Hhhhhh person living in abusive household who then discovers the borrower living there. Gets emotionally invested in said borrower, would do anything for them, insanely secretive and enamoured by how tiny they are and how gentle they get to be when in contact. Human being extra terrified of their abuser finding the tiny, an extra liability basically. Abuser is yelling at the human or scolding etc etc as the borrower has been shut in a drawer because the human didn’t have anywhere else to put them. Protectively standing in front of the drawer or shelf with sweat beading down their neck, horrified that their little friend is going to be discovered. They don’t even care about the physical or mental punches being thrown at them right now, they’re going to lose their mind if anything happens to this borrower.
Bonus points if the borrower isn’t really aware of the abuse, so this is the first time they’re seeing it all and realizing oh, this is why this human has been so kind and gentle towards me.
Abuser somehow getting their hands on the borrower and the human absolutely LOSING it. First-time anger and an adrenaline-driven tackle. Sobbing their eyes out, literally about to have a heart attack because they know what this person is capable of, the idea of them inflicting any harm on a person that fits in their palm is making them feral.
Human coming home one day and their abuser is in a terrible mood so when they come into their room and see the borrower out in the open they freak out and are immediately like “GO go go you have to get out of here please, PLEASE don’t be out here right now oh my gosh no no no no get out get out get OUT.”
Lowkey don’t know how big my tinies are. In my head I’m like “Yeah. Three inches sounds about right” because looking at a ruler, 4 inches feels too tall? But then when I start thinking about interactions all of a sudden it’s like,,, oh,,, dude, if this chick is three inches tall then these hyper specific hand interactions aren’t really size accurate. Also she’s tiny af. So I lowkey. Keep it. Ambiguous…
“Oh.” Misty lets go of her outstretched wing, tucking her hand back to her chest.
She could barely see his face with how bleak the lighting was in his room. However, she was so close that she didn’t need anything apart from the moonlight that peered through the curtains.
Eli’s eyes were a blue that consumed her, and they had been locked on her ever since she had startled awake.
Rolling onto her back, she lets out an awkward huff, allowing her arms to fall limp beside her.
The ceiling was always so far away. From the ground, of course it was, given that was where she spent most of her time. But she expected it to feel less distant now that she was on the pillow of a human’s bed.
Still, it was a sky in and of itself.
She shivers involuntarily as a breeze from the window rushes up her legs, goosebumps rippling over her skin.
The streaks of tears that had settled on her face felt icy now, discomfort increasing by the minute.
It was so dark, she was so cold, inside and out. Yet mere inches away from her was the most insurmountable source of warmth she could imagine.
Eli was curled up on his side, facing her on that very pillow. One little shift and she’d probably be sent sliding down to meet his cheek, but he tried his best to stay level with her.
She liked that she didn’t have to say much. That he just got it.
“Are you cold, baby?” His voice tousled her hair, wild and tangled from all the tossing and turning.
Only he had the ability to lace such an affectionate phrase with such casualty. His tone had barely changed.
“Yeah,” she sniffles, eyes darting back and forth between the popcorn ceiling and the blue of his massive irises.
She curls her legs up towards her chest, then rolls back onto her side to face him.
A sigh parts her lips as his hand approaches, dwarfing her under his palm. Immediately she was taken into a different atmosphere, heat melting into her body from the heavy contact.
“Eli,” she whispers, trying to hold back another flow of tears.
He rests his thumb against her cheek, giving slow strokes. “Hm.”
She could feel the familiar grooves of his thumbprint. Could draw out the swirls herself if she was asked.
“They’re still on?”
He hums. “Yeah. Like always.”
A hitched inhale. “Is that stupid?”
“You’re not stupid, Mist, come on.”
She loved it here. She’d stay cocooned under his hand forever if she could. Would stitch herself to him if it were possible.
The guilt ate away at her sometimes. She had everything she ever wanted in this boy, and still, there were other things that continued to haunt her every waking hour. And every hour that she managed to fall asleep.
The nightmares weren’t terrible, but they weren’t all too different, either.
It was always the same variation. Staring at her own wings, ripped away from her instead of an extension from her back.
Sometimes she’d be holding them. Sometimes she’d be stranded on a counter, peering over the edge to find them mangled on the kitchen floor far below.
Tonight, however, they were between Eli’s fingers.
There was never any blood. Just the translucent appendages and a few gut-twisting veins that stuck out from the bottom, where they were meant to connect to her.
