Chapter 4: Hunger and Lace
The lick never came.
Instead, Jules exhaled, a warm, mint-scented gale that ruffled their hair and made the silver lamé of Alex’s jumpsuit shimmer. Her enormous lips, glistening and pink, curved into a softer smile. The predatory gleam in her eye melted into fondness, though a shadow of that playful hunger remained at the corners.
“You’d give me such indigestion, my little stormcloud,” Jules murmured, her voice a low, tectonic rumble. She reached out and, with impossible delicacy, used a single fingertip to smooth a wrinkle on the shoulder of Jess’s black dress. The touch was brief, lighter than a falling leaf, but Jess went perfectly still, her breath held. “All that cynicism is probably spicy.”
“I’ll try to be more bland,” Jess said, the words tight in her throat.
“Don’t you dare.” Jules leaned back, the colossal architecture of her body receding slightly, allowing the dim, dusty light to return. “Now, come on. Both of you. Ellie’s back from her council meeting and she’s in a mood about zoning permits. You showing off your cute outfits will cheer her up instantly.”
“We’re not emotional support tinies,” Jess muttered, but she was already carefully navigating the plush, uneven terrain of the velvet towards Jules’ waiting hand.
Alex, finally zipped into the jumpsuit, felt a thrill at the sleek, cool fabric. She struck a pose, arms wide. “Do I look like a disco astronaut?”
“You look like you’re asking to be misplaced in a handbag,” Jess said, stepping onto Jules’ palm. The skin was warm and lined, a vast, living landscape.
“Perfect!” Jules chirped. Her other hand came for Alex, who hopped on without hesitation, the world tilting wildly as she was lifted. The closet shrank beneath them, a chaotic diorama of fabric and wood. They sailed out the door, the ceiling of the hallway rushing past overhead, a blur of recessed lighting and exposed beams.
The journey to the master bedroom was a short, soaring flight. Jules walked with careful, earth-tremoring steps, humming a pop song. Each footfall was a deep thud that vibrated up through Alex’s bones. They passed the door to their own tiny-scale living quarters, built into the wall like a luxurious mouse hole, and then the mammoth archway to the garden room, where the scent of damp soil and roses lingered.
The master bedroom was a study in contrasting scale. A bed the size of a city block dominated the center, covered in a rumpled duvet of grey linen. On the far side, near a window that looked out onto the twilight, Ellie sat in an armchair that could have housed a small hotel. She was still in her professional attire: a tailored jacket of dark green, her auburn hair coiled in a severe, elegant knot. A tablet the size of a billboard sat propped on her knee, its light casting a pale glow on her sharp, focused features.
The air here was different. Cooler. Charged with a silent, simmering energy that had nothing to do with playful threats.
“Look what I found!” Jules announced, her voice suddenly too loud, too bright for the room’s quiet tension. She lowered her hands to the surface of a broad, low dresser, letting her daughters step off onto the polished walnut.
Ellie’s gaze lifted from the tablet. It swept over them, a slow, analytical scan that felt nothing like Jules’ exuberant admiration. Her eyes were the color of weathered flint.
“You’ve been playing in the closet,” Ellie stated. Her voice was a low, smooth contralto, without inflection.
“They were being my models!” Jules said, folding herself onto the edge of the bed with a creak of springs. She propped her chin in her hands, beaming. “Don’t they look incredible? Jess is giving ‘funereal chic’ and Alex is giving… what are you giving, honey?”
“Intergalactic lounge singer,” Alex supplied, trying to inject some levity.
Ellie didn’t smile. She set the tablet aside and leaned forward, her shadow engulfing the dresser. “Jess, the dress is appropriate. It’s sensible. Alex,” her eyes narrowed a fraction, “that garment is a distraction. And you are covered in closet dust.”
Alex looked down. Sure enough, a fine layer of grey clung to the metallic fabric. She brushed at it, but it was staticky, stubborn.
“It’s just a bit of fun, Ellie-love,” Jules said, her tone softening, coaxing.
“Fun is one thing.” Ellie’s attention snapped back to Jules. “Your idea of fun often involves my daughters being treated as accessories. Or appetizers.” The last word was pointed, icy.
A heavy silence descended. The playful “gobble you up” comment from the closet hung in the air, suddenly stripped of its joking context, laid bare in Ellie’s stern gaze.
Jules’ smile faded, replaced by a flicker of genuine hurt. “You know I would never—”
“I know what you say,” Ellie interrupted, her voice still quiet but now cutting. “I also know the look in your eye. The carelessness isn’t in your actions, Juliana. It’s in your fantasies. They feel it.” She gestured a single, swift finger towards the dresser. The displacement of air rustled Alex’s hair.
Jess had gone very still, a statue in a black dress. Alex watched her sister’s face, saw the confirmation there. The fear wasn’t just theoretical. It was this: the knowledge that the line between doting mother and consuming force was a thread perceived differently by someone five hundred feet tall.
“It’s not fair to use them to soothe your… whims,” Ellie finished, standing up. The movement was swift, a mountain rising. She loomed over Jules, who, for all her size, seemed to shrink slightly on the bed. “They are not toys. They are not pets. They are our children. Act like it.”
The room froze. Alex could hear the low hum of the house’s climate control, the distant whisper of traffic from the city miles below.
Jules looked down at her own hands, twisting in her lap. “I just wanted to make them smile,” she whispered, the boom gone from her voice.
