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EXPLANATION: There is no vore in this, but I understand a certain scene might be considered too close to that. No one ends up inside anyone else in any way, but there is some interaction with the outside of a giant mouth while it is in the process of drinking. If you want to skip that part, watch out for the word “swimmer,” and skip eight paragraphs after you see it.

Danny had anticipated that dinner with the Suriels would be bizarre — would he have to sit close to a bunch of looming giant faces noisily chewing their food? The picnic lunch was calm enough, but he had sat far away from everyone then. For dinner now, he was seated at his own human-scaled chair and TV tray on top of the dining room table. He was perched only about a human room’s length away from Colby’s enormous plate.

It was an Esdreel custom for the host to serve his guest directly, and Colby very carefully allowed his friend to be seated before he placed his meal before him. It was in a metal serving tray with a shiny steel lid, and small enough to be wedged like a bean between Colby’s massive fingers before he set it down. With impeccable dexterity, the giant then plucked the lid off, revealing a steaming hot plate of lasagna. He also produced what seemed (to the giant) like an impossibly tiny bottle of cold apple pop.

Everyone else at the table sat down to have above-ground-pool-sized bowls of soup with air-mattress-sized squares of bread. As Danny watched Colby’s dad, Alan, quietly set each bowl down, he asked, “Weren’t you guys supposed to be trying vegetarian meatloaf today?”

“Yeah …” Colby’s mom, Melina, said with an embarrassed smile. “That didn’t really work out. Soup is kind of our last resort meal.”

“I like it, though,” Colby said cheerfully, and started to dig in, slurping kind of noisily. He noticed, however, that his human friend wasn’t eating right away. He looked down and saw that Danny’s eyes were closed, and his head was tilted downward. He was about to comment, when the boy’s eyes suddenly opened and he, too, started eating. Colby resolved to ask him about it later.

The meal proceeded in silence, mostly. Danny got the feeling that it was kind of a formal family event, but he still answered questions from Colby’s mom and dad and learned a lot more about the TDP.

At one point, Danny started to talk about going exploring and camping in the TDP someday, and Alan said camping in the forest should be fine.

“But there are some dangers everyone has to be reminded of from time to time,” Alan said. “For humans, there are some wildlife in the deeper forest that do not take kindly to being disturbed. In fact, for security and the sake of speed, we normally don’t let humans or Esdreel enter unexplored areas alone.”

Danny frowned as he chomped on his meal. “Even Esdreel can’t go alone? What’s the danger to them?” he asked.

“There’s a vortex keeping us all from the mountains, but Esdreel especially are affected by it,” Alan said. “Also, there are a few strange parts of the forest and the nearby hills that seem to repel us, but humans can enter just fine. We Esdreel get uneasy when we go into those places. We become nauseated, and some men have even broken down crying.” A haunted look crossed his face, but then he smiled. “Colby’s strong enough to go into some of those places, but I don’t think I’d ever encourage him to do it. Part of my work is studying why those places only invite humans.”

Danny sat in fascination. He thought it was interesting for Mr. Suriel to use the word “invite,” as if the places had minds of their own, and that set his imagination running. It wasn’t the first time he thought it would be a fantastic adventure to wander around and unlock the secrets of these mysterious trans-dimensional pockets, and in the back of his mind he began the process of making plans to do this with Colby the next time he visited.

But for now, he was exceptionally full. Even the pre-prepared “human food” the Suriels had gotten for him was nearly as dense as the Esdreel cuisine they ate.

“Thank you for the lasagna, Mr. and Mrs. Suriel, but I don’t think I can eat another bite of this. I’m super full,” he said, and the adult giants responded in kind.

To his left, Colby had just finished his soup, and he asked, “If you’re not going to eat it, can I finish it off?”

Danny gave him a weird look. The food on his plate was miniscule compared to the giant’s dinner. “Um, sure?” he answered.

Colby licked his index finger and stuck it down on Danny’s plate. When he lifted it, the entirety of the plate’s contents was stuck to his fingertip, and he nonchalantly slurped it off. Danny chuckled, but Colby’s mother shot daggers at him with her eyes.

