Disclaimer: Don't own it. If I did, Mikhael would have macronized long ago.

KCKCKCKC

When I was eleven, I was micronized.

I didn't think anything about it at the time. Actually, I didn't think anything about much of anything. I was very ill, with a particularly nasty variant of a respiratory infection, and was feverish and hallucinating. There was a treatment, but I had to be micronized, because they didn't have enough of the medicine in the quantity it would take to treat me full size. I didn't actually find out that I had been micronized until a few weeks after I was recovered. Like I said, it was a very nasty infection.

Sad to say, I didn't think anything of it at the time, and didn't understand why my father was so worried. (Mother was a proper meltran warrior, and if she was worried, she never showed it.)

I didn't micronize again until I was seventeen, and was fully grown. I don't remember much of that day, because I passed out from shock shortly after coming to as a micron. One of my greatest moments of shame, that.

It's called Pariya's Syndrome or Klan's Syndrome, now. There have only been sixteen documented cases, but those are enough to make zentran parents micronize their children before puberty only as a last resort. I was the first case in a little over thirty years, and the first on Frontier, so any local cases are likely to be referred to with my name.

Joy.

What Pariya's Syndrome does is 'lock' your micronized form at the age at which you were first micronized. It doesn't happen every time, but something like a one in five chance is enough to ensure that it's one of a zentran parent's worst fears. What it means to me is that I will forever be eleven as a micron.

If it weren't for Michel, I don't think I would have cared. I likely would have stayed macronized and lived my life that way. With Michel in my life, it was pure agony. My body wasn't developed enough as a micron to get hormonal surges. I don't get sexually excited. While I had an adult's appreciation of men, my child body got no pleasure from it.

I had hoped one day to convince Michel to get macronized. There have been cases in the past of humans surviving the process, and in any case Michel had zentran blood, anyone looking at him could tell. Now, I don't care. In some ways, now, I'm free. I haven't macronized since we first landed on our new home, and the freedom I have now can be a rush. I miss my Michel something terrible, but I don't wake from nightmares of pleasure turned to pain anymore, dreaming of him making love to me, and then watch him fly away from me, dying, once more. I can gaze upon his picture and my body no longer aches for him to fill me. Maybe there is something wrong with me for feeling happier this way, but in this body I am free to mourn him in my way, crying out for his lost soul, but no longer missing the any pleasures of the flesh.

It is better this way.

Really.