In the dream, the nightmare, whatever she was meant to call it, he was still so soft. He had them pinched gently, playing with them, almost. Chin propped by the heel of his other hand, casually displaying them before her. Blue eyes locked onto her as always, instead of the little dismembered pair.
She didn’t have the heart to break it to him. She knew how it would serve as a plague, being the agent of her night terror.
And the pain, it felt so real. The same kind that she would get right before a spasm. It soaked up her entire back and threatened to burn the rest of her. But still, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the giant blond.
Misty didn’t know what scared her more, the recurrence of the nightmare, or the fact that it didn’t even feel like one anymore.
The tears she woke up with often indicated that she must have been at unease, but truth be told, Eli could probably do anything to her and she’d favour it regardless.
He could tear her apart limb from limb, and as long as she was in his hands, she wouldn’t mind.
It was laughable. How the thought of anyone touching her made her want to puke. The feeling of massive digits wrapping around her and restricting her movement, suffocating her, proving just how helpless she really was.
Even then, on his pillow, she grabbed onto his fingers to pull them tighter over her. Tucking herself in for the remainder of the night.
Eli’s gentle breaths wash over her as he continues to stroke her face, pressing closer on top so that her wings met the soft skin of his palm.
A tender smile spreads over him.
“You’re not gonna tell me, are ya?”
Misty shakes her head, arms snaking around his thumb and pulling it close to her chest. She absorbed the thump of his pulse, beating from each of his fingers into her, strength dimmed in some places and terribly alive in others.
She wondered if he could feel the quickening of her own heart, or if his own beating overpowered it.
“Eli…” she mutters, clamping her eyes shut to avoid his gaze.
“Misty,” he mimics.
“Eli, I love you.”
His fingers curl around her completely then, securing her flush against his palm and pulling her in close to his cheek.
“And I love you, my baby girl,” he coos, nuzzling her against his skin. “My precious little angel.”
It used to feel so ridiculous coming out of his mouth. It still did, sometimes.
She didn’t really know what they were.
He was just her Eli. And she was just his Misty.
They didn’t really find the need to slap a label onto it just yet.
There was a thread, deep in the tiny redhead’s mind, from which her sanity hung.
This boy, this boy who held her close and let her trail after him wherever he went, made up every last fiber.
Her knees dig into the skin of his cheek with how his hand pressed her there, his fingers wrapped tight around her.
“Eli,” she repeats, taking another deep breath. Soaking up the scent and the warmth and the unnamable something that emanated from him.
“Mist, they’re still on… Right here.” He squeezes harder, if that were even possible. Just enough that she was glued to him, minus any discomfort.
“You won’t let me go?” She breaths out, shakily this time. Rushed.
“I won’t let you go,” he whispers back, lashes fluttering shut with finality.
The buzz from the vent across the room was all that accompanied the buzz in her head. It was enough for the night, she decided, giving into the warm touch. She could almost pretend that they were alone in this house.
Eli was enough. This was enough. Nightmare or no nightmare, her wings were still on.
lying on the wide expanse of a giant's chest, feeling the firmness of their sternum as it gently raises and lowers with each deep breath, bringing you along with the cyclical motion. even them breathing is able to sweep you along - but instead of this being disquieting, you are comforted by how completely surrounded you are by someone who cares for you. the even, slow thumping of their heartbeat beneath you eventually lulls you to your own slumber.
facing a giant as you lay side by side, only the broad sweep of their shoulders and torso visible to you as they fall deeper into sleep. you're held in the soft plush of a down pillow, their deep breaths wash over you gently, like the tide.
a giant asking "can I hold you?", their voice rumbling as they struggle to keep their eyes open - always willing to you space if you need it. you take a second, taking in their soft expression, before nodding. slowly, like always, they raise their hand towards your body, before the gentle pressure from their fingers envelops you from your shoulders down to your legs. they smile softly as you wrap an arm around their thumb. as your surrounded by their warm, stable presence, you begin to grow heavier and slip into an effortless slumber, knowing you are in the safest place you can be.
unintentionally falling asleep because you feel so secure, relaxed against the slope of a giant's neck, the steady beat of their pulse making it harder and harder for you to stay conscious. the last thing you feel is the slightest movement of their shoulders, chuckling as they realize what's happening but not daring to disturb your rest. they make sure to keep as still as they can till you wake to the world.
