Painting, Marco thought. Some kind of creative release. That’s how people work through trauma, right? Painting? Macramé? Underwater basket-weaving… maybe that was prisoners. No, prisoners made license plates for cars, though that technically wasn’t therapy or some kind of hobby. Oh, could you just imagine the kind of paintings I’d come up with? He giggled at the vision of Georgia O’Keefe’s oeuvre marred with tiny little dots that at first glance looked like bugs, insects violating the dramatically hued petals of enormous, spreading flowers. But with a second glance, one realized these weren’t just flowers, of course, and it turned out the bugs were actually teeny-tiny little men in business suits, sprawled upon a petal or scrabbling helplessly as they slipped into the… cup of the flower… stamen? No…

The analogy crumbled in his mind as his giggle brought the very personal, slightly yeasty tang of his owner’s interior fluids into his lungs. Marco coughed for a moment, paused, monitored his body for how badly his air sacs stung with the foreign musk. He decided it wasn’t too bad, really, just disarming for its unfamiliarity. And now Dorris was inside him in two ways: her creeping, pervasive vaginal syrup had encroached into every crack and crevice of his own miniaturized body, up his butt, slathered in his hair, as well as the bacteria of her flora settling into his lungs. Would something grow there? Would his body fight back and he’d be coughing it up in a day or two?

Would he… get superpowers?