“Hold on, what did you just say?” Anselm stood alone, especially alone upon the narrow tower’s peak. The blow of this news rocked his world, which he knew, intellectually, wasn’t a physical condition. Regardless, he staggered back a step, tripped, and collapsed against the merlons.

Did the tower sway? He was suddenly very conscious of how vulnerable he was up here, not just as a tiny little being compared to this careless goddess looming over him, but as a speck atop a long, thin needle. The early morning winds sailed around him, breaking with the tower, flowing turbulently over his soaked garments until it felt as though crystals were forming in his skin, reaching to the bone.

“Valka, talk to me. What’s happening?” His voice choked and he wasn’t sure she heard him. As his gaze stretched upward, her graceful fingers merely tossed a weighty wave of thick tresses over her shoulder as she turned to face the oncoming storm. Now he stared at her long and sinuous spine, shadowed blue in the moonlight, flowing in a poetic channel down to her…

He heard her call out, “Hey, baby! You’re back early, aren’t you?”

“Missed you, lover. Did you miss me?” Another voice boomed across the landscape, slightly huskier. There was something raw to it that, again, raised every last goosepimple across Anselm’s body. As reflexively as he wanted to know who his gigantic lover was talking to, he also really, really did not want to know; in fact, he wished he weren’t anywhere in the area right now.

“You know I did.” Valka giggled, and Anselm watched two arms slide around her wide waist. Muscles lining the forearms bulged and cast crisp shadows, pulling Valka tight. One coarse hand (Anselm couldn’t help but pick out all the details to every knuckle, thin lacerations across hard tendons) slid up her shoulder blade, and muscular fingers dug into that luscious, lavish mane, gripping the giantess’s skull.

“What are you doing all the way out here? Everyone said you’d slipped away but didn’t know where you—” The words were cut off with growling moans and slurping. Resentment tugged at Anselm’s heart, less than he was intruding and more that something he prized was being shared with someone else.

“How’d you find me?”

A harsh peal of laughter hacked into the atmosphere. “Like I couldn’t trace your scent in a tornado. I held you in my mind, closed my eyes, and took a long sniff… Hold on, what’s that?”

Anselm saw a cloud of lighter tresses drift over Valka’s shoulder, until the giantess shifted to block it again. “What’s what, baby?”

“There’s someone else here.”

Anselm’s heart fell at how amateurish Valka’s laughter rang out. “What are you talking about? C’mon, let’s go back. I’ll give you a proper welcome.”

The forearms withdrew from her spine. One hand shoved her immense torso aside, just as one would scoop a mountain off of its roots, and there she was. Where Valka was soft and curvy, this giantess was chiseled and toned. Where shadows blurred and blended around Valka’s pillowy contours, this giantess was marked with harsh, sharp lines beneath ribs, across abs. Where Valka’s golden hazel eyes glowed like a cozy hearth, this giantess’s eyes blazed like ice on fire, at once judgmental and disapproving.

Never had Anselm felt so much like a crumb on a copper coin. While his limbs were frozen stiff, his insides felt like they would vomit themselves out and flee as fast as they could slither.

“What the hell is this?” The second giantess’s powerful lips parted and clashed against each other. “Valgerðr, what the great rocky fuck is this?”

Valka cast down a guilty glance, the way barbarians would upheave and let loose a pile of boulders from a ledge. “Oh, this? I‌ dunno, it’s nothing,” she said, striking Anselm with those boulders.

“Nothing?” he croaked, despite himself.

The new giantess seemed to hear him, to his regret. Her face swung sharply, dead at him. After an eternity of bearing her frightful gaze, framed in coarse, unruly piles of platinum hair, he saw her thick lips slowly part and peel back into a sneer. One canine, not quite as large as he was, seemed to glow with its own light in the darkness.

“I don’t believe this.” Her voice was a continental plate grinding against another, with a volcano threatening to form between them. “You’re cheating on me. Valgerðr, are you cheating on me?”

