Winter Spire: Tiny Temptation

by Anya Merchant

  “There,” he said. “We’ll just hang out here, and before you know it, you’ll be jumbo sized again.”

  Dani punched the side of his leg with her miniaturized fist and Felix chuckled. She smiled at him and carefully settled down on the couch, avoiding the cracks in the cushions as she got comfortable.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Felix raised an eyebrow at her.

  “For what?”

  “For being you.” Dani smiled wide enough for Felix to see her dimples, tiny on her face, but still visible.

  CHAPTER 5

  The rest of the night passed by uneventfully. Dani fell asleep after the first episode of a Netflix original superhero show, and Felix made her a bed on the floor from a small towel and another handkerchief before stretching out himself.

  Stella was still in her room when he stirred the next morning. Dani was pacing back and forth in front of the TV. She’d made a few modifications to her makeshift dress, cutting off the extra on the bottom, adding a slit along one leg, and tying a small piece of string around the waist to give it a little more shape.

  “Good morning,” said Felix. “How did you sleep?”

  “Fine,” said Dani, curtly. “Go knock on my mother’s door and see if she’s made any progress.”

  “You could at least say, please, you know,” said Felix. “It’s almost like your patience shrunk along with your-“

  “Felix!” yelled Dani, in her tiny voice. “Just do it!”

  Felix smiled at her and carefully made his way by. He couldn’t remember his dreams from the night, but he had an odd sense that one of them may have involved falling on a tiny girl and crushing her to death accidentally.

  Stella’s door was shut. Felix knocked softly a couple of times and then tried the handle. It slid open easily, and he peered into the room.

  “Stella?” He panned his eyes over to the bed, and immediately flinched away, noticing that she’d fallen asleep naked, and was now only half covered by her sheets. She was turned away from him, but he could still see her butt poking out suggestively, and the curve of one of her breasts.

  “Uh… Felix?” Stella pulled the sheet about her as she rolled to face him. “What time is it?”

  “Morning,” he said. “Any luck?”

  Stella shook her head, frowning and apparently unaware of how much of her body was still on display. Felix did the polite thing and turned to face the back wall.

  “I have a couple of ideas to go on,” she said. “I’m going to need your help today, more than ever.”

  “Alright,” said Felix. “Do you think you could maybe get dressed first?”

  Stella made an embarrassed noise and Felix heard the sound of the sheets being drawn across her abruptly.

  “Knock loud next time,” she said. “I’ll meet you out in the kitchen in a couple of minutes.”

  Felix nodded and walked out of her room. He came within half an inch of stepping on Dani, who was, as she had been the day before, eavesdropping just outside the door.

  “It’s probably not the best idea to do that, now that you’re miniaturized,” said Felix.

  “It’s the only thing that I can still do effectively,” said Dani.

  Felix shrugged and bent over to offer her his hand. She looked at it curiously, and Felix nodded toward the kitchen.

  “Do you want me to bring you in there?” he asked. “I can put you up on the table so that you’re not at risk of getting stepped on.”

  “…Okay,” said Dani. She reached one arm across her body and rubbed her elbow as she climbed into Felix’s hand. There was something very vulnerable about her mannerisms. It had been there, as far as Felix remembered, back when she was regular sized, but it had never been quite so pronounced.

  Felix lifted her up onto the counter. Stella walked into the living room a moment later, dressed in a loose long sleeve blouse and black sweat pants. She paused in front of the refrigerator, and then began pulling out food for breakfast.

  She cooked in silence, with both Felix and Dani watching her patiently. Felix could see the gears turning in her head, trying to come up with a solution to her daughter’s predicament.

  It wasn’t until she’d set a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast down in front of Felix, and a much smaller plate, made from the lid of a mason jar and sporting a mini meal, down in front of Dani, that she began to speak.

  “I have an idea,” said Stella. “Bur… I’m going to need your help, Felix, to make it working.”

