Chapter 44 – I never wanted to go home, there was nothing there for me.

8 Fructidor Year CCXXXVIII, Potat, South Windland, Libertalia – Amazonia

Tyler carefully opened the door to his adopted home, trying to minimize noise. With effort he held the heavy door to just a crack and squeezed in, before turning around and sliding it shut. He was home safe after thousands of miles of travel and two dimensions. With luck he could get to his crib and his parents might not even have known he had snuck out. He took one large breath and turned to look in the living room.

His breath got caught in his throat as he stared across the vast gulf of the house. On the central couch was his adoptive father, his hair was combed, and he wore a white polo shirt with a heavy collar. His active eyes were behind thick glasses but were aimed downwards at the heavy book in his lap. On the man’s left was his wife. Tyler’s momma. Not mommy, or mom, or mother. Momma. Her hair was short and had started turning gray this year. She was also distracted by a book. Neither seemed to move from their positions to acknowledge he entered.

Tyler knelt down and slowly released pressure from the Velcro strap on his shoe. He cupped the shoe to minimize the noise. Both shoes were off, and he stood up. Neither parent moved. They had to know, right? They had to know he had traveled out of the country in a military jet and blew up an airship. Soon they would spank him. Soon they would shove him off to, where? Court? Hilltop? Black Cliffs? Maybe just put him on a plane to Yamatoa.

Or not?

The room was silent. Maybe he could get to his crib and hide under the blanket, and they would forget this whole thing. He took one soft sock padded step towards his room. Both parents lifted their heads and looked at the intruder, their large eyes sizing him up as though he were a meal.

“Tyler, please come here,” Momma’s command was heavy, but gave no hint of anger nor sympathy. His tiny feet carried him inches at a time across a room that felt like a mile long. This was worse than Hankokku, at least there he had an eject button. His diaper bunched slightly in his shorts as he approached the edge of the couch, and he began to fear he may have put it on incorrectly. He cast his eyes down towards his socks, avoiding looking at the giant.

“How was Oliver’s party? Did you have a good time?” Momma’s question was not the one he had planned to answer. She had placed the book down casually in her lap and leaned over. Out of instinct, or submission, Tyler lifted his arms up and she reached down, pulling him into an embrace before placing him on the couch next to her. His adoptive father put his own book down and turned his attention to Tyler. The giant’s eyes bore into him, drilling to the truth. Sweat began to build under his armpits as he contemplated his words.

“The party was good,” He stumbled a bit, “An out of this world adventure. Dewey.” He was not even sure what he wanted to say about Dewey. His best friend was thousands of miles away and in danger and possibly dead.

Father showed his interest, “What about Dewey?”

Momma jumped in front of Tyler’s explanation, “Dewey has to go to camp.” She paused before ‘camp’ and mouthed the d-word. “That’s OK, he just needs some more time to get to where you are now Tyler. Life isn’t a race.”

And where was Tyler? His heart and mind were still in the loops from the previous evening, over the lit skies of Honkokku watching flak cannons and missiles explode. And now no one even knew he had done the impossible. His hands and shoulders still hurt, as the only reminder of what he had done.

“Hmm, well, speaking of Oliver,” Tyler’s adopted dad began, wiggling uncomfortably in the seat before lifting up the book he was reading, “His dad just finished a new book, and your momma and I have been talking about it.” Tyler’s eyes went to the title, The Origins of Our Species. There was a word Oliver had used.

“My neoteny.” He barely whispered it, looking down at his bulging shorts.

His adoptive father nodded, adding, “We, think we want to try a different way to treat your condition.”

Tyler’s eyes moved around the room, first to his adoptive father, then his adoptive mother, then to himself. It was the first time they had mentioned his maturosis since he wet himself at work. He had started to believe they did not even believe in it. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and kept silent. They must have known what he had done. They were changing things to punish him.

As though to confirm, a massive arm came down around his shoulders and pulled him closer. His adoptive momma was always too tight, squeezing past the point it was painful, and he was forced to breathe in her sugary and flowery perfume. Her booming voice came down to him, “You’re getting too big Tyler. You have to promise me you’ll never be too big for hugs.”

He needed to breath, so he let out a soft, affirmation, “I promise momma.” That satisfied her enough to release him, and he saw as his adoptive father returning with a large gray plastic bag. He knew the brand well enough, and the nightmare fuel that came from visiting the store. Only the “R-US” was visible, but the store had everything a mommy or daddy needed to turn a little into baby forever.

