Chapter 15: Tongue-Tied Terror
The world froze.
Alex’s heart didn’t just skip a beat; it seemed to stall entirely, a cold, hard stone in her chest. One moment, Jess was sitting waist-deep in vanilla ice cream, wiping strawberry syrup from her eyes with a look of utter indignation. The next, Ellie’s massive spoon—a sleek, polished arc of stainless steel—swooped down not for a scoop of dessert, but for her sister.
It happened with the casual precision of someone selecting the choicest berry. The curved metal slid beneath Jess, lifting her and a small avalanche of whipped cream and cookie crumbs into the air.
“Hey!” Jess yelped, more annoyed than scared, bracing her hands on the spoon’s inner curve.
Alex tried to shout, but her throat was sealed shut by a plug of pure terror. She was moving before she thought, stumbling and sloshing through the dense, cold morass of the sundae, her hands slipping on fudge. She couldn’t get there. It was miles away.
She watched, helpless, as the spoon ascended toward Ellie’s face. Ellie’s expression was unreadable, a mask of calm observation. Her lips, soft and immense, parted.
The spoon tipped.
Jess, with a short, sharp cry, tumbled from the metal into the dark, waiting cavity of Ellie’s mouth.
Ellie’s lips closed.
A soft, definitive sound echoed in the parlor’s hushed space.
Alex’s scream finally ripped loose, raw and piercing. “NO!”
She thrashed in the ice cream, frozen sweetness burning her skin. Jules’s playful grin had vanished, replaced by wide-eyed shock. “Ellie?” Jules’s voice was a whisper of disbelief.
Ellie’s throat moved in a slow, deliberate swallow.
Then, her lips pursed. Her brow furrowed slightly, as if in concentration. She leaned forward, one elegant hand rising to her mouth.
And she spit Jess back into her cupped palm.
The action was neat, almost dainty. Jess landed in a damp, sticky heap, coughing and sputtering, covered in a fresh glaze of saliva that mixed with the melted ice cream. She was gasping, shaking, but whole. Alive.
Ellie looked down at the tiny, shuddering form in her hand, then over at Alex, who was standing rigid in the sundae, tears cutting clean tracks through the chocolate on her cheeks.
“Why,” Jess managed to choke out, pushing herself up on trembling arms, her voice a mix of fury and profound confusion. “Why would you DO that?”
Ellie brought her hand closer to her face, examining Jess with a detached, clinical curiosity that was somehow more intimate than any display of affection. A single drop of her saliva, clear and viscous, dripped from her lower lip and landed with a soft plip next to Jess’s leg.
“You tasted sweeter than the ice cream,” Ellie said, her voice its usual low, measured rumble. The statement was delivered with the absolute certainty of a scientific fact. There was no malice in it. No playfulness. It was merely an observation.
The absurdity of it hung in the syrupy air, colliding with the residual terror. Alex’s panic curdled into a strange, shaky nausea. Jules let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-groan, running a giant hand through her hair.
“Ellie, for god’s sake,” Jules breathed. “You nearly gave your daughter a heart attack. You gave me a heart attack.”
Jess sat up fully, wiping Ellie’s spit from her face with a grimace. “That is the single most psychologically disturbing thing you have ever done. And I once watched you accidentally vacuum up the living room rug while we were still on it.”
Ellie’s stern façade didn’t crack, but a faint, almost imperceptible light gleamed in her dark eyes. She didn’t apologize. Instead, she used the very tip of her littlest finger, with the delicacy of a master calligrapher, to gently wipe a streak of caramel from Jess’s shoulder. “It was an impulse. An assessment of flavor. You are unharmed.”
“I’m traumatized!” Jess shot back, but the edge was leaving her voice, replaced by weary acceptance. This was their world. The line between a deadly threat and a bizarre display of ownership was often vanishingly thin, drawn in the whim of a giantess.
Ellie’s gaze shifted from Jess to Alex, who was still frozen, chest heaving. The giantess’s expression softened, the hard lines around her mouth relaxing into something resembling remorse. She extended her other hand, palm open, toward the sundae.
“Alexandra,” she said, and the use of her full name was a hook, pulling Alex from her shock. “Come here.”
The command was gentle, but it was not a request. Alex numbly waded through the melting landscape, the cold now a dull ache in her bones. She reached the edge of the table, where Ellie’s waiting hand formed a ramp of warm skin. She climbed onto it, her charcoal-stained clothes soaked and sticky.
Ellie lifted her, bringing her to eye level, aligning her with Jess, who was still in her other palm. The two sisters, one spit-damp and scowling, one shivering and pale, were held side-by-side in a silent, comparative display.
“My girls,” Ellie murmured, more to herself than to them. Her eyes traveled over them—the details of their tiny, disheveled forms, the proof of their fragility, the unique essence of each. “One sweet. One… sharp. All graphite and nerve endings.”
She then did something she rarely did in public. She brought both hands, and the twins within them, to her face. She inhaled deeply, the airflow a warm gale rustling their hair and clothes. She was smelling them. Learning them. The scent of ice cream and sugar was overpowering, but beneath it, Alex knew Ellie was finding the smell of paper and graphite, of Jess’s medicinal hand sanitizer, of their own unique human warmth.
She pulled back, her gaze settling on Alex. “Your fear has a different taste than the ice cream, too. Bitter. Metallic. I do not like it.”
It was the closest she would come to an apology for the scare.
Jules, recovering her equilibrium, reached over with a napkin the size of a bed sheet and began to gently blot Jess dry. “Okay, well, now that we’ve conducted the day’s weird taste-test,” Jules said, her voice forcefully bright, “can we please eat the actual dessert? I’m having a sugar crisis over here.”
Ellie gave a single, slow nod. She lowered Jess carefully onto the table next to the sundae, then did the same with Alex. She then picked up her spoon again, aiming for a pristine section of the Volcano far from where they sat.
As Ellie took her first, deliberate bite, Jules leaned in, her voice a conspiratorial whisper that vibrated through the table. “You okay, kiddos?”
Jess just shook her head, wrapping her arms around herself. Alex stared at Ellie, watching the powerful muscles of her jaw work, the serene focus on her face as she enjoyed the confection. The giantess who had just enclosed her sister in the warm, dark vault of her mouth was now savoring caramel crunch with elegant restraint.
The contradiction was their normal.
Alex’s shaking slowly subsided. The bitter, metallic taste of her own fear began to fade, replaced by the cloying sweetness of the air and the profound, unsettling warmth of being known in such a terrifying, intimate way. She reached out and squeezed Jess’s sticky hand.
Ellie swallowed another spoonful and looked at them. A single drip of fudge clung to the corner of her lip. She caught it with her tongue, her eyes never leaving her two tiny daughters.
“When you are finished being dramatic,” Ellie stated, her tone shifting back to its familiar, stern doting, “there is a banana split at home with your names on it. A smaller one. A… civilized one.”
She paused, and the ghost of something that wasn’t quite a smile touched her features.
“And I promise to only taste the ice cream.”