“Then ask them what would make them smile,” Ellie said, her tone finally easing from glacial to merely cold. She turned, her attention dismissing the conflict. “Change out of the costumes. Dinner will be ready in half an hour. Jess, you can help me in the kitchen. The precision required for tiny-scale seasoning seems to elude your mother.”
She strode from the room, each step a definitive thud that faded down the hall.
The silence she left behind was brittle. Jules didn’t move for a long moment. Then she sighed, a sound like a tired wind through great trees, and looked at her daughters. The playful light was extinguished, replaced by a watery, apologetic sheen.
“Go on, babies,” she said, her voice thick. “You heard her.”
Alex and Jess didn’t need telling twice. They scrambled towards the designated rope ladder that led down the dresser leg to the floor, a long, dizzying climb. As Alex gripped the first rung, she looked back.
Jules was still sitting on the edge of the bed, a blonde giantess staring at nothing, surrounded by the overwhelming evidence of her own world. She looked, for the first time Alex could remember, small.
On the floor, safe in the shadow of the furniture, Jess was already shucking off the black dress, her movements sharp with relief.
“Told you,” she hissed, stuffing the dress into a waiting retrieval basket. “It always starts playful. It always ends with a reminder that we’re a hair’s breadth from being an inconvenient thought.”
Alex, peeling off the dusty silver jumpsuit, didn’t answer. She was thinking about the look on Jules’ face. Not the hunger, but the hurt. She was thinking about the vibration of Ellie’s anger, a different, more terrifying kind of tremor.
She pulled on her own soft hoodie, the familiar cotton a relief. From high above, a whisper reached them, so faint it might have been imagination, carried on the draft from the vent.
“You do look like a disco astronaut, Lexi-baby.”
It was a peace offering. A tiny, fragile thread tossed down from the clouds.
Jess didn’t seem to hear it. She was already marching towards the kitchen, bracing for the cool, exacting atmosphere of Ellie’s domain. Alex hesitated, looking up into the shadowed heights, then followed her sister. The thread, for now, remained unclaimed, swaying in the silent, charged air between worlds.
The thread, for now, remained unclaimed, swaying in the silent, charged air between worlds.
Alex quickened her pace to catch up to Jess in the long, shadowed hallway. The floorboards here, scaled for giants, were wide enough to park a car on, each a plain of polished oak stretching into the distance. Her socks made no sound, but Jess’s footsteps were sharp, angry taps against the wood.
“Will you slow down?” Alex called out, her voice swallowed by the vastness.
“Why?” Jess threw over her shoulder, not breaking stride. “So we can have a heartfelt chat about maternal complexity? I’d rather go chop onions for Ellie. At least that pain has a known chemical cause.”
The air smelled faintly of lemon polish and, from the direction of the kitchen, something savory beginning to simmer. A distant, rhythmic thump-thump-thump vibrated through the soles of their feet—Ellie, probably crushing herbs with a mortar the size of a swimming pool.
“You’re being way too hard on her,” Alex said, finally pulling alongside her sister. “It was a joke. A dumb joke. You saw her face after Ellie went at her.”
“I saw the face of someone who got scolded for playing with her food,” Jess snapped. She stopped suddenly, turning on Alex. Her eyes were dark pools in the low light. “That’s what we are to them, Alex. No matter how many adoption papers they signed. We’re the world’s most interesting, most stressful pets. And you act like it’s all some awesome adventure.”
“It is an adventure!” Alex’s voice rose, echoing slightly. “We live in a fricking monument. We have mothers who are literal forces of nature. You want to trade that for some boring suburban tiny-house and a dad who grills?”
“I want to trade it for a life where my biggest worry is student loans, not being accidentally sat on!” Jess’s whisper was fierce, raw. “Where a mother’ idea of fun isn’t pretending she might lick you like a goddamn lollipop!”
Alex felt a hot flush of anger. It wasn’t just about defending Jules. It was about Jess constantly treating her like she was too naive to understand the danger, too stupid to be scared.
“God, Jess. Stop being such a bitch about it.” The word hung between them, harsh and final. Jess’s mouth opened slightly in shock. “Jules was having fun. She’s a giant goofball who doesn’t think before she squeals. She would never, ever eat either of us. You know that. You’re just too scared to admit you actually love her, because loving something that big feels like a death wish.”
Jess stared. The kitchen sounds seemed to grow louder—the hiss of steam, the clatter of a colossal spoon.
“You don’t get it,” Jess said, but her voice had lost its edge, crumbling into something tired and brittle. “You don’t get what it’s like to lie awake and hear them breathing in the next room, a sound like a freight train, and have your brain calculate exactly how fast you could run if that breathing stopped. To see a foot, Alex. A single foot, and know it contains more mass than our entire ancestral lineage, and that it’s attached to someone who calls you ‘daughter.’ That’s not love. That’s a hostage situation with good interior design.”
Before Alex could retort, a new voice sliced
through the hallway, clear and cool, coming from the kitchen archway ahead.
“Jessica. Alexandra.” It was Ellie. “The shallots are awaiting their mincer. This is not a debate hall.”
They both flinched. How much had she heard? Her tone gave nothing away.
Jess turned away from Alex, her shoulders slumping in defeat. She walked toward the light and the sound of cooking, the fight gone out of her, replaced by the familiar, weary compliance.
Alex stood alone for a moment in the giant hallway, the words ‘hostage situation’ ringing in her ears. She looked back the way they’d come, toward the distant, darkened master bedroom. Then she looked at Jess’s retreating back, a small, stubborn figure marching toward a giant’s stove.
She took a breath, the air still tasting of lavender from the closet and now, faintly, of browning butter and regret.