head was supposed to be a third of an inch, and your bust measurement is supposed to be one inch around, and your vagina, now matter how wet you get, is supposed to be a sixth of an inch deep…”

Janet interrupted her, after briefly blushing at the frankness of her statement. “Kim… how am I supposed to think this is NATURAL? People don’t shrink, at least they didn’t before you and me. How can this be normal?”

“You weren’t hit by alien rays from outer space, hon. You were stung by a man-o-war. One of God’s creatures. That proves it’s part of nature. Maybe the man-o-war has evolved a species that shrinks other creatures as a defensive measure, or maybe for food.”

“Kim… how did you come to accept this?”

“I made a lot of money… sometimes I cut a few corners… but I had a successful career, a supporting husband, and
a beautiful daughter… and God saw fit to bring this on, to take all that from me.”

“You say ‘had’… how do you know your family isn’t–”

Janet’s words were interrupted by a frightening “clamp” around her right leg. It felt as though sharp glass were cutting through her flesh. Janet found herself flipped over in the claw of a small crablike creature. She looked at those huge, separated eyes, and saw the gaze of the predator. The paralyzing fear of prey froze her for a moment. Then she struggled to get out of its grasp. She could feel the blood flow to her foot ceasing, when suddenly —

She was dropped. The crab was now on its back, oozing blood from a used single-edged razor blade, plunged into his
midsection by Kim.

Janet was hyperventilating with fright at this close call. Without thinking, she plunged herself into Kim’s arms as she teared up and trembled and tried to get over what had almost happened to her. Although Kim had obviously been a petite woman in her previous life, to Janet her arms were large and powerful. The rhythmic stroking of her hair and head with one hand, her back with the other, was giving Janet a wall of comfort and safety after this horrific encounter. Kim spoke soft words of caring to Janet. “It’s okay, it’s all right, you’ll never have to fear anything as long as I’m here…”

After a long time, Janet stepped back and looked up at the larger woman who saved her life. “First of all, thank you very much”, she smiled and, on a whim, curtsied. “Now, Kim, tell me something. Remember… when we were talking, before we were… um… interrupted, and you talked about shrinking being destiny. Tell me, how tall were you before you got shrunk?”

“Five foot three.”

“I was five foot nine… yet here we are, shrunken down in Teeny Tiny World, and you’re more than a head taller than me.
Why do you think THAT is?”

“Because I was meant to be your PROTECTOR when Nature saw fit to bring you down into this world”, Kim said as she picked up the littler Janet and lifted her off her feet. “I want you to know that in this huge, frightening world, I am going to be your rock and my arms will be your safe place no matter what happens.” Their eyes met and stayed locked together. Kim took Janet’s head in her hands and planted a kiss – a short kiss, but a kiss on the lips. Maybe it was a reaction to the scare they had been through together, but Janet kissed back. She didn’t know if she liked it, but in the circumstances she knew she didn’t dislike it. As Kim brought her back to the ground, Janet wondered if Kim’s offer was for more than friendship, and whether this, indeed, was destiny, just as Kim told her her shrinking had been.

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Chapter 4
On the second day, Janet awoke in what you might call the “guest house” of Kim’s place. Kim lived inside a large seashell. The center of the shell had a section large enough to accommodate a sleeping person. This was where Janet spent the night. This section was behind Kim’s section, which was big enough to accommodate two people across. Kim’s space had been polished and showed flecks of color, as if it had been painted somehow. Janet walked past that section and out to the entrance, where Kim was starting a fire with some sharply polished bits of shell, some kindling mulch, and a paper clip. The younger woman thought for a moment whether she should put on her outfit of bark-and-seaweed, then decided that she would go nude until she could find a good shower someplace.

As it happened, Kim was also in the buff. Her brown hair caught the reflections of the morning sun, her breasts were still small but seemed bigger than yesterday, and her figure had a cuteness that two years of lean living, mostly in the sun, hadn’t melted out of her, though her skin did carry a nice bronze to it. Beyond Kim were all the reminders that Janet was now two inches tall – the outsized reeds and sea oats, the mounds that were as high as hills, the gigantic waves crashing the beach on a calm and windless day in the calm and steamy Gulf of Mexico.