This was it, the end of his big boy status. They were going to give him the hypnotic toys. A mobile for his crib that would slowly twist his dreams, or a book that made him unlearn the alphabet, or silly puddy that turned him silly. He did not even want to see what it was as his father pulled a long arm into the oversized bag.

The real one is five thousand feet tall, and they had started building it in Malalumper, just before he was adopted. He could recall the article he had been skimming detailing the planned building at the coffee shop years ago. It was to be a futuristic design that was not bound to conventions of a building composed of rectangles on top of rectangles. It pierced the air like an arrow, and its shiny blue exterior would fade into the sky like a waterfall made of glass. The image on the box of the tower at sunset left him stunned, but what mattered more was the text.

40,012 pieces. For boys and girls over the age of 12.

He had been twelve once, and he never played with a toy like this. His adoptive dad came over and placed it on his lap. The box was at least sixty pounds, and he struggled to hold it in his arms. Even if he added up every block from every toy he owned, he would not come close to a fourth of the number of pieces this new toy had. At three hundredth scale, once complete it would still fill from the floor of his room to the ceiling.

“I think I might need some help with this.” He let the box drop slightly in his arms, and he stared up at his adoptive father, who gave him a friendly smile back.

“That’s why we’re here, to help you be the best you, that you can be,” the older man said, proud to finally realize there could be a higher purpose to his parenting.

Momma leaned in and pulled Tyler closer, giving a large whiff of his hair, “Starting with a bath, then you can play with your new toy.”

* * *

A few blocks away, Merton was waving his arms in the air. His left hand went up and then down quickly, and with an exasperated breath he explained, “And then we dove like this, and there was this pew pew pew of bullets,” he waved his other arm over. “And this guy got right on Brad’s tail, and I was like fa-shoom,” his left arm went out pointing a finger and smacked his other hand, “and then kah-boom. Then there was a big flash from the Nippon exploding, and then we went to Hanoi but Dewey’s plane didn’t make it, but we refueled and dropped off our super planes.”

The giantess he was explaining this to did not even turn from her stirring, her attention was on forming balls of dough onto a sheet. She took the break in the conversation to ask what she cared about, “Did Oliver’s parent’s feed you?”

“I told you we ate on Earth,” Merton protested. Had she even listened to the part when he got to the spaghetti?

She turned her head, looking down at him, the frown and glare told him all he needed to know. There would be no more talk of these imaginary stories.

“I could use a cookie to tide me over until supper.”

* * *

Across the street Greg was lying on his back staring up at the ceiling. His mother did not even bother taking him to a changing table, his head was barely protected from the hard floor by a millimeter thin white blanket. His adopted mother was on her knees, leaning over him, her massive face smiling down.

“I’ve been missing my baby. Did Gregory miss mommy?”

He did not want to talk, he thought about moving his thumb to his mouth just so he could ignore the conversation. Instead, he turned his head and tried to tune her out, his thoughts kept falling back to the skies, and the twists and turns from a last night. She pulled at his shirt where he had accidentally tucked an extra layer into his under garments and untied his shorts. One slow movement of her hands and the pants were at his ankles. His bigger sister, Stephanie, looked cautiously over at him from the couch, with most of her attention to her phone.

“I’ve never seen this brand before. They look good on you,” Greg lifted his head to see what she was commenting on. He had put the garments on in the airport back in Cidknee and it slipped his mind he was wearing them. Her hands moved to the tapes, “Tapes are not very sticky.” Their ripping filled the living room and Brad turned his head to keep from watching what she was doing to him. Her warm hands contrasted with the cold of the room, and her slightly cool wipes carefully circled around the inside of his thighs.

She then asked him a question he had not heard in six years, “We’re going to be making supper soon, what do you feel like eating tonight?”

He did not have an answer, “Pasta?”

“Spaghetti for my baby boy. You’re gonna be all messy.” She was propping him up now, helping the shorts back up.

“No gettis. Only meatballs.” He held in his breath as she was bringing his shirt down, only to be rewarded by a poke into his stomach.

She seemed thrilled by the answer, “You’re going to turn into a meatball.” His mouth formed a large circle; his mother was certainly big enough to make that threat real.

Stephanie put down her phone, saying, “Why’s the baby choosing what we eat?”

