Notice: This has been brought up recently. However, the included depictions are inspired by the text but may not be 100% 1 to 1 accurate. Whatever is written in the text is canon.
Everything was a haze at first, shifting shadows and flickers of memory, barely stitched together by the thread of pain. Charity wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or dying. Maybe both. The world had narrowed to a tunnel of sensation, too intense, too real to be ignored, but too surreal to understand.
Heat poured from her body like water from a cracked vessel. Not just warmth, but a radiant fever that pulsed beneath her skin. It bubbled up from the marrow of her bones, seeped through every pore until her shirt was soaked and clinging to her like it had been painted on. The fabric stuck to her chest, her back, her arms, in a way that made her feel more animal than human, trapped in her own skin, suffocating in it.
She tried to lift her hand but couldn’t tell if it moved. Muscles twitched against her will. Limbs vibrated with exhaustion, too heavy to follow commands. Every breath was a struggle, dragged in with a wheeze, pushed out with a stutter. Her lungs felt full of dust, as if the air had turned to ash.
She wanted to cry out.
Tried.
But the sound never came.
Her mouth opened, but the desert in her throat swallowed the effort. Her tongue felt thick, foreign. The act of speaking, the very thing that tethered her to being human, was stripped away. In its place: dry sobs, ghost-noise, the sound of panic being buried alive.
And then came the dizziness.
She didn’t know if he was lying down or falling. The world rocked and spun, not with speed but with a slow, relentless churn, like being lost at sea on an endless swell. There was no center to cling to. No orientation. The ceiling twisted above her, if it even was the ceiling. It might’ve been the sky for all she could tell.
She squeezed her eyes shut again.
Darkness was no comfort. It moved, too.
Time, what little sense she had of it, slipped sideways. A minute felt like a day. A second like an hour. Something deep inside her, some primitive part that couldn’t speak but still knew, whispered that this was wrong. Not sick wrong. Not injured wrong. Fundamentally wrong. This wasn’t a fever or a seizure. It was change. Violent, biological change. Something was happening to her at the cellular level. She wasn’t just getting smaller, She was becoming something else.
This wasn’t illness. It was metamorphosis.
Not slow like nature intended. Not quiet like aging. This was fire and friction and force. A body breaking apart and remaking itself in real time, without anesthetic, without choice.
And just like that, like a door slamming shut in the back of her mind, the worst of it passed.
Stillness.
She floated in it for a moment, numb and hollowed out.
Then she opened her eyes.
And gasped.
Not because of pain, but because of the silence, the vast, eerie hush of a world too large to understand. She was no longer surrounded by objects. She was inside them. At their mercy. The room stretched out around her not like a bedroom, but like a landscape, familiar in shape but alien in scale.
The carpet beneath her wasn’t carpet. Not anymore. It was a terrain of towering fibers, tangled and coarse, each strand as thick as her leg and arching high above her head before curling back down like blades of bent grass. The air smelled different down here. Staler. Denser. Like dust and forgotten things, like the inside of an old book left too long on a shelf.
Charity tried to sit up.
The motion was slow, aching. Her muscles screamed in protest. But She managed, propping herself up on trembling arms as She looked around.
Her bed was no longer a piece of furniture. It was a mesa, a rock formation jutting into the sky with sheets cascading over the edge like cloth waterfalls. Her nightstand loomed above her like a wooden monolith, its drawer handle a wrought-iron gate. Her lamp might as well have been a communications tower, he couldn’t even see the top of it from where she sat.
Her breathing grew shallow again, not from exertion this time but from panic. It pressed down on her, not physically, but existentially. The enormity of it. The finality. This wasn’t a dream. She wasn’t waking up. She wasn’t going to stretch out and return to normal size. This was it.
The scale had shifted. The world was too big, and she was too small.
She closed her eyes again, as if that might rewind reality.
“No,” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse, barely audible.
“No, no, no…”
Her heart pounded harder. A steady, brutal rhythm against her ribs. It was the sound of someone losing control. Losing everything.
There was so much she hadn’t done. She hadn’t seen the Pacific Coast Highway. Hadn’t gone skydiving. Hadn’t told her brother she forgave him. Hadn’t said goodbye to her pets at the farm. Now all of it, all of life as she knew it, was closed off. Too dangerous. Too large. Too far away.
So many things left in the category of someday that had instantly shifted to never again.
She sat there for what felt like hours. Surrounded by shadows that were once furniture. Sheltered beneath a desk that might as well have been the overpass of a freeway. The ticking of the wall clock was distant, but thunderous. The house creaked overhead, normal sounds, but now amplified, unnatural. Like the breathing of something ancient.
And still… she was alive.
Barely six inches tall if even that.
But alive.
She drew a shaky breath and looked around again, slower this time. The room hadn’t changed. Only she had. That knowledge carved itself into her bones with quiet cruelty. It was no comfort. But it was truth.
Charity wiped the sweat from her brow and steadied herself on a single carpet fiber as thick as a rope.
Somewhere far above, a door creaked.
Then, footsteps.
Real, human footsteps. A thunderous cadence rolling through the floorboards.
She froze.
The world had just changed. And now, it was coming for her.
Oh boy this is going to a interesting one
I hope it will atleast
I hope chole gives her to Sara to mother to be a better person lol
Do you want her to be a better person or to learn from Sara, cause she can’t do both. Sara is only a bit better than Charity.
I was thinking Sara teaching her to be a better person would be therapy for both because most bad people are abused themselves, but I like her being Dayton’s little better lol.
Sara would use the opportunity for revenge, not therapy.