“That should burn just fine. It’s dry enough to get going real fast”, Kim said to Janet. “Then we can cook up some grubs I caught the other day.”

“Some grub?” Janet asked, not certain what she had heard.

“No, grubs” was Kim’s reply. “They’re pretty nutritious. You can make breakfast out of one real easy.”

“Saw your bedroom”, Janet said to Kim. “I didn’t know the insides of shells were multicolored like that.”

“They aren’t”, Kim replied. “I painted my room myself.”

“By yourself!, Janet marvelled. You know, it all seemed to work somehow. Kind of like feng shui in the seashell…”

Kim’s eyes hardened. “Yes, the interior designer of my house back in the old world was very into feng shui and she
taught me all the basic points…” Kim then began to belabor the positioning of which splotch of color went where.
Janet knew she had made a mistake. As her mother had told her, some people laugh at feng shui, others take it very seriously – there IS no middle ground. Janet knew she had to detour the conversation a bit.

“Where do you find paint around here?”

“You would be surprised how much pigment you can find – in plants, in sea life…”

“Eeeew! I can’t see myself digging in a bug’s blood to decorate my room… maybe to stay alive but…”

“You never know what you would do until you find yourself doing it” was Kim’s answer. “Now you may ask, why would I play with bug’s blood or grind up plants to decorate my seashell? The answer is that I want to remind myself that I’m still a thinking being, that I have a spiritual nature, just like the giant humans across the inlet who used to be my equals. I know I’m in a different world now, but I’m not going to give up that basic dignity, not as long as I’m alive.”

Janet was impressed by Kim’s answer. Her companion in this strange world had done so much to make it liveable, and not just in a physical way. It seemed that Kim had had a lot of time to think about her condition. Now that they were together, Janet believed they could use their combined smarts to get them out of this place, and back to their families.

“Kim, now that we’re here and we’re together, I was thinking – maybe we could figure out a way to get help.”

“I see.” A slight smile crossed Kim’s face. “Were you going to set a fire to tell the authorities you were here?”

“Well, that was one idea.”

“Did that”, Kim answered. “The firemen came out, put out the fire, walked right past me.”

“Oh”, Janet replied. “Then, maybe we could leave a note in a bottle at the beach telling someone how to find us.”

“Did that too.” Kim responded. “A ten-year-old boy found the note, walked back into the reeds, kicked my shell over and tried to play with me. Not in a child’s way, either.” Kim frowned. “He didn’t tell anyone else I was here, of course.”

Janet was beginning to sense resistance. “Well, there are other ways. We could flash mirrors up at passing planes, or—”

Kim stopped her. “Janet, honey, were there rescue boats circling out in the water when you got small?”

“Yeah, I passed a couple of them.”

“And did you try to get them to see you?”

“Of course, I waved and yelled…”

“But they didn’t see you did they?”

“No, they didn’t.”

“And on the shrimp boat, what happened when you thought you were rescued?”

“The shrimper used me as a…” Janet blushed and blanched at the same time, thinking of being in the shrimper’s palm.

“Do you see a point here?” Kim continued. “You had several chances to be rescued, just as I did. You weren’t rescued because it was part of Nature’s plan for you to be small and be here. I went through what you’re going through. I came up with all kinds of things. Notes, old Mylar helium balloons that floated across the channel, little rowboats, anything. I either damn near drowned or ended up wasting a lot of time and leaving myself starving and unclothed 'cause I didn’t tend to my basic needs.”

“But I’ve got to try”, Janet answered. “My parents are still there, and they’re worried about me.”

“God bless your mom and dad”, Kim sighed. “But the Coast Guard, based on what it has seen and hasn’t seen, will probably give up at some point. I wish I had a family left to worry what had --” Kim sighed. Once again their conversation had come up against that big wall. It was so frustrating to Janet, although a relative frustration compared to the exertions of survival and her own desire for rescue. What Kim had done on this island for two years was amazing – to survive against incredible odds with huge predators all around her, and to carve out an existence that even add some dignity – no, make that a lot of dignity – to it. Kim’s mastery of this spoil island was fascinating, like listening to a guy who’s into cars talking about his cars. Sure it got boring after awhile, but that energy that popped open when a man talked about his passions gave a woman a doorway to get him to talk about himself more, or so Janet thought. But every time the subject turned to family, there was that big roadblock.