A giant that in his younger years used to terrorise a town for some reason. Be it teenager angst, the world just too small for him, or angry and pushing people away.
Regardless, years later and giant now a dad of tiny human kid. Working to clear up his image in town and doing his best with his baby. Always worried his precious kid would ever look at him with fear like the other town folks used to (and some still do)
Early wattpad g/t was definitely something else but I do think it was stunning for introducing me to “borrower caught in glue trap” as well as “giant-human-mixed-sized-schools” and “little one x100” and “tiny sleeping on giant’s chest with hand cupped over them” and “tiny being locked in a drawer with a huff” etc etc etc. because omg those tropes were so overused like they’d be in EVERY SINGLE FIC but wow I was devouring them.
It’s been especially warm these past few weeks, and walking barefoot on the pavement outside got me thinking back to a very G/t-coded reel I saw once, where a man saves a frantic little caterpillar from roasting on a sidewalk.
It’s funny where the ideas for these stories come from, I’m telling ya.
I reused some of the same terms for the people in this story that I used in a previous one because they fit especially well here. It may or may not become a recurring thing, we'll see 😗
SYN: At Weston Prep, Cal has spent months proving he belongs among the elite. But when a chance encounter puts his future at risk, he must decide whether belonging is worth becoming someone he doesn’t recognize.
OC content | Premature themes (14+) | Fictional discrimination | Power dynamics | Dehumanizing rhetoric | ~2,900 words
High Society
Bellametre
It was so hot the asphalt smelled like burning rubber.
Cal wrinkled his nose as he watched spittle spray from Aurelian’s mouth onto the picnic table between them, speckling the half-finished essay about the history of Parvum integration into Magnum society. If Aurelian had been standing over by the road, every word would’ve sizzled when it hit the pavement.
Because the guy would not. Stop. Talking.
Cal’s leg bounced beneath the table. If he didn’t finish writing Aurelian’s paper by tomorrow, he could kiss his shot at the Veri Magni Society goodbye. Not one pointed look, impatient sigh, or exaggerated clearing of his throat had managed to shut the guy up.
“...and somewhere in there, I'd like you to mention the problems with forcing businesses to hire a certain percentage of Parvum employees. It's insane. Half the places around here lose patronage when they’re required to hire people who can’t even lift a pencil...”
Cal pulled the paper closer and rested his forehead in one hand. Maybe if he couldn’t see Aurelian’s smug face, the self-righteous drone of his voice would be easier to tune out. He tapped the back of the borrowed fountain pen against his lip.
Xenophobia.
Was there an ae in there?
“...lawyers, for example. Who's going to take a Parvum lawyer seriously? Most courthouses are older than the Intersize Amendment, so they can't even accommodate them properly. The whole thing's absurd. Without the presence... without the substance... people are being asked to accept something that simply doesn’t wor—”
“Look, Aurelian...”
The words slipped out before Cal could stop them. He cursed himself and bit down on his tongue. Nobody interrupted Aurelian Dupont: captain of the rowing team, runner-up for president of Veri Magni, son of a man rich enough to buy Weston Prep twice over and still have money left for the football field.
Cal risked a glance over the hand covering half his face. Aurelian’s smirk had disappeared. The signet ring he’d been idly turning vanished into his clenched fist as he leaned forward, creasing the shoulders of his maroon blazer.
“And what am I supposed to look at? The half-finished first page of my minimum seven-page essay?”
Cal swallowed. He straightened on the bench but kept his eyes fixed somewhere below Aurelian’s face.
“I was just wondering if...” He cleared his throat. “Maybe this essay would be more effective if you gave me a minute to catch up on all the points you've been making?”
Points was certainly one word for them. Cal wasn’t used to writing from this side of the Parv humanitarian debate, let alone at this level of venom. The social change brought about by a spontaneous mutation that had transformed thousands of people generations ago was a sensitive topic, and Aurelian’s argument was riddled with holes. Cal dreaded the battle it would take to wrestle it into something that could survive seven pages.
Aurelian stared at him for a long moment. His thin eyebrows lifted, and the sliver of his lip curled.
“I don’t have time to spoon-feed you,” he said. "The only reason Veri Magni is even considering someone from such a modest background is because you're supposed to be good at this."
Cal’s grip tightened around the fountain pen.
Modest background.
They’d been considering his modest background for almost the whole year. Every few months came another assurance: Keep proving yourself. Keep being useful. You’ll get your chance.
