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reborrowing · 1 year

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a strange appearance, part one

stranger swap masterpost | ao3 | Next Val is doing their best to adjust to a more traditional borrower lifestyle, which naturally includes keeping their much larger roommate in the dark about their presence. It's about the only part they've gotten right. One morning, at the end of Val's run, the two of them inexplicably trade sizes, leaving Phoebe to wake up in what may as well be a new world with no company but a mysterious, inhuman stranger. They're not much for conversation.

I really did hold onto that idea I just never finish anything anymore 🩵 posting so I can stop obsessively rewriting the same thing on repeat

cws: unreality, fear/anxiety.

This renter was harder to work around than the couple Val had roomed with previously, but at least she had the courtesy to snore. Val thought all insomniacs should snore, like cats that wore bells on their collars. It was loud, it was annoying, and it was reassuring—Val knew that she wasn’t looking their way.

Val spread their meager weight across multiple stems of lavender to keep the flowers from bending out of place. The human here was generally disorganized and careless, but she fussed so readily over her dear plants and jarred gardens that here of all places, they were careful not to leave a trail here that might catch her otherwise flighty attention. They plucked flowers from the base of each bloom until they had an armful, hopeful that spreading out the damage would keep it from being visible, then shimmied back down to the lip of the ceramic vase.

Someone had once told them a Rule to determine whether or not one’s borrowings were noticeable to a human eye, but after spending half their life at odds with much more significant Rules, they’d forgotten the minor ones entirely.

They cringed as they stepped in front of the digital clock. The red light washed over them like a warning. 5:26. Only one hour to get back home before her alarms could start going off. It was enough time, but less than they liked, especially tonight. Val was sore, headachy, and had a gut feeling that it was going to get worse. The Tylenol stock up in their kitchenside nest was down to a few grains and they weren't interested in trying to come out here when they were actually sick.

Outside, the wind picked up to a howl and caused a tree branch to bang against the nearby window. Val jumped at the sudden sound and their bag fumbled out of their hands and slid over the edge of the dresser.

Val groaned as they watched the contents spill out into an open drawer below before the bag itself bounced down to the floor.

Can't anything be easy? Just once?

Val had never been good at the whole borrowing deal, they just didn’t have a lot of other options for the time being.

They grabbed their floss and threw themself down the side of the dresser. With a huff, Val secured their bag over their shoulders and started to climb back up to the middle drawer to retrieve their borrowings from the sock drawer.

The howling wind and creaking framework masked the sudden silence behind them as the storm continued to beat against the complex. There was no warning that the human was awake until Val was a good half foot off the ground and a soft blue glow appeared overhead.

They tensed and looked over their shoulder. The human was squinting at her phone, not the floor. Not Val.

They adjusted their grip and leaned against the dresser to stay as still as physically possible. It was agonizing to hang in the open like this, but they were just as worried about their movement catching her eye. She was probably just checking a message or whatever and would roll right back over.

And yes, after a few more breaths, the human groaned and tossed the phone back onto the dresser. Val let out a sigh of relief, too soon. The phone bounced and slid into the earring that had anchored Val's line in place. There was a gentle scraping and Val’s line went slack. The earring caught on the open drawer and jerked their sudden fall to an equally abrupt stop and Val choked on a startled squeal.

That, she noticed.

The mattress creaked. The human grunted as she pushed herself up and to the edge of the bed. Her face scrunched up as she peered down through the relative darkness until her eyes met theirs. She recoiled with a yelp that mirrored Val's, albeit several times louder.

Val cursed—just one fucking trip without some kind of bullshit close call—and dropped themself to the floor. The horizon turned to shadow as the human sat up. Val dove to get under the dresser and out of reach. They missed the low clearance, instead slamming their head against the wooden frame.

They blinked away stars as they reeled back, ears ringing. They reached out to catch their balance and their hand curled around something small and metal, thinner than the palm of their hand. Val stared for several seconds, not really understanding what they were looking at. Their hand was wrapped around one of the dresser handles–one they ought to be able to use as a balance beam.