“Colby, that was a few kinds of rude,” she said, and the boy shyly apologized to his human friend.

After dinner, Danny wanted to go outside again — he wondered if the TDP’s night sky contained different-looking stars, but it soon began to rain and thunder. “Umm … lightning kind of hurts,” Colby said, and Danny was shocked to find his friend had been struck several times before. Needless to say, going outside was not OK.

So the two boys ended up going back upstairs to finally try playing some of the video games Danny had brought over. After turning on the machines and getting their controllers ready, Colby set Danny on his bed and carefully lay down on his stomach right behind him, his elbows on either side of the human’s patch of mattress space. The TV seemed almost a city block’s distance away from Danny, but it’s incredible size made playing easy.

They raced each other in Need For Speed and Hydro Thunder, they assisted each other in taking down Chinese warlords in Dynasty Warriors, and they solved a few puzzles in Lego: The Lord of the Rings, laughing and joking with each other the whole time. Finally, they started fighting against each other in Marvel vs. Capcom 3. So far, Danny was laying down some serious hurt on his giant friend.

“If you pick Deadpool again, I’m going to punish you,” Colby said. He looked at Danny with mock fierceness. Danny gulped, knowing that his friend would never hurt him, but a giant could do a lot of things.

“Come on, man! You just have to adapt to fighting him!”

Colby smirked and gently poked his finger down into his tiny friend’s side. He started to rub it just enough to start viciously tickling the little human.

“Aaaaack!” Danny yelled. “Stop that! You don’t hear me complain when you keep choosing Arthur and spamming his javelin!”

Colby grinned down at his friend as the human rolled over onto his back. A look of shock swept across the little guy’s face, but only briefly.

“What’s wrong?” Colby asked.

Danny smiled shyly, a strange look for him being the “cooler friend” and all. “It’s nothing, I just kind of forgot that I was in a huge cave made of person,” he said.

Colby sighed, his warm breath covering Danny. Luckily, it held a pleasant, nutty aroma from the soup he had eaten. Danny guessed what the giant was thinking.

“Are you getting bored with playing video games?” Danny asked.

Colby leaned his face onto his left hand, using his right to set his go-kart-sized controller a few feet behind Danny on the bed. Because one elbow was supporting more weight, it created more of an indentation in the mattress, and Danny noticed his body was in danger of rolling that direction, so he braced himself.

“No, I’m OK with it. Maybe a little bored, I guess,” Colby said. His right hand was now resting behind the human, and just like before, it was unconsciously creeping toward him. “I wish this night could keep going. We’ll have to go to bed soon. I wish you could stay here longer.”

Danny pulled a half smile and stared into the giant green eyes above him.

“What, you want to keep me or something?” he asked.

Colby knew he was joking, but he still blushed. Was Danny actually able to read his mind? Deep inside his psyche, a voice said, “Yes. I’ll keep you.”

But his real voice said, “No, I think your dad would probably miss you.”

Danny chuckled. “Then you could just keep him, too! I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. I think he and your dad are pretty tight.”

“You shouldn’t joke about that. You’ll give me ideas,” Colby said, moving his face down closer and trying to look scary. He failed, of course, and Danny laughed more, knowing his friend’s gentle personality too well.

Colby’s right index finger completed its surreptitious journey over to the human, and very softly it started to ruffle Danny’s messy black mop of hair. A jolt went through Danny’s body when he felt it, and he was about to say something, but the giant cut him off.

“What kind of stuff do humans do together when they have sleepovers?” Colby asked.

Danny decided to swallow his unease for the moment as the finger continued to stroke his scalp. “W-well, the last time I slept over at a friend’s house was when I was 11,” he said. “I remember we played a lot of air hockey in his basement, and we fought and wrestled a lot, but dude, I really don’t want to fight you if that’s OK.” He chuckled nervously. “Dude, do you realize you’re petting my head?”

The question startled Colby out of his absent-minded behavior. “Oh! I’m sorry. I wasn’t even thinking,” he said, and retracted his hand.