It was Kim who moved to change the subject. “I guess we’ll need to take our bath pretty soon. I don’t go out on the beach at this hour. Too many predators. There’s a little pool on the inside of the island. It’s brackish water, but it’s okay to bathe in, once you check for anything that wants to eat you. Before we go, I’ve got a question–” a wider smile crossed Kim’s face. “You were a big powerful swimmer out there in the old world. Do you think you could out arm-wrestle me?”

“No problem”, Janet replied. But then she began to think about it. Kim, who had been six inches shorter than her in Big Land, was now taller than her. Would it make a difference? Janet stuck by her confidence in those arms of hers.

“Let’s make it worth our while. Whoever wins gets to dare the other to do something.”

“Okay”, Janet answered, not sure of where this was taking her.

They set up on an abandoned lid from a peanut butter jar. “Go!” Kim yelled. Janet gave it her all, but to her astonishment she found herself losing ground to the petite, unbuff investment banker who had six inches on her. She found herself losing ground, and was surprised to see that Kim had won.

“All right, I’m yours.” Janet stood up and held out her arms.

“You are so mine” was Kim’s answer. She found a rock and sat down on it. “Come here.” She motioned Janet to stand alongside her. “I dare you to bend over my knee and let me spank you.”

Janet’s mouth went wide open. “SPANK ME?”

Kim smiled, “for being such a naughty lady and coming out here in the buff.”

Janet laughed, “Well, it’s not like there’s anybody but us girls out here…” She yelped as Kim’s hand pinched one of her buttocks. “No, you’re not spanking me!” she shouted in fright – probably mock fright, as she ran toward the beach.

Janet’s scampering was interrupted by another crablike creature, who saw fit to clamp its claw on her buttocks
as it lifted her upward for a potential meal. “Kim! HELP! Kim! HELP ME!!” This time the fright was real. Kim was a bit farther away, and it took her longer to gather her weapons. “HELP!” Janet cried again. Kim hurled a needle, that bounced off the creature. Her next weapon was a slingshot, hurling a rock at the creature. It caught an eye, and the crab let its prey go. Janet fell to the ground, rubbing her poor aching behind.

“Looks like the crab did the spanking for you”, Janet moaned. Kim picked her up, and they hugged again. “Two times in two days you let a crab almost eat you, what am I gonna do with you babe?” is what Kim whispered through tears.
They separated to face each other. “I have something that’ll help that feel a little less sore.” Janet thought, how convenient, she gets to play with my butt, but she was in too much pain to let that bother her. Together they walked back to the shell.

Kim put Janet face down on her bed – some stuffing made from native plants, combined with the dried fur coat of
a small beach mouse, and covered with soft silk. “Where did you get the silk?” Janet asked.

“It was the last remnant of the panties I was wearing the day I – (sigh) – got shrunk.”

Kim quickly turned from that painful subject to the subject of Janet’s painful behind. “This is an oil I made from
some wild berries that grow near here, with some oil from fish that washed up on the beach mixed in, plus a tube of ointment that I scavenged at the water’s edge one day. It really works well.” She reached into a small shell that served as a repository for the mixture, scooped up a handful, mixed it up in her hands, and began using her palms on the two red spots left in Janet’s red cheeks by the crab.

The potion was indeed soothing, as Janet discovered. Kim’s tenderness and patience helped the ointment to seep into Janet’s flesh and cool her wounds. Her grinding palms gave way to fingers used like a mitten, and two thumbs, one pointed at (though not touching) the anal cleft from either direction. It felt so good that Janet was sorry when it stopped. As for Kim, it was a joy to work the behind that was the terminus of those mighty swimmers’ thighs. She couldn’t let on to Janet just how much of a joy that was – at least not yet.

