title: Lost and Found aliases: [] tags: [FA] author: [ArgentVZ] id: [46794733] date: 星期五, 八月 26日 2022, 10:48:43 上午 modified: 星期三, 八月 31日 2022, 9:40:54 上午

[TOC]

Lost and Found

Author: ArgentVZ Source: Lost and Found

Lexir awoke slowly. The world seemed out of focus and unreal for the first few moments after he opened his eyes; the pounding in his head didn’t help much, either. Except that nothing hurt…it was just a deep thumping behind his eyes. Not to mention that wherever he was, it was hot—too hot—and whatever mattress he’d fallen asleep on was awkwardly warm and squishy in an uncanny way. The sergal shook his black-and-white-toned head to try and clear his vision, or at least fully cement himself back into reality.

What he saw after doing so briefly stunned him, simply by how alien and unfamiliar a place it was. Around him were countless towering spires made of some white-toned material nearly the same color as his own torso. Each rose up, and up, and up, seemingly to the far extent of his vision; above the stalks was a hazy sky of white that looked nothing like anything he’d ever seen before. What he’d thought was a mattress was an uncomfortably flesh-toned surface, seemingly close to an arid desert in the way it was cracked and segmented. None of that was to mention the heat, or the dull thump-thud that seemed to emerge from everywhere at once every few seconds.

All of it was terrifying…at least until his memory caught up with his waking brain. A friend of his—another sergal named Caylex—had invited him to a small party with two other friends of his. The four of them had been enjoying themselves, drinking, having a good time, playing games…and then someone had brought out a shrink ray.

Lexir was intimately familiar with the technology. It wasn’t exactly uncommon, despite being highly regulated and often prohibitively expensive to acquire. So when Caylex’s snake friend—he seemed to recall the serpent’s name was “Lev”—pulled out the shiny pistol-shaped device, Lexir had felt a mix of excitement and anxiety. The first because it was certainly one way to improve a party and have some fun; the second because it could very easily lead to ‘accidents’. Especially so given how many empty bottles were lying around Caylex’s apartment.

Soon after, they’d played some drinking game Lexir had forgotten the name of, which he’d lost despite being the least under-the-table of the group. With Dayza practically forcing a beer pong rematch against Lev, the pair had left him and Caylex to mess with the shrink ray as his ‘punishment’ for losing.

Caylex, even drunk, seemed to know what he was doing when tweaking the gun’s output to what he constantly called “fun-size.” And, after an awkward few minutes of waiting— during which, Lexir found himself equally apprehensive as he was enthusiastic about what was soon to happen—he found himself looking down the barrel of the shrink ray clutched in Caylex’s white-and-blue-furred hand.

Everything after the brief flash of the device discharging had been a blur. He’d merely been “small” for a while; teased and rolled around between Caylex’s fingers, possibly pushed somewhere that made him blush just thinking about, and getting quite the tour of the at-thetime huge sergal—all the way from his padded soles to the tips of his pointed ears. There was another flash—probably more than one, actually—and Lexir remembered feeling sick as he descended further and further…then things got very, very quiet.

At some point, he must’ve fallen asleep. Now, having woken up, and piecing together everything else, it was clear what’d happened. Caylex had shrunken him even further, likely on accident, and more than likely he was stranded somewhere on the now-landscape-sized sergal’s body. That would explain the heat, the ‘spires’—clearly strands of fur—and the dull thumping that wasn’t caused by a particularly stiff headache, but rather the pulsing of a heart now comparatively bigger than even the largest sports stadium ever constructed.

The first thing Lexir knew he needed to do was somehow get Caylex’s attention— assuming the sergal even remembered that he existed…and was awake. The latter of which was impossible to tell when his vision was like standing in the middle of an alien forest. Waiting for confirmation could be just as dangerous, however, as if Caylex had forgotten about him it’d be many times more difficult to get his attention once he’d woken up and started his day.

As luck would have it, before the unfortunate sergal could so much stand up, he heard— and felt—a change in the rhythmic heartbeat, coupled with a distant rushing of air that could only be Caylex’s breathing changing pace. The ‘ground’ then began to shift beneath him, and it became clear that his friend-turned-titan was waking up.