“No, Æsileif, it’s nothing like that.”

“With that?” She turned to her partner, flinging one arm toward the tower in accusation. Not even as strong as that, merely indication, waving mostly in the direction of the tower. It was a careless gesture, an incidental motion, alluding to something beneath consideration.

Anselm was nearly resentful. He wasn’t stupid enough to go all the way with it, but… okay, this brutal mountain giantess was clearly an indomitable warrior, but where did she get off? Slowly he pulled himself up: barefoot, sopping in his girlfriend’s saliva, but dressed.

There was a long pause, during which the wind flowed and the moon crept down to the horizon. Quietly, like the rippling river in the distance, Valka giggled. “It’s not ridiculous,” she said, her words soft around the edges like herself.

Æsileif’s eyes went wide and her smile stretched into her cheeks. “Yes! Yes, it is! You cheated on me with that little thing?” She laughed, barking harshly at the heavens, and the heavens seemed to know better than to respond. “I don’t know if I can even consider that cheating! It’s disgusting, sure. I don’t want to think about where you might have smeared that little germ on you—”

“Whoa, hey.” Anselm shifted his stance.

“—but I have a hard time being mad about it.” She laughed again, licking her lips and cupping Valka’s shoulders in her palms. “I always knew you were into some weird shit, but come on. This is funny. Isn’t it?”

Valka’s huge head rolled around on her shoulders, her grin flashing in the moonlight. “Maybe it’s a little funny.”

“It’s ridiculous!”

“I‌ guess…”

“No, this is fucking laughable! You gorgeous thing, going out here into Bug Country and trying to fuck one of these specks? How would you even do that? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.” Their laughter mingled and raced over the woods, bounced off the mountains. Æsileif slipped her hand into Valka’s tresses and pulled her in for a hard, violent kiss.

Forgetting himself, Anselm stepped to the merlons closest to the gigantic couple. “Hey, what the hell? I’m right here.”

The women kissed for a bit longer, and then longer than that, before Æsileif’s head turned over Valka’s shapely upper arm to look in his direction. “Your thing’s being annoying,”‌ she whispered in her lover’s ear.

“I’m not a thing!” Anselm squared his shoulders. “I’m her boyfriend.”

Æsileif chuckled. “I didn’t hear that.”

“You’re smearing yourself all over my girlfriend. We’re in love.” He spoke earnestly up at them. “With each other. We love each other.”

The blonde giantess considered him for a moment before lowering her head and slowly extracting herself from the brunette’s embrace. “Is that true? Valka, are you in love with this little thing?”

Valka wouldn’t even look at Anselm, merely tucked a lock behind her ear and said, “It’s really nothing.”

“No, no, it’s okay. Tell me if you are.”

“I would.” She smiled at the blonde. Anselm gaped at her, at them.

“You sure?”

“I‌ promise you. That little thing was a distraction while you were gone.” Valka finally looked down at Anselm, perched on his little tower. “I was just going to kick this weird little structure over, but there was something on it, and… I‌ dunno, I‌ was bored. I thought I’d just play with him a while, until you got back.”

“That’s not true.” Anselm spoke in a strained whisper. “That’s not true. You love me, in your way. I love you more than—”

“So, he’s not yours?” Æsileif ran savage fingernails through Valka’s scalp. Valka assured her he was not. “Then he’s available?”

“Hm?”

“I‌ mean, I could have him. I can have him, if he’s no one’s.”

Far above, Valka’s eyelashed fluttered prettily against the early morning sky. “What would you want with him?”

Æsileif’s teeth cut through the darkness again. “Fee fi fo fum, and all that. Feeling kinda hungry.”

Valka glanced at Anselm, then playfully rocked her girlfriend’s shoulders. “Eh, forget him. Let’s just go back. I’ve got some things I‌ want to try with you. I’ve missed you, baby.”

