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Study Sessions and Size Changings - Part II
🕑 Added 2020-03-25 05:35:32 +0000 UTCA packet of ground goblin ear, a vial of filtered pixie dust, a mason jar of silver apple skins, a cup of chopped mandrake, a shaker with rosemary, and more; a grocery list of ingredients both fantastical and mundane circled around a black cauldron. Luciene gathered the items together as she read them from a large tome opened in one hand, preparing the island counter in the kitchen to be her workstation. Only in the home of two skilled witches would they be fortunate enough to have all the ingredients necessary to concoct a remedy for her friends’ shrunken situation. It was a major interruption of their plan to host a successful study night, but Luciene had some clever thoughts on how to teach her classmates a thing or two yet.
Once all the ingredients were collected, Luciene put her hands on her hips, huffed, and reviewed the status of her friends before beginning. The first and easiest to notice was Lorelle, the least affected of the bunch. At thirty-five centimeters tall, she came up to Luciene’s knee but towered over the others, large enough that she wore a spare shirt like an ankle-length dress. After her was Cretia, the one responsible for feeding cursed confections to everyone. At ten centimeters tall, it was safer to keep her on the counter, same as the girls much smaller than her. She wore a napkin wrapped around herself, just as Freya did at her five centimeter size, offering some sparse privacy for their diminutive circumstance. The same favor could not be given to Vivin, Luciene’s housemate who had dwindled the most in size after excessive snacking. Stuck at a miserable half-centimeter at best and left naked, Vivin maintained visibility by standing on a small tea dish, lest she risk being overlooked by one of her massive -- and often careless -- friends.
Lorelle dragged over and then climbed atop a stool by the island. She laughed as she pulled herself up awkwardly onto the swiveling seat, the only one among the shrunken to be amused. “This is so weird!” she giggled, wobbling her way into balance. “I’m so light and free~ and everything is just so big! It’s like I’m in a cartoon!”
“Yep, glad to know you’re having a good time, Lorelle,” Freya groaned. She was seated with her back propped against the binding of her textbook, her gaze set away from the others and instead towards the various ingredients. She hugged her knees to her chest while leaning inward, “So… you’re sure about this cure, Luciene? It will return us to normal -- the correct sizes, right?”
“Exactly,” Luciene responded, her eyes still scanning the book. She moved at the same time, retrieving a pitcher of bog water from the fridge and pouring most of it into the cauldron. “A drink of this will lift your curse off you, once it’s all cooked and settled. A digested curse requires a digested remedy; that’s an important rule you should all write down.”
“Mm, that’s good to know,” Freya replied, looking back at the book behind her. “I guess you want me to be taking notes?” Luciene grinned, but didn’t force her suggestion onto anyone. Freya, at least, would have been easy to convince, had she the capability. “Err… I can’t even open my book… and anything I write like this is going to be way too small--”
“Hey, I can help!” Lorelle piped in excitedly, popping her arms onto the table to stretch over its edge. She reached forward and grabbed the corner of the study book, tugging it towards her while offering Freya only a moment to stand out of the way. To open the book to its note-taking pages in the back, Lorelle grunted and tossed the cover up, along with half of the text’s pages, creating a gust that traveled across the marble counter.
Cretia and Freya both shuddered as the wind blew at their napkin dresses, but Vivin screamed as she was pushed off her feet and rolled backwards by the gust. “Ahhck! Lorelle!” she shouted, an arm raised up to defend herself from the force. After the air calmed, she collapsed forward on the little dish, panting to recover. “I’m… I’m right here…! You have to pay attention, a-all of you-- Eeik!”
Before her complaint could be concluded, Vivin was swiftly elevated. The platform she was on was risen by Luciene, briefly lifted off the counter. The speed at which Vivin was carried into the air pushed her hard into the plate, and when she next looked up, she was greeted by two huge eyes that pitied her position. Vivin’s growl at her gigantic housemate went unheard, much like what else she had been speaking about -- at such a tiny size, her voice was far too quiet for Luciene to consistently understand.
“Lorelle, you almost blew Vivin away,” Luciene said, her softened voice still causing the air to rumble all around her shrunken housemate, despite the good intention. She looked for somewhere to put down the saucer, deciding to keep Vivin next to the sink behind her. Vivin protested, not wanting to be separated by what felt like an entire mile away from the others, but her titanic friend was already turned away and focused on the remedy.
“Oof~ My bad, Viv,” Lorelle apologized, waving across the island at the plate. She took the notebook she had opened and turned it towards her, then swept Cretia and Freya closer to her with a hooked arm. The two stumbled over one another as they were reeled in, falling onto their faces between Lorelle and the book. A smile hung above them, “Okay, so, what was I supposed to write down again…?”
“Err, actually,” Luciene interrupted, “I could use your help preparing some of this. You’re the biggest one, Lorelle, so you’re the only person that can help. I could use the extra hands -- even if they’re a bit small.”
Cretia sat up quickly, not noticing how her napkin dressing was unraveling from her chest. “I-I could help o-or something!” she sputtered excitedly, her cheeks glowing pink. “Lorelle is behind on her classes, sh-she really should be studying…!”
“Wow,” Lorelle plainly stated, “way to throw me under the bus, Cresh…”
“Cretia… Aren’t you also behind in most of your classes…?” Luciene asked while unscrewing a mason jar lid. She smiled at how Cretia squirmed in response, but kept her head lowered to hide her amusement. “I think it’s at least just as important that you take some notes, too. Lorelle is also, well, bigger.”