Not wanting to get thrown off in case the unaware colossus sharply stood up, Lexir scrambled for the nearest tower of fur and hugged himself to it. While soft and dense at normal scales, to the speck-sized sergal the single stalk was coarse and faintly ridged. Those two qualities did make it easy for his hands to grasp, however, and he held on tightly as the ‘mountain’ beneath him awoke.

A deep rumble rolled out over the landscape, as well as reverberated through the ‘ground’ beneath Lexir’s feet—it took him a moment to recognize it as a sigh or groan. Considering how many drinks Caylex had downed, it wouldn’t surprise him to know that the sergal was badly hungover.

Hopefully he wouldn’t need to sprint to the bathroom to throw up.

Luckily, Caylex remained mostly still outside of the trembling and vibration that indicated to Lexir that he was moving other parts of his body. The worst came when a dull buzzing sounded from somewhere infinitely distant—and immediately caused Caylex’s whole body to reflexively twitch. If Lexir hadn’t been holding on, he might’ve briefly found himself flying or at the very least thrown off his feet.

Then came the sergal’s voice. Lexir had experienced the microscopic life a few times previously; regardless, he was still astounded by just how immense even the smallest details of a person’s being were made when one was so small. A quality as simple as a person’s voice became akin to the landscape-covering rumble of thunder—but on a scale that Mother Nature could only dream of matching. Unlike the sound of a rolling storm, however, Lexir could understand what this one was saying.

And Caylex sounded annoyed. Not to mention tired.

Obviously, neither was meant to be aimed directly at Lexir. But they still could result in some decidedly ‘negative’ outcomes for the tiny sergal should Caylex’s frustration make him careless.

Briefly, it seemed to, as the massive body beneath him started to lift like the earthen slope of a hill readying to give way during a landslide. Lexir clung tightly to ‘his’ strand of hair, wondering if Caylex intended to stand up—which would almost certainly leave him dangling in place, unable to try anything until the titanic sergal stopped moving.

However, after hardly two seconds, the movement stopped. The tiny sergal breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed…although he found himself jolted out of that brief respite by further, sharper rumbles from Caylex. It almost sounded like coughing, or clearing his throat, or perhaps trying to speak? Lexir couldn’t be sure, save for when a raspy, resonant “Hey” emerged from somewhere ‘above’ him. Even that single word, delivered at barely a whisper and from so far away, rattled the tiny sergal’s every bone. A second followed, and by the third Caylex seemed to have found his full voice.

The simple “Hey, Lexir” rolled over him in waves, despite the minute sergal assuming he was nowhere near Caylex’s head. He might’ve even been temporarily deafened if he were stuck on the titan’s chest. Still, knowing that his friend knew he was lost gave Lexir hope, and he started kicking and scratching at the skin beneath him to try and get Caylex to notice him.

More words—if such a near-godlike emission could be considered mere ‘words’— emerged from the landscape of sergal above him. They effectively asked him to do what he was already doing: make himself known. The microscopic sergal redoubled his efforts, going as far as to shake and tug on the looming spire of fur in front of him—somehow, he managed to actually wiggle the towering fiber.

At first, none of it seemed to matter. Caylex’s voice quieted, the vast mass of titanic sergal went mostly still, and Lexir quickly stopped his attempts, not wanting to exhaust himself too much. However, it wasn’t long before something did change.

A dark, looming shape eased itself into the air above Lexir—above Caylex’s fur, really— and cast an equally gloomy shadow as it swung overhead. It took the sergal a moment to recognize it as a fingerclaw, and he felt relief bubbling at the prospect that Caylex knew almost exactly where he was. Although it was impossible to ignore the simmering doubt that the titan was merely scratching an annoying itch. He’d run from enough claws and fingers in his time to know the danger.

The vast claw brushed through the strands of hair, effortlessly bending them over as it slid overhead. Lexir instinctively ducked as it dully wooshed over him; luckily, it seemed Caylex wasn’t scratching his skin. Instead, he was likely trying to get a better look between his fur at where his missing friend could be.

Unfortunately, it didn’t seem as though the sergal had found him. The looming claw, blunted and dull from Lexir’s perspective, retreated out of sight. Moments later, Caylex’s thundering voice returned with another request—or perhaps an order. Simply, the titan wanted him to climb to somewhere more visible. Either way, Lexir confirmed he’d understood by repeating his pounding and scratching once the dull ringing of the titan’s speech had faded. The tiny sergal let out a relieved sigh as Caylex responded to his motions, having received Lexir’s nonverbal message.