“Hold on a second.”‌ Decisively, Æsileif extracted herself from Valka’s long arms and faced the tower. “You know what fee, fi, fo, fum means, right?”

Anselm gazed up the rocky cliff face of the blonde giantess’s bodyscape. Her navel was a raw cavern, her abs were unforgiving boulders, and her chest was a broad and forbidding slab of tons of meat, fat, and flesh. Her breasts rose and fell with animalistic heaving breath. Serpents of dense steam wound from her nostrils and sailed off into the night.

“I’ve heard of it,”‌ he said.

Level with the tower’s peak, between twin pillars of coarse muscle, erupted her own grove of kinky, glowing fur. Two stout fingers plowed the dense hairs and disappeared between her frightening thighs. “That’s giant-talk. It means it’s time to eat.”

As much as he didn’t want to, he stared up at her face, at the thick lips that exposed rows of cruel, jagged rocks that would not restrain themselves, unlike Valka’s. “Please don’t eat me. Valka? Valka, please don’t let her eat me.”

Valka’s bottom lip pouted in the pale blue light. “Hey, sweetie, let’s just go, okay? I‌ really need my face between your legs.” She pawed half-heartedly at her girlfriend’s bicep.

“In a minute, babe.” Æsileif stepped toward the tower, slowly, purposefully. “My hunger is nothing to be denied. This little thing is going nowhere but between my lips.”

“Valka! You said you’d protect me!” Anselm backed up, but the meager floor of the tower’s peak didn’t offer a lot of leeway.

“I didn’t say that, you said that.” The brunette giantess continued to paste her palms upon her girlfriend’s shoulders, until Æsileif finally reached back and shoved her away. “Come on, Æsileif, just leave him. He’s nothing.”

“I’m not nothing!” It was harder for Anselm to see his erstwhile lover, with the bold ridge of Æsileif’s pelvis gliding in the way. “Valka! Please! Stop her!” he screamed. His only exits were to stumble down the long, winding staircase or, more expediently, to pitch himself over the edge of the tower. Neither seemed promising, but the alternative was to bathe in the heat of Æsileif’s mons, as the coarse hairs closed the space between them, seemingly reaching out for him. “Valka! Help me, please, Valka!”

“What can I do?” The whimper was surprisingly discordant from the young goddess’s immensity. “I tried.”

“You haven’t tried anything!” The scraggly hairs rasped over the merlons, through the crenelations.

“Don’t yell at me…”

“Valka! Save me!”

“I’m sorry, Anselm. Don’t hate me.”

“Valgerðr!”

One colossal thigh swung through space, blocking out Valka, the forest, the field, and the river it led to. Æsileif’s muscles bulged as she went up on tippy-toes, and her hair and mons blocked out the moon and sky and everything. Anselm watched as thick slabs of hirsuite flesh were tugged apart by her fingers. Heat flooded his little platform, carrying the humid musk of the blonde giantess’s interior. He screamed his girlfriend’s name, and it bounced briefly off the long strips of pink, hot tissue, running up into the ungainly hole that yawned above him. He shrieked her name as the uneven hole widened, and his voice echoed back at him from a long, long canal. He wailed, losing command of his sounds, as the thick, writhing lips stretched around the head of the tower, took him in, and sealed shut.

Here, the darkness was incomplete, thanks to the lone torch burning in its sconce, like a sole, faithful friend. Resting not on a loving tongue but standing on a hard floor, Anselm froze in place, eyes wide, drinking in the narrow channel in which he found hiself. Immediately the crisp air turned warm, then hot. The musk of the blonde giantess stole into his nose, down his throat, filled his lungs. She was inside him, now, but he didn’t want her. Unsure what to do, he took a step in an arbitrary direction and put his hands out in front of him, as though to shove the invader away.