Cretia shuddered at that reality. “True, b-but--”
“Not to mention it wasn’t Lorelle that got us into this mess,” Freya scoffed at Cretia, unphased by being half her height. Freya’s coldness made her stature seem equal to Cretia’s hunched timidness. “It wasn’t her that poisoned all of her friends.”
“Cursed! Not poisoned!” Cretia swiftly corrected, her volume making Freya flinch backwards. “But, I’m actually failing both those classes, so…”
Luciene giggled at the conversation. “It’s good that it functioned,” she explained, “but you shouldn’t feed people magical food without telling them. Luckily, all your curse did was shrink people. It could have been way worse, especially if I wasn’t around.” While speaking, Luciene grabbed one of the confections in question from the tin container she had brought down from upstairs. Inside were a number of the green-swirled candies, some of which Luciene had taken out onto the upturned lid for studying purposes. She grabbed one at that moment, examining it to study some of its magical properties. Cretia felt as though it was herself being observed under those calm eyes, a sensation she did not dislike; she pined for more positive attention from Luciene, but thus far, she had only caused problems for everyone in her attempts.
Lorelle dropped from her seat and joined Luciene at her side. She stood up on her toes and still had to hold the ledge of the counter in order to peek over it. “I’m more of a hands-on learner, anyway,” Lorelle joked. She eyed the candy plucked in Luciene’s fingers as it was dropped into the cauldron as an additional part to the cure. “... Was that important?”
“Yes,” Luciene replied, arranging other items in front of her and Lorelle. “We let what we have in the pot right now sit for a few minutes to become accustomed to the magic make-up. In the meantime, we can prepare a separate blend of ingredients that will disintegrate the curse’s binding properties.”
“It sounds like you’re just making this stuff up,” Lorelle sighed.
“It sounds that way because you don’t pay attention in class,” Luciene retorted, twisting around to retrieve a knife. Lorelle silently agreed with her. “Now, take those honeycombs I have and strain the sap out. That will be the base that keeps all the natural elements together.”
Lorelle did as instructed, though she would need a chair pulled out for her to work from like a desk. While she began extracting the honey from the combs, Freya and Cretia tuned into Luciene’s lesson, gleaming valuable information regarding the making of remedies and how curses differed from one another. Freya was a natural at studying, jotting down notes using ink magic in a corner of a page, but Cretia was more easily distracted. Her eyes were on Luciene and she listened intently to every word she said, but her mind was elsewhere. In her headspace, Freya and the others were absent, leaving Luciene all to herself for a private lesson. She blinked when she realized how little else of the situation required a change; she didn’t mind being toy-size if it meant being tutored by a towering and mindful Luciene.
“You look like you’re thinking hard,” Luciene said teasingly to Cretia, stirring the concoction while having a glance pointed at her. Cretia snapped out of her thoughts moments later, slow to realize she was being spoken to. Luciene shook her head, “You must have a wandering mind… That would explain a lot.”
Cretia bit her lip where it had once been ready to speak up. Instead of her voice reaching out to Luciene, she instead slumped down where she had been seated. The comment, as short and simple as it was, impacted her with a hard blow to her heart. It had been painful enough causing so much trouble for a colleague she so genuinely respected, but now she was reminded of her failings as a witch. Of course, such a matter was not trivial; Luciene was an amazing student, a witch with ample readiness for the world of magic, while Cretia herself was bumbling, staggered, and weak-willed. Her skills were far below that of Luciene’s, and that represented well the distance between their respective leagues.
Luciene continued on with her makeshift lesson while the recipe came together. An unpleasant odor rose from the cauldron, yet she wafted the scent towards her nose, confirming that everything was blending properly. “Now from here, we can add that honey,” Luciene explained while she stirred. “I can take that now, Lorelle.”
“Yep, just finished,” Lorelle replied, hoisting up a plate that the honey had been extracted onto. Luciene offered her spare hand to receive the plate, but she reached far higher than Lorelle was, instinctively forgetting the circumstance. When she grabbed the plate, its contents were brought to the cauldron to be spooned in -- but Luciene stopped short, the small plate tilted down over the rim.
“Lorelle?” Luciene asked. Lorelle tilted her head and blinked. “Where did you get this plate?”
“Um, by the sink,” Lorelle answered. She snickered, “Would you rather I had used nothing?”
“Well, I would have preferred if you hadn’t used the plate Vivin was on,” Luciene sighed, bringing the saucer away from the cauldron. The others looked up in surprise while Luciene pointed to the small speck hidden in the amber gooeyness. Lorelle was the last to see from her angle, squinting up at the plate until it was turned to her.
“Ohhh, err…” Lorelle stuttered as she took the plate back into her own sticky fingers. On just the edge of a drip, Vivin’s tiny frame could be seen lodged into the viscous flood, expressing gestures that were inarguably frustrated and upset. The tiniest noise could be heard by Lorelle only, the mad yelling of Vivin up at her friend’s foolishness. Despite the outrage coming from her, Lorelle provided a nervous, apologetic smile. “My bad, Viv~ D-Don’t look so mad, i-it was just an accident!”
“Th-That’s a really big accident!” Cretia chimed in from the tabletop. Immediately, she felt a chill of a glare from Freya behind her. “Well… m-maybe I shouldn’t be the one to speak.”
