Shrinking Ella Enchanted

The traveler quickly puts his hand out, palm open in front of the girl, watching attentively as she flinches ever-so-slightly, but stubbornly holds her ground. His heartbeat is quickly accelerating as he becomes the object of more and more attention.

"Come on, I'll take you back to my place and we can figure out what to do about this... situation." Ella had watched as his massive hand came down and stretched out on her left, a fleshy platform that filled her with dread. Now, as the disreputable looking stranger asks her to go back to his place, she rebels. Hands on her hips, she shouts:

"If you think I'm getting on your filthy hand and going back to your filthy little house-" she is interrupted by his loud, hissing exhalation. Dealing with her made him almost regret her strange volunteering to be a test subject, even if that potion had cost him many months of travel and exertion to make. He follows his hiss with some equally exasperated words:

"Just get on and stark arguing, would you?" he demands harshly. Considering her stubborn stance, he is contemplating drastic action, but to his complete and utter astonishment she steps promptly over to his hand, gathers up her skirt (flashing a tantalizing amount of leg), and steps lightly onto his hand.

Despite the qualifier at the end of his words, they were unmistakably a command and Ella has no choice to obey. Cursing the almost-inaudible twinkle as she moves, she quickly walks over and gets on his hand. The yielding surface quivers oddly as she stands there for a moment, and she can feel its heat even through her soft shoes. She immediately moves to get off again, but her plans are dashed as the palm shudders and she sees the ground receding below her rapidly. She gives a small cry of vertigo, looking down that immense distance and feeling gravity tug at her. No sooner had he steadied his hand once more than she overbalances, arms pin wheeling, and falls over on her butt.

The man is entirely taken-aback by this sudden change of character and giving in to his will, but he is quick to take advantage of it, especially as she sees her almost immediately reverse course once on his hand. He quickly lifts her into the air, acutely aware of the two tiny feet resting on his palm, and the necessity for speed does not rob the situation of its novelty or wonder. True, he has held small live animals in his hand before, and the sensation of having a warm, breathing creature in one's grasp was not new to him, and he had quickly gotten over the heady feeling of power it brings. This was different, he now held a sentient being, with thoughts, feelings and memories, and who was, most pertinently, female. He is brought sharply to awareness of this fact as she wobbles comically in his hand, than falls on her tush. He would have found it deeply amusing on the ground, but in his palm it takes on an entirely new dimension. Heat rushes to his ears and he flushes swiftly as, even through her skirt, she can feel the girls paradoxically soft firmness. He pulls at his collar uncomfortably and, looking around to avoid looking at her, he takes refuge in logistics:

"I can't carry you there, you'll be seen for sure. Here, I'll empty a pocket." He does just that as Ella climbs swiftly to her feet, making sure not to look over the sides of his palm and concentrating on him. He opens the pocket. "Here you go." he says. He brings his hand closer, but stops looking down at her quizzically as she remains silent, arms crossed over her chest and eyes glaring at him steadily. He raises his eyebrows until they disappear into his hair (which, admittedly, isn't that far) and says in what is only partly-exaggerated astonishment: "That's it? No arguments? No threats? No wild accusations of treachery or reflections on my villainous nature?" Ella stays silent, still under his unwittingly-given command to not argue, and inwardly terrified of him discovering her curse. He frowns, clearly coming to the conclusion that she was giving him the silent treatment. He shrugs, almost sending Ella tumbling once more: "All right. Have it your way then." With that, he inverts his palm, sending Ella sprawling on her back in his almost-vertical hand, than slides her into one of his top-vest pockets.

His repositioning of the girl had put her entire back into contact with the young man's sensitive palm, and he feels her warmth and smoothness all the way up and down as well as tickling his palm with her hair. This period is blessedly short, as his wits could not withstand much more, but it is still enough to send another wave of heat rushing through his body. He is so distracted that he runs straight into Mr. Hember's table, and he has to fumble t catch a number of falling objects. Mr. Hember waves at him magnanimously and he stumbles on.

"At this rate," he mutters to himself, "I might as well be as drunk as a sailor." With that, he concentrates on the task at hand. Moving quickly and unobtrusively through the crowds, ducking into shops whenever he sees a group of thugs and trying not to get lost as he heads home, having been so long in the wilderness that he's become unused to its crows, closeness and maze-like streets. While he is doing this, he is continually aware of the bulge in his pocket, differentiated from all the others by its warmth and occasional movements, as well as his awareness of what was contained within. Several times he reaches up to touch it gently, wonderingly, and throughout his relatively short journey he contemplates the odd behavior of his newest subject.