Being accepted into Veri Magni meant a seat at club meetings. Invitations to all the right parties. Connections to the Ivy Leagues. Never having to worry about the state of your future again.
If they kept their word.
“Keep up,” Aurelian said, settling back into his seat, “and maybe I’ll let you off early.” His grin returned. “Now, where was I?”
Cal wasn’t listening anymore. Instead, he found himself looking out over the grass beyond. They called it the park, though it was really more of a courtyard stretching between the Academy buildings, its weedless lawn trimmed into neat stripes that ran parallel to the four-lane road. Stare at it too long, and the alternating bands made your vision blur.
His gaze drifted farther, to the treeline at the back of the property, where the campus gave way to wild forest. The green was deeper there, weeping willows drooping low enough to brush the blackberry bushes. If you listened carefully, you could hear the creek running behind them, where students had been expressly forbidden to swim.
Sweat trickled down Cal’s back beneath his blazer. Maybe he’d forget the essay altogether...
He drew a slow breath and lowered his pen to the paper, forcing himself to focus on Aurelian’s relentless monologue.
Then something caught his eye.
A Parv.
On the road.
He blinked and squinted, making sure the heat wasn’t playing tricks on him. It wasn’t. That was definitely a Parv. She looked to be a woman, only a few inches tall, carrying something in her arms as she walked toward the other side of the road. She’d only just stepped off the shoulder, barely past the first white line.
Cal could only stare. He hadn’t seen a Parv in person in months. Most lived on the other side of town in designated areas, where more housing had been built to their scale. Parvs rarely came this far into the Magnum neighborhoods unless they had somewhere they needed to be. What was she doing here? Weston Prep was one of the last schools in the state that hadn’t gone co-size.
And what was she thinking? It had to be at least a hundred degrees, the air itself wobbling. If she tried to cross that road, she’d fry. He narrowed his eyes. It didn’t look like she was wearing much in the way of shoes.
“...if we’re looking at solutions for the job crisis, obviously the answer is to start promoting career paths better suited to them. Things they'd excel at, like cleaning the insides of automobiles...”
Cal looked back down at the paper, but his eyes refused to stay there. They drifted to the Parv woman as she kept trudging across the road. Was she even watching for cars?
“...and if there’s any pushback, well, at a certain point you have to take whatever advantages you can. Wasn’t it Machiavelli who said, ‘It is much safer to be feared than loved, if one cannot be both’?”
She'd made it barely an eighth of the way across and was already picking up speed. Maybe she’d turn back.
“...not that you'd have to resort to force. Given the difference in scale and power, all it would take is withholding resources, relocation, or one of Ieyasu's techniques, like requiring the working men's families to live where they're better protected...”
She was jogging now. Whatever she carried seemed to be straining her arms.
“...but if we're thinking long-term, you'd have to start with a campaign, maybe even statewide, and hope it gains enough traction to spread. This is a problem across the whole country. I’m not saying they’re lesser, just that pretending we’re the same has its consequences...”
She broke into a run. Her foot caught on something, and she stumbled, nearly falling.
“What are you looking at?”
Cal was going to regret this.
He shot to his feet, the bench screeching across the bricks. Before Aurelian could say another word, he was moving.
“Where are you going?” Aurelian called after him.
Cal didn’t answer. He reached the edge of the shade and stepped into the full blaze of the sun, lifting a hand to shield his eyes. He didn’t even have to run. Within seconds, his shoes crashed down on either side of the Parv woman, but she was so intent on the road ahead that she never noticed him. This close, he could finally see what she’d been carrying.
A child.
A little boy, no older than two, with wide brown eyes. He faced backward over her shoulder, staring up at the shape now looming over them. His chubby arm shot up.
“Mama! Mama!”
The woman looked up, and that was the last thing Cal had time to process before he reached down and scooped both of them into his hands.
His brain sputtered. He straightened far too quickly, forgetting every instinct to move with care. All he could register was the tiny weight in his palms, the startled writhing, the heat of her skin against his own.
He stood motionless, his cupped hands raised to his face. The woman lay on her side in his palm, stunned. Her hair was a frazzled mess, strands plastered to her sweat-slick forehead. Flushed and panting, her chest rose and fell in rapid, gasping breaths. One arm flattened the child against her chest while the other dug into the webbing between Cal’s thumb and forefinger with a white-knuckle grip.
She was so. Tiny.