“It’s fine, it’s… mostly okay!” Lorelle whined, looking back and forth between Vivin and the others. “She’s alive! It’s just honey! It isn’t gonna kill her.”
Freya groaned, “It could have. Or at least, I could think of a few ways honey could kill one of us. And we’re nowhere near as small as Vivin.”
“I’ll… figure something out!” Lorelle promised, and acting upon that, she pinched into the honey with the very tips of her fingers, separating a blob from the rest. Trapped to the outside of Lorelle’s sample of honey was the writhing figure she had aimed for, stuck upside-down to one of the giant fingers. Her efforts to move were deeply troubled by how thick the sap was all over her body, messily pinning back her arms and legs, allowing only the harshest of spasms to move through it. The terror of Vivin’s situation rapidly increased when she realized how high into the air she was, even if it was just from the fingertip of a woman that, too, was shrunken. She had more to shout about in protest, but being out of breath left her at the whims of her friends to resolve her dilemma.
“Just… wash her up, I suppose,” Luciene suggested, taking the rest of the honey. “Gently. I hope her being drenched in this doesn’t affect the remedy…” As told, Lorelle took off towards the guest bathroom, deciding to use its sink and soap to wash off her hands and free Vivin from them. Luciene was now the sole charge behind making the remedy, which worked out another sigh as she proceeded to stir and stir. “This could take awhile now… The stirring isn’t supposed to stop while you add in what’s left…”
Cretia looked over the array of ingredients much the same way Luciene did from above. Some items were quite intimidating to her, such as the jar of bat eyes or the dried duck feet, but the mundane items reminded her of her kitchen. Just the thought of being back home with her familiar arrangement in the kitchen made her chest warm like an oven. When she thought it over, none of this was very different from cooking at all -- except the dried duck feet.
“If you need some help still, I-I…” Cretia spoke up with a hand shakily held up for attention. Luciene’s curious glance at her made her shudder back a step. “S-Sorry to disturb you… um, b-but maybe I could help you instead while Lorelle is away. I’m pretty handy in the kitchen.”
Luciene nodded. “That has to be true. You’re always coming to school with something homemade.” She mulled it over, leaving Cretia in suspense until she nodded again. “If you think you can help, then come over. I need the roots trimmed off the hushweed, and if you could peel the pixie leek, that would help a lot.”
“Trimming and peeling… I-I can do that!” Cretia affirmed her abilities and approached the edge of the table that Luciene worked from. Only then did she grasp the size of the contents and understand where the difficulty would lie. She hesitated to go any closer, looking from one huge item to the next. Even an ingredient as simple as pepper seemed so different at her diminutive scale, but she had sworn to Luciene and herself to jump forward with her best effort.
Cretia first put herself in front of the hushweed, a plant with a tangled shape and toxic color. She looked at the roots in particular, which were dry and drained of color. It was an uncommon ingredient to be working with even in a witch’s kitchen, and she hesitated before plucking away at it. “Hushweed, right?” she timidly asked. “I remember this one from class… The roots are poisonous, aren’t they?”
“The leaves are the poisonous part,” Freya corrected. Her nose was still in her notebook even while speaking. “The roots are fine.”
Cretia’s hand jumped away from the purple leaves, having been close to grabbing the hushweed from there. “I-I don’t want anything that poisons us in our cure…”
“You’re both wrong,” Luciene giggled. “It’s all poisonous. Just don’t eat any part of it.” She aimed her smile onto Cretia. “The poison gets negated by other elements we put in. You’d be surprised, but a lot of potions and remedies come from something poisonous.”
Marginally more assured that she wouldn’t perish, Cretia settled herself in front of the hushweed, gripping it by the roots. With a firm tug, a handful of the roots were ripped off and separated from the plant, like feeble branches being torn from an old log. Though she initially cherished her success, she quickly dropped the plant material into a small bowl and dusted her hands, afraid of being poisoned. Luciene’s giggle rang again as she watched the cautious display, and Cretia giggled in return as she went back to the roots to tear away at them, handful by handful.
“Easy, isn’t it?” Luciene asked as she sprinkled in pinches of herbs into the cauldron. “It’s a bit tedious at your size, but I’m sure even Freya could if she wanted.” She turned a glance up at the friend in question, noticing that she was slightly away from her book. Upon being spoken to, at least, Freya flipped back around towards her notes, a fist covering her mouth.
“Mmrf-- I’m g-good!” Freya replied, her mouth seemingly full of something, but neither of her companions made mention of it. She cleared her throat and continued, “I-I’m fine just taking notes and watching from here.”
“Hey, Luciene?” Cretia’s hand was cupped under her chin as she pondered over the hushweed. Luciene ceased her stirring to listen. “This roundish-pale part of the plant looks like it could be snapped off from the bottom. Wouldn’t that be better for getting the roots off?”
Luciene blinked, studying the hushweed for a moment. She had never noticed the slight bulb that appeared near the base of the plant until Cretia had pointed it out. “Uh, perhaps?” she replied. She held down the leaves with her free hand, “Try pulling from there and see if it works out.”
Cretia warmed her hands before applying a firm grasp on the mid-section. The light tug it took before to remove the roots would not cut it from this point, so a second attempt was made, and then a third -- both arms tightly wrapped around the stem, her body twisted around to pry the bottom loose. Being so small proved difficult to perform an otherwise simple task, but faster than she realized, the pale middle snapped and all the roots at once were removed from the hushweed.