Ella huddles in the bottom of the traveler's pocket, staring at the seams in the leather through the dim light filtering down through a number of crudely poked holes in the pocket's flap. Judging from the holes, the traveler had obviously kept something alive in here for a while. Judging from the smell, Ella most certainly does not want to know what it was. The motion of her conveyance is worse than any horse or carriage. The relative speed is vastly greater, and the sudden stops, twists, turns and ducks cause her feel nauseous, especially at the beginning. After a while, however, her body begins to acclimate and she is left with her thoughts. Now that there is no one to vent her anger, fear, frustration and helplessness on, rational thought begins to dominate her mind, and rational thoughts are rarely comforting.

In this case, Ella takes stock of her situation, and it doesn't look good. She's six inches tall, completely unaware of her location, trapped in the pocket of a giant over ten times her size who could probably, well okay, definitely overpower and control her with his thumb and forefinger. Even worse, he was the very same one who caused her to shrink in the first place, and who was perilously close to discovering her secret. To top it all off, even if she had relatives who cared, neither they, nor her good friend Arrived, know where she is. Sitting there rigidly, she does her very best not to break down weeping, with a nearly hopeless situation and no real reason not to. She also tries to to flinch as at various points she feels a light pressure from outside, clearly her captor checking up on her.

At last, the traveler makes it home. Looking around carefully, he walks into a fairly dilapidated building on the edge of town. Entering through the door into the unlit hallway, he steps over to the barely visible trapdoor set into the door. With some determined hauling and a number of muttered curses, he finally manages to get it open. He descends, closing the trapdoor behind him, into his basement home. He gives a weary sigh followed by a gasping cough as his feet kick up clouds of dust from the floor. He shakes his head and marches through his four-room home, past the large numbers of bookshelves crammed with books and jars, and on into his bedroom. Setting his pack down on his decks. He looks longingly at its multitude of specimens, samples and filled notebooks, and for a moment thinks wistfully of taking off his vest, folding it up and sticking it on a shelf, somewhere high up. But his curiosity, his unwillingness to put such an important and fascinating matter off, and his own good, if not inexhaustibly saintly, nature eventually overcame his pleasant fantasy. Besides, he thinks to himself wearily, {font:comic]she'd just get out and start shouting abuse at me from on high. Deciding that he might as well start his ordeal now, he reaches up, undoes the flap and reaches in carefully, as if fearful of bites.

After far too long a period of being cooped up, Ella should be relieved to get out of that stinking pocket. However, as the hand reaches in for her, coming slowly but inexorably, its isolated presence bearing uncanny resemblance to that of an arachnid, she instead does everything possible to avoid getting out. Whether she does it because of fear, anger or sheer contrariness, she simply will not get on that hand. Unfortunately for her "everything possible" does not amount to much when trapped in a pocket barely big enough to permit both part of a hand and the tiny girl herself to fit inside, even when she was pressed against one side. She hears a long exhalation from above, sounding much like a slow wind passing between buildings.

"Look, you can yell at me all you want if you fell the need, but would you please just let me get you out of there." It was partly his words, but far more the release of the command which had been binding her tongue and humming at the edge of her hearing which caused Ella to give in, although graciously. She relaxed her body away from the wall, stepping a fraction closer to his large fingers. He quickly moves in, using a finger on her shoulder to turn her around gently, and then cups his hand behind her. She is motionless for a moment, but she gives her a tiny nudge to the back of the knee, enough to overbalance her slightly and sit down on his fingers, her back resting against his lower palm like the back of a curved chair. For a moment, its warmth almost makes her relax. Almost. But she recovers herself as she is lifted up and catches a glance at his face, which is set once more in that strange, disturbing expression.

The man quickly places his hand over the desk, and the girl daintily steps off his palm onto the desk with a swirl of her skirt. He holds his hand there for a moment as the sensation of holding her gradually leaves it. The girl, meanwhile, is looking around the room, taking in the massive amounts of dust, the spider webs and the only faintly organized books and specimen jars that crowd the shelves. He momentarily envisions how it must look from her perspective, a vast, dimly lit plain of dirt, disorder and confusion that probably doesn’t look even slightly habitable. As she turns back to him, he can see that her stance is not even slightly dainty. Belligerence radiates from her and her face is dangerously set. She is clearly itching for another fight with him. He feels weary and is tired of being yelled at. Trying to think of a way to preempt her inevitable tirade, he ponders for a moment, while the girl clearly starts winding herself up. Finally, he...