Kim had been married, had a child, and had never been given to thoughts of making love to a woman. That was before her world vanished, and she was sent down to this place. She felt that this all happened to humble her, and this experience had shaken her sexual morays somewhat as well. But why was she drawn to Janet? Because she was the first human being to enter her world, as she called it. But there was a deeper connection, beyond the sexual, something that reminded her of what she had lost.

As for Janet, she acknowledged the sexual tension between them, but was grateful that Kim was trying to soft-pedal it. Her curiosity was growing, though, growing strong enough to make her willing to at least try sleeping with a woman, especially since she seemed to be the only creature like her in this new existence. The two were growing very intimate, as two women would in any such situation, but that one secret of how Kim got small remained elusive. Janet wanted to know that secret, not because she was a busybody, but because from deep within her she ached to know Kim better, this fascinating, inventive, miniature Robinson Crusoe.

They continued working together through April and into May. The common struggle of survival drew their hearts closer. As they slept in the separate corners of their seashell home, the sexual tension was like static electricity on a doorknob, waiting for a chance to make the jump. Kim showed Janet the secrets of surviving the creatures that lived on the spoil island, and where to go when the water rose and flooded the beach. Janet continued trying to persuade Kim to help with escape or rescue plans, but made no headway.

Out of the blue, Kim asked Janet: “Do you have a boyfriend?”

Janet smiled. “Had one. Broke up with him, interestingly enough, just before I took the big swim and wound up in this world.” She paused. Kim’s way of calling this place “her world” had affected Janet as well. Then she threw a loaded question in front. “Why do you ask?”

Kim responded, “Because, um, when I was in investment banking, they taught me how to play in a man’s world, but one thing they didn’t teach me was, um, how to tell a girl I liked her.”

Janet giggled. “Well, it’s not like there’s a lot of competition, so why don’t you just walk up to her and tell her yourself?”

Kim coyly smiled, turned around, walked ten paces, then turned around and walked back. Without a word she slipped a hand under Janet’s chin. She lifted it to face her. Their eyes met. Janet turned her left cheek to face Kim. Kim then planted a deep, wet kiss on her neck. Janet turned, and they kissed on the lips. Kim whispered in her ear.
“Let’s try to keep ourselves apart today. Tonight, you go to my bed, and wait for me.”

Around sunset, Janet went to Kim’s room and placed herself on the silken bed. Kim had lined up a clamshell directly facing the entrance to her shell home. At sunset, the clamshell opened, and like Botticelli’s Venus, Kim slowly emerged from within. A nearby fire pit lit her walk to the shell where Janet was waiting for her. Her face was painted with the cosmetics that Nature had given them in this world – strange concoctions made from fish’s blood and oil. She reached the entrance to the shell. She drew up a small fabric, and used a kind of paste to stick it to the corners of the entrance, for privacy’s sake. The fire’s orange glow could be seen through the fabric.

She sat down on the bed next to Janet. They kissed face to face. Then, hungrily their kisses ranged each others’ forms. Kim, feeling dominance in her need or her nature, pinned smaller Janet’s powerful arms back to taste her breasts and nipples. As Janet’s moans grew louder, Kim darted her tongue lower, reaching the entrance to Janet’s womanly within. As if on cue, Janet’s thighs, mighty, distance swimmer’s thighs, locked on Kim’s head. It was the first time since they had met that Kim felt herself being overpowered by the smaller swimmer who would have been six inches higher than her in “real life.” Those thighs were drawing in Kim to the vulva, demanding that she unlock the door and unsheath the clitoris. If they could, those thighs would have simply scooped all of Kim inside of
Janet and held her there, so great was Janet’s lust. Kim saw no choice but to lick and cuddle with her tongue, patiently like a master painter, until at last Janet’s thighs seized her with otherworldly strength as the paroxysms of orgasm overcame her.

Kim was far from done with Janet. The smaller woman, once recovered, expressed a desire to go down and visit Kimberly, and this she was granted. Kim’s back was on the bed, her legs were in the air, showing off her butt
and her womanhood. Janet loved being able to use her hands to play with Kim’s butt – even though it was bigger than hers, it looked so tiny! – as she dove to use her tongue on Kim’s womanhood. Many words were spoken, many more were not. Yet something more than the carnal was communicated as the smaller Janet brought the larger Kim to a most satisfying release.