But in her haste, Cretia lunged from where she stood with the stem still embraced in her arms. She tripped in the direction she had been pulling, her feet dancing over each other as she tripped towards the countertop’s ledge. Cretia gasped and one arm flailed to stop herself, but she was soon tipped beyond the edge, the hard tiled floor staring up at her.
After a hard blink, however, Cretia found her fall stopped. Her body had dropped only a short distance before being caught in a safety net of fingers. Luciene reflexively turned her body with her hand brought to the island, catching both her friend and the roots she had hugged against her abdomen. “Cretia!” Luciene gasped, leaving the cauldron unattended as both hands came together to tend to her.
Cretia raised her head, swept into dizziness. She only then comprehended how she had fallen into Luciene’s grasp, and that the fleshy platform she was on was her hand. She trembled where she sat while Luciene brought her higher, yet unaware that her napkin dress had come undone. A chill tickled her exposed body as it was under the watch of Luciene’s big eyes, and with that reminded, Cretia swiftly covered herself again with a blush appearing along her cheeks.
Though Cretia shivered with worry, Luciene was amused by the situation, having found it all to be harmless. “That was close,” Luciene admitted, “but, hey. It worked.” She pointed at the stem that had been pulled free from the hushweed which Cretia had beside her. “Your method actually worked pretty well. Nice thinking.”
Cretia couldn’t respond, not after such praise left her burning with emotion, which were then further stoked by Luciene lightly petting her atop her head. Each of the few strokes brightened the blush that was already there, and Cretia hunched forward bashfully in an attempt to hide her feelings. Luciene, whether she noticed the embarrassed expression or not, still returned Cretia to where she had been, though this time, she repositioned the hushweed to a safer part of the counter.
Upon her feet touching the marble, Cretia turned towards Luciene with a pitiful expression. “Th-Thank you for catching me! Luciene, you’re s-so… cool!”
Luciene raised a brow and chuckled. She kept her own expression angled away as she scratched at her cheek. “Cool…? I think anyone could have done that.”
“B-But not as cool as you did it! You do everything so cool!” Cretia’s rambling was as fast-paced as her racing heart, still thumping from the sudden fall. Before humiliating herself with any additional flattery, Cretia held her chest tightly and sighed, slipping into silence. It pained her to think so warmly about Luciene, knowing how beneath her she was -- both in size, and in character.
The work that had to be done was a distraction for those worries, and soon after being settled back on the countertop, Cretia was back to work on removing roots, and Luciene proceeded with the next steps of the recipe. The cauldron was eventually carried off the island and over to the stovetop, occupying two burners that glowed with heat. Cretia readied the last few ingredients, which Luciene explained would be added to the “stew” as it all cooked together. Nearly everything was together, and appropriately so, Luciene’s mood had brightened, a change that Cretia was relieved to detect.
After giving the cauldron a stir, Luciene stepped away from the stove, curiously looking around the kitchen. Something had gone unnoticed until just then. “... Lorelle?” she asked, checking behind the island for her friend. “Has anyone seen Lorelle and Vivin?”
“Not since they went to the… bathroom…” Freya answered, realizing mid-sentence the potential for problems. Her palm massaged her brow, “Oh god. Lorelle almost killed me in your bedroom -- think of all the ways she could kill Vivin in a bathroom!”
Luciene grimaced while a finger tapped nervously on the table, not far from where Cretia observed her. “I don’t think Lorelle would be that careless,” she argued, her lip partially bitten. “... Maybe I should check on them, though.”
Cretia nodded, “It’s been awhile now… Weren’t they just going to clean themselves up?”
Luciene weighed the subject in her head, considering as well that she was in the midst of delicate cooking. Ingredients still needed to be added, but making a cure wouldn’t matter much if one of her friends died -- no magical remedy for that. “I’m gonna be right back,” she said before hurrying out of the kitchen. She called out towards the guest bathroom, “Lorelle! Is everything alright in there? Is Vivin moving?”
Cretia watched Luciene as she left, immediately noticing the absence of her gigantic friend. The distance between them grew quickly until Luciene was completely out of sight, at which Cretia’s shoulders slumped and she turned back towards the cauldron. She could hear the bog water just begin to boil, but no one was there to tend it. So soon after Luciene left did Cretia look back for her, hoping she was already on the return, but it remained to be only her and Freya left in the kitchen.
“Luciene…” Cretia whined, her hands fiddling with each other out of worry. She looked back at the cauldron and the steam rising above its rim. “Hurry back…”
“You are so locked onto her, huh?” Freya said, almost within a giggle. “I see now why you were so antsy all day today…”
Cretia blinked, her response just a straight stare into Freya. In return, Freya raised a brow, and Cretia stuttered to explain her gaze. “U-Um, how-- did you get… smaller?”
“Oh. Uh.” Freya looked down at herself, but her answer only came when she looked all around her and at how much more distant every object was, how much longer her napkin gown had become. She remained close to her book like she had, but it was clearly taller to her than it once was. Freya shrugged, “Yeah. Looks like it.”