  “He’s willing!” said Dani, answering for him. Felix glowered at her, but shrugged his shoulders.

  “Just tell me what I need to do,” said Felix. “Hopefully it’s within reason.”

  “It shouldn’t be too hard,” said Stella. “I need you to get a few magical samples for the potion.”

  “Sure,” he said, taking a bite out of his food.

  “You’ll have to be on the lookout for Jesamar,” said Stella. “I doubt she’d try anything in broad daylight, especially in front of the townspeople, but she’s volatile. There’s no way to know for sure.”

  “Mom!” cried an impatient Dani. “Tell him what he needs to get already!”

  Stella frowned at her, but lifted her gaze to meet Felix’s eye.

  “I need three things,” said Stella. “One… the blood of a magically enhanced person. Your blood should work fine, Felix.”

  “Okay,” he said. “That’s doable.”

  “Two,” said Stella. “I’m going to need a diluted sample of sweat or bodily fluids from as many of the townspeople as you can get.”

  “Uh…” Felix scratched his head. “That sounds tricky.”

  “It would be, but our handyman finished the repairs to the town’s indoor pool a few days ago,” said Stella.

  “Really?” Felix shook his head. “I didn’t hear about that.”

  “It happened during your winter odyssey,” said Stella.

  “Ah, gotcha.”

  “The pool is in the tower’s basement,” said Stella. “You should be able to get down there by taking the stairs.”

  “I don’t have a swimsuit,” he said.

  “I have one that Trent left here that you can borrow,” said Stella.

  Felix nodded again. He tapped his fingers on the kitchen table and took another bite of his food. Both of the ingredients Stella had sent him after sounded as though they’d be relatively easy to get ahold of, but she still looked a little anxious, as though the worst was yet to come.

  “Finally,” said Stella. “The last sample. It’s not going to be easy to get.”

  “I’ll manage,” said Felix. “Let’s hear it.”

  “I need you to get ahold of… a nun’s panties.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Felix shook his head and scratched at his ear.

  “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” he asked. “Because it sounded like you just said-“

  “A nun’s panties,” repeated Stella. “We have one staying with us currently by the name of Sister Catherine.”

  “Is this sample, uh, negotiable?” asked Felix. “Like, couldn’t you use Dani’s panties instead?”

  A tiny fist struck his arm, and Felix looked down to see Dani glaring at him, her arms crossed over her makeshift white dress.

  “It needs to be Sister Catherine’s,” said Stella. “There’s a form of magic that comes from her faith and purity. We should be able to extract some of it from her… panties.”

  “No offense,” said Felix. “But this sounds vaguely insane. You’re sure? A nun’s panties?”

  “A nun’s panties.” Stella smiled. “I have an idea about how you could go about it, if you’d like to hear.”

  “I would,” said Felix. “Very much so.”

  Stella leaned back against the counter and ran her hands through her hair.

  “It’s Saturday,” she said. “She probably isn’t going to be occupied with much. Find her, chat her up, and invite her to go swimming with you. You can get the pool sample while yo
u’re at it, too.”

  Felix nodded. It was a good plan, perfectly doable.

  “Alright,” he said. “I’ll give it a go.”

  He finished eating his food, glancing down at Dani’s tiny form every now and then. She’d barely eaten, and she hadn’t been given much to eat to begin with. Felix felt his stomach twist when he thought about what it must be like to be stuck in a miniaturized body.

  Felix wiped his hands on his jeans and stood up from the table. Stella was standing nearby, watching Dani and the door cautiously.

  “And you’ll be okay here for the day?” he asked.

  Stella shrugged.

  “For today,” she said. “But Dani’s absence will only go unnoticed for a few days. We might be able to make an excuse on Monday, but they’ll be expecting her to be in school, to help out with the children.”

  Felix chewed on his lip. He tapped his finger on his wrist and then headed for the door.

  “Felix,” called Dani’s quiet, tiny voice.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you,” she said. “For doing this.”