“That’s OK, it didn’t feel bad or anything, it was just kind of … different,” Danny said, and propped himself up onto his elbows. “You know, I think I know how we can make this video game more interesting. Have you ever played ‘truth or dare’? It’s kind of a traditional sleepover thing.”

Colby had not, and so Danny explained the rules to him. Whoever won a match in the fighting game could ask a “truth” or a “dare” from the loser, and if that person chose, for example, “truth” for one loss, then they would be forced to complete a dare for the next. There were, of course, a few extra provisions added. Colby made Danny promise that he wouldn’t dare him to do anything that would put the human in danger (to which Danny said “Duh!”), and Danny laid down the customary “nothing horribly disgusting, like licking the bathroom floor” rule (Colby reacted to that one with pure horror; what things did people dare each other to do in this game?!!). Also, Danny gave in to the rule that he couldn’t use Deadpool. Or Dante. Or Wolverine. “Why do I have to be so nice?” he thought.

Even being nice though, he ended up baking Colby’s team with Phoenix fire. “Truth or dare?” he asked, refusing to be intimidated by the giant’s glare. Colby chose truth.

“OK … playing it safe …” Danny said. “Are there any girls you like?”

A confused look crossed Colby’s face. “Girls I like? What do you mean? I mean, I like my mom …”

Danny laughed loudly at this. “No! That’s not what I mean!” he said. “Are there any girls you have a crush on? Any girls that you think are pretty or want to fall in love with you?” He theatrically batted his eyes.

Colby’s cheeks burned vermillion. “No, not really,” he said.

“Come on, duuuuude …”

“OK, fine, I guess there’s this girl Anita at the learning center,” Colby said shortly, huffing and rolling his eyes.

“What’s she like?” Danny asked.

“She’s just nice, I guess, and she’s really pretty and … graceful? She likes dancing. I don’t know. I think she’s still kind of afraid of me, but at least she talks to me. Most of the other kids act like I’ll break their arms just by looking at them.” Colby scowled and stared into space at this last part.

Danny found himself wishing he hadn’t asked — he worried he was just leading his friend into a bad mood, so during their next match, he subtly (and, of course, hypocritically) let him win.

“Ugh! That’s what I get for using Thor! He’s the worst!” Danny said, flopping himself over with expert drama.

Colby’s eyes gleamed as he asked, “Truth or dare?”

“Dare,” Danny said, smiling with his eyes closed.

This surprised the giant. He was actually kind of hoping for truth because he loved learning new things about his friend. He thought for a while.

“Um, I don’t really know what to tell you to do,” he admitted. “What kind of stuff do you dare people?”

Danny looked up at him and rubbed his chin. “Well, when I was 11, my friend Denzel and I played, and …” he started using his fingers to count as he spoke, “I dared him to jump on his trampoline three times in his underwear, then he dared me to put ice down my pants, then I dared him to let me shoot him in the butt with his Nerf crossbow, then he dared me to let him punch me in the stomach as hard as he could, then – “

“And this game is fun to you?!” Colby interjected.

“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!” Danny said, grinning up at his friend.

Colby thought hard for a few more seconds, but then a devious smile appeared on his face. Danny saw this happen, and his own enthusiasm for the game gave way to a little bit of nervousness.

“Do you remember, a couple of weeks ago, you told me you wanted to try out for choir when you started high school?”

“Uh oh,” Danny thought. “Yes? What of it?”

Colby pointed his huge finger straight at the human. “I asked you to sing a song for me then, and you refused! Now you have no choice! Ha!”

“Ugghhh!” Danny groaned. “That’s it? That’s your dare? I was worried you’d stick me in your armpit or something!”

Colby grimaced at that thought. “This seems to annoy you enough,” he said, and carefully shifted himself to a seated position without jostling the bed too much. “And, anyway, I know exactly the song you should sing.”

“What then?” Danny asked, and then raised one of his eyebrows as he watched his friend reach over to the giant bedside table. Colby was opening one of its drawers and rummaging around.

Grinning like a monkey, Colby brought around what was obviously a huge video camera.