“Wh-What?!” Cretia went to Freya’s side, despite her friend staggering away from her approach. Dropped onto a knee, Cretia was still taller than Freya was, their difference in size having become even greater since the last few minutes. “What happened? Sh-Should we tell Luciene--”
“No, no, I was… just…” Freya looked away, but Cretia held her by the shoulders in what was intended to be a reassuring half-hug. Instead, Freya squirmed and tried to push her larger friend away. “I-I was snacking again, alright?!”
“Snacking? On what?”
“Your candy, obviously…” Freya looked to the side and Cretia followed her sights. The tin of Cretia’s confections was there, and a single piece lay partially eaten outside the container. The little size of the bite marks confirmed that Freya was at fault. “So, I shrunk again because of that…”
Cretia blinked, then shook her head. “I-I’m confused. Why did you eat cursed can--”
“I-I just can’t stop myself!” Freya groaned, rolling her eyes as she successfully broke out of Cretia’s embrace. “I love to eat when I study! It’s a weird habit, b-but I can’t just tell myself to stop! There wasn’t anything else around that looked good, so…”
“So you ate cursed candy? Are you crazy?”
“What’s it matter! I’m already hella tiny! We’re gonna get cured anyway, right?”
“Y-Yeah, but look at you! Y-You’ve got to be so tiny right now!” Cretia cooed, and without thinking, her arms went under Freya’s to lift her up. Freya immediately kicked in refusal, but she was too small to stop herself from being grabbed, like a stuffed animal writhing in Cretia’s hands. “If you needed to snack, I’m sure Luciene could have just gotten you something…”
“Well, your candies were… good!” Freya argued. “Really good! I couldn’t help myself, not when they’re just sitting there… and so big, too. So tempting.”
“Eh? You can stop joking, Freya…” Cretia sighed while lowering Freya back to the table.
“I’m not lying,” Freya went on, her arms crossed over her slipping attire. “I’d eat way more if they were curse-free, obviously, but they taste great the way they are. Usually magic makes things taste rancid -- just look at the shit Luciene is gonna make us drink. Why’d you try to include that weight-loss spell?”
Cretia bit her lip, having to come to terms with her answer before she could explain. “Well… I-I wanted to show off my magical abilities… I’m a witch, too, you know.”
“Ah, of course,” Freya nodded, “you wanted to impress Luciene.”
“Y-Yes… Err! A-And you guys, too! But Luciene, she’s… sort of amazing, isn’t she? I hate always goofing up in front of her…”
Freya shrugged. “Well, I think you’re overthinking it a bit. Luciene is a powerful witch, but she’s also just a woman, too. She’d probably love anything you cooked for her, no magic involved.”
“Ahh… Maybe…” Cretia’s posture faltered, as though the weight on her mind was a physical one as well. Magic was Luciene’s whole life, and Cretia couldn’t imagine a witch like that having any interest in something as mundane as cooking or baking. If she wanted to symbolize her affection, she was sure that it would require the touch of a spell.
Hissing came from the stovetop. Cretia and Freya whipped around to see that the cauldron’s contents were boiling over, the bog water bubbling over the rim and onto the burners. Cretia immediately checked to see if Luciene was there to handle it, but she found no one of normal size to help. Standing so far away in their shrunken states, both girls were incapable of helping at all, even unable to call for help.
“I-Is that supposed to happen? No?” Cretia wondered aloud. “Uhh, that probably won’t screw up the cure, I’m guessing…”
“Whoa, whoa,” Freya shook her head. “Cretia, we just talked about how I was eating that candy. I need that cure.” She laughed, and so too did Cretia giggle, but Freya’s tone quickly became grim. “I’m serious! I’m not gonna be stuck like this past tonight! That cure has to come out right!”
Cretia looked back and forth between everything on the island. The pressure put upon her by Freya was very real. As the biggest one of the two, she found herself to be the most responsible without Luciene’s supervision. Something had to be done, and soon, as the hissing of water hitting the burners continued to intensify the situation.
“Isn’t that the book Luciene was using?” Freya said, pointing to the book on the opposite end of the island. The book sat open beside the remaining ingredients that were needed to be put in. Before Freya could make the suggestion herself, Cretia was already on her way, leaping on top of the pages and scouring the words at her feet for information.
Cretia nodded as she read the recipe’s final directions. It would be after adding the final items and a few more minutes of boiling that the cure would be complete and ready to digest, inspiring her to do what she could. Everything she needed was in front of her, but the problem was figuring a method of transporting the ingredients to the cauldron. The answer, at least that Cretia imagined, was to be like a witch and utilize magic.
“First… the hushweed roots.” Cretia aimed her hand at the ingredient in question with a deep breath. She concentrated on the item, focusing on its outline, its texture, and its mass. Her eyes closed occasionally in surges of deep focus, her brow bent as she took control of magical energies both within and around her. It was a powerful but useful spell that she was manifesting, one that would teleport the ingredient to wherever she wanted.
Her eyes shot open while her breath was held. Her chest hurt, as if something was taking the air from it. The roots remained there on their plate, and then the next moment -- gone. An unoccupied space was there in front of Cretia, and a smile quickly took over her face.
But that pride vanished exactly like the roots had when she then heard the clash and shatter of a plate from across the kitchen. Her and Freya quickly looked to the stovetop where the sound had suddenly come from, just in time to see a flash of roots in mid-air above the cauldron. The plate had been teleported too, and so it fell onto the cauldron’s rim harshly, ricocheting off it and directly to the floor. Shards flew out in all directions and half the roots did not even make it into the boiling water.