They shook their head to clear themself from the daze, unsuccessfully. They swayed for a couple of seconds and collapsed the rest of the way to the floor, right in the open where the renter would have no trouble finding them.

What a stupid way to go.

Phoebe wasn’t sure if she had just woken up or blacked out into a dream, but she was pretty sure there’d been a sudden shift in her consciousness. She’d been looking for something—a noise?—and then there was a brief blank in her stream of consciousness and now she was sitting back up.

She couldn’t tell where she was, which was hopefully just a sign that she was dreaming. She should have woken up in bed or maybe in a pile of textbooks, and this was neither. It was hot, stuffy, and darker than she ever let her apartment get.

As she stood and stretched to get her bearings, she brushed up against a canvas wall. Phoebe followed it for a while, but never found an exit. No one answered when she called out, either. She ran a hand through her hair, unsettled by the dark, then tugged at the bottom of the fabric. It was heavy, but after a few seconds, she managed to worm her way out from under what she assumed to be a collapsed tent.

She took in her new surroundings with a sense of awe. She was inside a poorly-lit room that was so huge that the shadows ate at the distant walls and the ceiling was barely defined in her peripheral vision. But what she could see was familiar. The ground in front of her was covered in more fabric, a field the exact color of her sheets. There was a wooden building in the distance, carved in the same shape as her dresser. A squat hill to her left was wearing a pillowcase. She had woken up in bed.

Unsteadily, she pulled herself to her feet, tripping over what she first assumed to be a slick fabric rug. She looked down as she pushed herself off the ground and recognized it as the tag from the T-shirt she’d fallen asleep in.

She blinked slowly, then laughed. It was so surreal, so absurd, that whatever fear she should have felt fizzled into bemused curiosity. She ran a hand over rough cotton stitches, each now as distinct as in a knit sweater.

It was impossible. Not strange, not unexplainable, impossible.

Definitely dreaming, she decided, never mind lucidity. That’s a thing anyway, isn’t it? Lucid dreaming?

Phoebe stood slowly, more carefully than the last time, and walked towards the edge of the bed to explore the rest of the room. Crossing the bed was strange. She was too light to sink into the mattress, but the cotton sheets were spongy and grabbed at her heels to keep her from walking too easily.

She wondered about how she’d get down once she reached the edge. If it was a dream, she ought to be able to fly, right?

To her disappointment, the thought didn’t miraculously lift her into the air. She was still thinking about how she might force it to work when she got close enough to see and be startled by the stranger passed out on her floor. She jumped, but that didn’t knock her into flight mode either.

The stranger was presumably normal-sized, although Phoebe didn’t bother with the math. Whether they were full-size or not, they were still comparatively huge to her. Like a jetliner had been re-sculpted into a living person.

They looked like they'd been through some real ordeal before reaching her bedroom floor. They were on their back, splayed out as if they'd collapsed and large, overlapping scars painted their bare chest pink. There were fresher cuts on their shin.

“Hey, are you alright?” she called down warily.

Several seconds passed with no response. Phoebe stepped closer to the edge and gave them another look to confirm they were breathing, then raised her voice and she tried to wake them again. Had her volume scaled down with her? Her vocal tract would have, right? But why would part of her physiology function as expected at scale, but not—

Phoebe pushed her hair back and shook the thought out of her head. This was a dream. It wasn’t going to be real or sensible or possible. She shouldn’t make herself crazy trying to make sense of it.

Instead, she tried simply willing the stranger awake. It was about as effective as willing herself to fly. She looked around for anything that could help, waiting for dream logic to kick in and hand her the next piece of the plot.

She found that anything that could’ve been useful either dwarfed her or only existed far out of her reach. The best she could see was the charging cable dangling off of her nearby dresser, but as she got closer, she got queasy looking at the gap between the two pieces of furniture.

That was strange too. Phoebe didn’t have any particular fear of heights when she was awake. This was a dream. It was only a few feet between the edge of the bed and the cable (proportionate to her current size). She hadn’t done the math, but she could. If she was even half as light as she ought to be at this scale, the fall shouldn’t hurt, not beyond some light bruising. She was sure of that.