  Felix smiled in her direction.

  “No problem,” he said. “Just don’t go drinking unlabeled potions next time.”

  Felix exited the apartment into the drab hallway of one of the tower’s upper floors. He headed for the stairs, thinking for a moment about where to look for Sister Catherine.

  North Spire didn’t have a dedicated church. It wasn’t something that the tiny town had ever prioritized, even though many of the people were deeply religious. There was, however, a small room that Felix had seen small groups of them congregate to for spiritual advice and meditation. Sister Catherine didn’t do sermons, but she was still a woman of faith, and helped the townspeople in her own way.

  The room was on the tower’s ninth floor, in a section of the building primarily used for storage. Felix made his way up the stairs in haste, and had to force himself to slow down and catch his breath when he stepped back out into the dusty hallway.

  The ninth floor was quiet, almost eerily so. Felix walked down the hallway slowly and around the corner, passing underneath a burned out overhead light, and then stopping in front of a doorway.

  He reached his hand up to knock, but the door was already open a crack. Tentatively, he set his palm against it and pushed.

  Sister Catherine was inside. She was facing away from Felix, leaning over to slide a small chair across the floor toward a table on the other side of the small, dusty room. She was wearing casual clothing, a pair of yoga pants along with a loose tan blouse in the style of a tunic.

  From the angle Felix was standing at, he could barely make out her underwear in the exposed space above her pants, where her shirt had ridden up. She was wearing a thong. Felix blinked, squinting in disbelief. She was definitely wearing a thong. He cleared his throat.

  “Oh!” Sister Catherine jumped slightly and spun around to face him. “I didn’t realize anyone was there! Felix, please, come on in.”

  Sister Catherine was tall for a woman, almost at eye level with Felix. She had long blonde hair, eyes the color of the ocean in an equatorial region on a sunny day, and modest assets. She apparently wasn’t required to abide by stuffy religious dress codes, but from what Felix had seen from her, she was usually prudent in her fashion choices. He thought again about that thong, and realized that he’d just been standing there, staring at her, for several seconds.

  “Uh, hi,” he said. “Sister Catherine, how are you?”

  She smiled at him, flashing perfectly white teeth and putting him at ease.

  “I’m well, Felix,” she said. “I was just finishing up with a bit of cleaning in my time off.”

  “Devout as always,” said Felix. “Listen, I was going to head down to the pool and go for a swim. Do you want to join me?”

  Sister Catherine gave him an odd look. She folded her arms across her chest and looked down at the ground, hiding her expression from him.

  “It is okay for you to swim, isn’t it?” He scratched his head. “I mean, it isn’t against your dress code to wear a bikini, is it?”

  “No, in fact it isn’t,” said Sister Catherine. “My congregation is rather open minded when it comes to this kind of thing. I’d love to join you, Felix.”

  He let out a sigh of relief and smiled at her. Sister Catherine nodded to a few more chairs that had been set up in a semi-circle in the room, and Felix helped her move them back to the table.

  “Will Dani and Stella be joining us as well?” asked Catherine. Felix winced.

  “They’re… busy, today,” he said.

  “Is that so?” she replied. There was something odd in her voice, as though she didn’t entirely believe his excuse.

  “Dani has a bit of a fever,” Felix lied.

  “Really? Maybe I should bring some soup over, after we’re done swimming.”

  “Uh… She doesn’t like soup,” said Felix.

  Sister Catherine laughed at that, but seemed to let the subject drop.

  “You know, you should look into petitioning the Mayor for lodgings of your own if you intend to remain here in North Spire for much longer,” said the nun. “It is borderline scandalous for you to be sharing an apartment with two attractive, single women.”

  Felix shrugged.

  “Maybe from your perspective, sister,” he said. “I’m not religious myself. It doesn’t violate anything sacred for me.”

  “That doesn’t prevent it from being sinful!” snapped Catherine.