Cretia jumped and cheered, “It worked!”
“Uh?” Freya shook her head, having to thaw from her shock. “That… did not work.”
However, Cretia was already standing in front of the next ingredient, the wishbone of an owl. “I-It’s better than just letting the cure go bad,” Cretia explained hectically. “H-Here goes another one… Please make it in…”
Again, Cretia closed her eyes and focused on the power of the spell. Her breathing was not so refined, as the worry of the noise she made began to unnerve her. Already in the motions of casting, Cretia hoped for the best and unleashed the magical energies she had gathered. Just as before, the ingredient disappeared.
But into the cauldron, it did not seem to go. “Wh-Where is it?” Freya asked, only to find out a second later. Dropping onto the island suddenly was that very owl bone, which bounced off the marble countertop between the two shrunken women. Both were surprised by its reappearance, realizing that Cretia’s spell was misdirected. Instead of going above the concoction, the bone instead teleported above the kitchen island.
“... I’m starting to have some doubts,” Freya plainly stated. “We should just wait for Luciene, she’s definitely coming back after hearing that--”
“No! I-I’ve got this, just watch and don’t distract me!” Cretia affirmed herself in front of the wishbone’s new position, this time using both hands to focus herself and the direction of her magic. She felt the energy spiral around her and flow through her body, but her posture wavered and her expression flickered to frustration. “Focus…” she breathed, and then cast her spell.
“... Cretia?” Freya asked, blinking in doubt of her vision. She looked to her sides, but it was true: Cretia was gone. “H-Hey, Cretia…? Did you… teleport somewhere?” There was no response. Freya then whipped her head towards the ceiling, but unlike what she had feared, Cretia was not falling -- a meager relief. “Oh, Cretia, where did you end up…?”
It was the other counter that Cretia had teleported to, right beside the long spoon Luciene had been using to stir. Naturally so, the change of scenery caused her head to swell with dizziness the moment she was materialized. Realizing what had gone wrong, Cretia hurried back into a focused position. She closed her eyes tightly out of embarrassment as she felt the magic spir again, and she thought hard about her destination, wanting to warp herself back where she had been.
When Cretia opened her eyes, everything had changed again, but far more drastically than before. Rather than the cold black of the marbled counter beneath her bare feet, she instead felt the cold of white tile. The space was far more open, and she stared up at towering chairs and a tremendous couch. “The… The floor?!” Cretia exclaimed. “Why? Errgh! Magic, just work for me, pretty-please! I need to get back and--”
Cretia jumped forward as she felt a quake run through the floor. She nearly buckled to her knees, but a second shockwave had her firmly on her feet, looking around in distress. Another quake, and another -- footsteps, she realized, that were growing closer. She turned her body towards the source, up where the hallway to the guest bathroom was. Beginning to turn the corner was a gigantic body, her head first peeking the corner and looking into the kitchen.
“What was that?” Luciene asked, stepping out from the corridor. After having heard something shatter, she left Lorelle and Vivin in the bathroom to investigate what had happened. A second after speaking did she remember that no one could reply to her, and so she continued into the kitchen, readying herself for whatever mess had been made.
At the floor, Cretia trembled backwards away from the giant figure lumbering her way. Each footfall came with a powerful stomp that shook the shrunken woman to her core, but she had dwindling time to be scared. The socked feet of the woman that enamored her were now thundering monsters that would flatten her heartlessly. In a panic, Cretia widened her stance and held out both hands again, her entire body tense as she raced to cast the spell.
The shadow of Luciene’s right foot blanketed the area around Cretia. It’s descent was swift and callous, crashing onto the floor only to launch away in the following instant. Where it had fallen, there was nothing. The booming footsteps continued without pause as Luciene entered the kitchen proper, discovering the splattered plate and the spilled roots.
“... Seriously?” Luciene scoffed, shaking her head while examining the scene. It was as though she had stepped into the house again that night, how she happened upon a lump of discarded clothes. Such were the chances when five witches converged under one roof, Luciene told herself, but she knew well she’d be the one cleaning up the mess. She shook her head again, focusing her wonder on the why and how of the mess, and so she looked to where she last had her friends on the island. “Cretia? Freya? What happened while I-- huh?” Luciene blinked, but it was true that she saw neither of her friends there on the counter -- disappeared.
Instinctively, Luciene backed into the stove and stared down at her feet. “Please… Please…” she chanted, hoping that neither Freya nor Cretia had somehow ended up on the floor. The clean floor and socks meant that no such tragedy had occurred, but Luciene was still left baffled and concerned. Her mind raced to find a magical explanation for how this could happen, but there were so many possibilities as to how witchcraft could get involved.
Suddenly, just as Luciene looked up from the floor, there was a plastic container in mid-air. It popped into existence on the other side of the kitchen island, several feet in the air, at least until it dropped unceremoniously. There was a loud whack as the plastic hit the floor, its red lid popping off from the impact and allowing a splash of spaghetti and sauce to spread across the floor. Luciene gasped and turned the corner, but flinched away from the dramatic red color and its strong garlic scent.
There was no time to ask questions before the same thing happened again, this time with a single cup of yogurt that appeared in front of the microwave. It, too, fell from the air where it had spawned, hitting the counter in such a way that its content erupted out. Luciene flinched again, hiding behind her arms as food spontaneously appeared in her kitchen.