But the math also suggested she shouldn’t be alive at this scale, so the dream had to have rules of its own. Or no rules at all, which could make the fall as painful as she imagined, or maybe perfectly harmless. That was all assuming she even tripped in the first place.

She took a deep breath and steadied herself against the mattress as best she could. She’d probably just wake up if she fell anyway. Because this was a dream, despite how clear her head felt. She’d be fine.

The stranger groaned and her attention snapped away from the stunt. She took a few steps back from the mattress’s edge and watched as they rolled onto their side. Their eyes opened into a squinting glare towards the ceiling. Immediately, their eyes widened into panic. The stranger shot upright like a house collapsing in reverse, eyes darting around to take in the horrors of a disorganized grad student’s bedroom.

"Are you okay?" Phoebe called.

The stranger froze. Their gaze swept over the bed twice before finding her on the sheets. Their eyes were big, gold, and so intense enough that Phoebe found herself taking several steps back. They only held eye contact for a brief half second before looking down to their own hands wringing in their lap. Their lips twitched for several seconds before the words came.

"What–why–what just happened? What did you do?" they sputtered.

"What did I do? Look at me, don’t you think I should be asking you that? You broke into my apartment! Who are you?”

"Your apartment? Since when does anyone else–oh god, unless? You’re not…?"

“I’m not what? What’s wrong with you? What’s going on?” Phoebe demanded.

They leaned closer and Phoebe edged backwards as they took over her horizon, overwhelmed. This kind of fear didn’t really belong in a dream. It lacked the urgency of a nightmare, but she no longer felt as detached from the feeling. She wanted it to stop.

The stranger’s breath hit her in gusts, even though they’d stopped a good distance away from her. The color drained from their face and their mouth split open in shocked horror, revealing a set of fangs. Phoebe’s stomach jumped and she couldn't keep herself from flinching when they yelled.

“You are! You’re her!”

"Her who? Who are you? What are you?"

They answered with a string of curses and pushed themself away from the bed. The shove reverberated up through the mattress. Phoebe caught herself only for her legs to go weak as the stranger rose. They'd still been on their knees when they were gawking down at her and now they stood up and seemed infinite. The speed of it made her motion sick.

They looked down at her one last time, shook their head, then unsteadily backed out of the room. Their footfalls were upsettingly silent for something so large. Phoebe ran after them so far as she could, but stopped several inches from the cliff edge where her bed ended. The stranger had already disappeared around the corner.

"Wait, hey! Who are you? What's going on?" Phoebe shouted.

They didn't answer. They didn't leave either. Every few seconds, the old floorboards behind the couch squealed with use. As far as she could tell, they were just pacing.

Phoebe stared down the drop to the floor, feeling even less convinced that it was safe.

But this had to be a dream, it had to be, and she’d really like it if the lower levels of her brain could work that out and wake up.

#g/t #giant/tiny #gt #gianttiny #gt writing #borrowers #stranger swap #oc: val #oc: phoebe #my writing #giant tiny #aotp ocs #a strange appearance

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reborrowing · 10 months

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Stranger Swap

which may someday have an actual name, but probably not. for now, some organization

Based on this post I had like a year ago, a borrower and the human they live with suddenly and inexplicably trade sizes—but up until now, said human was unaware of the borrower's existence. I don't really have a large scale plot, but for context, after day one, the two continue to trade sizes irregularly general tag

Story and Characters under the cut

writing

So there's not A Story, but these should be in vaguely chronological order. Starred pieces make up The Plot

*a strange appearance (one, two, three, four, five)- the first time Val and Phoebe meet Dream (GT July 2023) - waking up on the couch *siblings and secrets (part of GT July 2023) - Hollow discovers something strange going on with his exiled sibling. Scary Movie (GTober 2023) - Val picks a movie

Other

Changeling Loredump Caught (again) (again) - art and a writing snippet from Val's backstory

characters

Valentine Underjack, "Val"

Somewhere in their 20’s | 3.6” (or 5’5”) | they/them |

A pariah on the fringes of the apartment complex’s borrower colony. Val spent their adolescent years with a human girl a few years younger than themself and is not a fan of the whole “fending for themself” business they now find themself in. They want to prove themselves trustworthy to earn a place in the colony where they won’t have to leave the walls nearly so often.

