"Weeks?!" You couldn't believe your ears "Ah, dammit!" You shook your head in frustration.

 

"My apologies, it takes a while for our reduction beam to recharge. It's powered by daylight!" The scientist ant said, showing you a sort of scepter that seemed to be made out of some wires, a gem or piece of colored glass and what appeared like circuitry.

 

"We did our research and we're prepared to care for you while the reduction beam recharges. We have observed that Goddess Snickers eats similar things to what she feeds us" The Queen said.

 

"Yeah but I wasn't counting on being stuck at this size" You sighed "Well, it's not like you could ask me in advance" You then said with a bit of a laugh at the sheer silliness of your predicament.

 

"We certainly didn't think this through. I suppose you have a Queen to return to" The Queen Ant said.

 

"Well, in a way, I do" You chuckled "I have a mother and you could say she is the queen of the house"

 

"Humans have queens" The scientist one muttered as she grabbed another piece of gel to write notes.

 

"You think we should be worried about angering your Queen Mother?" The Queen Ant asked with a mix of curiosity and moderate concern.

 

"Not really, she's nice to most creatures but at the same time, she can be dangerous if you're small, she... I guess she has a harder time with how big her body is" You explained and given that there wasn't much more to do, you then proceeded to explain how humans work as best as you could and in terms the ants understood. However, with the Ant Queen being about 4 times larger than the rest, she could relate a little bit.

 

Surprisingly, you weren't too bad at this given that you've always had a knack for tutoring and teaching others but never in your life you thought you'd be explaining human biology and society to ants. Time flew and you honestly lost track of it but it couldn't have been that long because you heard some distant booming noises and felt the ground shake.

 

Shortly after, the door was opened and Snickers walked in with a glass of water in one hand and what appeared to be some iced coffee with a lot of cream and possibly chocolate or caramel in the other.

 

"Blaise?" She was surprised and confused to see that you weren't in her room.

 

"Goddess Snickers is here!" Some ant, which you assumed to be a worker, shouted and everyone but the Queen and the few ants with her in the royal chamber moved frantically.

 

"Is that your human name?" The Queen asked almost in a whisper and you nodded, surprised that she caught on. She patted your head and ruffled your hair with her hand and chuckled.

"You're so different from us, you have your skeletons on the inside but you don't look as grotesque as we'd imagine someone inside-out would look. Your skin is soft and warm... if you all were our size you'd be prime meals for most creatures"

 

"Huh?" You gave her a fearful look in response but she shook her head and patted your head again.

 

"Don't worry, we have no need to eat you, we're not savages" The Queen Ant said.

"Besides, Our Goddess provides plenty of food and I can tell that she'd be sad if harm were to befall to you"

 

"How are you so sure?" You asked with a bit of curiosity on the latter part.

 

"Now that I know that word 'Blaise' is your name I can tell you that she's spoken it out loud several times. I wondered what it meant for quite a long time" The Queen Ant replied, amused by your reaction.

 

Snickers looked around and saw that your backpack as well as the rest of your stuff were all still there 'Did he go to the bathroom or something?' She thought but quickly realized you wouldn't have known where it is because you hadn't asked her yet, which led her to the only other cause for your sudden disappearance.

 

"Oh my god, I hope my mom isn't doing something stupid right now" She sighed in frustration and decided to head back and look for her mom, hoping she wasn't already harassing you or something. Her footsteps slightly shook the entire ant farm given the hefty weight they supported.

 

"Mom!" Snickers called out as she went to the living room but saw that Bertha was still sitting on the couch watching tv while eating pork rinds in a pretty large bowl.

 

"Hmm? What's up?" She asked with a nonchalant, slightly sleepy tone.

 

"Did you see Blaise?" Snickers asked, crossing her arms.

 

"Yeah, I see him every day at school" Bertha yawned and resumed eating her pork rinds.

 

"No, mom. I meant today, like right now" Snickers said, giving her a deadpan look, wondering if her mom was being dumb on purpose or she legit had no idea.

 

"Why would I-Oh... oh!" Bertha caught on more quickly than her daughter expected and then gave her a smug, teasing smirk "You brought him home? I didn't know you had it in you"

 

"He's been here for the last 2 hours" Snickers sighed and facepalmed.