“S-Stop! Stop it!” Luciene pleaded with whatever invisible force was responsible. She dashed about the kitchen, attempting to make sense of things while trying to gather towels to clean the messes. In the midst of her hurrying, just as she was cutting in front of the island, the next item appeared. It was her and Vivin’s water filter, recently filled, hanging in the air. Luciene gasped and made a lunge for it, her waist rushed into the countertop as she reached for it -- but she was too slow, and the filter fell hard against the island. A wave of water rolled out from the jug as its top came undone, splashing off the counter and over Luciene’s lap.
The shock of cold made Luciene jump back and shriek, nearly backing up into the boiling cauldron. The heat reminded her of what she had cooking, and she quickly turned towards the stove, unsure of how it had progressed. Just as she was looking into the thick, bubbling liquid, another kitchen item poofed into the air, right in front of Luciene’s face. It was a jar of mayonnaise that had spawned above the cauldron, which then promptly dropped directly into the concoction. Boiling water splashed upwards, forcing Luciene to stumble back again and into the island. She blinked but had nothing else to say, too amazed to put into words the distress she was under.
At that moment, the chaos made sense, and Luciene had her explanation. The mysteriously appearing food were all items that she had in her fridge. The broken plate of hushweed roots, and Cretia and Freya’s absence, were all evidence of someone attempting teleportation magic and going wrong. Luciene darted to the fridge, realizing that the source of all these troubles had to be there.
The refrigerator door swung open with such speed that the items along the door were all shifted. Luciene scanned the shelves from top to bottom, and there on the lowest shelf above the cabinets, the frail body of a tiny person shivered in the middle. It was Cretia that hugged herself for warmth, staring up at Luciene’s huge body.
“O-Oh, L-Luciene! I-I’m here, Luciene!” Cretia shouted through her shivering, waving one arm through the air for attention. “I-I don’t want to be stuck here, Luciene…!”
“Cretia!” Luciene exclaimed, surprised to find Cretia where she had deduced her to be nonetheless. “What do you think you’re doing?! M-My kitchen is a mess!”
“No-- I-I’m so sorry, Luciene! I didn’t-- I was t-trying to help!” Cretia stammered. “I-I used teleportation magic t-to get the ingredients i-in… b-but then I teleported myself, a-and I tried teleporting out, but other things j-just kept d-disappearing instead! I w-was trying to get myself out…!”
Luciene stooped to one knee and offered both hands to cup Cretia in. The warmth of her touch was most welcomed by Cretia, who snuggled into the palms as she was lifted out of the cold chamber. Just as she could exhale now that she was with the security of her friend, so too did Luciene begin to destress, knowing that no other food items were going to appear randomly in her kitchen. There was still a surreal mess to be cleaned up, however, and the cauldron continued to boil over despite its contents having been disrupted. With a sigh, Luciene turned off the burners, abandoning the recipe.
Cretia felt a pit form in her stomach as Luciene left the kitchen and went into the living room for a seat. She was silent while Luciene dropped into a sofa chair, unsure if she could summon an apology satisfying enough for all the problems she caused. She studied Luciene and felt how frustrated she had to be, having put all that time and resources to waste, all because of her. That fact weighed heavily on her as she laid in the two hands, chilled by this reality as much as she had been chilled by the fridge.
“Well… I’m not sure what to do about this now,” Luciene said, staring off into a wall rather than down at her friend. “I only had enough ingredients for this one batch. I don’t know when I can get some of this stuff again… You and the others might have to be like this for awhile.”
Cretia bit her lip. “It’s… I’m so sorry, Luciene. I-I thought I could… help.” Her shoulders fell limp and her eyes sank away from Luciene’s. “I should’ve known better. Me and magic just… don’t go together. But you love magic! I-I just wanted to show that, m-maybe I could also be good at it, like you are…”
Luciene winced at the comment, a mild blush glowing on each cheek. She hesitated to reply while she absorbed Cretia’s perspective, glancing around the room but always looking back down at the woman in her hands. “Th-That isn’t necessary,” Luciene began. “You don’t have to push yourself like this. Even if you’re not talented with magic, we can still be good friends.”
“But I wanted to impress you,” Cretia sighed. “I’m always lagging behind you guys in class. If I’m not cut out to be a witch, then why am I bothering you all the time? Even if we study together like this, I’m just never going to figure out magic…”
“Cretia…” Luciene tilted her head and her hands folded to be closer around Cretia, as if wrapping her into an embrace. “We like you because you’re you. Even if you weren’t a witch, you’d still be a fun person with so many skills, but… don’t give up on magic yet. It can be hard to understand, admittedly, but I know you have a drive for it. You have a wandering mind -- that’s good for a witch!”
“I-Is it?” Cretia sniffled. “You said that before, but…”
“I-It was something of a half-compliment,” Luciene giggled, “but I do mean it. You had a creative solution for a unique problem, teleporting the ingredients into the cauldron. Many other witches wouldn’t have known what to do.”
Cretia scoffed and looked aside with her arms crossed. “Most witches wouldn’t be brewing up a cure for a curse they accidentally made…”
“That’s definitely not true,” Luciene laughed. “I’ve seen witches of all levels get themselves into their own brand of trouble. It comes with the territory of bending reality, I suppose.” Luciene offered a cheerful smile, hopeful she could brighten Cretia’s spirit. To her joy, Cretia did manage to smile back from where she was held. “We’ll keep hosting these study sessions and I’ll help tutor you. There’s a lot of potential for you yet.” She snickered, “How about you teach me to cook, and I’ll teach you magic. Eventually we can make those candies just like how you wanted.”
