Falling In (Chapter 2)

Milo, the miniature boy currently tombed down beneath the pounding mallowy-soft shafts of Betty’s naked toes, certainly hadn’t planned on any of this happening the night before, when he first saw her. It was shock enough, while out on one of his usual pilgrimages around the valley the roughly three-inch-tall members of his well-hidden town called home, he’d seen this utterly towering ponytailed giantess looming suddenly near the zone border. Even from a distance, her bootfalls quaked the grass and sand alike, representing a force of nature that Milo had never beheld, and definitely never guessed he’d ever see in the flesh. He’d heard stories, or rather fairy tale myths, about their much-taller precursors from long ago, most of whom were lost in the wars, and then eventually gave way to the remnants, who’d gradually evolved to become smaller-proportioned like himself, generation by generation, in order to better survive what was left of the world. Having always been taught this, Milo had no reason to believe there could ever again exist beings who shared their similar anatomy, yet boasted the stature and strength of living titans.

But here she was anyway, at once intimidating the little thing to his core, and yet fascinating him so immensely that he couldn’t quite turn tail, either. Instead, he waited until Betty enclosed herself into that tent and went to sleep, before he cautiously approached. This was incredibly risky; he knew that. As friendly and harmless as the giantess might’ve appeared at a glance, not to mention downright gorgeous, this girl might easily descend into the valley and threaten to wipe out the whole three-inch-high population, assuming she could find their hideaways. Still, if she did turn out to be a foe more than a friend, Milo reasoned, it might behoove him to observe her from closer up, while she was asleep and not as prone to destroying him like a mutant cockroach. Maybe he’d learn something useful, if his people had to defend themselves. Not to mention, no matter how dangerous she may have been, something ineffable about Betty drew her puny yet-unseen admirer toward her. He just couldn’t help it, even if he couldn’t say yet what it was that magnetized him so.

Though once Milo had scampered near Betty’s humongous tent, the answer to this strange allure presented itself, even if it made no greater sense to him. The closer he came, the more-intense that foreign pull, like some long-dormant sense unearthed without warning from the instant he’d laid eyes on this comparatively hundred-fifty-foot-tall leviathan in blue. And while Betty herself exuded a majestic amazement-inspiring presence due to her sheer beauty and scope, that ultimately wasn’t what made him come this near. Hunkered quietly before the pitched shelter, every atom of Milo’s scrutiny was instead swallowed by the real source of his attraction: those two behemoth boots she’d just dumped outside, freshly stripped off her tired feet, and still actively steaming from within those rubbery interior tunnels, which shone in the moonlight from leftover streaks of her smeared sweat.

Realizing what he wanted now, Milo was at a loss, in every dumbfounded sense. So far as he knew before today, there was nothing unusual about his tastes, carnally or otherwise. He was “normal” – or so he thought. He’d never thought twice about anyone’s shoes except as a utility, and definitely never desired to put himself so close to a pair which were undoubtedly the largest he’d ever encountered, and also by default the stuffiest and most fume-packed. No matter how pretty Betty may have been, as Milo crawled reluctantly closer to the black maw of her right boot, he was reassured that squalid steam emanating from within was empirically nasty. It made his eyes water and his nose tickle, forcing him to squeal out a cough over its revolting punch, and he could only assume the smell would gain enormous strength if he actually ventured inside that boot, like he found himself unconsciously wishing for, in defiance of all logic. Milo was disgusted, and knew he’d have to be crazy to keep following this pull. Yet simultaneously, his belly was overrun with excited butterflies, and as shallow as his breaths had become while intaking that tincture of the unknown giantess’s salty boot soup wafting in a tacky mist from both vessels, there was no denying that he thirsted for more of it. Maybe more than anything in his life previously.

What the hell was going on here?

Just as bewildered by his own inexplicable attraction as he was repelled by that balmy ripeness bestowed by a day of wear on Betty’s massive feet, Milo finally surrendered to this alien impulse. He took a last deep breath of that cleaner outdoor atmosphere and then leapt inside the cavern. While Betty’s size-14 boot was huge, and definitely more spacious than his own hidden habitat down in the valley, it began to feel claustrophobic once the three-incher had slunk down that lengthy canal that fitted snugly over the giantess’s lower leg, and arrived into that deepest wettest sanctum which had spent a whole day slow-roasting her nude feet in its protective thickness.

Every surface Milo incidentally touched in here was densely frosted in a grimy layer of her perspiration, slick yet sappy upon the rubber and fabric textures alike, like the drooling innards of some otherworldly beast. The unventilated space had only mildly cooled off from those earlier day-baked conditions. And with the horrific volume of sweat and heat came a festering stink that was indeed multitudes profounder than the mere sample he’d sniffed from outside. Considering that he lived in close-quartered community of tiny beings who often spent much of their time among the earth scavenging for supplies, Milo was no stranger to body odors, nor did he consider himself to have a weak stomach, as it was tough to be prissy in their post-apocalyptic world. Nevertheless, as he crouched humbly before the sweat-plastered insole of Betty’s dark boot, wherein he’d just voluntarily crawled, his senses were accosted by no less than the most gruelingly rancid aura of noxious underfoot raunch he’d ever had the misfortune to inhale from afar, let alone willfully immerse himself among it. His throat closed; his gut flipped; his limbs shook from queasiness. The question of what was going on here, and why he was doing this, rang even more urgently in Milo’s skull.

But still he didn’t retreat, even though there was nothing physically stopping him from doing so. And in fact, he had plenty of motivation pushing him to get out of here, as he began to go lightheaded and even feel a tad sick from the lung-burning reek of Betty’s hardworking treads preserved so vividly in here like a museum of wretchedly unwashed stink. Yet that unnamable pull remained even more powerful, keeping him rooted to the same spot on his miniscule hands and knees before the sideways filth-battered fresco of the giantess’s insole. Though only faintly via refractions of moonlight, Milo could make out that the padded basin of her shoe was weight-depressed, resculpted into the distinct shape of a monolithic footprint, and stained oily-gray by splashes of crusted-in sweat. It was a grotesque sight, yet so mesmerizing that he couldn’t blink, just as he didn’t have the willpower to filter his ever-deeper inhales of Betty’s juicy end-of-the-day. No matter how nonsensical this choice, and in opposition to every survival instinct that Milo had ever developed as a three-inch-tall survivor of a hostile planet, he felt like he was right where he was meant to be.