Quinn’s Paw Day Story

That Monday, Quinn woke up just the same as any other day. He yawned, stretched out in his tiny bed, rolled over to reach his phone and-

Wait. That didn’t feel like his phone at all. He turned over on his ‘bed’ and shot straight awake. The entire world around him was grey. From horizon to horizon, there was nothing but a sea of gray. Uh oh. That sounded like there was some shrinking afoot. Quinn was quite the experienced shrinker, after all. He knew exactly where to start on a day like today. The tiny ‘kun squinted his eyes, unable to focus on any point of reference that made sense. Usually during a shrinking episode he could rely on something being around to use as a size reference. But there were no walls, no ceiling, not even any furniture to gain his bearings from. And it didn’t look like he’d gone to the level of atoms, nor did he see any fur to speak of.

The only thing left was his bed; Quinn stopped looking around and instead turned his gaze down. It looked like a ladder, although he could barely believe what he was seeing. The rungs were as large as a football field, and spaced apart what looked like the length of a 4-lane highway. It was a ladder as large as it was impossible. And then it occurred to Quinn that this wasn’t a ladder at all.

It was a strand of DNA. He recognized the structure from his biology classes, even as that strange coiling structure seemed to disappear far off in the distance. It was miles long, thousands of miles long, longer than he could see the end of. That meant whoever was responsible for this particular shrinking incident wasn’t afraid to really overdo it on pulling the trigger. That made Quinn’s heart drop for a moment, as he gulped nervously. It might be nothing. But usually when it came to this sort of size, there weren’t many people that could be the culprit. Possibly Duncan. Kit was a high contender too.

The world shifted suddenly. Quinn realized at that moment he must be inside someone’s cell. And that someone was starting to move now. He fell backward, bracing himself against the nucleic acid that had acted as his bed moments ago. Everything around him, from the DNA to the very cell acting as his home, vibrated with enough force to chatter Quinn’s jaw.

“HEY QUINN, YOU AWAKE?” the world rumbled.

After he was able to stand again, and catch his breath, the raccoon yelled, “Yes, I’m very awake now! Who is that up there? Hard to make out tone when everything is apocalyptic, quakingly loud.”

“Oh shoot, sorry,” the titan above said, less of an earthquake and more like a tremor. “Forgot how easy it is to shake you up when you’re down at toe level. It’s Al.”

“Al? You’re the one who shrank me?” Quinn asked. That wasn’t really in character for the meerkat. But then again, he’d been a lot more chaotic lately after those fae-touched antlers appeared on his head.

“Well, you know, not on purpose,” Al said sheepishly. Even the mumbled words were enough to knock Quinn to his knees. That didn’t sound like a lie though. It just sounded like there was more to the story that Al wasn’t telling yet. Quinn frowned and crossed his arms, making an exaggerated attempt to coax the ‘kat to tell more.

As if sensing the disapproval, Alkali squirmed again. “It was just going to be a Paw Day prank. Take the whimsey antlers out for a spin again, see how far down on my toes you can go before you wake up again.”

Quinn grinned and performed an extra long sigh. Truly his best acting performance to date. “And now you’re having trouble finding me, aren’t you?” This sort of prank was super predictable. He’d been on the receiving end of enough shrinking pranks to know the usual pitfalls; he’d even exploited a few of those on friends, dwindling them away to specks as well.

“Oh, no. I know exactly which toe, and which cell you’re in. You’re riiiight… there,” Alkali said, as the world hummed to life around Quinn in all directions. The cell shuddered, much like the earthquake earlier. The unfathomably large meerkat had apparently clenched his toes. Quinn was knocked off the DNA, floating through the cellular fluid as if he were a speck of dust. And in some ways, that was a pretty accurate description of the tinykun’s predicament. He tried to swim, floating toward the DNA again if only for the safety of having something to cling to.

“Okay,” Quinn said, his tail fur standing straight on end as he tried to compose himself. He shuffled his feet once back on his nucleic acid bed, and looked up at the grey horizon of… well, all of Alkali. “Then what’s the problem?”

“I’m not the only one who had that idea.”

Quinn’s face changed from amusement to concern in an instant. “Al. How large are you?” he asked, though his twitching tail already betrayed that he knew the answer.

The world shifted, tossed aside as if Al’s cell had been struck with a mortal blow. Quinn yelled as he was thrown clear of the DNA strand again, as if the world had flipped 90 degrees onto its right side. The meerkat yelped, a hurricane force blow of sonic force that shuddered through Quinn’s whole body. Apparently whatever just happened was equally jolting to Alkali. Quinn bit his lip when he realized that something bigger was up there, and was large enough to send a meerkat like Al tumbling like a speck of dust.

“Well. I know Bomba is up there. He planted a toe atop me as he saw me dwindling. I think it’s Jakebe that decided to get in on the Paw Day shrinking, playing that prank on me when he felt my fae magic going wild. Assuming Kit or Duncan haven’t joined the action yet too, that is. So… we may be a few levels of shrinking down at the moment? After a while beneath a toe as large as a moon, it all kinda becomes relative how much smaller you are.”

“HAPPY PAW DAY QUINNY,” Alkali rumbled from the force of his voice alone. And for just a moment, Quinn thought he saw a change in the color of the sky far above. Something beyond the background of the grey cell he’d been trapped in. His tail wagged back and forth as he tried to figure out just which of his captors was up there, looming so far overhead.