While being asked to climb the stalk of hair that loomed before him certainly seemed daunting, it wasn’t as if the sergal had any other hope of being rescued. Lexir took a few moments to size up the towering length of fiber and debate if another nearby stalk would be more suitable for climbing. He soon decided to stick with the nearest one, however, and slowly started to ascend the looming strand of fur.

The understanding that he was clambering on a single hair, in a literal forest of similar strands, all covering a normal-sized sergal that had now become a veritable continent didn’t escape Lexir. The need to climb and desire to be found kept his reaction to no more than a subtle heat in his cheeks and the lingering idea hovering in the back of his mind, however. It was probably for the best, as the fur’s total height became more and more evident the further he ascended, and he wouldn’t want a distraction to make him miss a hand or foothold. While he didn’t think a fall would hurt him, it would effectively reset his progress.

So, Lexir focused on climbing. The hair’s ridges and imperfections made it like clambering up a novice-level climbing wall—albeit one that shifted and flexed with Caylex’s subtle movements and the air cycling through the room around him. That airflow did help clear Lexir’s head, and to cool off a little, making the climb even easier. As did the way Caylex’s fur began to bend towards being level with his hair’s ‘grain’; after a while, Lexir almost had to adopt a shimmying movement as opposed to climbing.

His micro-sized body felt as thought it had far more energy than he would at normal scales; even as the strand of fur began to sway to the point that Lexir had to periodically pause his ascent, he still felt confident in continuing. Really, he had to.

After several more minutes, Lexir noticed the strand beginning to narrow as well as bend. Its flexing had also grown to a near wiggle from his own movements, slowing his progress to a crawl—yet, he knew he was close. It seemed the stalk he’d picked was slightly longer than most of the ones around him, so the sergal only needed to push a little further to become at least partially visible…

…and after nearly losing his balance a half-dozen times, he felt comfortable enough to stop and take a look around. What his eyes found was an even more disorienting—and aweinspiring—sight than when he’d awoken in the forest of Caylex’s fur.

To his front, a vast white plain of shifting fur extended far into the distance, transitioning into a pair of dark-blue ‘rivers’ that flowed down past the extent of Lexir’s vision— Caylex’s legs were a geographic feature all their own at his size. Everything outside of the seeming continental sergal was simply a blur, things his brain refused to process—or simply couldn’t.

Behind him, however, was a far more incredible sight. Caylex’s chest arced upwards like a mountainside slope, ending with a burst of white and blue fur that surrounded the vast, wedge-shaped ‘peak’ that was the sergal’s head. It seemed as infinitely distant and vast as anything else in the background of his vision—but as he watched, the whole thing began to move.

Lexir’s heart skipped a beat as the looming head, impossibly large, shifted down and over him as Caylex bent forward. A burst of warm air flushed across the ‘plains’ of the sergal’s belly fur as he breathed, jostling Lexir but failing to send him tumbling from his perch. There, the minute sergal waited, breathless, as Caylex’s bright, golden eyes began to track along his stomach in what was clearly an attempt at a search pattern.

When the vast, slit pupils seemed to point in his direction, Lexir released one arm and waved as much as he could without unbalancing himself. He knew spotting him—a mostly white-furred, but also patterned with grey and black tones, speck of a sergal—would be difficult enough, so perhaps the titan’s predatory instincts would pick up on the tiny flicker of motion.

And, almost unbelievably, it seemed to work. Caylex’s eyes drifted over his spot before noticeably flicking backwards to rest directly on Lexir’s tiny form. His breath momentarily caught in his chest as the colossus’ eyes locked onto him. Slowly, they drew closer as Caylex leaned in even further than he already was. Lexir waved wildly, almost losing his grip as he frantically tried to make sure Caylex was looking at him and not some nearby speck of dust or lint.

The giant’s following words, a simple request to “hold still,” made his ears ring—but Lexir would forgive him if it meant getting somewhere known and safe, rather than lost and unseen. He watched as Caylex’s head lifted slightly and the sensation of something approaching made Lexir twist his neck towards where his body was telling him to look.

