Echo Echo




We left the puppets in the car when we got back to the studio. Magic made me promise silence until we got home.

She sat at the corner of my desk, writing on a yellow sticky note. It looked like a desktop in her lap.

Over in the prop room (our fancy term for the folding table over by the window), Electra was a surprising vision.

She had a small but tightly tailored black outfit with discrete white highlights. She had thigh-high boots that nearly reached the bottom of her skirt, with blood-red tips on the toes. Where the hell had Delli found the boots?

And her hair had been dyed black.

She stood on a coaster from my Star Wars set, looking up at me. She didn’t look comfortable. But it wasn’t the clothes, she was waiting for my reaction.

Delli knelt behind him. I didn’t see Cher.

I sat down gently beside the table. Reached out slowly, not quite touching her.

“She won’t break,” Delli told me.

“But the mood might,” I whispered. I touched the very tip of a finger to her shoulder. “You… Uh, wow,” I said.

She relaxed and spun around, showing me the bare back.

“Still wow,” I said.

“Damn straight,” she told me.

“What’s the occasion?”

“Just a thought,” she said. “Maybe something new for the show.”

“Strange things happening with the American Undersized,” Delli said, gesturing to her new gnome size.

“So maybe we should start concentrating on that,” Electra said. “The gnomes and undines, the ghosts, the dreams…”

“Dreams?” I asked. “I remember Grandpa’s ghost from Xander and Raven’s visit, but…”

“Dreams!” Electra nodded. She stepped down off the coaster to come over to me. “Haven’t you read those stories?”

“If I did, I forgot,” I said. I do that sometimes.

“People have these dreams,” she said. “People who own sylphs. They have a dream where they’re the same size and they see life through their pet’s eyes.”

“Dreams are magic, now?” I asked.

“They’re all the same. Like there’s a script! It’s freaky!”

“Okay…” I said. “Do you have some people to interview?”

“Of course,” she said. She started patting her pockets, realized the clothes were too tight for any. “I have a list… Somewhere.”

“Okay. Well, I’ve seen your life, with the remotes.” I shrugged. “Not completely, but I think we’re close.”

“Close,” she agreed. “It’d be nice to see you, the real you, down here, but I don’t think it’s necessary. Not for our relationship.”

----

Magic invented a game of puppets. Each of us rolled a 20-sided die. Magic had a chart.

Electra got a puppet that was a mermaid. A blonde wearing Lederhosen.

Cher got a knight. Kind of a chess piece, he had a horse head, and his armor was black on black.

Magic rolled a superhero in tights. A strongman in zebra-striped tights.

Delli picked up a two-headed snake kind of like the doctor’s staff. They were wired so the mouth of one moved to match the other one. She rested it on her arm and played at sticking out the tongues.

I got a robot. A real 1950’s black-and-white sci-fi thing, with spurious cables and shiny colored stones where lights would go. I wiggled it onto a finger and played with it.

“But how would Lilliputians find out about robots?” I wondered.

“You didn’t believe that, did you?” Magic asked.

“I kinda did,” I said.

“Not a word about how they know about Lederhosen?” Electra asked.

“Lilliputians learned Lederhosen makes sense, though. It rhymes.”

“ALLITERATION is NOT rhyming!” she said with a stamp of her flipper.

I shrugged. “Okay, so anyway, what do we do?”

“Let’s try a cocktail party!” Magic suggested. “Figure out your character, and when you’re ready, we enter the party.”

There was a little table set up on top of my dining table. The sylphs stood on it, Delli sat with her feet under it, I sat across from it.

I thought about my robot.

Electra walked out onto the party floor. She moved kind of like Morticia Addams, tiny little steps that her mermaid costume allowed. “Yodel-ay-deep-blue!” She turned in place. “Am I the first guest to arrive?”

“Yes, y’are, little fish-ma’am,” Cher said, trotting forward and throwing out a really horrible Texas accent. “But ah’m racht behin’ yer.”

“Well, sir knight, tell me about yourself?”

“I’m Sir Loin of Angus, fish-ma’am,” Cher drawled.

And we were off.

-----

I figured my robot’s backstory was that he was the Control Rod Activator and Radiation Monitor for a nuclear power plant.

“That’s a mouthful,” Magic observed.

“Fellow party occupants can refer to me as CON-RAD for efficiency,” I monotoned. They all rolled their eyes, though they all giggled.

CON-RAD stayed by one side of the table because that’s how finger puppets have to interact.

Delli’s Nurse Practitioner – Delphi, had a bit more freedom, as long as no one bumped into Delli’s elbow elbow. She repeated the last word of everything she said said. That was her effort to indicate an echo echo. The two heads talking almost at once once…

Magic’s Captain Bellow pretty much spoke in ALL CAPS, as if everything was a public announcement. “LET US MOVE TO THE DRINKS TABLE IN A CALM AND ORDERLY FASHION, PARTY CITIZENS!”

It was an interesting exercise in character ad lib, really. Meeting other people’s people, indulging in the tiniest whim, all while knowing CON-RAD didn’t have to maintain continuity for more than one night.

