Mystery Egg patreon reward, and Micro May story. If a toy has a warning on it ‘Property of Calex’ you should really know what to expect by now.
Dropped Toy
By CalexTheNeko
“Hmmm?” Sinopa had been taking a small mental break and decided to go for a walk outside. The cream and brown foxboar thought a short trip to the park and spending some time outside would go a long way towards making it easier to get through the workday. The park was abandoned, which was not surprising. School wasn’t out for the day yet, and most people would have taken an earlier lunch. However, as Sinopa walked the trail around the park she noticed a strange glint coming from the playground.
Since no one else was around, she decided to investigate. Once she approached the playground it was easy to get a look at what the glint was. It was a toy, a bubble wand. It had a plastic handle, and a light up ball on top of it. The light bouncing off of the clear glass colored plastic must have been what caused the glint. Some kid was probably here earlier and had lost the toy. That was kind of a shame. Hopefully it wasn’t a kid’s favorite toy or something with a lot of sentimental value. Sinopa hesitated briefly, wondering if she should grab it or not. Left behind, it was just a piece of plastic trash, nothing better than litter. It would be better to throw it in the trash can before some animal walked off with it. But, there was the chance whatever kid lost the toy might come back and find it.
Sinopa bent down and picked up the toy wand to examine it. Other than a bit of sand from the playground on it, the thing was pretty clean. So it probably hadn’t been here that long. Perhaps whoever had lost it would realize it any moment and be back. It was probably best to just leave the thing alone for now. She could come back after work and if it was still there take care of it. In the meantime, she could at least put it in a more obvious place so it’d be easy to find for whoever came looking for it. One of the picnic tables under the pavilion across from the playground would be perfect.
And if Sinopa had simply walked over and sat the toy down, that would have been the end of it, and she would have gone on to resume her normal job and live a normal life. But while looking at the toy she noticed lettering on it. Someone had gotten their paws on a label gun. There was a very clear message written just below the light up ball of the wand.
‘Warning: Property of Calex.’
Well, Sinopa had the name of the child who lost it now. Not that she had any idea who they were. Still, it was kind of cute that thee felt the need to put the word ‘Warning’ before marking the thing. As if the toy, or the kid themself might be dangerous. Sinopa pushed the thoughts from her mind. She had better things to do than worry about some kid’s perspective of the world. She moved towards the pavilion intending to leave the toy there, but as she did her finger slid over the switch and the ball on the end of the bubble wand lit up.
The toy made a bell-like noise, and then a blast of bubbles erupted from the tip of the wand, surrounding Sinopa in a cloud of them. It was actually kind of impressive, to just create that many bubbles in such a close density. She certainly didn’t have any toys like this as a kid. Best she could get was a bubble gun that might make a few small bubbles that floated off in one direction.
And then all the bubbles popped, and a strange pink light was released from all of them. Sinopa felt the moisture from the bubbles land on her fur as so many of them popped around her. And the same strange pink light appeared lighting up her entire body.
“Wait what?” This was enough to give Sinopa pause. That wasn’t normal. Suddenly, her clothing started to feel a lot looser on her, and the bubble wand was getting a lot heavier. As she looked around, the pavilion and the tables were getting further away and the ground seemed to be rushing up to meet her. A sense of vertigo overcame her and she dropped the toy and stumbled backwards, tripping over her own skirt as it fell to the ground.
Sinopa landed inside her own shirt, which was far too big, and rolled across the ground in it. She still felt the same sense of vertigo and her shirt was suddenly really heavy. But, Sinopa was not one to let herself be knocked down so easily. Well okay, she had already been knocked down but she wasn’t going to stay down.
Despite how dizzy she felt, she forced herself to her feet. As she did, she moved around, blindly as giant fabric covered her. Eventually, finding an exit. A few seconds later, she stumbled out of the necklhole of the shirt she had been wearing. It was gigantic in comparison to her.
The feelings of vertigo intensified, and Sinopa nearly lost her balance again. She closed her eyes and forced her legs to steady themselves. When she opened them, the entire world was even bigger. It was as if she was suddenly the size of an ant. And… She was naked now. Which, made sense as she had just shrunk and climbed out of her now giant clothing. It didn’t exactly take a genius to figure out what was going on. The why and how was something of a mystery still. All that had happened was she had accidentally activated the toy and…
Was that causing it? The toy was magic? Was that the reason it was labeled with a warning? Well fat lot of good that did! Instead of just listing the owner! How about: ‘Warning, toy is actually magical and will make you tiny!’ Sinopa ran down the side of her shirt as quickly as she could, landing among blades of grass that were as tall as skyscrapers. She moved in the direction she was pretty sure the wand was in.
The sense of vertigo never went away. The blades of grass continued to get taller and wider, until they stretched further up than Sinopa could even see. The ground itself became difficult to cross. What had been a dirt pathway was now made of millions upon millions of boulders that Sinopa had to climb her way over to try to make her way to the toy. By the time she got in sight of the toy she almost didn’t even recognize it. It was like looking at the edge of the world. A blue wall, that extended both to the left, and the right and upward infinitely. Were it not for the bright blue coloring she might not have even identified it as the wand. Which meant she knew it wasn’t infinite. If she had to guess, the thing had only been about two inches wide and maybe six inches long.