As Janet looked up wordlessly, Kim dipped two fingers in a small shell, gave them a coat of seaborne lubricant, and then eased those two fingers into Janet’s vagina. She kissed Janet’s nipples as her fingers worked away, and pressed her head against Janet’s chest to hear all the sounds as Janet gave herself to yet another orgasm.

[ltltb]

@ltltb Chapter 5
Eventually, they would have to clean themselves of the joys of this evening. But first, they lay together, Kim wrapped around Janet like a spoon. As the ecstasy of orgasm passed, Janet wanted to know. After their feelings for each other had been expressed so vividly, she felt she had a right to know. She asked it in a whisper: “Kim, tell me how you got small.”

Kim sighed, with resignation but also looking forward to removing this from her chest. "I was an investment banker in Tampa. I made a lot of money, and helped people lose a lot of money. Nothing blatantly illegal, but I cut some close corners. I played the system well. I also had a wonderful, supportive husband, and together we had a beautiful daughter who I just knew was going to grow up to be somebody special. Right before I shrank, there was a lawsuit by one of my disgruntled clients. He lost a bundle. I managed to eke out a legal victory, but I can’t say it was anything to be proud of. To celebrate, we decided to take the family boat out on the Gulf.

"We were passing Honeymoon Island when something flipped the boat over. Dave – my husband – radioed a Mayday and the EPIRB beacon went off. We were hanging to the underside of the boat and figured we’d be rescued shortly.
Then we saw this man o war in the water. “Everybody watch your feet!” I yelled. We all watched our feet. But that creature was coming right at us. It stung Dave, then my daughter Jenny, and finally me. We were all screaming in pain… and then the strangest thing happened. The boat started getting bigger. Our clothes and our jewelry were falling off. “Hold on the boat!” I was yelling. But one by one, we all lost our grip and fell into the water.

“As I watched, that man o war came up on us again. It reared up and – I didn’t know man-o-war’s could do this –
it just DISSOLVED Dave right there. I was shocked, but I was even more horrified. When I saw it going for Jenny.
I swam as fast as could toward Jenny, and she swam as fast as she could toward me. But it wasn’t…enough…”
Kim’s voice began to trouble. "It got Jenny… and DISSOLVED her. I could hear her scream as it just seemed to absorb her within itself. And then I knew it was coming for me…

“I swam, I swam, I swam. I must have worn it out. I saw a bottle of non-alcoholic champagne floating in the water.
It was the bottle my husband and I had brought to celebrate. The bottle caught the panties I was wearing under my shorts by a leg hole. I rode that bottle – the last physical evidence of my family – to shore.”

“Poor Jenny. I knew she wanted to swim. She wanted to be the best swimmer in the world. Every waking moment, she was dragging us over to the swim club. You know who her hero was? She had her posters up in her bedroom. Her name was JANET BILLINGSLEY.”

Kim was sobbing, and now Janet was crying too.

“And you know what? She came up to me just a little lower than you come up to me right now–” Kim choked on her tears again. It was the first time she’d had any shoulder to cry on, save her own, since the tragedy.

“They searched the coast for days. They went right past me, never saw me, never heard my cries for help. How could this have happened if… the man o war wasn’t sent to punish me for ripping people off. I got my family ripped off from me for doing that…” Kim broke down again.

“And now do you see why you’re here? God has given me another chance. I couldn’t protect my husband and daughter.
But now I have someone new to protect and love. I know you’re not a replacement for my daughter or my husband.
I love you as an adult, and as a woman. God is telling me, if I can protect you and make your life a good one in this world, I might get another chance. But I don’t WANT another chance…” Kim sobbed. “Not in that big world. That’s the one where I lied and cheated and stole. That’s the only way I knew to ADVANCE MY CAREER in that world and I lost everything. Since I got SMALL, I’ve lived my existence honestly. Not running from the facts, not hiding from the facts, not hiding from my feelings. I do what is necessary for survival – and NO MORE. I CAN’T do any more than that, because I’m too SMALL to do anything more than that.”