Greg was lifted up to her eye level, and reflectively he held an arm out on the giantess’s shoulder while she cradled him at the butt. He was floating casually five feet off the ground.

“Because Gregory is a part of this family. We’re making some changes around here, so he feels more included.” Greg looked up into his mother’s earnest face before turning it back to his adopted sister.

“I want sushi,” Stephanie complained.

Mother snapped her down fast, “We are not having that in our household. No sushi, no ramen, no hibachi, and no wagyu. We talked about this.”

Stephanie’s face shifted and betrayed her incredulity. Scorn and sarcasm dripped from her response.

“Maybe some people are right, and we let the small ones have too much freedom. You even let him spend a couple of days at his diaper party with all his diaper friends.”

“Gregory is your brother, and you’ll treat him with respect,” her mother started, her daughter was nearly her height, and she was a few years short of being an adult herself. Mommy’s threat was nearly empty to the teenage brat.

Stephanie bounced it back to her, “Are we going to let him choose what type of diaper he wears. Are you going to pretend he’s ready for ‘Pee Oh Tee Tee whY’ training?”

Greg closed his eyes, he could hear the air-to-air warning radar, the high tone piercing the cockpit as the Nippon searched desperately for his invisible craft. He was invulnerable, and he was going to show how big a man he could be.

“Stephanie, I understand that if you needed to wear diapers it would be embarrassing for you, but I have a condition, and they let me live my life to the fullest. I have done things in my diapers I never thought possible, and they do not hold me back from being the best me I can be. You can waste your breath on insults, but I will not be shamed for wearing them.”

Stephanie scrunched her face, almost angry enough to talk back, before biting down. Something had changed, it was as if he was an adult with decades of experience and wisdom and she was the child.

He was the tallest person in the room, though it helped that mommy lifted him up to her face. Her mouth and nose grew huge, and then their noses touched briefly, and he was forced to stare into her large brown eyes. A kiss came upon his forehead, and he was brought back down to see his sister’s defeated face. He was now mommy’s favorite.

Later when he was locked into his highchair, and a plate of three meatballs the size of his fists were placed before him, mommy gave him a tiny fork to try eating them with. He was still a messy eater.

9 Fructidor Year CCXXXVIII, Yongding, Hanoi Amazonia

“This is my best friend, Dewey.” The young lady talking to the giant, had her hair in pigtails, and stood a half head smaller than him. They both had to crane their neck to address the woman at the door. Past her the house had the smell of soft smoke and dead flower leaves, and soft sounds of bubbling food were barely audible from the kitchen.

Dewey had stayed at the first house he crashed landed at for only a few hours. The first boy’s parents were headed to the Capital. Despite the imperial patrols pulling any independent little they could find, no one seemed to be checking the car seats. Once in the Capital, Oliver’s network got him to the next leg of the journey at Ling’s house. He kept his mouth shut as the girl did her song and dance for her adopted parent.

“I thought your best friend was Mia,” the tall giant voiced. The woman wore a long summer dress with pink and white-water flowers on a dark blue background. Her hair was short. She seemed ageless in the way all Amazonian women could be. Dewey guessed she was probably somewhere between thirty and one hundred.

Ling was as much an expert of bullshitting her fake parents as she was at filling her pants, “That was last week. This week my best friend is Dewey. How do you not know who my friends are?” Her narrow whine on the end was just the right note to cause distress in an Amazon’s well-tuned ear. Dewey could see the woman stagger as though stabbed from the realization she was a failure at being a good mommy. How did she not know her daughter’s friends?

She caved, “Well, I suppose he can come in for a bit.”

The three walked into the door, only for Lita, to continue her demands, “Oh, we need to drop him off at his aunt’s tomorrow. You don’t mind driving to Hunhe do you?”

Dewey kept his mouth clenched as he slowly knelt to remove his shoes, carefully removing the knot in the lace.

The women seemed unsure, “That’s a little far…”

“Mom, he’s stranded. His mommy and daddy were going to Goryeo, and his aunt was supposed to pick him up but there was confusion over the date and with the restrictions she can’t leave after nightfall, and she wasn’t able to get here in time so I promised he could stay the night and we’d drop him off at her house tomorrow.” Ms. Zhu was buffaloed by the onslaught of new information, barely able to process the sentences as Lita spoke quickly in under four seconds and one breath.

Dewey added his line, “I don’t want to impose Ms. Zhu, I can just sleep on the bench in the park or something, it’s no big deal. I’ll hitchhike up north if I have to.” He looked down at his socks and frowned.