Two immense fingers had swung in behind him, clearly readying to pluck him up from his precarious position. Lexir wiggled himself around on the hair he continued to cling to, his heart pounding with adrenaline. Hopefully, Caylex knew how little pressure he needed to pick someone of his size up—and how easy it would be to accidentally turn him into a smear if he wasn’t gentle enough.

The looming walls of deep brown pads slid in on either side of Lexir, parting the fur beneath just as easily as Caylex’s clawtip had previously done. The tiny sergal trembled in the faintly muffled darkness before the titan had so much as closed his fingers a millimeter, simply out of anticipation for what was about to happen. Not to mention how intensely awe-inspiring it was to realize that he was looking at two fingertips and not the sides of some millennia-old chasm.

Slowly, the two walls began to close down like something out of an ancient myth. Lexir steadied himself for the last time, watching intently as the padded walls—and darkness they brought—approached, even if there was little he could do to change what was about to happen.

The first contact came from behind. The vast, rough, warm wall swiftly pushed him into its opposite; instinctively, Lexir released the hair that he’d climbed, his body knowing that he was now snugly held between Caylex’s fingers. Yet, the pressure didn’t stop growing, and for a moment the micro was afraid that his worst fears were going to come true.

Just as soon as his primal, claustrophobic terror began to mount, however, Caylex’s digits halted. The sensation of being squeezed was overridden by a sharp, almost nauseating sense of lift that seemed to go on for an hour or more. It didn’t help that Lexir’s vision was reduced a thin line of light only faintly illuminating the tough, cracked surface of the titan’s pads.

A similarly stomach-churning pivot marked the end of his ascent, which he was all too thankful for. Before his rattled mind could recover, however, the immense finger pinning him down lifted away. Lexir was briefly drawn along with it—for a moment thinking he’d be stuck to it—but quickly flopped back to the padded ‘floor’ beneath his suddenly quite-tired body.

He did manage to raise himself up enough in time to have his breath taken away for nearly the tenth time in what felt like as many minutes. Lexir wasn’t exactly keeping track, though, as he had more important things to focus on—such as Caylex’s eyes, one of which was now filling his vision nearly from edge to edge.

Caylex blinked, and Lexir was close enough to feel the subtle puff of air the motion of his eyelid sent out. Although that faint gust of unnatural wind was quickly overshadowed by Caylex’s voice. The question was simple, more or less “are you okay?”, yet the answer Lexir wanted to give was far more complex. However, all he managed was a simple, exaggerated nod. He hoped the gesture would make sense across their vast differences in scale; like his earlier scratching, it seemed to.

The ‘eye’s’ reply—as Caylex’s person really was nothing more than a single, yellow orb at this point—confirmed that he’d been understood as intended. And while the titan’s confirmation of getting ahold of his friend to reverse the accidental shrinking wasn’t really a question, Lexir chose to nod yet again. He even decided to couple it with a painfully tiny-feeling “Okay!” shouted across the vast chasm between himself and Caylex’s head.

Caylex made no indication of having heard him; his head merely shifted away a few hundred feet in a second as the colossus briefly turned his attention elsewhere. It soon returned back to Lexir, however, and the minute sergal was once more overwhelmed by the sheer scale of his friend.

While what he wanted wasn’t exactly something Lexir was totally comfortable with, it did make sense that Caylex wanted to go about his own morning routine, having finally figured out where the missing sergal had ended up. The stomach-churning descent that followed made him glad for the pressure of Caylex’s other finger as the titan brought him down level with the table.

‘Level’, however, didn’t quite mean the same to Caylex as it did to Lexir. The tiny sergal was forced to clamber down the slope of the titan’s pads until he made the heart-stopping leap to the ridge-lined wood grains of the tabletop. There wasn’t a gap to fall between, luckily; just a far longer drop than Lexir would ever choose to fall from at his normal size.

The last moments of terror-and-awe came when Caylex—for all intents and purposes part of the sky—reached over to slide the seemingly Uluru-sized phone a bit too close to where Lexir had disembarked. The sleek rubber of the phone’s case effectively became a mountain range, blocking the sergal in on one side—if he’d even thought about trying to move anywhere.

