Meow.

So, in comes Chapter Two a bit earlier than planned... I usually (fail to) update once a week but since I likely won't be around this weekend I guess I might as well upload it now...

Thanks for the review! And thank you for believing in the work of my brain that even I sometimes doubt... I mean, most of the time doubt. xP Hopefully this chapter makes even less sense, haha.

2. Awakening

He was buried neck-deep in a mountain of squashed strawberries, soaked to the skin in strawberry juice. The sweet smell was suffocating. So much for a peaceful afternoon nap at home. He was so, so tired…

How had he ended up in this literal mess?

'Princess… Princess!'

Presently, a chorus of peculiar squeaking voices was brought to his attention. With a definite sense of dread, Len slowly let his gaze move down towards the base of the mound of strawberries.

'I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming I'm dreaming… Please tell me I'm still dreaming!' he wailed.

There were five tiny, tiny straw-coloured mice in sailor hats blinking anxiously up at him with beady black eyes. They were roughly each the size of his smallest fingernail.

'No Princess, you aren't,' said a mouse, twitching its whiskers.

'I am not a princess you bastard!' Len yelled.

Silence.

They exchanged curious looks. 'What's a bustard?' one whispered.

'Is it something like mustard?'

'Maybe custard.'

'I love custard!'

'I believe,' said one with glasses and a white beard, 'It's a bird with a profusion of plumage.' He nodded wisely.

'Ahhh.' They all nodded with closed eyes.

A sixth mice charged out from under the opposite hedge. 'I told them she's awake! They're coming!'

'What the…'

A stampede of pint-sized animals charged through the hedge after the mouse, almost trampling it along the way. There were deer, badgers, squirrels, hares, possums, quails – even an owl. They all squashed themselves into the little clearing surrounding the giant tree, which, coming to think of it now, was quite small.

'Are you alright, Princess?' asked a tiny badger anxiously.

'We found you in a mountain of strawberries.'

He scowled. 'You don't say…'

A hedgehog beamed. 'I know – she must be the Strawberry Princess!'

Len would have clobbered it if it hadn't been so spiky.

'How do you feel?' asked a plump quail.

'Terrible!' Len wailed.

'There, there… Don't cry, Princess.' A dormouse which was apparently female (it was wearing an orange apron) climbed his now almost-literal mountain of strawberries to pat his head. Len fixed it with a scowl, which it evidently ignored. 'I am not about to cry,' he hissed at it.

Nonetheless he felt a big squall of tears coming soon if they didn't stop freaking him out.

Animals didn't talk. They did not talk.

'Don't cry – Princess, don't cry!' they all screamed.

He glared at them murderously. They cowered at the hem of the mountain.

'How many times do I need to tell you I'm not a princess?'

'But Princess, you are…'

'Oh yeah sure,' he said sarcastically. 'I'm the damsel in distress waiting for Prince Charming to come kiss me and this is some sort of magical forest stuffed full of tiny talking animals and I'm supposed to sing to you or something.'

'Exactly, Princess!'

'She's finally got it!'

They all cheered.

They didn't get it. None of them did. They simply weren't reachable. Len decided there were more important things that had to be settled first. Let them call him whatever they thought he was for now.

'Why're you all so small, anyway?' he asked.

'We aren't small, Princess…' the badger fidgeted. 'You're big.'

'Very big,' the hedgehog added.

'In what sense?' Len growled irritably.

Just then, he noticed a small pile of clothes folded neatly near the base of the strawberry mountain. They looked like… a pair of black shorts, a sailor shirt, banana underpants and a camisole. They looked like his clothes. Except that they were Barbie-sized.

His eyes widened in horror. 'Oh. My. God. Ohmyfucking– ! Don't tell me I'm n…!'

He stood up. Like a vast, rose-coloured mountain lurching to its feet. The animals fled back into the cover of the surrounding hedges in alarm. And, as he stood, so did the mountain of strawberries.

'What on…?'

It wasn't a mountain of strawberries.

It was a mountain of red frills, bows and laces, clinging to his body. Or – in short, a mountainous dress like a humungous, over-decorated, Victorian red-velvet cake.

'Argh!' He collapsed into his knees with a resounding boom, wailing, face turning as red as his dress. 'This is worse than naked! What's happening to me!?'

The animals watched warily from the bushes.

'Forty-calibre indeed,' he sighed heavily into his hands. 'Thank you O goddess of fangirl disasters…' He could only imagine all the horrid things they would do to him like this. He began to cry. 'How the hell am I supposed to go home now!? I can't go hoooome!'

'No – no, no – Princess, don't cry!' All the animals wailed in unison.

Too late.

Huge dollops of salt water began to fall from his blue eyes, pounding huge muddy craters into the forest floor. The animals ran, screaming. Splash – a kangaroo was pounded into the mud, face-first. The dormouse frantically clung onto Len's shoulder as he lurched forward, its eyes wide with terror. As he gave another lurch, the dormouse lost its balance with a terrified squeak, tumbled off his shoulder and disappeared, flying away.