“Nonsense,” Ms. Zhu had been punched hard by her daughter’s promise, but this is what it meant to be a parent: Driving your child around from one event to another, and sometimes you had to host their snot nosed friends overnight.

Ms. Zhu looked carefully at Dewey as he fidgeted slightly; she sensed something off. An Amazon always knows, it was like blood in the water for a shark. Dewey could have been a mile away and Ms. Zhu would have picked up what was happening.

She leaned over and reached for his hand. Dewey grabbed on and she quickly rushed him along, picking him up as she went. She dragged him to the small half-bath down one hall in the house. Sweat began to pool in Dewey’s armpits, and he knew the ruse was up. He resigned himself to the worst this woman would throw at him, letting his body go limp.

The giantess deftly lifted him in the air four feet. Dewey glanced down and watched as she pulled his pants down to his knees with ease. He began to shake, before plopping him onto a cold plastic seat. His bum was exposed to cold dirty air, and he would have slipped in if he was not being held forcibly in place.

Water torture? Was she going to drown him? Dewey looked at the woman as she made strange noises with her mouth, a long hissing noise with her tongue. His brain racked for a bit, this was the most foreign encounter of his life, but his body knew what to do. He had been holding it for close to an hour, and the weight against his tummy was released in one long stream.

The giantess pressed down on a lever near the floor, and the toilet had its revenge. A pressure of liquid shot up into his nethers with as much force as his previous attack. Dewey closed his eyes as the cold liquid squeezed between his buttcheeks.

The giantess gave a soft chuckle, and she turned him towards the sink and let him wash up, before sending him back to play with Ling.

Dewey turned to his host before whispering a confused question, “What was that?”

Ling was already going through her toy box, every doll inside would be needed for the grand overnight party she was having, “Oh, ever since the invasion, diapers have been hard to find so. The bigs just hold us over the toilet now.”

“You’re potty trained?” Dewey looked at the smaller woman, it was incredible, outside him and Oliver, few littles his size who did not need to wear diapers.

Ling shrugged her shoulders. Her focus was on the important matter of what dolls would be needed for tonight’s sleep over, she did not even look at him to answer, “Isn’t everyone?”

16 Fructidor Year CCXXXVIII, Haishenwai, Tsaria Amazonia

Dewey was excited, for the first time in a week he allowed himself to believe things were looking up. It had been a long boat ride from Goryeo, and multiple times on the trip their small fishing vessel had been nearly intercepted by Yamatoan patrol vessels. Now that he was across the border, he saw a path to getting home. Every day he met a new family, a new little who was part of Oliver’s long network, and each one passed him along the tin-can-network to the next little on the track. Wassily, the next contact was six.

He was looking forward to having a more refined conversation with an unregressed little. He hoped Wassily might know what was going on in the world since his attack, and who might be able to give him better transport than mini-vans. It would be a long shot, but Wassily might even have his own plane or other transport. An unregressed little had to be high enough in Oliver’s spy network and would have better communication than stringed cans. If he could get a call back to his friend in Libertalia, maybe Oliver could arrange some magical dimensional travel again, come pick him up without anyone even knowing.

Tsaria had entered the war, and that made everything more complicated. He was glad he had decided not to crash here, as in less than a week Tsaria dropped the pretense of neutrality. Every step here was just as dangerous as in occupied Hanoi or Goryeo. Long had Tsaria been a thorn in the Alliance’s efforts to prevent trafficking of littles, and while they were not in step ideologically with the Empress’s crusade, the war would be a grand opportunity to reset the world stage.

While the Alliance countries were offput by the surprise attack, most decided to back Libertalia out of fear and in some cases opportunism. Itali had immediately used the war as pretext for invading Libya in northern Alkebulan. Similarly, Suomi declared war on Tsaria, which pushed Tsaria to form a pact with Yamatoa against the Alliance.

The entire world was at war.

Dewey came to the suburban house and held his breath, double checking the digits on the door matched the ones he had memorized from the previous contact. Before his adoption, his biggest fear in life was knocking on the wrong house’s door, and now the tension had built enough he shook for several seconds before finally gaining the courage to knock.