His palms sank into hot, silken tissue, glistening an intimate reddish-pink in the torch’s light. The wall was soft and slick against his skin. He shoved, and it gave a little, but it also welled up over his thumbs and around his wrists. With a yelp he withdrew and discovered his fingers thickly coated in something warm and oozing. Absently he staggered back, and another wall plastered him with the fluid. It immediately warmed up his shirt and soaked through to his skin; it matted his hair and ran down his neck, syrupy and hot. He jerked away, tripped over his own feet, and fell to the hard stone roof.

Lying there, he stared up into giantess’s canal. It stretched up above him, unevenly shaped, bulging here and swaying there. And it writhed: sometimes it closed like pressed lips just above him, and sometimes it snapped open, yellow light shooting up along thin blue veins and healthy pink tissue, dripping with gluey fluids. Way up in the distance, when the passage accidentally widened, he could almost see… Anselm turned away, burying his eyes in the crook of his elbow, his voice rasping in panic.

Perhaps the stairs weren’t so unreasonable. His breath hitching in his chest, he rolled to his knees and groped for his boots, fighting to tug them on. He reached for the iron ring on the trapdoor, then yanked his hand back when he found it submerged in the giantess’s juices.

The canal writhed, living and agitated. It should have rumbled, like hiding in a cave during an earthquake, but it didn’t so much as groan. The walls simply flexed, dilated, and then slowly slid down. Tiny veins glided past his sight. Seemingly endless yards of vaginal walls bunched around the merlons, then gave way and descended all around him. The giantess was lowering himself, he knew, and he was being thrust deeper inside her. The stairs were more imperative than ever.

Anselm reached for the torch. A wave of thick, milky fluid wiped off the living, tender walls, built up on the merlons, then finally dumped upon the torch and put it out without so much as a hiss. In perfect darkness, Anselm screamed, groping for anything that felt like a little wooden door.

Æsileif’s heavy brow furrowed and she bit her lip, concentrating on taking the fragile structure into her. It was slender, too thin to really feel like much, but that meant it went in easily. The masoned walls were far too fine, at her dimensions, to scratch or even drag, and her natural moisture coated them on the first pass. She planted her hands on her hips, planted her feet on the cool turf, and bent her knees with great control as she guided her hips down. She looked down at her toes, digging easily into the loam, tearing it up without the least effort, and at the base of the tower between her feet.

“This really is a stupid idea,” she said to herself.

Valka stood back, arms crossed upon her chest, wincing as she watched. “Well, you’re the idiot sticking that thing up inside you. It’s not hygienic.”

“No, I‌ mean this tower.” Æsileif tensed her thighs and calves and slowly, carefully raised herself. Her thick labia sucked at the tower, relinquishing it reluctantly. The uppermost yards of the gray shaft glistened in the moonlight. “Look at it, long and thin, unsupported by anything. Anything could just knock it over. What were they thinking?”

“Hey, just go easy on it, okay?”

Æsileif gawked at her girlfriend. “What?”

“Don’t hurt… I mean, don’t break the tower.”

“The hell are you talking about?”

“Come on, it belongs to the bugs. Let them have their playthings, they’re harmless. It doesn’t affect us at all.”

Confusion slowly melted into a mischievous grin on the blonde giantess’s face. “I’ll stomp them all the fuck out, if I‌ want to. What are you going to do, stop me?”

Valka rolled her eyes. “I‌ might, you don’t know.”

Æsileif licked her lips. “Are you really worried about your tiny, little lover?”

“He’s not my—”

“You are! Look at you!” Æsileif’s teeth glimmered as she bit her bottom lip, descending upon the tower, taking even more of it inside than before. “What are you worried about? Are you worried I’m going to destroy their little playthings?”

“I‌ guess I don’t care.”

“Then you won’t care if I do this.” Æsileif looked down at the tower, maybe a fourth of its total height swallowed into her vagina. With a simple thrust of her hips, she snapped it off. The mortar between huge blocks pulverized into a dust, caught on the wind and cast upon one brawny inner thigh. The tower buckled, fragmented, and collided with the ground in gentle thuds against her bare soles. All of it, of course, except the last few yards her pussy hugged possessively.