Not all bad people are secretly victims who just need sympathy; sometimes, they’re just bad people.
Personally, I want Dayton to never get a little. for her to long for one but never actually succeed.
Dayton will eventually get a little. I mean even if she has to buy one with her own money. Nothing could stop her long-term from getting a little.
In the immediate timeframe sure if her mom is not willing to buy one but at 15 she would be able to get a job and get her own money. If she really saved she could easily save up enough for a little especially if shes not very picky.
There’s no guarantee she could earn enough to purchase a Little, just because she was born with enough privilege to afford a Little, doesn’t mean she’ll maintain it as an adult.
true, the key would be she would need to start working while still in school living at home.
As with zero expenses working 20 hours a week. she could afford a little in approximately 200 hours of work at $20 dollars an hour which in a city like new york wouldn’t be difficult to secure a job with pay due to the higher cost of living.
As getting the little when she is younger ensures the bulk of the expenses are paid before she has to earn her own money and pay for her own expenses. The maintenance related fees would be much easier to afford even with a diminished earning potential.
I doubt sara’s mother would want a little. It was stated earlier in Smallara that because she works with littles she doesn’t like the idea of coming home and having to deal with a little. As its a bit to much like taking your work home with you.
I think he meant “so Sara could take on the roll of Charaty’s mother”, not “Sara’s mother”
oh, that changes things. I can’t see Sara wanting that role with Charity. There is no love loss between the two of them.
Now Charity can become Dayton’s little hahaha 😆
that would be classic lol, now I am with Nodqfan. It would be better for Sara’s metal heath if she becomes Dayton’s little. And more entertaining for us lol.
Glad you agree.
hard to keep a good idea down lol
That would actually be perfect honestly lol
I agree Sara can visit and Dayton gets her little, everyone wins.
RIght now she just needs to get out of her room and try to get some help.
I’m hoping Charity is kept far away from Sara and her friends. Her guardian is some kind of Little influencer who spoils her and posts all about it on social media. Sara would see it and know Charity has forever evaded consequences, just like Sara.
That would be interesting.
1) Was not expecting a story about Charity.
2) “Charity wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or dying. Maybe both. The world had narrowed to a tunnel of sensation, too intense, too real to be ignored, but too surreal to understand” Man, this sounds way worse than the people who shrank in their sleep.
3) “She wasn’t waking up. She wasn’t going to stretch out and return to normal size. This was it.” So no cure for charity? Pity/s
4) “There was so much she hadn’t done. She hadn’t seen the Pacific Coast Highway. Hadn’t gone skydiving. Hadn’t told her brother she forgave him. Hadn’t said goodbye to her pets at the farm.” That’s often the way with Smallara, too much left undone. At least she can still forgive her brother at her current size.
5) “The room hadn’t changed. Only she had. That knowledge carved itself into her bones with quiet cruelty. It was no comfort. But it was truth.” An understanding all Littles need to learn.
6) “The world had just changed. And now, it was coming for her.” Looking forward to seeing where Charity ends up, hopefully nowhere near Sara, but with Sara being able to see her, living the best life a Little could, and Sara knowing she can’t do anything about it.
1) I wasn’t sure if anyone was but it was a story I wanted to tell for awhile now. As its been kind of something hanging over the story with how personal it is to sara’s story. So it seemed appropriate to atleast tell the charity story. I also wanted to do a story where I got to do a bit more writing as opposed to graphic novel writing where since there is a picture i don’t need to be as descriptive as hte picture provides a ballpark descriptor of whats going on and between the text and imagination the reader can fillin the rest. Which is nice too but not always as fun as traditional storytelling and i enjoy the writing process much more then the graphic design process.
2)Not being conscious for it would be preferred. Just like god willing I die in my sleep. I don’t want to see how i go. I feel like this would be the same thing. Somethings its better to just wake up to and know it happened then ahve to live through it. However, i thought it would be nice to depict the process for people as mostly we haven’t seen it explained in detail.
3) Its talked about this week. Its just not mentioned in this episode.
4) Often in life there is not enough time. Smallara isn’t as cruel as death but there is never enough time. Thats the sad part about humanity. Currently, she doesnt even know if she wiill be able to tell her brother. That is predicated on actually being able to get help which currently she does not have.
5) Yup, unless you are smallborn then its not just normal and how life is.
6) that would be last thing Sara would want. You do get more information as to what happened between them in this story. I will be curious to see if you hold with this opinion or not. I’m personally not sure I agree with Charity getting to live the best life a little could. But I won’t say anything more to not spoil things.
0) When is this?
1) Yeah, that’s fair, it’s a question I think we’ve all asked, “what happens to Charity?”
2) Agreed, this sounds like the kind of procedure where people’d beg for death throughout.
4) In many ways, Smallara is crueller, death can be a mercy, but Smallara can’t. I am looking forward to learning more about her brother or family in general.
6) I don’t want Charity to live a good life because I think she deserves one. I want Charity to live a good life because I want someone to get away with hurting Sara, just like Sara has gotten away with hurting others.
0) October 2021. So a little over a year after Sara finds Jordan. A few months after Dayton’s junior guardian story and a few months before Steph gets guardian trained for lisa.
1) that’s good it means I wrote it something compelling. Now just need to follow through with it.
2) 100%
4) Now that you mention it probably is worse then death. You learn a bit about her family from Charity’s perspective and views.
6) Two wrongs don’t make a right. I mean if one person gets away with murder. I don’t believe then the next person should get away with it as well.
I’m interested to hear about Charity’s family, though I suspect that they are going to abandon her to the system.