There was no response. He looked at the empty drive and then back to the door, the weight of every mile was upon him. He had faced battle and jets, crossed borders, and dodged patrols and guards. It was all going to come to an end because he knocked on the wrong house, at the wrong time, and was going to be abducted forever. Dewey wondered how bad it would be to live under the roof of a Tsarist Amazon, but his mind was blank. Probably cabbage and potatoes every night. What were the bigs called? Babas? Babushkas?

His eyes went the button a few inches above his head, and he let off a short mutter, “Fuck it,” before pushing it and hearing a loud long buzz. The loud thumping of a giant coming to her front door told him all he needed.

Dewey watched as her head pivoted, confused after opening the door, before finally looking down and finding him smiling up at her. She had short thin mom hair, and a heavy blouse and tight blue jeans that seemed a bit warm for cool summer temperatures. She seemed to be thinking what to say, given it was the first time in her life a small person had knocked on her door.

Finally, she her word was loud and commanding, “Yes?”

“I’m Dewey, uh Wassily’s friend. Is he home?” It was a strange question, where else would a little be but home? Dewey opened up his smile showing a row of tiny friendly white teeth, trying to be as innocent and inviting as possible.

She held the door open for him and waved for him to enter. Dewey stepped into the portal of the darkened home when she turned and left him at the atrium to remove his shoes. “I’ll get him, he’s just getting up.”

Within a few moments the giantess returned, and in her arms was a man a few inches shorter than Dewey. His hair had been reduced to a small number of strands, and he wore a blue shirt with a large fluffy brown bear rollicking. Wassily was not afforded the dignity of pants, instead his bottom was protected by a thick white diaper. It separated his legs, holding tight with thin holes, squeezing him in a way that would have made crawling or walking difficult. Whatever hope Dewey might have had to communicate with Wassily was dashed as the man kept sucking on a pacifier. His only acknowledgement of Dewey was a slight wave with his fingers.

This little was not six years old. He was six months old. Maybe thirty physically, but that was difficult given some of the procedures the man had undergone. The natural indent around his mouth had been inverted as part of having his teeth removed, leaving him with a chubby face. His adopted mother pointed with her free hand, indicating she was bringing Wassily to a kitchen, and Dewey followed behind.

Wassily cooed as he was placed in a highchair at the head of a small table. Dewey found a chair opposite and with effort scrambled up to sit opposite. The Amazonian woman looked over at him, with just his head and shoulders peaking above the table, before turning away from the boys to enter the kitchen. She returned with a large cloth bib, a jar, and a spoon and placed them in front of Wassily, who gave off soft babbling that almost mimicked real words and sentence structure.

Dewey stared across the darkened room at Wassily. Maybe he was faking it? His mother came in from the kitchen with a plate of baked pastries, putting two on a plate before him, and the rest in front of her. Dewey poked a hand up onto the table and carefully prodded a circular brown puff. It smelled like cabbage and potatoes. Across the table, Wassily’s mother began placing the heavy cloth around her adopted son’s neck and then placed a single jar. The soft cyan colors on the label were too small to read, but the goop of pearly white inside did not look appetizing. Dewey watched as a spoon dipped into the shallow jar and then came up to the other little’s mouth. Wassily seemed dazed at first, unsure of what to do with the foreign substance, before he chewed pathetically at the puree and then swallowed. White drool came down the edge of his lip, and he gave an approving puff and a zip to his mother.

Dewey tried to pick up a pastry, but it burned his fingers, he watched white vapors of smoke waft from where his fingers had pressed into the bread. The giantess eyed him toying with the food and opened with her conversation.

“I wasn’t aware Wassily had any friends. He hasn’t mentioned anyone before.” Wassily did not seem to be the type of person who was on speaking terms with her about anything he did.

Dewey did not what to say, “We go way back.”

“At the daycare?” Dewey felt he was walking into a trap. She was setting him up for a lie. At this point she must have been dragging things out, waiting for the authorities to arrive.

“He’s more outgoing in public,” the little tried to defend himself. In the pauses between her probes, he could hear the ticking of a distant clock, and the creaking of the house against the outside winds. Dewey looked towards Wassily’s chubby face covered in turkey and wheat, for any help at all.

She paused on moving the spoon up to her son’s mouth midair, “Well, I just think this is a bit unusual,” she did not get a chance to finish her sentence, there was a loud knocking. All eyes were on Wassily as his tiny fists smacked against the white plastic tray. He lifted up one hand and pointed clumsy fingers across the table.

“Friend.”