Once satisfied with his phone’s position, the titan rose from the couch; Caylex’s upper body seemed to lose focus no matter how hard Lexir tried to keep it from blurring, and the only part of the colossus that seemed to remain at all relevant to where the micro was were his knees. Considering Caylex was at least several thousand times taller than the speck staring up at him, it made sense.

If he recognized this fact, Caylex didn’t make any indication of it. He smoothly turned away, leaving deep, resonant thooms to echo through the table and floor as the giant padded off towards what Lexir assumed was his room. The first few impacts nearly threw Lexir off his feet, although by the time Caylex had faded into the haze of the far distance of the room, his steps were little more than a dull rumble—akin to the vibration from a miles-distant freight train.

With little else to do but wait, Lexir sat down and took a moment to stretch. He was still tired, after all; from the party, from not sleeping well, from the shock at being so small, from his climb, and from the experience of being manhandled and moved by a creature that was effectively on a completely different plane of existence to himself.

Most of him was glad that it was all over. However, some small part of him did hope there was more fun to be had. Being nano-sized wasn’t all bad, especially when it turned the mundane into new lands to explore—and your friends into impossibly large titans to gawk at and admire. Being stuck so small for a few more hours wouldn’t hurt. He might as well make the best out of an unfortunate situation.

Earlier…

The world returned in a haze as Caylex’s exhausted, aching eyes opened. He groaned, blinking, and lifted a hand to his wedge-shaped head. The flesh beneath his blue-and-white fur pounded with the painful rumble not unlike a heavy, militaristic drumbeat. And that wasn’t even to mention how thirsty he was. The sergal didn’t think his mouth had ever been so dry before.

At least it was clear that he was in his home, sprawled out on his couch, nude save for a comfortable pair of shorts. His shirt was nowhere to be found; but that wasn’t much of a concern. He tended to go shirtless when in his apartment, so more than likely he’d discarded it on his bed.

Caylex glanced to his right, trying to keep his head’s motions slow lest he encourage his thumping headache to worsen. Someone had left a water bottle—at least, what he assumed was water—and a couple of pills on the low table situated in front of the couch. It was too obviously placed not to be intentional. A dark rectangle, his phone, laid next to them.

Memories returned to him as slowly as the room around him came into focus, his eyes naturally drifting back upwards towards the living room’s ceiling fan. It rotated slowly above him as he squinted into the dull light of his apartment, trying to fully ground himself back into reality as he processed what he could remember from the night before.

There’d been a party. Flashes of his friends drinking. Playing games to drink more.

Putting on some dumb movie and only halfway paying attention to it. More drinking. Someone (Lev?) pulled out a gun—no, different, too flashy. Laughter, a game to pick a ‘loser,’ more drinks, then…

BZZZ BZZZ BZZZ

The sergal jumped and felt his heart nearly skip a beat from the shock of the noise. Exhaling sharply, his head snapped back to the table. His phone buzzed again, its screen now brightly lit; but with the throbbing headache forcing Caylex to squint, he couldn’t decipher what was on it. Needing to bring it closer, the sergal gingerly reached over his chest with his left hand to fumble with the sleek box for a moment before managing to grab it and bring it over his snout.

His clawed fingers keyed in his passcode on the second try, and he found himself met with a text message from a friend, another sergal, that both his jumbled memory and the context of the message told him was at the party. It read:

Yo sleepyhead :P

You were DONE when me and L left, so I put out some water and painkillers for you. Bet you’re gonna have a nasty headache when you get up! We did some cleanup too so don’t worry bout that.

More serious tho: last night Lex kinda…disappeared? Lev and I scanned the carpet and tables pretty good but didn’t see shit. Just be careful when you get up.

You two were having a good time so he’s prob on the couch?

Text Lev when you find him. He’ll come over ASAP and sort that out lol

GL dude

“Motherfu-…” Caylex groaned. With his head a bit clearer, he’d managed to search his brain for the last few memories he had of the third sergal who’d been at the party.

Lexir had drawn the proverbial short straw in their last game. Dayza—who’d sent him the text—and Lev had been occupied by a surprisingly heated game of beer pong, which had left Caylex to dish out the loser’s ‘punishment.’

Which, as they’d decided, had been being shrunk, courtesy of Lev’s shrink ray.