Janet wiped a tear streaking down Kim’s eye. “Maybe we can find a way to return to the big world, and still be small. You’ve found integrity in smallness and I respect that. As for me being the one you want to protect, well, what can I say? I’ve won gold medals but I can’t say I’ve had a bigger honor than that.”

The two hugged and kissed as the orange light from the fire died off in a pop-up thunderstorm.

---

Early June brought an unwelcome visitor to the spoil island. Morning light revealed a hulking beast on the beachfront – a Portuguese man-o-war, its life ebbing at low tide.

Kim and Janet walked up to the creature. “Look, it has the pattern. It must be one of the shrinking ones.” Janet mused. “In fact, since there aren’t that many, I’d say it’s the only one in these waters.”

“Let’s pray it’s the only one in the world”, Kim answered.

“If it is the only one”, Janet responded with a sigh, “then it’s the one that ate Dave and Jenny. In a way, this is as close as you’ll get to them in this world.”

“Yes, it is. Oh, how I wish to God I could touch it”, Kim said. “It looks so majestic, up there just dominating everything. Even in death, it’s telling us, how could you ever have fancied yourselves above me? Looking at it, I feel small, and I feel like I’m SUPPOSED to be small, like going in a cathedral.”

After Kim had gone on to chores, Janet returned to the man-o-war with an ax – a razor blade attached to a long bamboo-type handle. She cut one of the stingers from the creature and dropped it in a shell. She carried this home and boiled it over a fire, creating a potion that she set aside in a special blue-toned shell.

After dinner, Janet undressed herself and called to Kim. “I have something to show you…”

She pointed to the blue shell, cautioning Kim not to touch it. “This I made by boiling the stinger from the man-o-war on our beach. Since we think it is the last man-o-war with the shrinking power, chances are that its biomass contains the remnants of your husband Dave and your daughter, Jenny.”

Janet then stood back, lifted the shell over her head, and flipped it over, dumping the mixture onto herself.
She could feel a tingling take hold as she spoke these words…

“I take within myself the last earthly presence of Dave and Jenny. I… I hope and pray that as you take me into your arms and love me, that you feel comfort from sharing the presence of those you lost…” Janet’s voice was beginning to grow a little higher…“I love you beyond words and I welcome your protection, and I grant my honor and obedience to you, for as long as we both shall desire it, or as long as we both shall live…”

The shrinking had stopped. Because the stinger’s poison was diluted, Janet only shrank to an inch and a half in height from her former two inches – about as high as Kim’s belly, as she had figured.

“And I hope and pray that someday you will find a man to help you fill this wonderful womb with new life, and if you do so, I shall not honor you one bit less”, Janet said as she kissed Kim’s round midsection.

Kim reached out to touch her. “No, wait!” Janet yelled. “Sorry to break the moment, but I need to towel the potion off. Can’t have you shrinking too!”

Kim laughed through her tears. She so deeply loved the now-tinier and even cuter swimming goddess who had given her itty bitty heart reason to beat again, and right now that heart was beating at takeoff speed. It was so wonderful to have someone smaller and more vulnerable than her in the world, just to make it all bearable and give it a sense of meaning.

“Just promise me you won’t shrink any smaller, because I never want to lose the opportunity to love you like THIS…”

The two bodies hurled onto the silk bed in Kim’s shell.

Janet persuaded Kim to work with her to contact rescuers. They figured their best chance would be during sea-turtle season, when people would be on the island looking for small crawling creatures. They are hopeful, and whatever happens, they have each other.

[ltltb]

@ltltb Epilogue

(I felt compelled to write one last item before I let these characters go. This is set one year after the events in the main story. Kim and Janet have been rescued and are living in a special area at a marine research institute. Janet, the swimmer character, writing to her sister Suzanne in an attempt to explain her relationship with Kim, of which Janet’s parents disapprove. I just think Janet’s point of view got some short shrift in the last couple of chapters of the story.)

