Good Morning! Tiny Terry chapter 1 by KoroKoroAi

Terry woke in the darkness inside his matchbox bed. Its slightly sulfurous scent had never really gone away. A worn cotton ball was his pillow, and a scrap of some old bra padding was his blanket. The thin, silvery line of light on the edge of the pantry door was his dawn.

Terry stretched, his tiny joints popping, and sat up in his matchbox bed. He pushed aside the scrap of bra padding he used as a blanket - whose bra? He didn’t want to know.

A deep, resonant THUMP… THUMP… THUMP shook the pantry. Mom was coming down the hall. The pantry door swung open, flooding his space with light and the overwhelming, sweet scent of her new peach-and-cream body spray. His bed was, thankfully, at about face level with her. (The original placement of his “room”, at chest level, had been a terrible mistake for reasons he shuddered to remember.) He could see the elegant cascade of her long, black wavy hair brushing her shoulders and the carefully applied makeup that accentuated her eyes, even this early.

“Rise and shine, my little man!” her cheerful voice boomed.

A colossal shadow fell over him. Her hand, soft and warm, descended. Her fingers, each one larger than his entire body, gently scooped him from his bed. The world became a blur of motion and scent as she lifted him, holding him just in front of the massive swell of her chest. He was dwarfed by the logo on her sweatshirt. It was too large to read, this close up, but it must have been from whatever fashion brand had last decided to decided to partner with her.

“Time for breakfast, sweetie. You have a big day ahead of you!”

She carried him into the kitchen and set him down with a gentle thud on the cool, hard surface of the breakfast table. The landscape was immense. Giant ceramic plates piled high with pancakes surrounded him. Glasses of orange juice and coffee shimmered in the morning light. To his left and right, his sisters were like living mountains.

Hazel, a vision in pink pajamas, beamed at him. Her medium-length, wavy brown hair was held back with a multi-colored plastic clip, and her face was alight with a sweet, genuine smile. “Good morning, Terry!” she chirped, her voice a sweet, high bell. “You look so cute all sleepy-eyed!”

Kayla, a monochrome sculpture in a black leather jacket, didn’t look up from her phone. Her long, straightened hair was its usual a severe, inky black with a red streak, forming a curtain around her face, which was pale under a heavy application of mascara and black eyeliner. Her nails, tapping on her phone case, were painted a deep, blood red. “Yeah, real cute. Like a dust bunny.”

“Be nice, Kayla,” Jenna chided, her tone light. She placed a single, crumb-like piece of pancake in front of Terry. It was still larger than his head.

Hazel leaned in, her wide, blue eyes filling his sky. “Here, Terry-Berry, you need some syrup!” Before he could protest, she used the tip of her pinky to dab a single, glistening drop of maple syrup onto his pancake crumb. The droplet completely covered his bite of pancake, and turned it into a shining, sticky glob. “Isn’t that yummy?”

“Thanks, Hazel,” Terry squeaked, his voice barely audible even to himself. He began the arduous task of trying to eat the sticky morsel, shoving his arms into the sticky mass.

“So, girls,” Jenna said, sipping her coffee from her favorite “#1 Tiny Momma” mug. “I saw the most adorable trend on TikTok last night. All the moms are getting them for their little boys.”

Hazel clasped her hands together. “Ooh, what is it?”

“It’s a little harness,” Jenna explained, her eyes sparkling. “But it’s designed to look like a cute little necklace! That way, when we take our tinies out, they can’t wander off and get lost. Isn’t that just the most practical thing?”

Terry froze, a piece of pancake halfway to his mouth. A necklace cage. He was nineteen years old. Not a baby.

“That’s genius!” Hazel exclaimed. “We could get a pink one for him! He’d look so precious!”

“He’d look like a worm on a fish hook,” Kayla muttered, not looking up.

“We’ll look into it,” Jenna said, winking at Terry. She reached out and patted his head with the tip of her index finger, a gesture that nearly squished him into the sticky pancake bite. “Anything for my little man.”

Somehow, breakfast continued without any major disasters. No giant elbow crushed him, nobody spilled any orange juice on him, and, most importantly, he didn’t become part of anyone’s breakfast. (At least, not yet.) It was, by the chaotic standards of the Rose household, remarkably peaceful. As he finished his crumb, licking the sticky syrup from his hands, he thought about the upcoming day.

What was today, anyway? Did he have plans?