So the fact that appeared to go on forever in every direction was slightly concerning. Just how small was she? She had gotten the hang of keeping her feet, despite the vertigo making her dizzy, but it hadn’t actually ceased. The boulders she had been climbing were getting bigger. And soon, they were closer to mountains. So to answer how small she was? Well… She’d probably have to use the word ‘very’ at least eight times, and counting.
Sinopa didn’t bother to try to move from the spot she was on. She was smaller than a speck of dust, standing atop a tiny speck of dirt that might as well have been the peak of Mount Everest in comparison to her current size. And as the feeling of vertigo hadn’t gone away. She was pretty sure that the shrinking wasn’t stopping yet. And she proved correct, as suddenly, she fell into the speck of dirt. It turned out to be bade of several tiny small bits of strange blobbish blocks.
Molecules. She was looking at individual molecules, and had gotten so small she had fallen right between them! She was on the microscopic scale at this point. Or maybe nanoscopic. Really heckin’ small would have to do for a description. Especially since it still hadn’t stopped.
She fall downward, landing atop a single molecule that was as big as a football field, and getting bigger by the second. At this point, Sinopa didn’t even feel alarmed. She was being shrunk by such a ridiculous degree it was hard to fathom. Already stuck in this position, it wasn’t as if panicking or freaking out would do anything. Instead, might as well and just try to enjoy the ride and see the sights.
And what sights there were. The molecules soon broke apart, revealing themselves to be made of even smaller bits of matter. Tiny constructs that seemed to be made of several particles clustered together, some orbiting a center mass. Atoms! She was seeing actual atoms! Sinopa landed on an electron, and sat there, her legs dangling over the edge as the electron got bigger and bigger till she was on top of it completely. And then its surface was as big as a house. And then a city. And then country. And then a planet.
Protons, neutrons, and electrons. Turned out, even they weren’t the basic building blocks of the universe. Sinopa sunk into the electron she had been atop, where she encountered several new particles. They looked like flashing lights that came in and out of existence. Now in free fall again, she managed to reach out a hand and grab one. But it seemed to blink out of existence a second later and she was falling again.
It was almost like being among a field of stars, if stars acted like twinkling Christmas lights. And it wasn’t too long before these tiny things called quarks, the tiny particles that made up atoms were in fact as big as actual stars in comparison to Sinopa.
The speed of her fall had slowed, and she was more floating vaguely downward. The sense of vertigo was starting to lessen slightly. And eventually, she arrived upon a new scene. Now too small to make out the shape of quarks, she instead found herself surrounded by a maze of string stretching out in every direction. She wound up about as tall as each string was long and the sense of vertigo finally stopped.
“So that just happened.” Sinopa took a deep breath. At least the vertigo was gone she had her sense of balance back. Not that it really mattered since she was effectively weightless floating among all this string. She was a single Planck Length tall.
Because of a stupid toy.
“ROOAWWR!” A playful voice rang out somewhere near Sinopa.
The foxboar looked around in the direction it had come from. She found she could kind of float in the direction she wanted by swerving her body in one way. As she moved in the direction she had heard the sound, she heard it again. Now louder. It was someone’s voice. Someone else was down here and this small! Sinopa continued to float in the direction of the voice, and finally found the source of it.
“MROOOOWRL!” It was a small orange kitten. He was a child, maybe six, six and a half at the most, only about as tall as Sinopa’s knees. And he was currently chasing bits of string and trying to chew on them. He froze when he realized he wasn’t along, looking up at Sinopa.
Realization set in.
“You wouldn’t happen to be Calex would you?” Sinopa asked the kitten.
“Yup!” The kitten beamed. “Can I help ya with anything?” He purred happily. So, he had been shrunk by his own toy. Strange though. Clearly, clothing didn’t shrink with them. But Sinopa hadn’t seen any piles of kids’ clothing anywhere near the wand. But, the young kitten was much like her in his bare fur.
“I found your toy bubble wand.” Sinopa responded as deadpan as possible.
“Oh! I was wondering where I lost that.” The kitten who was named Calex looked around. “Um… You don’t know which direction it is from here do you?”
“Erm…” Sinopa thought for a moment. What with the whole shrinking smaller than everything in existence she hadn’t really kept an eye on where she was in relation to the toy. “Somewhere… Up there?” She gestured.
“Ah…” The kitten shrugged. “Eh, I’ll find it eventually, probably when being small gets boring.” He pounced through the air, grabbing another piece of string in his teeth. “It’s like a paradise down here.”
“Is that so?” Sinopa rolled her eyes. She wasn’t a cat. String wasn’t really going to do it for her.
“Awwww, come on don’t be like that.” Calex recognized her tone of voice. “Come on, come play with me! You’ll see it’s fun!”
“Hmmmm.” Sinopa crossed her arms. It wasn’t as if there was anything else to do. The string and the kitten were the only things in the universe as small as her. Well, she was at least three times the kitten’s size. Maybe there was a bit of fun to be had, teasing him keeping some string just out of his reach. What else was she going to do? “Alright, I guess I can plan.” Sinopa flashed a mischievous grin.
The End