They're not interested in finding out why there seems to be some kind of magic stalking them. Or why they don't look quite like a normal borrower. Really, they have a bad habit of bottling up their problems to ignore them. Surely something that goes unseen and forgotten can't cause any real problems.

Phoebe Nilsson

22 | 5’11” (or 4”) | she/her, doesn’t mind they/them | AuDHD

A grad student who could probably be a mad scientist in another life,* but thankfully was was introduced to the concept of ethics in this one and generally kind—though a tendency to speak without thinking makes one wonder how considerate she really is. She wants answers to everything, even things most would believe are better left unsaid.

Hollow

27 | 3.9” | he/him or she/her (bigender)

Val's brother, who more-or-less lives in the borrower colony inside Glenwood Court, but spends a good deal of time outside. Has a reputation for being highly capable and just as miserable. Guilty conscience. Doesn't like to talk about it. Or much of anything. Prefers to keep busy.

[no image yet ha]

Elytra Lightfoot, "Ely"

23 | 5.3" | he/him

An odd creature that lives on one of the balconies at Glenwood Court. He's generally known as the garden witch because he trades in things that shouldn't be possible. [underdeveloped but has actual connections/knowledge of faery, which is kind of important]

*these characters were originally not for GT. Phoebe (Felix, at the time lol) was a wizard who played with soulcasting and obliterated his colleague from the timeline. and now I'm like, oh, I could absolutely throw these two at a lab setting. will probably be an AU someday. so. in multiple other lives, she's a mad scientist for sure.

#gt #g/t #giant tiny #gt writing #gt story #borrowers #aotp ocs #oc: phoebe #oc: val #oc: hollow #oc: ely #stranger swap #strangers size swap #<- old tag in case I didn't fix all my links

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reborrowing · 10 months

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gt July - "Ancient"

Interpreted the prompt liberally (and very self indulgently). I threw current Val and Phoebe at their original Ashes of the Phoenix incarnations (Val and Felix) from an original fantasy universe that I made in like...2012? I abandoned the project like 5-6 years ago at least, it feels ancient to me.

I restarted the AOTP story several times, but the general premise was like

A street scammer pulls a con on the wrong person and pinches a very cursed pendant that senses their latent magic and immediately fuses itself to their life essence/soul. They find themself in sudden possession of very strong magic, as well as intermittently possessed by an unknown entity. In events that are definitely entirely unrelated, the dream cities that fuel commonplace magic start to break apart, kicking off what initially appears to be a plague. For most folks without magic, it’s unremarkable, but it feeds on magic. Infected magicians suffer excruciating symptoms over an indefinite period of time until they’re cut off from magic entirely—a typically lethal experience. One wizard scholar is convinced that that this has happened before and intends to work himself to the bone looking for a solution until the plague kills him. He specializes in soul magic and divination. Altogether, this puts him in the unique position to recognize there's a random street rat running around with a piece of god's soul, for some reason. That's probably important.

Fling the two sets at each other, Vals' first impressions aren't great. But in original!Val's defense, the only things like a tiny race in AOTP were dream sprites, but they aren't fully sentient. they normally look like melting wax figures and their behavior is just an echo from someone's dream. the only time you'd find one that looks and acts like a person is if a fairly talented magician spent a lot of time sculpting one. so. kind of feels like they just found a fine art project from a mystery stalker. They work it out and bond over being weirdness magnets for magic they want nothing to do with.

Felix-Phoebe goes better, since they both click as people who are the same flavor of neurodivergent. Phoebe loves the idea of magic that has rules and can be studied, unlike the chaotic faery stunts she's had to put up with. Felix is similarly intrigued by the concept of particle physics until either Val catches enough of the conversation to understand it and shut it down, they are not going to invent nuclear magic, that's horrifying.