She barely reached the length of his little finger. And yet the detail was astonishing. Fine lines had begun to gather around her eyes. Freckles dusted her face. Dirt darkened the edges of her fingernails. She wore a thin, poorly made dress and shoes that were nearly falling apart. A small purse hung at her side. A thin copper ring rested on a chain around her neck.
Heat crept into Cal’s face as he realized he was staring. He tore his eyes away and shook his head.
“I’m sorry.”
He was still standing in the middle of the road. He started toward the far shoulder, careful to keep his hands steady, his fingers slightly curled.
“I’m sorry. It’s just so hot, and I saw you struggling, and I thought I’d lend a han—”
He flinched as her grip tightened. He’d never realized how sensitive that spot on his hand was. Or how heavy Parvs were. He’d never held one before. Somehow, he’d always imagined they’d feel almost weightless, like insects with hollow little bodies. Instead, the woman and her child had a surprising heft to them—a density more substantial than that of birds or rodents.
He reached the far side of the road and was about to set them down there, but the ditch was still dusty and baking in the sun. Glancing around, he spotted a patch of shade beside a hedge and headed there instead. Crouching carefully, he cupped his hands a little higher until they rested on the grass. Then, gingerly, he unfolded his fingers until his palms lay open.
“Here...”
But the woman didn’t move. She stayed exactly where she was, still breathing hard. The grip on his skin had slackened, and the panic written across her face had faded. She was still warm, though—surprisingly warm. The skin of his palm had actually gone red from the heat of her body.
Cal stayed still, waiting.
He wasn’t sure what else to do. He’d expected her to scramble away the second he gave her the chance. A sudden worry settled in his chest. Had he scared her so badly that she was in shock?
The little Parv boy squirmed, probably uncomfortable from being held so tightly for so long. He looked up at Cal, his eyes impossibly large for someone no bigger than a quarter. He looked warm, too, the pudge of his cheeks flushed a rosy pink. After a moment, he turned back to the woman and made a soft cooing sound.
That seemed to bring her back. She sat upright, though her movements remained sluggish, and adjusted the boy in her lap until she had a more secure hold on him. Then she stood, one leg at a time. Cal nearly jerked at the heat of her shoes against his skin, but he forced himself to stay still, watching to make sure she didn’t stumble in the shallow dips of his hands. Finally, she took the last step and landed in the waist-high grass.
The entire time, Cal had expected her to look at him, to give him some indication of what she thought about all of this. But she kept her face turned away, and it made a sour knot of guilt twist in his stomach. He hadn’t warned her. Hadn’t asked. Hadn’t even given her a chance to understand what was happening before he just…
Snatched her up.
He could have kicked himself. For those few seconds, he hadn't been thinking about what she wanted. Only about what he needed to do. As soon as she was a safe distance from his hands, he started to pull back. But he froze when he felt something.
The woman had turned back and laid one trembling hand on the tip of his middle finger.
Cal had never held so still. He hardly dared to breathe as he watched her lift her head, meet his eyes, and give the most tired smile he’d ever seen. She chewed on her lip, looking as though she wanted to say something.
But she didn’t.
Instead, her fingers tightened around the tip of his finger. Then she let go and turned away. She didn’t start walking immediately, but when she did, her legs were unsteady. As she stepped onto the first root of the hedge, a piece of her shoe sloughed off.
Cal carefully got back to his feet, suddenly hyperaware of every movement he made. He turned around slowly, climbed the ditch slowly, crossed the road slowly.
He wasn't sure why, but there was a strange ache in his chest. How had that Parv woman and the boy ended up here? Where were they going? Would they be able to make it on their own?
But he kept walking.
Slowly.
When he reached the picnic table, Aurelian's face was a sight to behold. Cal wasn't sure he'd ever seen anyone look so thoroughly horrified.
“You picked it up with your bare hands?”
Cal clenched his jaw but didn’t answer. He walked to his schoolbag and unbuttoned it. Pulled out his water canteen, unscrewed it, and took a drink. He put the lid back on, then unscrewed it again and took another drink.
"What did you think that would prove?” Aurelian asked. “It would've been better if it was a rat you dragged off the road."
Cal returned the canteen to his bag and stared at the essay that hadn’t moved since he’d left. He did not sit down.
"Try something like that again, and trust me when I say Veri Magni will never so much as breathe in your direction again. That’s not something we can just dismiss without any sort of repercuss—”
“Stop talking.”
Aurelian actually flinched. Cal hadn’t even raised his voice, but he watched Aurelian’s expression darken.