  “I’m sure my immortal soul can handle it,” said Felix.

  Sister Catherine made an annoyed noise.

  “I’m giving you a bible after we’ve had our swim,” she said. “And I expect you to read it!”

  Felix chuckled and waved a hand at her.

  CHAPTER 7

  The two of them walked down flight after flight of stairs together, stopping at Sister Catherine’s apartment on the fourth floor so she could grab her swimwear. Felix waited outside, and when Catherine emerged, she was wearing a very flattering purple polka dot bikini with a sun skirt wrapped around her lower half. She also carried two towels, and handed one of them to him.

  “We can come back up here when we’re done,” she said. “There are a few sections of the good book in particular that I think I should read out loud for you.”

  “That sounds good to me.” Felix grinned at her. It would be far, far easier for him to get his hands on her panties this way. He could sit with her for a while, excuse himself to the bathroom when the opportunity arose, and raid her dirty clothes hamper.

  Sister Catherine gave him a funny look, as though she was sensing his less than pure intentions. Felix scratched his head, fidgeting awkwardly and nodding toward the stairs at the end of the hallway.

  “Uh, shall we?” He smiled innocently at her. “I’ve never been down to the pool before. Stella said it was in the tower’s basement?”

  Sister Catherine nodded.

  “Yes. It was actually designed to serve as part of the heat sink for the generators. The water is warm, perfect for an area with year round winter weather.”

  “Awesome,” said Felix.

  They walked down a few more flights of stairs, passing by the tower’s lobby, and exiting out into the basement. They walked passed the generators and through a door that Felix hadn’t notice the last time he’d been in the area.

  The pool area was far more extravagant than what Felix had been expecting. The pool itself was massive, close to Olympic size, if he had to guess. On one side of it was a large, bubbling hot tub.

  On the other was a mockup of a beach, complete with a sandbox sunken into the concrete floor that stretched from wall to wall and took up the section of the room furthest to the left. Fake palm trees poked out of the floor in places. A mural of the horizon, complete with puffy white clouds and a sun that had a bright, calming light built into it covered the back wall, directly across from the door.

  “Here we are!” said Siste
r Catherine.

  Felix took a couple of moments to admire the setup. It was beautiful, and contrasted spectacularly against the harsh climate outside the walls of the tower. It felt like a representation of the attitudes of the people of North Spire, taken the cards they’d been dealt and playing them in a creative fashion.

  “This is amazing,” said Felix. There were a dozen people already milling about the pool. Felix spotted Shane, one of the few people he’d gotten to know outside of Stella and Dani in his time in Alaska. His father, Sheriff Burke, was lying on a pool chair to the side, head lolled back, with snores echoing from his face.

  “Felix,” said Shane, splashing to the side of the pool and slicking his wet hair back. “I see you brought company.”

  He nodded curtly to Sister Catherine, who smiled wanly back at him. The two were not on the best terms, for reasons that Felix couldn’t guess at.

  “Hey buddy,” he said. “Why the heck didn’t you ever mention this pool to me?”

  “One of the filters was clogged for almost a month,” said Shane. “I wasn’t sure if it was ever going to be fixed. Let me tell you, I’d almost forgotten how much of a difference it made.”

  He rolled forward into the water, pushing off against the side of the pool with his legs and shooting outward. He almost crashed into a woman facing the other way, only righting himself and regaining control after a few seconds of floundering.

  “I’m going to set out towels down in a spot on the sand,” said Sister Catherine. “The men’s changing room is over there.”

  Felix nodded to her and headed off in the direction of the door she’d indicated. He pushed his way inside, immediately being hit by a mixture of familiar, unsavory scents that all locker rooms have in common.

  The lockers didn’t actually lock, which didn’t surprise Felix. North Spire was a small enough community for theft to be something that people didn’t have to give a second thought. Felix picked an open one and set about stripping out of his clothes and dropping them inside.