#but alex wouldnt this work better under au #probably but im playing w fantasy!unwarranted #g/t #gt #giant tiny #gianttiny #gtjuly #gtjuly2023 #gt community #stranger swap #aotp ocs #oc: val #oc: phoebe #i also couldnt come up w anything ancient I actually liked

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reborrowing · 9 months

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a strange appearance, part two

how does everyone write 800 gt first meetings? it's the worst. there's dialogue and a sense of anxiety that bleeds into self-doubt about what I'm doing.

Stranger Swap Masterpost | ao3 First | Prev | Next Val talks themself through an anxiety attack, Phoebe gets herself in trouble. Word Count: ~2400 cws: anxiety attack, unreality, reference to past abuse. nonsexual nudity? that seems bizarre to warn for in text, idk if it's needed, but it's addressed here taglist: @whumpsday

Val froze mid-step as something fell to the floor back in the bedroom. A second later, their ears flicked as they caught a long groan from the renter. Val was so freaked out they couldn’t recognize the sound and struggled to pick what new problem it might represent.

Was the renter coming out? Was she herself again? Something new? The thud was louder than Val would expect even the most clumsy borrower child to make from a fall, but it had been decidedly more singular than human footsteps.

Val didn’t want to deal with her. They didn’t even want to think about her, their head was already full worrying about what to do next. Every other times things had gotten this bad for them, somebody else had loomed over them with exacting instructions on how best to appease the danger. Now, the choice was their own and the freedom was paralyzing.

They paced past the front door, dimly aware that they could leave, very conscious of having nowhere to go. They felt as cornered as before they’d blacked out and as trapped as the last time they’d been caught. The ceiling was too low and the walls pressed in like a box that was sure to rip open any second for a pair of prodding, grabbing hands.

The renter started yelling at them again and for a moment it fuelled the illusion. She was distant and muffled, the same as if they were separated by a sheet of cardboard instead of drywall.

They needed to hide, but they kept pacing. They couldn’t hide like this. They turned the corner into the kitchen, too wide, and bumped their hip against the table. Val flinched as the table jumped forward, as if it were some mere object and not an immutable fact of the apartment’s landscape. They swallowed the scream clawing up their throat.

At least their headache was gone. They paused to hold onto the thought. They probably weren’t going to die of the flu later this week. For a few seconds, things didn’t feel progressively worse.

“I know you’re still there, dude! Why can’t you come back and tell me what’s going on?”

Val groaned as they were knocked back into the anxiety spiral.

I don’t know what this is either!

What they did know, they didn’t want to tell her, because what would happen when this…whatever sorted itself out? They already had more than their share of experience explaining their existence to humans and no one ever took the news well. The best outcome Val had gotten so far had started with a week in a garishly colored cage.

Val wasn’t willing to consider the possibility that this was going to be permanent.

They looped through the front room twice more, pulling and clawing at their skin the whole time. They were barely breathing and they couldn’t tell if their ribs were too heavy now or if it was from the weight of their fear.

They needed to calm down. They made themself acknowledge that this was new, that it was different, and that they weren’t actually in any immediate danger. They would survive. They were afraid, but that was true as often as not. They just needed to get through this.

A shrill noise jerked Val out of their thoughts. The renter again, this time less demanding and more urgent. Val sighed. As much as they didn’t want to deal with her, they should probably make sure she got through this too, with or without any answers.

They stepped into the bedroom with more apprehension than usual. They hadn’t outgrown the compulsion to stay out of sight and now they were also worried about what they could do to her accidentally. That had always been one of the more horrifying aspects of living amongst giants, that they could be so destructive without a breath of awareness.

The room was dimly lit with curtains still drawn closed over the morning sun. Val started to itch. They didn’t see her yet. The unmade bed was empty. Their eyes got lost in the mazes of clutter they’d been so thankful for over the past few months. She noticed them first and shouted, finally drawing their attention to a quivering pinkish blur hanging off the sheet near the head of the bed.

“Are you alright?” Val asked uneasily.

“Obviously not? Help?”

