Falling In (Chapter 3)

So Milo pulled himself closer yet, hugging his body face-forward into the damp grit-flecked façade of the giantess’s abandoned boot insole, and then after draining his airways, began huffing the stiffest breaths he could muster of that left-behind stench. Quivering like mad, going loopy-eyed and salivating from lost motor control, as it felt like he’d just had his senses power-washed by pepper and acid, he clung tight to the dingy wall where Betty’s gigantic sole had slumped all day. Then he just doubled down, snuffing and shuddering through a vinegary overload of her frightful yet irresistible malodor. It really was unlike anything he’d ever smelled out in the healing wasteland: bitter and sharp beyond any ordinary three-inch person’s sweaty output, richly sour, murky as toxic mushrooms, and yet also sickly-sweet in a way that knotted his entrails even worse. And the more of it he imbibed, the greater Milo’s absurd attachment grew. He’d already forgotten any notion of going on reconnaissance into Betty’s tent to snoop for anything that might help ward her off, if she decided to attack their hidden town tomorrow. All he cared about was this, even while it was making his head spin, and a heart-palpitating rush spill from his core to all extremities, including the one between his legs. Though Milo was too hooked on the perspiration-slogged adrenaline of every flavorful insole gulp to notice that now. Something had to give, and soon. After ten straight minutes of hungrily hyperventilating over Betty’s boot effluvium, with his senses walloped and his brain in bittersweet pieces, he flopped backward in a daze, until he finally succumbed to exhaustion as well.

Milo slept much longer than usual, as if kept tranquilly sedated by that lingering pungency of the gargantuan visitor’s shoe. If he had his wits about him, he would’ve likely roused much sooner and made a break for it out of her boot, before this already ill-conceived whim could turn deadly. But that pheromonal smog had overtaken Milo on a deeper level than he could’ve ever realized, keeping him in the orbit of her grody sole-wrung essence, even while unconscious. And so it was only when continued slumber became literally impossible – as the boot jolted tumultuously upright in the giantess’s grip, followed by a toe-pointing barefoot plunge back inside while she put it back on – that he was shaken out of that too-comfortable stupor. Naturally, it was much too late to scramble toward the light. Betty’s ginormous ped was already blotting out the morning glow and eating up the space in here so fast that all Milo could do was cover his head and roll into a ball at the toe section of her funk-entrenched vessel. In one brutal thwomp, the giantess was fully reclothed, with both boots planted into the earth, and her unnoticed shoe invader squished immobile beneath the supple overhang of multiple digits.

Everything happened so suddenly then that Milo was forced to abide a series of lightning-quick surprises in succession, all of which might’ve been almost heart attack-worthy, if he even had the time to think about them too much individually. The first was the fact that he wasn’t severely injured, let alone mashed into a viscera splotch, once Betty started walking right on top of him. In retrospect, Milo was aware that the three-inch-tall remnant population were rather sturdy for their size, but he’d always been careful enough (until last night, when he caught that addictive whiff from the giantess’s boot) to avoid any situations that might put his physical limits to the test. So it turned out that he was capable of being worn inside a titanic young woman’s footwear, tanking tooth-chattery impacts every time her treaded sole returned to earth, then getting flattened by digit-flexing effort for the next launch of her gait, without crippling or perishing.

The second surprise was that Betty didn’t notice him right away, wrench her boot off, and furiously scream at this presumptive little humanoid parasite before dumping him out and stamping him apart on purpose. He was expecting it at any second. Milo may have been small, but he wasn’t a microbe in comparison to her either, and to anyone paying even modest attention to their own bodily equilibrium, it should’ve been easy to detect a three-inch lump flinching at every collision beneath their bare toes. Yet she didn’t feel a thing: too happily engrossed in the thrill of studying the new settlement zone. So after several minutes passed, and Milo still wasn’t evacuated from his accidental hiding spot by a vengeful blue-suited titaness, he realized he’d evaded potential doom yet again by pure luck. Moreover, as dangerous as it was to remain in here, he decided he’d better play dead as best as he could, in hopes of escaping once Betty eventually kicked her boots off again, without her ever being the wiser to his presence. Above all, he couldn’t let her find him, or the rest of his people, until he knew her true intentions.

The third and most overwhelming shock for Milo, however, wasn’t the risk of being smashed or discovered under Betty, but the utter entrapped feast of rugged underfoot spice which now made last night’s snorted-up sample taste tame by comparison. The giantess may have rinsed herself off in the riverbed before getting dressed, but that stagnant glut of salt-cured rubber and cheesy lining still present inside the boot was given fresh life once she actually wore it again. And with her burly digits bearing down on him, Milo was claustrophobically smothered upon the imprinted strip below, lacking any new oxygen to recycle this stale scourge, while his face was rug-burned over the closest toepad crater until a concreted dribble of her sweat was rubbed loose. Though it didn’t take long for a raw supply of it to come seeping from the creator herself, either. Once Betty started moving across the valley, determined to set up camp and run as many tests as she could before the sun set tonight, she didn’t seem to ever come to a complete stop.

Which meant Milo soon found himself caught in a turbulent sweat-sodden disaster more alarming than any other obstacle he’d ever faced in his usually-quiet valley existence. Every step she took upon him, though not heavy enough to break him, was hardly comfortable either, as Betty clearly favored leaden-heeled haste over leisurely exploration. It felt like being wadded into a barrel and rolled down a hill repeatedly, with only jarring mid-stride pauses to break the momentum every time her booted sole squashed through another sand patch. The dizziness Milo suffered last night from her shoe stink was cranked up by tenfold, now that he was squeezed and tumbled and smushed along while she traveled back and forth over the landscape, far quicker than he ever could’ve gone by himself. Now mid-morning, it didn’t take long for the heat to rise tremendously, making it far hotter inside the boot than if Betty’s three-inch hostage was allowed to sunbathe out in the open by himself. The atmosphere was unconscionably sweltering. Which not only belabored Milo’s breaths and made him feel like he was roasting alive, but also dramatically upped the sweat quotient gushing from the giantess’s pithy-padded toe flesh.