Wassily’s eyes moved to his mother. Outside of mama or baba, it was the first word she had heard him speak in years. Her hand shook and slowly put the spoon back into the jar. Her eyes followed the finger to Dewey and then returned to her adopted son.

“Mama friend!” His mouth was large and excited, and he smashed his fingers together as though making a clap. She had thought she had removed all his words, took away his mobility, shattered every neuron, but there are ideas that transcended the worst evils of this world.

The Amazon did not know what to say, littles were a mystery. She would host the other boy through the rest of the night.

Dewey kept close to Wassily, rolling a small blue and white ball from between his feet to Wassily’s legs. The other man could not crawl, but he could at least sit up, and despite the simplicity of the activity, Dewey was prepared to roll a ball with him for hours if it meant keeping the attention of the giantess away from the two of them.

Wassily stopped the ball and then looked around the room, as though listening for something, but Dewey heard nothing but the sounds of the evening television news. He grew worried at the change in behavior, but Wassily then waived him closer with his fingers. The other little scooched closer. Wassily held out one hand, and made a pfft sound with his mouth, before dipping and dodging it around in front of Dewey. His right hand then went up and followed the first, but the left made a loop dodging the slower right. Finally, the left hand smacked the ball, and Wassily gave a triumphant plorp with his mouth.

Dewey understood, the other little had heard of what he had done. He wanted to hear the story from Dewey directly.

“When we shifted over it was nighttime, but we could see the Nippon easily with its massive search lights,” the captain began, going through the events of the raid in intricate detail. Wassily maneuvered the ball in front of himself like a joystick, banking with each turn in Dewey’s heroic raid. He might never walk again, but for a fleeting time he got to know what it was like to fly.

Wassily continued to babble happily, Dewey could almost make out a pattern to the coos and garbled noises coming from the other man, but he was soon interrupted by the giant again. She brought the two boys to Wassily’s room and laid him in his crib for the evening, leaving Dewey with just a blanket and pillow for his sleepover. She turned out the lights, and closed the door, but the evening sun snuck around the edges of the curtains. Wassily seemed to wait quietly for a minute, and Dewey was unsure what he was doing here.

Was this it? The end of the road? Where was he going to go from here?

Wassily shook slightly on his mattress. Dewey turned his head and looked up at the man-baby struggling in his crib. With wobbling legs, the man stood up pulling his arms against the white rails, and after a quarter minute he was hanging from the railing in a standing position. He reached down to a stuffed teddy that loitered near his pillows and used it to reach over the crib towards his nightstand. With an awkward pull, the stuffed animal gripped the baby monitor which stood isolated on the bedside table and knocked it over the rails into the crib.

The action forced Wassily over, and Dewey stood up and slowly moved to the crib to see what was happening. The baby monitor hung with its single red eye floating over the rail. Wassily struggled with his breathing, before clawing at the edge of the crib and making up to the monitor. He fiddled with the back a bit, and Dewey noticed the sound gave a static buzz and then shift to a soft tone. The two boys watched the red eye dangle for a bit, before the tone shifted. First a high note, then a lower note, and then a high note again.

Wassily had switched the radio frequency on his baby monitor, which struggled to pick up the foreign radio as it wafted back and forth. There was static, like it was a station between stations, but there was finally a bit of music. The simple notes began to spiral and repeat. Dewey crawled closer to watch the other man, but Wassily kept still in the crib, unmoving, focused on keeping the radio locked into its station.

There was a voice of an older man, muffled through the static, “Too all members of the Little Orphan Secret Society, we have an urgent update, make sure you have your decoder rings ready.”

He then spat out numbers quickly, “two, five, nineteen, twenty-one, eighteen, five, twenty.” Dewey watched as Wassily’s head nodded along, cooing and babbling at each letter as though acknowledging it. Shortly after, there was another spiraling tone, and then, it shifted to beeps. Tones that shifted between long and short. Wassily seemed to coo with the beeps, and dah with the longer ones. What was this? A code? Was Wassily speaking in code the whole time?

Dewey sat quietly for a while, listening to the beeps and coos for several minutes. His eyes grew heavy, and he lost focus and then fell unconscious to the sounds of notes and beeps and boops.