“Anselm!” Valka shrieked, taking a step toward her girlfriend before catching herself. She clapped her hands over her mouth, looking guiltily at her mate.

Æsileif howled with laughter, feeling the structure crumble within her as her muscles clenched with hilarity. “I don’t believe it! You really felt something for that measly little speck, didn’t you?” She stared at the brunette, who only stared at the blonde’s crotch in concern. Æsileif shrugged and lowered herself to the ground. Her immense buttocks dug into the earth. Her spine straightened and flattened scores of trees. She laced her fingers behind her head and smirked at her lover. “If you’re so concerned about him, you’d better get in there and rescue him. I‌ won’t even fight you or make it difficult.” She laughed, stretching her powerful legs out, plowing ruts into the field as she displayed herself to her girlfriend. Her ass clenched, bouncing her pussy tauntingly in the night.

Well past lying to herself or anyone else, Valka threw herself between Æsileif’s knees. Moonlight glowed upon her curved back as she bent down and spread her girlfriend’s labia with one hand and slipped one cautious finger inside.

The bricks of the tower were completely sundered inside Æsileif’s pussy. Valka winced, trying to picture the mess in there, and did what she could to carefully scoop as much out as possible. In she went, unsure how deep to go, curving her knuckles and dragging out another load of carved blocks of stone. Each load would have taken a team of horses to haul across the countryside from the quarry, but she simply wiped them and the juices that bound them off on the grass.

Looking away in concentration, she slipped two fingers into her lover. Æsileif laughed at her meticulous movements, and Valka felt her squeeze her fingers. “Please stop, that’s not fair,” she told the muscular woman, but Æsileif only mocked her for her care. When Valka extracted her fingers, she examined them closely, as much as the poor lighting permitted. Bricks and rubble coated her fingertips but, as far as she could tell, no little man.

Growing anxious, she lowered herself further. The ground trembled with blows from her elbows and knees as she arranged herself between her lover’s thighs. “Looks like you live up to your promises, you horny little bitch,” Æsileif crowed at her.

“This isn’t how I wanted to do this!” Valka snapped back. “I wanted to go down on you in love, not this… fucking rescue mission.”

“Then love me! And give up chasing after that sad little stain!”

Grumbling, Valka jammed her hands under Æsileif’s taut buttocks, lifted her hips to her face, and pressed her lips to those of her lover. “This isn’t how I‌ wanted it.” She thumbed her labia aside, closed her eyes, and dragged her tongue up the other woman’s slit.

“Holy fuck, I‌ missed this.” Æsileif’s hard body tensed with the initial tantalizing shocks. “Half a year, two continents over, beating back the cyclopes into submission, and this was all I could think of.” She sifted her fingers through her lover’s hair. “And you were back here, dinking around with that little piece of snot.”

Valka shot her an icy glare, lost midway over the expanse of hard, rippling belly. Beneath the blonde giantess’s thigh, she spied the ruined foundation of the tower, a doorway to nowhere, the staircase interrupted after a dozen steps. She could just imagine tiny Anselm, clad in his pathetic little slivers of metal, bracing himself up the long haul toward the sky. Her heart lurched for him, and then by an odd writhe, Æsileif’s leg sank flat and rolled aside and tore up the foundation and the ground around it a yard deep. Nothing but fresh, upheaved earth now, not a trace of ruins or remains. She cursed the callous blonde in her mind, but opened her jaws and thrust her tongue inside.

More blocks. She could taste these, a flat, dusty pall behind the tang of her girlfriend’s syrup. She also missed her face down here, locked securely by those powerful thighs, Æsileif’s hips bouncing and grinding into her face, and she would have said so but she didn’t want to give the cruel woman the satisfaction. She only pushed the blocks aside and dug deeper, trying not to bump her teeth into her girlfriend’s tenderer bits.