My dear SissiSu (a nickname given in childhood),

I was so glad to see you with your fiancee Rick when you came to visit us at the Marine Research Institute. We had a good talk but it was way too short to tell you everything that has affected me since I got small. I hope this letter will cover some of that ground. I know you’re very open minded, and I think it’ll help you talk with Mom and Dad as we try to close the gap that has opened between us.

I know it’s hard to understand why I feel the way I do about Kim. I suppose the only way to really explain it to you is to go back to the beginning. For me, that’s April 3rd of last year. When I got small really was the second beginning of my life. It was a huge event that changed my existence in every way. (No plays on words, there:0)! I haven’t talked about this in the interviews we gave to the media. But when the man-o-war stung me, I didn’t just feel pain. I felt intelligence. The man-o-war was doing a conscious act, or one that involved a consciousness somewhere up the scheme of things. It was WELCOMING ME TO THE FOOD CHAIN.

When it stung me, I saw the image of a huge whale, and then I saw the image of a tiny, cute fish skipping through the water. I stopped being Humanity, the big creature at the top of the food chain (the whale analogy). I became a very small link in the chain. One moment I was swimming apart from nature. The next moment, I was part OF it. Just another little creature in the sea. I was facing down every tiny animal’s fear as a giant predator was bearing down on me with no one to help.

Here at the institute, we have the swimming pool in our little compound but we also have kind of an aquarium with fish that are small enough not to hurt or prey on Kim or me. I swim in there every chance I get. I really feel at one with all the guppies and other little swimmers inside that tank, thanks to being small and being chased as prey.

Kim is the only other person on earth who knows what’s that like. It’s evil in one sense.
She lost her family to that monster. The good that came from the tragedy is that it changed her, even more than it did me. She told me before how she would play fast and loose in her business career to make money. Getting small and fighting to survive burned all that phoniness out of her, as she said to me. Her personal integrity hardened, and that struggle made her a lot more confident than she had ever been out in the business world.

I saw confidence in her eyes the first time I met her. It was so funny. When I first looked at her, I saw this petite woman looking down at me. She has small breasts and a little butt, and she was 5’3" over in your world, so she would have been about six inches smaller than me if we had ever met before. But I stood up, and in this world I only came up to her breasts! It was so weird, but I think this was something Nature or somebody was doing to me, to make me READY for Kim. Not only was I small, but I was now the smaller of the only two people on this island, so that made my feeling of smallness stronger.

Something else, too, is that not only are you smaller, but you are thinner. Everything shrinks in proportion. It’s not like you are standing next to a petite woman and you have the same body build, it’s just hers goes higher than yours. It’s like she’s bigger and wider, without looking in any way fat or husky, just as I am smaller without looking like a dwarf or midget. Noticing that was sort of the beginning of the turn-on for me. If you had asked me a year ago if I ever would have had a sexual relationship with a woman, I would have said “no.” But if you had asked me if I would have had sexual relationships with people who are eight feet tall and taller in my eyes, and who look huge, I think I would have said “maybe.”

But of course Kim’s confidence made her look all the bigger to me. Then she rescued me again and again from crabs and snakes and other things that wanted to kill me. I was feeling like a clumsy girl in distress. That confidence just looked so… so good. I felt a contrast between us. She was bigger and confident. I was small and all of a sudden, I wasn’t so confident anymore. There was a contrast, and that helped to make the sexual chemistry between us. That, and I think either of us was afraid there would never be anyone else to be close to. So far, we are right. I think we’re the only two people who ever got shrunk by the man-o-war and lived to tell about it, and there’s still no cure for what made us small.

Which brings me to another problem with Mom and Dad. They are treating me as if I were
disabled or someone with a very low quality of life. That is so wrong. I don’t feel disabled. I can walk and talk and think just the way you giants (yes, I love you, but that’s what you are to me now) do. I like to say that I am an inch and a half SMALL.
Not tall, because that doesn’t describe me. I like the sound of small, because that is what I am to the core of my being.