When we broke for second dinner, everyone laughed and grabbed Magic. “That was PERFECT!” Cher told her.

Electra clapped her on the shoulder. “That’s the most fun I’ve had with Conrad’s pants on since…” She scratched her chin. “NO, I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun!” She turned to me. “Sorry.”

“I’ve had a blast,” I said. “Nothing to apologize for.”

Delli picked Magic up, cuddling her in her arms like a kitten. “I never thought anything could ever tie us closer together, but YOU did! It was like I really MET Captain Bellow! And he saw me, SAW Delphi!” She squealed, Magic squealed, they hugged.

“What’ll we do next time?” I asked.

“A game!” Delli said, putting Magic down.

“I’ve got it half done,” Magic told us. “It’s kind of a game of charades. See, we randomly pick the puppets, but we don’t put them on. And we don’t tell each other what puppet we picked!

“We take turns looking at the twenty puppets, and saying stuff like ‘my puppet hates the taste of apples,’ and we all take a guess which puppet it is.”

I carefully replaced the puppets and we went in to dinner.

------

I put Electra on my pillow and got ready for bed. She waited patiently, not moving to remove her clothes.

Since the night of the remote, we rather enjoyed me undressing her. Prone on the blanket, I cupped her in one hand and gently stripped away once piece at a time.

I paused after each garment to stroke and lick the revealed skin.

She stretched across my hand, hissing with pleasure. I tightened my grip, holding her in place as I continued to explore, taste, tickle.

I took one leg into my mouth to suck on, licking the sole of her foot with the back of my tongue. She laughed, shrieked, threw futile little kicks at my lips. I switched legs, then took both legs. Capturing her knees in my cheeks, I licked her inner thighs, gently exploring her pussy.

“Ooooooh, Master,” she purred.

“Damn straight,” I said. Or tried to. With a mouthful of girlfriend, there’s no telling what she actually heard.

I rolled onto my back, lifting her slightly, spreading her legs outside my lips, holding her weight with my tongue, breathing up her torso.

Two fingers dipped into my mouth then slid wetly across her breasts. She grabbed my thumb and pulled it in close against her.

I squeezed a bit and lifted her. “What did you mean by the most fun with Conrad’s pants-“

“ASSHOLE!” she screamed. She kicked, her heel digging my lip against the point of a canine. It hurt. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a lucky shot, either.

I continued licking, lipping, sucking. She forgave me as she came, grabbing my nose and squeezing my lips between her thighs.

Panting and spent, she collapsed over my face. I eased her to the pillow, then stared at her, watching her breathe as I played with myself.

“No,” she gasped. “I’ll… I’ll… I wanna…”

“Okay,” I said. “If you’re sure.” I kept pumping, slowly, as I lifted her to my chest. She crawled for a ways, then stood on shaky legs and walked towards my cock.

Once there, she touched me in three special places. Two on the rim of my helmet, grabbing the edge and squeezing, the third a place I couldn’t even find. She put her face against the underside of my cock and nibbled.

I exploded almost immediately. I considered the time researching those spots to be well spent. She just chuckled triumphantly, then crawled to my belly.

I lifted her to my face and kissed her, then cuddled her to my throat.

I don’t know about her, but I was asleep instantly.

And found myself at the base of a tree…

It was a giant tree, stretching up into the sky and curving gently away from me. I saw pine needles the size of my arm on twigs as big around as my calf. The sun peeked through the branches and needles above me.

Either I was next to the World Tree of Norse Legend or I was a sylph. I heard a sigh and my gaze dropped. A few feet away from me, a woman stood closer to the tree. She held a hand to the bark and drew a deep breath.

It was Magic and she was as tall as I was. Or I was as short as she was. I looked her over for a minute. She was naked. A hand to my waist found that I was too.

Her hair was the spiked do that I’d given her a few weeks before. She’d said she was going to keep it. I hoped she liked the look, though she may have been trying to hold onto how she connected with me that day.

Either way, I left it to her to decide.

Like I said, she was naked, and she looked good, but I was paying a lot more attention to what she was doing. She was just breathing. I could scent the pine looming above us, some flowers, the crisp spike of a brook somewhere close. When I concentrated, I could hear it babbling.

But it was her shoulders that got my real attention. This was about as relaxed as I’d ever seen Magic.

She wasn’t just an adrenaline junkie, like Cher suspected, nor suicidal as Delli accused. She just really, really connected with nature. She loved being outside.

And I’d have to make sure she got to do that more often.

“Okay,” I said. She spun around.

“Conrad! What are you doing in my dream? I mean as a sylph?”

“Aw,” I pouted. “You don’t dream about me?”

“I do,” she said. “But I dream of you in the house, and you’re full size. If it’s an outdoor dream, I’m usually alone or it’s with… Him.”

“Marcus,” I said. I wasn’t afraid of her former owner, or his memory. I stepped a bit closer. “Well, this is probably one of those more supernatural dreams like Electra mentioned.” I was tempted to call it a magic dream, but I was afraid she'd think I was teasing her.