“Deeper,” Æsileif said, laughing. “Go deeper, my sweet little minx. Get your tongue in there!” Valka wanted to tell her to shut up, but instead she inadvertently obeyed.

Æsileif squirmed pleasantly, feeling that thick, hot tongue playing around inside her. She cupped her girlfriend’s skull with one hand; the other dug agonized grooves into the ground. She sucked in the chill night air and warmed it immediately in the kiln of her chest. Valka’s long hair spilled over her inner thigh, setting her skin on fire; her ass tensed and bulged in her girlfriend’s hands, wordlessly urging her on. “Keep looking for that stupid little fucker,” she murmured. “Take all night if you have to.”

Valka had nearly cleared out all the shattered tower, so she believed. There were fewer and fewer gritty little chunks coming out. But there was no sign of her little man anywhere. She checked: she withdrew and ran the tip of her tongue carefully across her palate, hoping to find some soft little lump and rolled along with her. He was never there, but her lover’s pussy was almost completely free of debris now, and she had no idea how she could reach deeper with just her tongue.

That wasn’t necessary. It dawned upon her that she could bring Anselm out to her, if she couldn’t go in any further. Her upper lip pulled back and she glared across her lover’s body as she lifted her head not much at all. Æsileif’s hard little clit bumped against her teeth, popped inside her mouth. She latched her lips around it, helping it to stand out, and then it was just a matter of rasping yards and yards of attentive papillae over that sensitive little bundle.

“Too soon,” Æsileif moaned. “Go back down there.” But Valka wouldn’t listen, and badly as she wanted to, Æsileif wouldn’t force her. She only whimpered cutely and started wording how Valka would owe her another, soon, for ending the first round early.

Valka moaned, despite herself, whipping up that pink bean into shape. An idle part of her brain compared her Anselm to it, in size. How big would he really be? Could he hug it? Could he hump it between his thighs? Or would he become subsumed by her hood, lost in a tidy little fold of the least tissues? No, he had to be bigger than that… She slipped the tip of her tongue inside the clit’s hood, just in case.

She heard Æsileif’s breath stagger. Gripping her lover’s ass hard, she slipped her pinky between the marble cheeks, worming it toward Æsileif’s asshole. She was rewarded with a shocked jerk as the toned woman writhed automatically. “You’re horrible!” She giggled but told Valka not to stop. And Valka didn’t, tickling her poophole while slapping her clit around with the tip of her tongue.

When Æsileif came, it echoed across the landscape. Night birds rattled and flapped out of the trees, crying in the distance. Deer scattered, foxes went underground. A village a mile or two away stirred in their sleep; dogs howled, horses neighed. She bellowed, she cried, she laughed, pounding the ground with enormous fists, digging great gouges out with her kicking heels. Valka was the only being around strong enough to hang on to her and hold her in place, never letting up on her dancing tongue until Æsileif frantically patted her crown. “Enough, enough,”‌ she begged, but Valka only slipped down and thrust her tongue back inside.

This is what Æsileif was waiting for, all this time. The kiss of her lover, how Valgerðr knew how to do her right. This was worth the wait, the battle. How Valka rarely listened to “no”‌ but went after what she wanted, simultaneously generous and selfish with Æsileif. She relaxed only when Valka withdrew. Her body tingled and rippled, exposed to the dome of heaven, stretched across a landscape that could barely hold her.

When she finally looked up to thank her lover, to beckon her lie down beside her, she found Valka sitting upright, between her ankles. She was studying her own hand, with her other hand covering her face. “What’s going on there, lover? You hurt yourself? I‌ hope you’re not out of shape from not fucking me for so long.” Æsileif grinned warmly and propped herself up on her elbows.