The giant puddle of tears eventually turned into a pool, and then a small lake. The tiny forest clearing turned into a swamp. A rubber duck floated in from somewhere, bobbing in the salty water.

That was when the hexagonal tiles in the sky gave a shuddering ripple, and a tiny hovercraft chugged in. An even tinier parachute fell from it, floating down in front of Len's nose. He snagged it out of the air and looked at it. On the parachute were the words Eat Me, and tied beneath it was a basket containing two halves of a large red fig.

'…Couldn't have been a banana instead,' he grumbled disgustedly as he popped them into his mouth. 'Curse you Rerulili…'

He immediately began to shrink. To him, it seemed as if the red dress was expanding around him. It was growing larger than it already had been. And so was the forest, and everything in it. The trees grew taller and thicker; the ground grew closer; the bushes billowed up like a storm cloud on National Geographic; and the pool of tears grew wider… and wider, until the effects of the fig finally came to a halt, leaving the bewildered shota as a tiny speck of a (rather tempting) figure standing on the bank of a vast blue lake.

He stared open-mouthed at the gigantic salt-pool. A Loch Ness monster leapt into the air and disappeared into its depths. 'This… is freaking me out. Seriously.'

'Princess! Princess!'

A squeaky yelling was presently brought to his notice.

Len squinted across the lake to see a giant dormouse in an orange apron swimming towards him.

'Wow, I never knew dormice could swim…'

'Princess – wear something!'

He gasped. '… Oh shit…'

The now-tiny and nude blonde shota ran for cover behind the voluminous folds of the red dress he had been wearing, grabbed a corner of the former sash and began to wind it around himself at full speed.

He ended up like a giant baggy strawberry with legs.

'…'

He ripped a small length of fabric off his dress and wound it around his waist, wishing it weren't so thin. It made him look like a girl. He tugged on the sash, drawing up the fabric. At least now, it looked like a dress with the curves in the right places. The fabric was rather damp from all that crying, clinging to his legs.

And then he froze.

Why was he voluntarily wearing a dress?

The next moment however, he had an even worse premonition.

There was that very strange feeling about the way the wet skirt clung to his–…

'No way,' he rasped, 'No fucking way…'

He couldn't help it. He ran behind a giant velvet bow, checked that no one was looking, then grabbed his truckload of skirts and felt under them in growing dread. With an oath, he bent over and ducked his head between his knees.

His face went pale, which quickly turned… well, in a way of saying, as red as a strawberry.

'Shit –!'

He clutched his head and almost fainted. 'Holy mother of god…' He screamed.

A trail of rather obscene language followed, issuing out from behind the mountain of skirts.

Len's hysteric wailing brought his rescuers scrambling back through the bushes in alarm. 'Princess! What's the matter?' They were now huge.

'Are you hurt?'

'Why are you so small?'

'Is it the Snake?'

'The Snake? Where?'

'It scared the Princess! I'll beat the–'

Len's scream blotted out their rabbling. 'I'M A GIRL!' he screamed. 'Fucking hell I'm a girl!'

He was a girl.

He'd turned into a girl.

They all stared at him, rather calmly.

'…You just noticed, Princess?'

'Hell yes! I am not a frickin–'

'Princess! Calm down.'

'I AM NOT A PRINCESS!' he bellowed, silencing them all.

I am not a princess! I am not a princess! echoed the mountains.

They all blinked dumbly at him.

'I think she hit her head,' whispered a squirrel.

'You fed her too many nuts,' the deer whispered back.

Len narrowed his eyes. 'I can hear you…' He crossed his arms. 'Leave me alone! All of you! Shoo!' He began to throw stones at them.

They all scattered away, finally leaving him alone to some peace and quiet.

Len fell face-first into the sea of red velvet skirts around the lake, sobbing, cursing his insane fate.

He hated figs. He hated figs even worse than he did strawberries.

###

At least, he thought, it would still be better than nothing. He went to look for his pants – and fortunately found they had floated close to the lake bank. But he seemed to have shrunk too much. The waistline was now about the size of a hula hoop.

Thus regretfully, he had to part with his original pair of underpants. He buried them under a banana tree.

...Okay, I just hope you're not too mad at me for screwing up Len, because it might get just a bit better later on.

Did anyone get the fig – yes I know, it was random – please check Len's songs on Rerulili-san's official YouTube channel. The keyword's "explosion".

Well I thought it was a fig… but now I'm not so sure. What was it, exactly? Any idea, anyone? :|

Oh yeah, and not to forget, the forty-calibre thing... xP I'll just excuse myself saying I wrote that bit at three in the morning.

And the usual of course, please review, thanks. ;D