“I beg your pardon?”
Cal decided not to question the buzzy feeling spreading throughout his body.
“I said, stop talking.”
If looks could kill. Aurelian’s hand rose with chilling steadiness until one finger pointed squarely at him. When he spoke, his voice was low.
“Thin ice, Calvin. Whatever heroic feat you think you just did, it doesn’t give you the right to talk to me like this. What part are you not understanding? The moment you start treating them as equals is the moment you bring yourself down to their level.”
Cal blew a sharp breath through his nose. What did that even mean? Was Aurelian hearing himself? He was starting to wonder if the guy had ever actually interacted with a Parv in his life. Considering who he was, that might well have been the case.
Cal rubbed his thumb over the spot where the woman and her child had lain. The redness had faded, but his skin was still pink.
“Want to put some weight behind that argument?”
He reached down and grabbed the paper. With a quick, deliberate pull, he ripped it in half. Then again. And again. Over and over, until it was nothing but shreds.
“Write your own fucking essay.”
He let the pieces flutter onto the table, grabbed his bag, and stalked off. For once, not a word followed him. Just the hum of the cicadas.
He kept his head down as he marched toward the green curtain of the forest, trying not to let the gravity of what he’d just done sink in. He knew he’d just destroyed any chance he had of getting into the Veri Magni Society, maybe even ruined the rest of his high school career. Everything he’d been working toward. All of the months he’d spent slaving away over dirty work for other people.
Gone in an instant.
He stopped at the tree line. The heat was already more bearable there, the breeze from the creek cool against his cheeks. He took off his blazer and undid the top button of his collar. Closed his eyes and listened to the willows whisper.
He could go back. Get on his knees and beg Aurelian to believe he’d just been joking.
He looked back at the picnic table. Aurelian had only just started walking away, leaving the torn paper scattered across the lawn like fresh snow.
But instead, Cal turned right, headed toward neither the picnic table nor the forest. He wasn’t sure if what he was doing was right, or if they’d have any reason to still be there, but he crossed the road anyway, slowing to nearly a crawl as he reached the hedge, paying careful attention to where he placed his feet. By the time he’d taken out his canteen and unfolded a map of the city, including a detailed section of all the Parv neighborhoods, he spotted what he was looking for and released a breath:
One small hand, and another, even smaller hand, waving up from the grass.
__________________
You can also find this story on my Wattpad under the same username, in my G/t oneshots collection Offset. Constructive comments and feedback are always welcome.
Borrowers are a species of miniature (~6 inches tall) human first formalized by Mary Norton with her book "The Borrowers" and based on mythologies established prior to that point.
Borrowers are consistently depicted with a lifestyle that is commensal to standard humans, living in hidden places in the homes of standard humans (such as attics and crawl spaces) and scavenging dropped or abandoned food and objects while staying out of sight of standard humans themselves; the name "borrower" describes this lifestyle, being the self-description of the protagonists of Mary Norton's book.
Borrowers are notable for having been picked up as the "default" small human variant in specific online spaces focused on "giant/tiny" scenarios and interactions (G/T, also often described as a fetish or "macro/micro"), due to their lifestyle facilitating such interactions rather easily.
What is the Borrower Project?
The Borrower Project is a project intending to create a biologically and societally coherent version of borrowers as a fantasy race, essentially going through the actual physical implications of a humanoid species being 6 inches tall, and how things like society, architecture, and transportation would develop around that. This species is also to be incorporated into a "parallel history" for the real world, in which they exist on Earth alongside standard humans, although since the focus in moreso on the "borrowers" themselves than their relation with standard humans, most borrowers will be living outside of standard human settlements entirely, in their own communities, with only a small fraction retaining the commensal lifestyle.
I'm also aiming to get some community engagement with this project in the case that it gets popular enough for that to make sense.
How will the project be presented?
In large part, information about the project will be presented as polished Tumblr posts like the one you are reading, often including visual graphics. This account will also post the creator's random thoughts about the project in order to allow for the wider web to engage with the project.
Most architectural specifications will be presented as Minecraft or Hytale builds with a specified scale, as that is the 3D medium I find easiest to use for applications like this.
What is a parallel history?
A parallel history is an alternate history where the "butterfly effect" is not observed. That is, one where, despite a major difference from our reality, history generally still follows the same course. Most "urban fantasy" takes the form of a parallel history; a parallel history focuses not on how some event or circumstance changes the history we know, but on how some new thing not found in our world, or some overarching difference in nature, weaves its way through it.