When Valka looked up, tears shone on one of her cheeks. Her eyes were narrow slits of anger, and her lips quivered around clenched jaws. In her palm lay a little man, limbs splayed at alarming angles. Peering at him closely revealed a gaping mouth and terrified eyes, beneath a film of cum. “You stupid bitch,” Valka hissed, her mouth nearly unmoving. “You ruin everything. You stupid, clumsy brute, stomping around, wrecking everything nice.”

“Hey, now, honey. Think about what you’re saying, okay? I‌ just got back tonight. I’ve been missing you for half a year. You’re all I’ve been thinking about, and you were defiling yourself with that little piece of scum.”

“You take that back.” Valka’s voice was low and quiet, one even tone of malice.

“Valgerðr? What’s gotten into you?” Æsileif drew up her knees and sat upright, facing her girlfriend. “Aren’t you happy to see me? Don’t tell me you love that—”

Valka’s eyes flashed. “Think very carefully about your next words.”

Æsileif frowned. Her right arm tensed, as though to draw back for a thunderous backhand, but this wasn’t how she wanted their reunion to end. She sucked in a deep breath (an unfortunate couple of birds disappeared up one nostril) and held it, trying to think about her girlfriend’s needs. “What, was he a hobby? Was he like a pet?” Her voice softened. “I‌ could understand that, if he was a kind of pet. I‌ wouldn’t want to hurt something you cared for.”

“No, not a fucking pet! He was—” But what was he? Valka stared at the hapless figure that sprawled across the 7 in the crease of her palm. Anselm was using her, that was obvious. Somehow he was getting off on her. It was hard to say at her expense, exactly, since she let him and it meant nothing to her. It affected her not at all. She couldn’t even taste him on her tongue when he came: it was just a contest of not swallowing a morsel for a few minutes, that was it.

But he loved her, or said he did. The little man fairly bounced on the top of that little tower when she approached. When Anselm smiled at her—because of her—Valka thought she could feel a wave of heat fly up at her face. He was pure joy when she met him, more joy than a puny little body like that should reasonably contain.

He used her, but wasn’t she using him? He was a funny little bug for her entertainment. The words he came up with, she didn’t know them all but they sounded wonderful. Maybe they weren’t real, as made-up as the emotions he professed, the vows he hurled up from his perch at her waist. It was so amusing to watch him frantically dance for her pleasure, desperately trying to extract that all-important promise that she would see him again in a month. It was all beginning to wear thin, by the time her girlfriend should be returning, and she was going to cut it off.

By rights she should’ve knocked the tower over with her big toe, as soon as she discovered it, stomped the rubble into the ground. This was to send a message to that audacious race of tiny people that they’d overextended themselves, shouldn’t get too greedy. Because anything they had could be taken away by her people, without any effort at all.

She ran a fingertip carefully over Anselm’s tiny legs, straightening them out. She drew down his arms by his sides, or tried to. If Æsileif was saying something, Valka couldn’t hear it. She scratched at a tear tickling her cheek, then opened her lips and let her tongue slide out. The blind, blunt tip dug under Anselm’s side and scooped up his torso, letting his limbs sway in the morning breeze for a moment. Then she drew him into her mouth and rested him upon her tongue. She sat there with him, palm clasped over her lips, holding back a sob as she felt that tiny, pathetic weight upon her tongue, still and cool, until just as he’d begged her not to several times, she let him slide down the back of her throat. Valka blinked hard a couple times, watching the moon sink behind the trees. She swallowed a couple times, unsure whether he’d gotten stuck inside her throat halfway down.

She felt Æsileif’s warm, strong arm around her shoulders. “You feel better now?” her girlfriend said. Valka knew she didn’t care, was just making a gesture. Wordlessly she nodded at her lover, who nodded back, and they struggled to stand on cramped legs, giggling at the ache of their lovemaking. “I will never understand you,” Æsileif said, “but I love every last part of you. I love the parts I don’t understand, if that makes sense.”

Valka sighed in her girlfriend’s embrace, nodding at her babbling as they trudged back into the mountains.