Caylex leaned back into the couch, sighing. While the device was technically supposed to make it difficult to reduce someone in size to the point where you’d lose them, it wouldn’t have taken much for someone several drinks down—as he’d been—to accidentally multi-tap his friend. Hopefully it was only three or four hits…Lexir would be hard enough to find at four tenfold reductions. Five or six would make the task nearly impossible.

He carefully sat up a little further, wincing as his head continued to pound. He didn’t want to move too much in case the worst happened—the mere thought of which made Caylex’s already-questionable stomach turn over. In the past, Lev had explained the shrinking process to him and how those affected were much more resistant to being hurt than a normalsized person. Even that knowledge brought him little comfort.

Caylex tried to focus on something productive, like a way to narrow down where Lexir might be. If they were “having a good time” as Dayza had said, it meant that the missing sergal likely wasn’t far. Perhaps he was even lost on Caylex himself—a thought that sent a spike of heat to his face, as well as making his hangover-induced headache emit an intense spike of pain.

Once the sensation of being stabbed in the forehead mostly faded, Caylex continued his thinking. While Lexir couldn’t reply in any verbal way, he certainly could hear Caylex’s voice. An idea came to him, and Caylex cleared his throat before trying. Even so, the sergal still had to retry his simple greeting three times before it came out satisfyingly clearly.

“Hey, Lexir,” he finally managed. It felt awkward speaking to effectively nobody, regardless of the fact that his friend was somewhere nearby. “I, uh…don’t know where you ended up, but…if you’re…on me, could you…let me know? Somehow?”

It was impossible not to feel a blush rising in his cheeks again, and as always he was glad for the tufts of white fur that covered his cheeks. Sizeplay was one of his ‘interests’, after all, and since the situation wasn’t truly dire quite yet Caylex was still finding a few things to enjoy about their situation.

What wasn’t one of them was the strange pinch-like feeling he’d noticed while speaking—that had seemed to grow in intensity once he’d finished. Although, thinking back, he might’ve been too focused on other things to not notice it sooner.

In any other case, he would’ve assumed the sensation was one of his body’s idle itches or an unseen mosquito finally managing to get under his fur to bite him. But, given that he was searching for a sub-millimeter-sized friend, and that the only reasonable way for said friend to get Caylex’s attention would be to scratch at him or tug on a strand of fur, it couldn’t exactly be anything else.

Still, there was a chance that it could be something else—god forbid Dayza had fleas— but Caylex felt reasonably confident in his assumption. So much so that he leaned up further and squinted down at the spot where he thought he’d felt the tingle. Bracing himself with one arm, the sergal used his other arm’s hand—really just a single clawtip from a single finger—to gingerly brush through the fur just above his waist. His relief at potentially having found his friend quickly soured, however; it was impossible to make out anything through his thick fur. In situations like this, he envied people without fur, like Lev…

“You’re…gonna have to climb to somewhere I can see you,” Caylex said, sighing. “Can you…do whatever you’ve been doing to let me know you’ll try?”

A second of ‘silence’ passed; then he felt the same itch again from nearly the same spot. He couldn’t help let out another sigh, but this one was far more relieved instead of mildly frustrated. “Alright, good. I’ll uh…stay still for a few minutes, then take a look, okay?”

The question was rhetorical, obviously, but Caylex still waited as if expecting an answer. When none came in the form of a pinching against his stomach, he assumed Lexir had begun to climb. It gave him time to address the second-most-important issue plaguing his morning—that of his hangover symptoms.

Taking care to not move his torso too much, Caylex popped the painkillers into his mouth before swallowing them down with a few greedy gulps of the water Dayza had left him. While in any other case he would’ve checked to make sure it was water before twisting off the cap and taking a swig—as vodka looked all too much like water to a desperately thirsty person—he assumed that Dayza wouldn’t take such an opportunity to prank him.

Besides, getting revenge wouldn’t have been all that difficult with Lev and his shrink ray.

After a several minutes of idling, alternating between drinking cool water and trying to will away the throbbing in his skull, Caylex decided that Lexir should’ve had enough time to get somewhere visible. The other sergal was in pretty good physical shape, and supposedly being tiny increased one’s endurance, so Caylex assumed he wouldn’t have much trouble climbing a strand of his fur…even if said strand was potentially twenty (or more) times the shrunken sergal’s height.