In contrast, a divergent history is one wherein a point of divergence is chosen and the timeline is different from that point onwards - most alternate histories that are labelled as such approximate this - and a convergent history is an alternative, fictitious story of how the world came to be what it is today; essentially it is an exercise in speculative reconstruction and examples include various mythologies such as the Biblical narrative of creation.
Anyway, I hope to see you again soon, where I'll be establishing the basic parameters of our Borrower species.
The door to Jonah’s room was almost always open. Funny enough, even when the human-sized door was locked, the two fairy-sized openings— one at chest-level and one down by the floor— remained at the house’s disposal.
Hattie had a towel draped over her shoulders, pale-pink pajama set dotted with drops from her dark hair. After flicking the moisture from her shower off of her wings, she made a beeline for the elevated fairy door etched into the wood.
Noon on a Sunday usually meant that the residents were out, or napping, or getting ready for the week ahead of them. A few occasional footsteps and murmurs, but no bright conversation echoing down every hallway. An atypical silence floated around the house then, like time was frozen in place.
She didn’t bother knocking, twisting the little knob between her fingers before pushing the door open with her hip and slipping inside.
Immediately, the scent of pine and laundry wafts her way. She inhales deeply through her nose, eyes landing on the heap of a body tucked into bed in the centre of the room.
Releasing her breath, she cuts through the air in a quick zipping motion, hovering over Jonah before diving for the pillow supporting his head.
He was sound asleep, or so it seemed, deep, rhythmic breaths gently rocking the surface as she sank into the fabric, scrunching the towel around her hair to squeeze out a few more drops.
It was rare to see him in such a neutral state. Dark lashes held shut, hand lazily draped across the pillow right behind her, brown hair a bit of a mess. A consistent warmth radiated off of him, impossible to ignore.
Shrugging the towel off of her shoulders, Hattie crawls forward, arms and legs sinking into the plush terrain, wings fluttering softly behind her for support.
“Mm…”
Her breath hitches. She had forgotten how light of a sleeper Jonah could be, the flitting sound of her wings enough to stir him from up close.
Once she’s near enough, she settles back into the pillow, scooting forward to press against the curve of his jaw and lay her head down.
His breathing stutters, disrupting the air around her, and in one swift motion, his hand comes up behind her.
She blinks, accustomed to the sensation but not any less marvelled by it. She could feel every ridge in his palm, the swirls of his fingertips as they lightly wrapped around her, one finding her sodden hair to rub slow circles.
“Who…?” he mutters against her, voice grainy with sleep, eyes still clamped shut above her.
“Oh, right. It’s—”
“Hattie?” His fingers curl tighter around her.
She smiles, wriggling in the fleshy grip. “Yeah… it’s me.”
“Hmm… hi, baby.”
“Hi, Jonah,” she whispers, little fingers giving him a gentle stroke along the jaw before retreating.
The mattress groans as he shifts, pulling the comforter tighter over himself, and then, bringing the corner of it up to Hattie, airy fabric smoothing over her before his hand returns to cup her beneath it all, pinning her wings in place.
Now she was all smushed against his cheek, partially sandwiched between his face and the pillow.
She takes a deep breath. “I’m not bothering you, am I?”
“Mm-mm,” he denies. “You’re good.” His voice vibrates through her. It was difficult to get used to a sensation so over encompassing no matter how many times she experienced it.
His thumb comes back to her hair, smoothing over the wet strands.
“D’you take a shower?”
She nods, leaning into his touch. “Yeah.”
“Hm.”
“I’m just kinda tired. I wanted to take a nap, so… I don’t know, if it’s okay, I just…”
“Stay,” he breathes, lashes fluttering open. She tilts her head up, his green eyes already drowsily locked onto her. “Door was open for…” He stiffles a yawn through his nose, nuzzling closer. “For a reason…”
She glances for a few more seconds at the flecks that dotted his impossibly huge irises, before his lids fell heavy again.
“My sweet girl,” he mumbles, corner of his mouth turning up into a smile. “Sleep.”
She nods, knowing he could feel it with how close they were.
“Night, Jonah,” she giggles, forcing herself to shut her eyes.
He hums in acknowledgment once more, fingers falling limp around her little form.
———
🥹 my babies
Hattie’s first meeting with Jonah (months earlier)