He awoke just at sunrise to find his face covered with something. His hand pulled at the sticky paper to find one side had latitude and longitude, along with short directions, the back had a short map that Wassily had hand drawn. He turned his head to see the sleeping man, his crib had been reset with the baby monitor returned to the dresser, with no sign of his electronic subterfuge. Wassily lay sleeping, hugging his bear with a thumb in his mouth. His one-piece cyan pajamas had an extra lump in the rear. Dewey gave a quiet thanks to the boy and left the house undetected.

24 Fructidor Year CCXXXVIII, Gnome, Ackack, Libertalia Amazonia

“It’s kind of a funny story, there was a bit of a mix-up, and I was supposed to meet my parents in Anchorhead to see the Eye Ditter Dog race, but I got dropped off at the finish line instead. Fortunately, my best friend Atiqtalaaq lives out here.” Dewey had gotten much better at bullshitting in the three weeks he had been traveling. From Wassily’s he had found an old prop plane in a warehouse, which took him to the far northeast of Tsaria, and from there a friendly fishing boat had helped him sneak into Libertalia.

Atiqtalaaq waited patiently for his Amazon caretaker, not adding to the story. Theodore was a giant bear of a man, but something about the winters up north seemed to soften the Amazonians. His face had rounded, and nose plumped out, while his hair and beard were turning a soft silver to white. Despite this weathering, his arms were the size of trees, and Dewey suspected the man could lift both littles with one hand. Theodore carried himself cautiously as he moved, as if afraid with each step he would smash something underfoot. Dewey and Atiqtalaaq had found him inside the cabin at a woodworking desk, gently filing down some instrument or ornament. His hosts were dressed in matching plaid long sleeve shirts and jean pants that looked comfortable for cool weather. Except for the bulging underwear, both father and adopted son wore identical clothing.

Dewey had always thought Ackack was an icebox, a frozen wasteland, but in the summer the sun barely set each night, and the temperature peaked in the middle fifties. He had not seen any snow. The lodge he had been directed to was surrounded by tall old trees and muddy roads. Eagles prowled the land and a few of the beasts seemed to eye him as a potential catch, their caws were the only noise to pierce the empty wilderness.

“I was going into town to pick up some power converters, I suppose I could take you along and drop you off at Anchorhead,” The giant seemed more interested in justifying to himself than to the littles why he should do this. It was going to be a long trip.

“I would not want to impose,” Dewey offered, as though staying here was an option.

“No, these things happen,” the man responded.

When he became a parent, taking your kids’ friends home was just another one of those things you agreed to do. That meant something different when the next town was a hundred miles away. The important thing was that his little Atiqtalaaq had a friend. Father and son lived on the edge of the world. There were no daycares, no play dates, and his son could not go back to his own people. They would put his baby on the ice flows given his condition.

Theodore turned to Atiqtalaaq, “Get the dogs ready, we can take the training sled.”

The little hopped up and dragged Dewey to the back. There were half a dozen dogs in a fenced enclosure, white furballs three hundred pounds and four feet tall. Dewey watched as the smaller man wrangled the heavy beasts each one obediently listening to his commands and waiting for him to tie harnesses to their collars. The boy was experienced, easily handling ropes and latches, and his attention to each individual dog showed a high level of care.

The captain was unsure how to describe his question, “So, you still have to work? Or is this something special between you and Theodore, like he’s letting you do it because you like it?”

Atiqtalaaq turned, cocking his head as if confused, “Dewey, I’d love to sit around and watch cartoons all day and play with toys, but we live on the edge of the world. Littles work or we don’t eat. I’ve been working since I was two.” He handed Dewey a leash, “Here, help me tie to them to the sled.”

36 Fructidor Year CCXXXVIII, Potat, South Windland, Libertalia – Amazonia

Dewey’s chest was hurting from running, but he pushed forward down the street to catch up as bus forty-two unloaded at the spot his father had dropped him off at last time. He rounded the street corner and with a burst of speed arrived at the side of the yellow vehicle just as the lights on the bus lit up and the engine started again.

Eighty-six hundred miles of booster seats, minivans, planes, trains, and dog sleds. He had made it. Oliver’s underground network of littles had forwarded him from one contact to the next like a game of telephone. To what end? Dewey had been asking himself this for a long time, why was he in such a hurry to get home.

He knew the answer. Em-em. His “mommy.” He had nothing else in life. She had let him build the world’s greatest plane and even let him even test fly it. She had been there when he started to lose control, and she let him continue to work for her afterwards. She had been there when he was scared to be alone. Each night when she kissed him on the forehead, it was more than just a mommy kissing her baby. It was a protective ward, and it shielded him from all the worries of dream time.