She twisted awkwardly to look at them. It was uncanny. They could barely make out her features from here without squinting and still their fur stood on end in response to being seen.

“What do you want me to do? Climb back up,” Val said.

She groaned, sounding winded.

“I’m not much of a climber.”

“Slide down, then? It’s not far. You could just fall.”

She looked down and the sheet swayed. Her grip tightened until she was hugging the fabric with her whole body.

“It’s like a twenty-something foot drop!”

Val frowned, pinching their brows together. THey didn’t know how that kind of conversion should work, but they were good and familiar with jumping off various pieces of the furniture in a hurry. Falling off the bed wasn’t pleasant, but it also wasn’t dangerous, even from the mattress top.

“Oh my god just help me, I cannot be that heavy!” she yelled, shrill and urgent once again.

“Okay, okay!”

Val shuffled further into the room, tensing as they got closer and closer to the shrunken renter. They watched her the whole time, as if they expected her to give up whatever trick this was and charge them.

She didn’t.

They stepped on something (horrific) as they went to kneel down behind her. They nudged it out from underneath them and their chest tightened even further as they realized it was her phone. It definitely hadn’t been there when they woke up, which meant it was probably the thud they’d heard earlier.

They wished they’d paid more attention to exactly what she was yelling while they had indulged their anxiety. They had assumed it was all directed at them. She could’ve called anyone. Someone could be on the way right now. Their throat went dry as they quietly shoved the phone under the dresser and hoped it wouldn’t be a problem.

They just needed to get through this.

The renter was enough to worry about without imagining things she might have done.

Val bit their lip and pinched the sheet to drag her back onto the mattress. She flailed and squawked in alarm, demanding Val just grab her. They let go and their hands hovered around her uncertainly for several seconds. She looked so breakable.

“You actually want me to…? Um…here. You can let go now, I’ll catch you,” Val said, settling their right hand against the side of the mattress just below her.

She let go and a strange sort of vertigo hit Val so hard they felt dizzy. They could see the room from two angles at once, the apartment as they knew it and the apartment that they were seeing, superimposed. She landed in their palm and struggled to find their balance on the meaty platform. On Val’s hand. They froze. They felt the dread of seeing someone caught in a giant’s palm and couldn’t process the impulse to help while the palm was their own.

It was a relief to be standing again, even if the ground wasn’t so solid. She leaned against their index finger to catch their breath and noticed they didn’t have any fingerprints. It wasn’t like they’d been scarred off somehow, they were just…not there. Their skin was thick and leathery, dotted with calluses, but flat. Smooth. Like a dog’s paw. She made another mental tally mark under the alien? column in her speculation about the stranger.

They moved like something human. They had a slight tremor that kept her from finding her balance. Familiar muscles slid together as they cupped their palm to keep her from falling and she could feel the tendon sliding beneath her feet as they cupped moved their finger to accommodate her. She eagerly took it as another sign that this was a dream. She’d been reviewing anatomy the day before, of course it would bleed into her sleep.

It was one of the coolest things she’d ever seen. She was surrounded by details she’d normally only notice with an accompanying text, the sort of thing she had to memorize to use. She wondered if the rest of the intruder felt the same as a human or if her subconscious would fall short the same way it had for generating fingerprints. It kept her mind too occupied to think about being held a few stories off the ground by a complete stranger.

She looked up, past their scarred chest. As soon as she met their eyes, the alien(?) looked away and abruptly brought her back to the mattress top, practically throwing her against the pillow. She still couldn't even guess at what their problem was.

Phoebe found her balance and caught her breath, then looked back up. She thought it might be easier to talk to them if she were to flop onto her back, their face was so far up there, but that felt rude. She didn’t want to scare them off again. She settled for leaning against the pillow as she craned back.

“Thank you. I know you don’t like me, or are afraid of me. Or something. Thanks for coming back to help anyway,” she said.

They frowned.

“I don’t—”

“You literally ran out of the room with your tail tucked between your legs when you saw me earlier. Which, what? What are you, anyway?”