Cretia slowly nodded, coming to accept that this arrangement was indeed coming together. “S-Sure,” she nervously answered, swallowing right after. “I-I dunno if I’ll be a good teacher for cooking, though…”
“Try your best,” Luciene said. “For Vivin’s sake, if nothing else. I think she’s done cooking for both of us all the time…”
At her own mention of her housemate, Luciene remembered Vivin and the others. Her head perked up in worry, but she was relieved to see Lorelle exiting the bathroom, smiling as she brought a rinse cup with her. “Did you find out what that noise was, Luciene?” she asked, standing where the living room and kitchen met. She then saw Luciene situated in a chair, the cauldron unattended. “Um… Is the cure done?”
Luciene sighed, but her smile persisted. “Not quite,” she answered bashfully. “First thing tomorrow morning, I’ll take all of you to a professor that can come up with something.”
Lorelle’s concern was apparent, but she kept her attitude positive. “We learned a lot, at least! You make for a good teacher, Luciene!”
“Perhaps, but it’s hard enough just watching over four students…” Luciene teased, but her joking immediately ended there when she did another headcount of everyone. Her pupils shrank, “Does anyone have Freya? Cretia, what happened to her?”
Cretia blinked, only then realizing Freya was absent. “Oh! Err, uh! I-I dunno!” she frantically responded, thinking back to when she last saw her. “I-I’m pretty sure I didn’t teleport her… She might be hard to see now, because she kept eating more of my confections…”
Lorelle approached the two, startled by what she heard. “She ate more of the candy? Wouldn’t that, like, shrink her more though?” Luciene listened on, her bewilderment restrained for the time being.
“Yeah. Well, she was getting smaller. She shrank to half her size when I last saw her.” Cretia shuddered, “B-But she was still on the countertop! She’d still be there, unless something happened.”
“I’ll go look,” Lorelle offered, but was stopped by Luciene, her hand held up in a pause while she stared down past Cretia. “Huh? Do you, uh, know where she is?”
“... In a sense…” Luciene bit her lip, afraid of how to explain her theory. Her eyes were locked onto her lap, still moist from when the water filter splashed onto her with its sudden appearance. Her expression twisted as the others watched on with confusion. “I… have a feeling… that she got washed up onto my jeans…”
Lorelle looked at the drenched front of Luciene’s pants, squinting as she got closer. “I don’t see her…” she said, anxiously chuckling. “She was already so small to begin with, so… how small is she now? Is she really tiny?” She looked into the rinse cup and the small dot of a person within. “As small as Vivin…?”
Luciene closed her eyes. “Perhaps. Maybe, even smaller…”
“She must have really liked my sweets,” Cretia mumbled. “Um, how are we going to find her then?”
Freya clung to the strange surface she had been washed onto, just as she had for several straight minutes. Even though the world was turned up-right and there was a floor beneath her body, she dared not venture outward lest everything began moving again. The blue rainforest of hard fabric overwhelmed her as she stared across the wrinkled plains, the sky an incomprehensible blur of normal-sized life going on without her. She did not whimper, knowing no one would hear her cry, despite being right between all of her friends.
“So stupid… Why couldn’t I control myself…?” she quietly complained, asserting her grip on the jean-ground with greater tightness. It was the only way she could vent her frustration at herself. “I didn’t think… that getting this small was even possible…! It was just candy, dammit…!”
Freya shivered and jumped when she felt the ground quake with activity. The fabric swayed to the pressure of something else upon them, something certainly bigger than she was. A finger or anything else would have made a much bigger impact, she would have felt the world change into something different. But the shaking that resonated beneath her was rhythmic and controlled, just like someone’s walking. In any case, Freya wondered if she had been found.
Beyond a hill-sized fold of the jeans, Vivin’s head cropped up, idly looking left and right as she made it past the button of Luciene’s jeans. She clawed through the moist environment, past the point of awing at her surroundings and well into a state of being humiliated by them. It did not go past Vivin at all that she knew she had been forced here onto Luciene’s crotch, a belittling location to be sent to. She complained as much about it under her breath, but with the others watching her directly overhead, she kept her comments to herself.
“No, not here either,” Vivin sighed. “This is bad… What if she isn’t even here? What a waste of time this would have been…” But before she moved on to another area of Luciene’s lap, she blinked and looked once more. Not far from the jeans’ zippers was a speck of a person, waving at her with desperate motions. Vivin leaned closer, amazed by how tiny the bouncing life was. “Oh my…” Vivin shook her head. “Freya? R-Really?”
“Y-Yeah… Really…” Freya shrugged to the weird world that surrounded them.
“We need to quit snacking so much when we study,” Vivin groaned. She crawled forward and put down a hand for Freya to board. “Come on, let’s get you somewhere safe.”
Freya stepped into the hand, still comprehending Vivin’s size. Despite being ridiculously tiny herself, in comparison to Freya, Vivin was over ten meters tall. “I don’t like how strange this is… At least Luciene should have that cure finished soon…”
“Hah,” Vivin scoffed, “about that…”