Then she sent him to diaper camp.

They were just going to have to have a nice polite conversation between adults on what the expectations of their relationship were. He had spent the last three décades considering everything he would say to her. That he was able to do so much more, and that there were other ways of doing things. He had seen the world, and now understood his parents were the weird ones.

Only she was not the one waiting at the bus stop. Frank was waiting for him. Dewey looked both ways before crossing fifty feet of subdivision road and approached his captor.

“How was it?” Frank offered an empty question. There was a long silence, so Frank reached up and brushed a bit of sweat from a bald spot on his head. He then reached down and touched Dewey on the shoulder, staring down at his adopted son.

“I’m sorry, it wasn’t my idea, and I get what your mom,” a cough escaped the giant’s lips, “Mommy, sorry. I get why she did it, but I didn’t want her to do it.”

“It’s a thing that happened, I guess we have to live with it.” Except it was not a thing that had happened. Dewey ran away in stolen fighter jets and bombed another country. Dewey looked around, “Where’s your car?”

“We’re trying to not take unnecessary trips; it’s a nice day I thought maybe you’d like to walk.” The sky had only the smallest traces of white wisps, and the early sun was already starting to be uncomfortable. It would be a hot day, offset by a strong wind.

Dewey nodded, and without thinking, replied “Where’s mom?”

Frank did not see the slip or did not care, “She’s busy with work, working a lot more hours lately.”

Right - that whole war thing. Dewey looked at the road ahead of them, home was so close, and yet every part of him hurt. He looked down at his worn shoes and haggard clothing. He was at a limit.

“Can you carry me?”

Dewey was a big kid. Dewey never asked to be carried. Dewey never asked Frank for anything. It was like the boy thought he was competition for mommy’s attention. Frank’s gentle arms easily picked up Dewey, cradling one hand along his back and the other on his shorts. The little’s face compressed into Frank’s chest. Camp was worth every penny if it turned his boy this sweet.

It did not take Frank more than a couple steps to notice. “You’re not wearing.”

Frank stopped mid-walk, and with a small shake up he forced the little to look at him. Dewey tensed up. He had gone for so long without that he had forgotten. He came to his senses fast enough to button up his face into an innocent look.

“Don’t need them.” Dewey smiled sheepishly and put a thumb in his mouth.

The giant was not sure how to address that, but he did not want his son to pee all over him. He increased his step and was back home within minutes.

* * *

It was a few hours later, after Elinor came home the three were sitting around the table, Dewey was being quizzed over his time away from the house. He had been thoroughly bathed, an act that was decadent and luxurious given what he had experienced the previous month. He did not even mind that another man was cleaning him, it felt like Frank was the servant and he was a king.

“I don’t know, not a lot happened. We were outside a lot. There was one thing! I saw a dog that was this big.” Dewey held his hand four feet off the ground.

Elinor was holding a paper in her hand, her attention on some article in front of her. She passed a lazy response, “Sounds like you had fun.”

“It was fine. I just missed being home.” Dewey considered it a win she had not mentioned him stealing her jets or visiting another country.

“Nothing exciting happened then?” She pushed again. Her voice had a ring as though she knew Dewey was holding something back, but perhaps she would settle for what happens at camp stays at camp.

“Not really.” He looked over at Frank and then back to Elinor, both were unmoved. The lie was unsatisfying. The whole world should know what he and his friends did. They were heroes.

Elinor barely flicked her wrist and the paper she was reading flipped closed and flopped perfectly inches from his face. Dewey stared down at the headline.

Psychopath Returns to Krill-Murdoch Camp.

In the final hours of this year’s summer camp aimed at diaper dependent littles, the Tweener counselors working for Krill-Murdoch Camp descended into ritualistic debauchery. Campfires and lodges were transformed into temples to Bacchus himself, with signs of alcohol, marijuana, sex paraphilia, and even used condoms discovered littering the campsite. The attacker, who was described as wearing a hockey mask, had gone through and captured each tweener one by one. In a sick sense of revenge, she forced them to wear…

Dewey put down the paper confused. Diaper camp sounded awesome; he was almost sad he missed out.

Elinor’s fury drilled a hole into him, “Sex, drugs, and booze. This is what you were doing! You know better than to…”

Frank gave Dewey a quick thumbs up before giving a stern face.

“So, I take it I won’t be going back next year?”