@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