The lack of any further itching or tingling was likely a good sign. Caylex placed down the bottle and leaned forward yet again, setting his now-less-pained eyes into a thorough scan of his belly. It was unfortunate that Lexir was lost on his stomach and not his thigh, as the navy blue fur that covered his legs would’ve made the white-and-grey-furred sergal stand out.

Currently, Lexir was a monochromatic speck lost in a sea of snow-white fluff.

Still, Caylex tried, despite the continued headache thudding away inside his skull and a growing restlessness at being forced to stay lying down rather than being able to get up and wander around his apartment. However, the first priority remained finding Lexir; everything else could wait.

And soon, he did. His eyes tracked over a faint discoloration on his fur; instantly, he flicked back to it and focused down, watching as the speck flickered—as if moving. Caylex shortened his breaths, not wanting to accidentally blow away the tiny thing, and leaned as close as his neck and spine would allow. The dot still wouldn’t resolve into something sergalshaped—for all he knew, he was staring at a piece of lint from one of his shirts—but he couldn’t see anything else that had as high a chance of being his lost friend.

“Alright, uh…hold still,” he warned. Caylex reached down with his left hand yet again, and extended his thumb and index finger towards the speck-topped strand of fur. He carefully slid the padded fingertips of each to either side of what he hoped was his friend, then only hesitated a moment before easing them together. Caylex waited until he just felt his pads connect, then halted their movement—he didn’t want to squish Lexir on accident, despite how resilient Lev claimed shrunken people were.

Caylex smoothly brought his fingers up to one eye—perhaps too quickly in hindsight— and, after taking a second to let out a nervous breath—as it was very possible there wasn’t about to be a minute speck of a sergal between his fingers, or worse, a flattened smear of what was once one—the ‘giant’ slowly parted his digits, leaving his thumb as flat as he could.

Immediately, he let out a sigh of relief. Atop the pad of his thumb sat, or perhaps lay, a clearly humanoid shape—although Caylex couldn’t tell if they were annoyed, exhausted, or terrified…or perhaps a mix of the three. Or even none of them. The sergal liked being tiny; maybe not in such an uncontrolled way, however.

“You alright?” Caylex asked.

Lexir was still way too small to provide any kind of audible answer, but Caylex chose to take the way his upper body ‘bounced’ as a “yes”.

“Okay, good…I think?” He couldn’t help chuckle; now that he’d found the tiny sergal, the situation was less dire. “Lemme get ahold of Lev, since he should be able to zap you back to normal.”

The speck on his fingertip made another motion similar to the first, and for a moment Caylex swore he heard Lexir’s voice…but it wasn’t possible. Once again assuming it was a positive reply, he turned his attention to his phone. With his free hand, he tapped out a simple message to Lev:

“I found Lexir. Can you come over and fix him? Thanks.”

Caylex set his phone back on the table and turned his eyes back towards the speck still thankfully atop his fingertip—now sitting up, it seemed. He smiled gently in Lexir’s direction. “He’ll hopefully get here soon. But first,” he paused, wincing as his head throbbed, “I need a shower and some more water. Lemme find somewhere safe to put you down in the meantime, alright?”

Transitioning Lexir from his fingertip to the table wasn’t as difficult as he’d assumed it would be; Caylex simply moved his thumb as close to the wooden plateau as he could, and the tiny sergal made the leap onto it. He flashed Lexir a mildly pained smile and a quick thumbsup—if the speck-sized sergal responded, he obviously couldn’t tell.

Before wandering away, Caylex slowly moved his phone to make a clear mark of the approximate area his friend was in, as well as making sure to silence it. If its notification vibration had startled him so greatly, he didn’t like the thought of how badly it might rattle someone the size of a dust mite.

Once confident in his ability to re-find Lexir once he returned, Caylex carefully lifted himself off the couch and, after taking a moment to stretch, slowly padded away towards his bedroom. A cold shower and some more to drink would help his hangover, and by the time he got out, Lev would certainly be on his way.

Maybe there’d even be time to mess with the tiny sergal before his ‘rescue’ arrived. He could always ask Lev to delay an hour or two, now that Lexir had been found. There wasn’t much else going on in either his or the minute sergal’s mornings anyway…and it’d be a shame to waste such a golden opportunity for more fun.