The tail in question twitched and curled around the stranger’s leg. She watched it quiver for a moment then looked back up to catch the stranger chewing on their lip.

“I—It doesn’t matter, does it? I mean, no, it doesn’t matter,” they said, trying to force a firmer tone. “I’m Val, I—sorry, this is weird, all of it, but I—I’m kind of stuck here and you felt like you’re freezing. You should worry about taking care of yourself, not interrogating me.”

She held back a laugh. Interrogate. They really were afraid of her. Phoebe couldn’t imagine what they expected her to do. Nip their toe? They’d just casually saved her from the equivalent of falling off a roof. She supposed she could yell at them until they got so nervous they left the room again, but that seemed pointless.

They obviously weren’t interested in hurting her, whatever their problem was, or else they already would have (or even just let her hurt herself). She may as well trust them. It felt better than just sitting here alone.

“It is cold in here. Maybe you could turn on the heater, now that you’re helping? I’d put on a sweater, but, well,” she said, gesturing down at herself.

Val narrowed their eyes and Phoebe’s resolve swayed. That sick feeling bubbled up. She backed up against the pillow for support, but Val stayed where they were. (Which, she realized, felt a lot farther than it was. She was still within their arm’s reach, if they wanted to do anything.)

“You’re so calm about this, are you sure you don’t know what’s going on? Or maybe it’s the other way around. You do get that you’re only a few inches tall?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m dreaming,” Phoebe admitted.

Val inhaled sharply.

“I wish I believed that. No, this is real.”

Phoebe laughed to sidestep the panic that lapped at her heels.

No, it isn’t. This is a dream. It has to be, because this is impossible, because it doesn’t make any sense, because I almost got myself killed doing something mundane and stupid just trying to check my phone and I know I’m going to do it again if I have to stay like this. It’s a dream.

“If you say so,” she said, deciding not to argue. She doubted there was proof one way or the other.

They asked if she had any old pillowcases she didn’t mind losing—in case this wasn’t a dream, they said. She pointed them to a stack of old pillowcases in the hall closet and sat down to wait. They didn’t ask about scissors or hair ties or any other tools they might’ve used, but came back just a few minutes later with a tiny, rough circle dress and a black elastic belt.

Dream.

Val was careful to set it down slowly, several inches away from her. She rolled her eyes. Their slow, cautious movements evaporated as she stepped closer. They leapt back so quickly it left the bed shaking. They reminded her of an old-timey cartoon seeing a mouse, just missing the house dress and apron.

“You know,” Phoebe said, “You might want to get dressed too, even if you’re not cold. It’s kind of awkward to stare past your junk while we talk, especially if you want me to think this isn’t a dream. It’s pretty surreal.”

They started stammering again and their tail curled around their leg. Definitely surreal—they were the size of a building, but everything about their movement was perfectly fluid and organic. She knew that they weren’t actually at a scale where that should be strange, but her heart still jumped when she saw it.

“I mean, if this is how your …species? …people? I don’t know. If you’re normally nude, I can get used to it. We can forget I said anything. It feels pretty tame next to the whole eighty-foot demon thing,” she said.

“You think I’m a demon?”

They sounded incredulous, as if it weren’t a natural conclusion to make out of tail, fangs, and weird eyes. She crossed it off the list of possibilities. Maybe solving a mystery would let her out of the dream.

“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to offend. But, if you’re stuck here like you said, you might as well make yourself at home. Take whatever from my closet,” she said. Then, quieter, “I assume you’re here to rob me, anyway.”

They made an expression she couldn’t quite read. It was uncomfortable and suspicious, but so was every other face she’d seen them make. As they thanked her, a corner of their mouth quirked upward. It was so slight that she wasn’t sure she’d have noticed if their face wasn’t a billboard. They thought they were getting away with something, to be sure.

But for now, she was going to insist that this was a dream and they probably weren't going to hurt her anyways.

#g/t #gt #giant tiny #gianttiny #gt writing #borrowers #gt story #my writing #stranger swap #oc: val #oc: phoebe #aotp ocs #a strange appearance

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