If this process could be reversed, SissiSu, I would recommend you to experience it, just for the things you learn, just for the new perspective and sensitivity to the smaller patterns of life. Both Kim and I have asked for artist supplies from the Institute, and we’re feeling a need to express our view of this huge world in that way. On the other hand, if this process could be reversed, I’m not sure I would want to be big again. I had all kinds of success in swimming in the big world, but it doesn’t compare to being in this world, the smallest thinking being in the whole world, with Kim towering over me as my champion and companion.

What a change that was for me! I was always the big, powerful athlete. Now I’m very happy to have someone bigger and more powerful (although she doesn’t look it) in my life. Every morning we swim laps in the swimming pool they built for us at the institute – and she beats me almost every time. I’m a world-class swimmer, or at least I was one, but I can’t overcome her two-to-one height advantage on me. It’s like when you were little and swimming with your mom, looking forward to the day when you beat her. Only I know I’ll never “grow up” enough to beat Kim. Knowing that makes me secure, and I am OK with submitting – yes, submitting – to her and to all the bigger creatures and beings above me in this universe.
My heart belongs to Kim, and submitting to her power and confidence gives me the freedom to enjoy the world of which I am such a small part now. She didn’t hypnotize me, didn’t give me drugs to make me feel this way and surrender my will. Her strong heart touched my strong heart, and for the first time ever my strong heart felt it was the weaker heart. It’s as simple as that.

Kim has a very disciplined mind now. She painted her shell different colors according to feng shui, and you should see what she has done with our dollhouse at the Marine Research Institute. Sometimes, it seems as though so much was burned out of her by the way she became small, that it burned out some of her capacity to enjoy life. Her sense of humor was OK when I first met her, but there were obvious sore spots that we just couldn’t talk about. I think as we became closer, I gave a lot of that back to her. Every day we were there, I noticed her laughing a little more, and by the time we were rescued, I think our biggest shared activity (besides, uh, that stuff) was laughing.

When Kim and I were rescued, the only things she wanted from her old house in Beach Park
were her family album, and her daughter’s swimming trophies. They were miniaturized (you can do that with stuff that’s not living) and brought here to the institute. I know that to some extent, she sees me as the replacement for her family. She says her husband was very supportive during her career, and I have tried to be supportive too, and be there for her just as he was. Sometimes, when I walk up to her and talk to her from behind, she finds herself talking Mommy talk to me, then she catches herself and stops. It’s as if she is responding to my voice, which is much higher than hers because I’m only half as tall.
Once, she felt she had to tuck me into bed. I tried to talk her out of it, but she seemed determined, and I just let her. I only come up to her belly now, and I think at some unconscious level she sees her late daughter in me. At least, she sees what her daughter would have grown up to be. (I swam years before in some of these meets Jenny won – she must have been a GOOD swimmer!) For Kim, the good part is, I’ll never grow up, so she’ll never lose me, and certainly she’ll never lose me the way she lost Jenny.

I try to be understanding, but I don’t want Kim to stop seeing me as a woman, to stop loving me as a woman. I always try to counter the next day or so by wearing something very sexy, to get her back in the present. I love the feeling when we turn each other on.
It’s like you were in the ladies’ locker room, and there was somebody who looked good,
but you never thought you could express certain feelings, or that they could turn into something as beautiful as sex with a man. Every time I am with Kim, it’s like making that discovery again. We can love each other; we can enjoy each other; we can create our own little existence of frills and lace and tender kisses even in the most horrific and hostile environments full of big bugs and huge spiders and mice and crabs.

I know Mom and Dad are concerned about me not having a family if they find a cure for this in time for me. Kim and I are open to that, in a way. I know neither of us, if we could change our size, would go out into the world to find men to date. But if men, or even a man, wanted to come into our world at our size or a little larger,and be with us, I think we’d like that. Maybe we came to this lesbian thing a little late to give up on guys, completely…?

SissiSu, we could never have seen each other again. I know that when they found us it must have been the most wonderful day in the lives of you and Mom and Dad. Please understand that I wouldn’t be here today if it hadn’t been for Kim. It’s wrong to say I shouldn’t be with Kim, when Kim is the whole reason we’re together as a family again.

Please talk with Mom and Dad and try to bring them around. Thank you for all your understanding, and may your giant heart beat well.

With love from the world of the small,
Your sister,

Janet