“Oh!” she smiled. Then she grimaced. “Oh. Oh, no! No! No, no, no, no!” She hugged her arms to her sides. “No, no, this should be Electra’s dream!”

“I’m quite happy to be here,” I said. “With you.” I looked up past her. “Are we going to climb this tree? Is that why we’re at the base of it?”

“Base?” she repeated. “Conrad, don’t look down.”

“Does that EVER work?” I asked, before looking down.

We weren’t at the base of the tree. We were on a branch. And we were way, way up in the air. The ground was far, far, far below us.

I started hyperventilating. I was going to drop to the branch and hold it with all four limbs, but I was afraid that in dropping down, I’d lose my balance and fall.

Fall all the way down, down, down to the ground.

“Agggh,” I said, alerting her to my condition of utter terror.

“It’s okay, Conrad,” she said gently. One hand took each wrist and slowly drew me forward. We inched along, a step at a time, to the base. The branch grew wider, the bark smoother, the footing better.

At the tree’s bole, she set me down with my back to the tree. “Aggh,” I thanked her.

“You’re welcome,” she smiled.

She turned to sit down next to me, arm around my shoulder. “Are you okay, now?”

“I’m a million feet up in a Ponderosa pine, waiting for the breeze that’ll blow me over the side to my death. So, not terribly okay, but not dead yet.”

Magic leaned over a bit, then came back to me. “No more than 60 feet, Conrad. You're lucky. These things can grow 200 feet tall."

“Where did you get such a cruel sense of humor?” I asked.

She laughed and kissed my cheek. “It’s a dream, Conrad, we probably can’t die in here.”

I grabbed her hand, held it tight. “Probably?”

“What can I say? It’s my first supernatural dream.” She settled in against me. “Man, Electra is going to kill me.”

“Why?”

“This is supposed to be her dream,” she said.

“Naw,” I told her. “If she had the dream, who’d interview her for the show?”

“This isn’t about the show!” Magic protested. “Electra’s the one that needs to be closer to you!”

I laughed at that. “Right now, Electra’s curled up against my collarbone. Any closer and she’d be a skin graft.”

Magic moaned. “I don’t want to take Electra’s place.”

“Then don’t,” I said easily. I waved at the tree, the sky, the dream. “But all this? This is about you. I saw you.”

“You’ve seen me naked before,” she said.

“I haven’t seen you this relaxed, though. You really like Nature, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said.

I nodded. “So, a picnic in a park downtown probably isn’t the same. It’s not what you need.” I nodded firmly. “Okay.”

“You said that,” she recalled. “That was the first thing you said.”

“I don’t think I can match Marcus at hiking, skiing, sailing,” I apologized. “But I know where we can rent some cabins, way off in the wilderness. Or… Well, I was thinking of replacing the Tantive IV once more. Maybe something that’s more useful for off-the-grid camping?”

“You don’t have to do that,” she said. Well, her mouth said no. But her eyes lit up.

“No, I do not,” I said. I shifted a bit on the branch. “But if we get out of this alive, maybe we can extend our horizons just a teensy bit. A camper, or an SUV with room for me to have a sleeping bag? Something where Delli can be surrounded by the comforts of civilization, but just outside the door is… Nature,” I said with a dramatic finish.

“Nature,” she repeated breathlessly.

I offered her my hand. We shook. To days in Nture.

“No, how do we get out of here?” I asked.

“We can just sit here,” Magic assured me. She scooted a bit closer to me. We sat there. It was a nice day. The sun shone on us in between the branches. But I was still a little chilly.

I was glad to have Magic leaning against me, touching up along my body.

I’d always known the sylphs were fond of touching. Whatever their culture before they shrank, the body had to work hard to keep them warm. They shed heat too easily.

Electra could explain about the mass to surface ratio that causes it. But even knowing it, I’d never really felt it before.

I’d touched my sylphs, even naked, and I was the one providing heat to the tiny.

This was differnet for me. A whole big body of warmth all touching me. I usually had only a few ounces of sylph touching me at a time. This was nice.

I started to relax a little bit. Taking big breaths of the clean air. I smelled something that reminded me of the county fair. Something of an animal. I couldn’t identify it any better.

Magic shifted a bit, lowering her hea to my shoulder. “This is nice,” she said.

“It is,” I agreed.

I finally realized that the warm body rubbing against me was a pretty, naked woman. And that part of that body were two very nice breasts. And I noticed that a part of me had figured that out some time ago. I was erect.

Magic noticed it as well. “I guess you’re feeling less frightened,” she chuckled. She gave me a little kiss on the shoulder.

“Um… Conrad usually screws things up,” I said slowly. “So, I guess, I can choose to offend you by apologizing for the hard-on. Or I can offend you by saying, despite the evidence, that I don’t want to sleep with you. Either would be a typically Conrad thing to do.”

“It would,” she laughed. “But it’s okay. It’s natural, or natural enough. I don’t mind that it’s there.” She pat me on the shoulder reassuringly. “But this time, when I say that Electra WOULD kill me if I did anything about it, you shouldn’t argue with me.”





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Index

26. Kitty Kitty

28. New New