If I put just enough swagger and move my eyebrows like a muppet I might be able to deliver the line, “I could tell you about big,” ignoring the kind of gravitas that the moment deserved.  My eyebrows are distinctly unmuppet, at least in this stage of my evolution, and I’m not the swaggering type.

Let me put it this way: I had been thinking small.   Not so small that I could describe the naiad as some kind of lymphocyte small, but small in that the creature that represented Ivan in the gate transfer (Ivan wasn’t a small man, if you recall) could quite easily eat a me and my lost simulacrum for a snack and still want a couple dozen pizzas before its belly stopped complaining.

And it worked for the gate requirement.  I was happy about that – only Doloise has broken my personal rules, and she had a reason.  I mean, I had wanted to mention that the mountains were far larger than molehills, but since I’m from Colorado I try not to brag.  There’s only a few groups of people who understand why we stay in the state (and not just because we’re addled from the altitude) for the mountains.  Going just about anywhere else, and you get, you know, hills.  Soft rounded things that don’t have the presence our part of the range does.  So I hadn’t been impressed with the shiny mountains and their purple flowers, but again, it’s all about how you describe the environs.  Artur in the trollish form he showed in the kitchen of the restaurant was big, bigger than Ivan, but this thing (and I really wanted a name for it and an entry in some kind of Monster Manual to know its capabilities) put Artur and the lesiye’s ent-like ways to shame.

I was feeling kind of small for a moment.  And wet from splashback as the island creature (too human to dub it Krakoa) shook itself loose, catching me in a giant hand (oh, call it three quarters my size) before I fell back into the water.

“Hmmmm?” it asked.  I think it was hmmmming, at any rate.   Its head still kind of looked like a cave, and the scales looked very much like living water.   It had caught the naiad in its other hand, and seemed to ignore Artur and Nikolai completely.  Apparently, the second obstacle was a necklace.  You know, the usual kind of fire charm you’d give your sentient lake boyfriend.

I really did not want to speculate on what that made the first obstacle.  Alas, my brain does not always obey my every whim, but this time it kind of went crazy and suggested it was um, a familiar.  Like a parrot on a pirate’s shoulder.

I would like to state for the record that I did not pee my pants, but honestly, it would have been completely reasonable to do so.  I did not mostly because my body had seized up in a fashion that decided any additional moisture would have to be Enemy.

Air whooshed around me, and the roaring of a giant waterfall all but made the “Hmmmm?” sound like a cavern taking a deep breath.  I was soaked now just from the ambient water in the air.

I hate it when my socks get wet.  But it’s not like you can go all over the universe in adequate footgear without  life sometimes just handing you giant island men.  Or women – but “humanoid” only goes so far, you know? And I’d like to say it saved me from having to take another shower as soon as I got home, but “ambient” only goes so far, too.  I couldn’t find a way to ask for soap in “giant island thing language.”

“It wants to know who and what you are,” the naiad shouted.  Besides the necessary volume, she was looking completely relaxed in the thing’s hand.

“It first!” I wanted to shout back, but my better sense actually blocked it.  Of course, I wasn’t getting anything better prepared than, “I am me!” but that’s fine, because Artur showed up again, doing something to the hand of the creature like a special pressure point and having it release both of us.

Falling wasn’t “fine,” by any means.  I’m not afraid of heights (but I don’t test it, either) but falling, falling wasn’t getting me to my happy place.  I had complete and total empathy for Bilbo Baggins and his wanting a good hot breakfast after a night’s rest in his own bed.  Well, except for the part of me that was screaming, “We’re going to die!”

Artur didn’t look worried.  Oh, he was pulling a Kyra.  It’s a “Dark Crystal” reference, and shouldn’t count as a spoiler anymore.  Well, the flying squirrel version of showing he had wings.  I didn’t know the limits of his transformations, but I was pretty impressed.

And pretty worried.  Why hadn’t he taken out Nellie?  I know this wasn’t a matter of “needing mortal blood” or any such silly ruling.  If she was more powerful than this son-of-a-lesiye, I better have something hidden like Zaphod in my brain and be able to pull out some kind of Heart of Gold improbability.

Of course, I’d been sitting on my living room couch with something that could all but obliterate Artur without much effort, and she, too, had been snatched by a Dragon.

See?  I would like to take this moment to refute the common refrain.  Size does matter.  Scale is important.

I wasn’t quite at the point that I cancelled my “I’m not dying from falling,” happy, but I was beginning to wonder if I could eat what we were biting off.  This wasn’t even at more than I could chew stage, this was, bigger than my giant island thing’s head.  When did I order the “mess with metaphysical things beyond my ken,” buffet?

I will not eat green eggs and dragon, no matter the size of the wash-it-down flagon.