Falling In (Chapter 6)

“I see! Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Milo,” Betty responded, noting but not bothered by his apparent caginess. She couldn’t blame the boy for not divulging every secret to her outright, when she was plainly the much taller and stronger being between the two of them. If she’d emerged from the Vault and instead been the one to encounter a comparatively fifteen-story-tall being out in the half-green wasteland, no matter how human and affable they seemed, she too would’ve been anxious. Still hoping to sate her curiosity about the little thing’s origins once they had a rapport, Betty decided she’d better build up some trust with him first. “I really do feel terrible that you were stuck in my boot for all that time, and I had no idea. I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for you, but I’m sure it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done to anyone. I… know I can really sweat a lot, once I get moving. Even though it was an accident, that’s no excuse. Please, tell me, does it hurt? Can I get you anything? Water, food, medicine? I have it all! What’s mine is yours.”

“Nothing hurts. I’m just fine. Really. Thank you, though,” Milo said, just as surprised as her that this was the truth. “I, um, don’t need anything.”

In fact, aside from some residual dizziness after so much stamping around, he felt terrific: a byproduct, he supposed, of total hours-long immersion in the most erotically stimulating circumstances of his life. And as little sense as it made, considering he’d been ingesting the funkified equivalent of anatomic seawater, he felt no hunger or thirst either after drinking such a hearty bounty of Betty’s sour foot sweat for hours on end. As deadly as it sounded in theory to get stepped on thousands of times by an oblivious giantess, brutally compacted in blinding blackness and drowned on an overflow diet of her body’s stewy fallout, his surreal experience ended up feeling more like life support instead. Today really was a gift, and a part of him hoped it wouldn’t be the only time he ever got to enjoy a ride beneath her foot, so long as he didn’t blow this introduction.

“If you say so! But if you change your mind, I’d be glad to give you whatever you like, so long as I have it on hand,” Betty insisted.

The giantess pursed her lips, contemplatively studying this nervous-looking creature laid at her feet. The sooner she could find a way to make amends, and convince him of her good intentions, the sooner she’d get her desired answers. There was certainly nothing in the protocols that told her how to proceed, if she happened to encounter a hidden civilization of three-inch-tall humanoids in the settlement zone. And while Betty wasn’t about to abandon this site just because its ecosystem might already be home to another life form, she sincerely believed it would be in everyone’s best interests if she did her best to establish a harmonious connection with any local wildlife – including those that spoke her language and fit inside her boots. That meant she’d need to find Milo’s people, wherever they were, and make herself a friend to them, so as to ease the transition of this valley into a future coexistent home of both the Vault dwellers and their tiny neighbors alike. There was room for everyone to live in peace here, Betty thought. But it all depended on how she handled this peculiar situation. They had to start somewhere.

“Oh, and I hope you know that I’m not forcing you to stay here, if you don’t want to,” Betty continued, when Milo stayed quiet. She watched him fidgeting, perhaps out of angst, yet he clearly wasn’t upset either. What was going on in his little head, she wondered, and how could she get him to share it? “I certainly don’t mean you any harm. Well, at least not any more than I’ve already caused you today, even if you say you’re all right! Maybe we just got started off on the wrong… errr, foot? Anyway, like I said, while you’re welcome to stay here with me, you’re also free to go back home anytime you like. If you just tell me where it is, I’ll even take you there myself! It seems like the least I can do, after what you’ve been through today.”

“That’s r-really nice of you, Betty. But you don’t have to take me anywhere. I don’t mind going back alone,” Milo stuttered. “Maybe I should just… s-should…”

He knew the smart decision would be to say goodbye, while he still had the chance to get away safely, then use a circuitous route back home, so that the giantess would lose sight of him in the valley, and hopefully never find the remnant society’s lodging. Right now, just like last night when he had every rational reason to walk away from the mouth of her boot, there was nothing physically stopping him from withdrawing before this scenario got any further out of hand. Yet Milo couldn’t do it. Even while he’d so far managed to answer Betty coherently, and kept himself from libidinously gawping after those wrinkly-slabbed monoliths of her propped-up bare peds shining so gorgeously before him in all their sweaty luster, something within him made it impossible to run away from her. Her feet didn’t just have a hold over him now, psychologically and sexually; they absolutely owned him. Once that fact sunk in for Milo at last, his focus on her broke, and drifted longingly back to his behemoth wiggly-toed possessors.

Betty, being as bright as she was and so inquisitively fixated upon this three-inch-tall novelty, instantly spotted the shift in him. She still didn’t have a handle on why he was behaving so oddly, nor anything else about him but his name, but there was no missing the palpable change in his demeanor once he surrendered to the lure of her dirty feet, and gazed upon them in a trance. Betty wouldn’t have been surprised if Milo kept a paranoid eye on her feet, considering the havoc they’d obliviously wreaked on him today, but he wasn’t regarding them with grossed-out wariness. Instead it was manic almost-reverent preoccupation she saw in him. Only now did the giantess even realize how rude it might’ve been for her to keep her naked sweaty soles hovering so close over the boy, and would’ve retracted them from his airspace right away with another apology. But Milo’s hypnagogic body language didn’t suggest he wanted a sorry, nor did he want her to take her feet away. His miniscule pupils darted up and down, as if inspecting each individual grime-glazed furrow so complexly adorning her steep arches. She cocked her head, studying Milo with the same silent intensity he was now paying to her feet. What was going on here?