"And it's not like that, we're doing a school assignment together, that's all"

 

"Really? Welp, I haven't seen him around. You sure you didn't make him leave?" Bertha teased, glancing at Snickers' pudgy belly and smirking while the younger chubby blonde blushed.

 

"I didn't do anything like that!" Snickers shook her head "Maybe he had to take a call outside, I'll wait in my room"

 

Back in the ant farm, you were offered some of the gel the ants carved tunnels into and to your surprise it was made out of sugar. In spite not having much of a sweet tooth, you could enjoy sweets from time to time, most of the time in the form of chocolate bars, ice cream or chocolate chip cookies, which your mom and grandma excelled at making.

 

"You know, this is nice and all but actually we humans can't live on sugar alone" You explained to the Queen Ant and what appeared to be some sort of council, with the Scientist Ant taking notes every few seconds or so.

"To be healthy we need to eat meat and vegetables too"

 

"So, humans need a varied diet just like queens" The Scientist Ant whispered as she jotted that down.

 

"I guess that's the best way to explain it" You chuckled.

 

"Not to worry, the Goddess provides us with quite the varied diet. You fed us this time, you should know best" The Queen Ant remarked and like before, the conversation was interrupted by booming, earth-quaking footsteps followed by Snickers walking into the room.

 

"I guess I should continue work, he even left his notes here" Snickers said, picking up one of your notebooks to make some extra progress on the assignment while you were busy doing whatever you left to do. Snickers felt a bit bummed out but she hoped you'd be willing to hang out with her for a bit even after work was done.

 

"She has no idea I'm here and is wondering where I am. It will be even worse when it gets late and there's still no signs of me" You said to the ants, looking out the transparent wall as Snickers worked on the assignment by herself.

 

"I'll make sure they recharge the reduction beam as quickly as possible, but even then it will take a while" The Queen Ant said in an apologetic tone. After that, there wasn't much more for you to do but the ants gave you a tour of their colony and you could at least get absorbed in that, seeing it like this it was much closer to human civilization, they way they built their various structures, conducted farming and even raised their own cattle.

 

"And these are our farms! We cultivate fungi on these leaves that the Goddess provided" The ant that was guiding you explained. It definitely looked like some sort of mold though it didn't give off the gross smell from the kinds you knew.

"We observed humans eat some form of giant fungi too, she fed us some but we weren't able to cultivate any of it"

 

'Must be talking about champignons' You thought. There wasn't much more you could say, their logic was sound with the context they had and you were quite amazed they were this observant.

 

"Of course, that's not everything, we also raise livestock!" The ant lead you to what essentially looked like a massive ranch, though instead of cattle it was a bunch of bugs that were larger than the ants themselves and unlike them, their appearance remained animalistic at your size.

"The Goddess has shown us visions in which humans raise some other creatures this way to procure some sort of white nectar"

 

"Cows? I guess it must be cows" You chuckled "And the white nectar is actually called milk, It's actually pretty good, it's like liquid sugar but not excessively sweet. I'm a big fan of that one" You said with a bit of pride. You wondered what those visions the ant mentioned could be but you felt it was most likely her television or computer and maybe that'd be a bit much to explain.

 

"Oh so that's milk?! The Goddess has shared some with us in the past but we didn't know where it came from" The ant seemed happier to have learned something new and perhaps your inner child shared that feeling. In a way it wasn't that bad to hang around with the ants but it still sucked you'd essentially go missing until they reversed the shrinking process. Time definitely flew because not too long after the tour concluded you heard Snickers sigh.

 

"He's still not back? Maybe his mom called him for some errand?" She figured you'd have to come back at some point to pick up your stuff but in the meantime she might as well look for ways to entertain herself. Browsing through the Internet for memes didn't seem as appealing right now but then she looked at the ant farm. Besides yourself and Tina, the ants were among the few friends she had.

 

"She's coming!" You heard another ant shout and then it seemed like an oxymoron, an organized chaos as most of the ants scrambled to head to the top of the farm and outside of their tunnels and chambers. Somehow, you found yourself getting carried along by the crowd and then you were gently deposited back down on the floor, you'd been put at the front of the ant crowd as they watched Snickers approach, the question was: What was she up to?

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September 29
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