“I want you to sing ‘Let It Go’ from the movie ‘Frozen’!” Colby said triumphantly. “And I’m going to record the whole thing!”

“WHAT?!!” Danny said, mortified. “Where’d that come from? No! Argh!”

Colby chuckled at his friend’s pirate noise. “I actually wanted to record when you arrived today, but I forgot it,” he said. “Now, I’ll just have to treasure this memory forever.” He turned the camera on. “Now sing!”

After that ordeal was complete, during their next match in the fighting game Danny banished all mercy from his heart. He relished the act of cutting Colby’s Strider Hiryu to ribbons with X23.

“It has to be a dare for you this time,” he said, and cracked his knuckles like a thug. “And I have exactly the dare in mind.”

Colby’s parents, Alan and Melina, were cuddled together on the living room couch watching an Esdreel TV show when they saw Colby, carrying Danny, softly walk from the stairs to the foyer.

“What’s up, guys?” Melina asked, noticing that the expression on her son’s face was not exactly a happy one.

“Colby’s just going to show me something outside really quick,” Danny replied.

The giantess frowned. “But it’s raining, and we’ve seen a few flashes of lightning. I wouldn’t suggest going outside,” she said.

Colby shrugged and answered without making eye contact, “I’m just going to duck out there really quick. I’ll barely get wet.”

“… OK then …” Melina said, a suspicious squint to her eyes, and then resumed watching TV with her husband.

“Mwa ha ha,” thought Danny.

When they reached the door, Colby set Danny down on the floor, but not as gently as usual, and the human stumbled a bit. Looking up at his enormous friend, he felt a little perturbed that he was in this position while the titan had reason to resent him. He watched Colby’s massive toes twitch ominously.

Still, a dare was a dare.

Colby, a resigned look on his face, proceeded to take off his shirt. He gave Danny a quiet warning to watch out as he pulled down his soccer shorts. And he stood there, like an ancient Greek colossus, clad only in his light blue boxer briefs.

Danny couldn’t help giggling as his masterful dare was about to be completed. “Nice abs, big guy,” he said, mimicking the way Colby had teased him earlier. However, he felt that, in Colby’s case, the compliment had more truth to it. He was proud of his own fitness, but Colby had a real wrestler’s bod with defined abdominals.

Colby glared down at his friend more fiercely than ever, but an idea sparked in his mind, and he smiled inwardly. Slowly, he stooped nearer to his friend.

“You know, if I’m going to do this, I might as well go for the gold,” he said, and then stood up and hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his underwear.

Danny practically yelped and quickly turned his whole body around. Normally, this wouldn’t embarrass him — he wasn’t supposed to be the sheltered kid in this friendship — but for some reason the idea of seeing a naked giant worried him. A huge mass of clothing fell to the floor in his peripheral vision, and then he heard Colby open the front door.

Outside in the rain, Colby proceeded to streak in one wide circle in front of his family’s home. No one was out there to see him, and it was dark, but his cheeks (the ones on his face) still burned red as he fulfilled the other part of the dare, screaming “GOODNIGHT MOOOOOOON!!!!”

Danny, waiting in the foyer, covered his ears as he heard the incredible bellowing and booming footsteps outside. He couldn’t help laughing, and continued to do so as he heard his giant friend re-enter the foyer behind him and close the door. He closed his eyes and kept his ears covered until he felt Colby’s hand wrap around him. His stomach flipped as he was raised up high.

Colby was chuckling, too, now, and trying not to make it too loud. “You can open your eyes now, Danny, I’m decent,” he said, and the human did so. Colby had his underwear and shorts back on, but he was still clutching his shirt in his left hand. “Thanks to you, I’m all wet, and my clothes are going to stick to me all night.” With a smirk on his face, he gently wiped the human on his rain-slicked shoulder.

“Ack!” Danny said, now slightly damp himself, and sputtered. “Come on, dude, you know that was hilarious!”

Colby smiled and laughed, drying himself off with his shirt as he slowly stepped through the foyer into the living room. “Yeah, I guess it was kind of fun to do,” he said.

But when the boys returned to Colby’s bedroom and resumed their gaming positions, Colby looked down at his human friend gravely.

“You’d better hope I don’t beat you again, little guy,” he said.

Danny looked at him, unfazed. “Even if you do, and you won’t, I get to do a truth next time.”

“Then I’ll just have to beat you twice!”

“Ehh … we’ll be done with the game by then.”

“I DON’T THINK SO.”

And so it continued, this time with Colby playing like his life depended on it. The first match, he lost, and Danny asked him the old standard: “Have you ever kissed a girl (not counting your mom)?” The answer was “No,” of course, and they played on, the giant boy struggling not only to defeat his little friend, but also to keep himself from breaking the controller in his hand as his effort unconsciously drew on his extreme strength.

The struggle paid off, and the next match resulted in a win for Colby. His eyes sparkled with victory, but then he realized Danny had the right to choose truth. After some thought, he settled on the only question he could think of without copying the questions asked before.

“Have you ever gotten in a fight at school?” he asked, and silently regretted it. In all honesty, it seemed like kind of a racist question to him — Esdreel often thought of humans as belligerent, and even if the stereotype was mostly true, it was still an ignorant generalization.

But Danny showed no surprise or problem with the question. “Yeah, I’ve been in a couple,” he said. “My friend Craig and I got in a fight in the fifth grade. We were on the bus, and he kept stealing things from me, so we ended up pushing each other around a lot — not much of a fight. We both got detention.”

Danny reclined on his spot on the bed, relaxing the back of his head on his arms.

“I got in a worse fight when I was in fourth grade, though. This kid named Tim Nuckols was a lot bigger than me, and he liked to bully me all the time. I tried fighting him once, but he beat me up. He ended up getting suspended, and then later his family moved away.”

“He … beat you up?” Colby whispered.

“Yeah, and not just me. He bruised up a couple kids pretty bad. My dad wanted to sue, but my mom wouldn’t let him. She said Tim had pretty bad problems with his dad.”

Danny sighed, thinking of his mother, and Colby looked down at his friend with concern.

“Do people ever pick on you now?” he asked.

Danny smiled up at him. “No way, dude,” he said. “I’m pretty good at keeping out of trouble now. I try to be friendly with everyone, now, though … sometimes I’m kind of a mean person, too.”

“I don’t think you’re mean,” Colby said. “Except when you make me run out in the rain.”

Danny scoffed. “Oh right, I MADE you run out in the rain. Your tiny little friend who fits in your hand MADE you do it! Ha!”

Colby tried to scowl, but he couldn’t suppress his smile. “I think it’s time for the next match,” he said, and they continued their game.

It was a close fight. They were both at the very limit of their health bars when Colby’s Ghost Rider worked in a chain whip at just the right time. Match: the Esdreel.

“HA HA HA HAAAA!” Colby guffawed, forgetting to keep his voice down. Danny, having developed pretty good instincts for this, managed to cover his ears just in time. His mind and heart were racing. “This is it. He’s going to torture me,” he thought, but really he wasn’t that worried. In fact he was kind of excited to hear what his friend would come up with.

Colby launched himself off the bed, causing his little friend to bounce wildly for a bit. He turned and gazed gleefully into Danny’s fearful brown eyes.

“Hold tight, buddy,” he said. “I’m feeling thirsty. I’ll be right back.” The giant started to head out of his room, but then he turned, grabbed Danny’s tiny backpack off the desk, and tossed it onto the bed next to his friend.

“If you packed swim trunks, you might want to change into them,” he said, and then padded out of the room and down the stairs.

“This should be interesting,” Danny thought as he opened his backpack and pulled out a pair of Hawaiian board shorts. Before he came to visit, he and Colby had talked about possibly swimming in one of the ponds or lakes that dotted the TDP’s forest, so his dad had suggested he pack appropriate supplies. As quickly as he could, he disrobed and changed into the shorts, making sure to hide himself behind a more prominent fold in the bedspread just in case Colby returned too soon.

And the giant did return, almost at exactly the same time as Danny pulled the shorts on. At first, he didn’t see the human on the bed, and started to panic, but then noticed his tiny head peeking over the edge of a crease in the blanket.

In his left hand, Colby was holding what looked like a large glass of water, and he casually took a little sip from it. With his right hand, he gently, if not menacingly, grabbed his friend.

“You’re a pretty good swimmer, right Danny?” Colby asked. Honestly, if the human had then answered “No,” the dare would have ended right there.

But Danny answered that he was a pretty strong swimmer, and so Colby lowered him into his cup of water and let him go with a minor “sploosh”!

“I dare you to just have a little swim,” he said, watching his friend keep himself afloat, and then he brought the glass to his lips.

Danny gasped as he saw the huge mouth latch onto the edge of the glass, the diameter of which seemed to be only a little less than his height. Colby tilted it up and started drinking, and Danny found himself lurched around with the shifting surface of the water. He heard it rush over and into his giant friend’s mouth, and he shuddered as he heard him gulp. Looking at Colby’s big, pink lips, he tried his best not to let the experience frighten him too much — after all, he determined that he was probably too big to fit into his friend’s mouth, at least all at once. But he really didn’t want any part of him to enter it at all.

The glass continued to tilt up further and further, and Danny struggled to keep himself at the back of it, as far away from Colby’s mouth as he could get, but a thought struck him. He was in no danger at all. He already knew Colby would never hurt him. Or, anyway, that’s what he had promised.

The glass tilted up more, and Danny started to slide toward his friend’s waiting maw. “Yikes!” he said, but then smacked into Colby’s upper lip. He could see the giant’s nose above him and noticed that the mouth had been kept closed enough to not even threaten taking the human into it. Still, Danny protested.

“Dude, I can see up your nose, and it’s disgusting!” he said, steadying himself with his hands on Colby’s peach-fuzz-covered lip.

Colby stopped drinking, keeping the glass steady, and giggled as he gently released Danny onto his bedspread with a negligible amount of water. “Dude, your hands tickle!” he said.

Danny flopped onto the bed and rolled around, attempting to dry himself off like a dog. “Colby, was that supposed to scare me?” he asked. “I already told you I’m not scared of you.”

Colby walked over and put the empty glass on his desk. “I’m pretty sure I heard a ‘Yikes’ come out of you,” he said.

Danny smirked. “But dude, I thought you didn’t want me to be scared,” he said, teasingly.

Colby gave the human a bashful look. “Yeah, I don’t, but I had to get back at you, right? I mean, that’s part of the game.” He sighed, but still smiled. “Whatever, I guess it was kind of a lame dare, wasn’t it? I don’t have anywhere embarrassing to make you streak around. I guess I could make you do it in front of my parents, but then we’d probably get into trouble.” Both boys laughed at this.

“It wasn’t a lame dare,” Danny said, sitting up. “Too bad I peed in that water while you were drinking it, though.”

“Shut your face! No you didn’t!” Colby said in a forced whisper, and he giggled, knowing his friend was kidding.

As it turned out, the experience had the effect of making Danny thirsty, so Colby allowed him to change back out of his board shorts in privacy and then brought him downstairs to get another human-scaled apple pop from the kitchen. Melina and Alan’s TV show was just ending, and Melina told the boys that it was time for them to get ready for bed, so, with heavy sighs, Danny finished his drink and Colby carried him back upstairs so both boys could change into their sleep clothes.

Before long, Danny was relaxing in his small bed on Colby’s bedside table, and Colby was lying comfortably on his side underneath his own covers, looking at his little friend. For background noise more than anything else, he had turned on the second Thor movie at low volume, and its light flickered throughout the room. Colby sighed.

“Are you tired, Danny?” he asked, and the human grunted in the affirmative. In fact, Danny really didn’t want the night to end, but as soon as his body hit the mattress, he realized he was exhausted.

“This has been such a good day,” Colby whispered. “I wish it could last longer. Thank you for coming to visit me.”

He noticed that, as he said, this, Danny’s eyes closed. The boy’s chest was moving slowly up and down.

“Thank you for being my friend,” Colby whispered, and then closed his eyes to go to sleep.