The first thing she noticed was the metallic smell in the air. It was if someone was turning her senses on one at a time by flipping switches in her brain. First her sense of smell, and that odd taste in the air, the sound of a low hum, like that of an engine and a claustrophobic feeling, like being stuck in a telephone booth.

Did they even make telephone booths anymore?

“Can you hear me?” a voice whispered. It was pleasant, feminine. “Are you okay?”

Slowly, she sat up and rubbed her head. “Yeah…” she muttered. “My head hurts.”

“That will pass.” The voice said soothingly. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Charlotte.” She groaned. “My name is Charlotte Cassano.”

“Okay Charlotte.” The voice continued. “Has your vision begun to clear yet?”

Charlotte looked up and blinked. “I… yeah a little. I’m starting to see colors again… what’s going on? Where am I? Who are you?”

“I’ll explain that as soon as you can see.” The voice assured her. “What’s the last thing you can remember?”

“I… I was in a hot-tub with my friend Molly and Sam Rodriguez. You know, the actor. We’d been at a party… he asked us to come back to his place… We were having fun and then there was this bright light and loud noise and then…”

Charlotte blinked and her eyesight cleared. In front of her the face of a woman dominated her vision. She had deep red hair and pale skin and she stared back at Charlotte with stormy green eyes that nevertheless held a spark of sympathy in them.

She was also gigantic.

“Easy Charlotte.” The woman said softly. “I know this must be a shock, and I can explain things but I need you to calm down and not-”

Charlotte screamed.

*.*.*.*.*

Vanser Nix stared at the woman lying on the small pad of fabric he’d made on the desk in front of him. He’d temporarily commandeered an office from the staff of Titan Station. He was now faced with the question of just what he was going to do with the human that he’d recovered. Leaving her there was out of the question, of course, and he didn’t want to see her set adrift in a galaxy she knew nothing about.

If the rumors were true, (and having met Rixie’s friend Alex, Vanser didn’t really doubt they were,) then the woman in front of him was from Earth. Which meant she knew nothing of the universe beyond her solar system or the way it was run.

Vanser rubbed his forehead. This was supposed to be his vacation. He hadn’t counted on having to break the news to some poor girl that she was far away from home, had no chance to return and- oh yeah- technically classified as an animal.

Still, he admonished himself. Things were a thousand times worse for her.

At that moment the little human girl began to stir, and slowly sat up with a groan. She shook her head as if to clear it and brushed her long red hair out of her eyes. Vanser tensed as she looked up at him and their eyes met. He braced for the scream, or for her to pass out again…

He wasn’t prepared for tears.

“Oh no…” The young girl moaned. “It wasn’t a dream, or I’ve gone insane…”

“Uh… listen…” Vanser kept his voice soft so as not to frighten her further. “This is obviously very upsetting to you… but I’m not going to hurt you, and I can explain everything. My name’s Vanser.”

“What… what’s happened to me?” The woman whimpered pitifully. “Have I gone insane?”

“No.” Vanser sat down in the desk chair. “You’re not insane. And nothing’s happened to you, you haven’t… you know… shrunk or anything like that.” Damn, why did this have to be so awkward? This wasn’t the first time Vanser had broken horrible news to someone, after all.

Then again, this was possibly the first time he’d had to tell someone their entire life had imploded.

“Look…” He told the tiny red haired woman. “The truth is you’re not on Earth anymore. How about… Let’s just start from the beginning. What’s your name?”

“Molly.” She whispered softly, pulling her knees to her chest and curling her arms around them, as her long red hair fell like a curtain in front of her face. “Molly Olson.”

Vanser sighed. “Well Molly, while it’s nice to meet you, I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances. You see… you’re not on Earth anymore.”

*.*.*.*

“Titans, huh.” Charlotte’s eyes narrowed and she scratched the back of her head. “Like from mythology?”

“Well… I suppose so.” Lenya responded hesitantly. “I know my people had more direct contact with yours hundreds of years ago. It’s pretty likely some memory of that time was passed down by your ancestors.”

It had taken some doing, but eventually Lenya had managed to calm Charlotte down long enough to attempt to explain what was going on.

Charlotte sighed, brushing her thick dark hair away from her face. “This is nuts. This is absolutely crazy, and if I wasn’t seeing the obvious evidence right in front of me, I’d think you were crazy too, lady.”

Lenya chuckled sympathetically. “I can understand your frustration.” The titan bit her lip and looked away.

Charlotte peered at the giant woman. She could tell Lenya was… not exactly hiding something from her, more like she wasn’t sure how to phrase something.

“What is it, Giganta?” Charlotte sighed. “What’s the ‘bad news?” Inside, she shoved aside the part of her brain that was having a panic attack over the idea that she was millions of miles from everything she knew and trapped in some kind of space-age Gulliver’s Travels. There would be time to deal with the crushing sense of loss, and the panic, and everything else. Now was not that time.

Lenya’s eyes widened and she smiled despite herself. Charlotte was obviously a very perceptive woman. Then her mood sobered again, this was not going to be easy…

Lenya shook her head. “There’s something else you need to know…”

*.*.*.*

Vanser fought valiantly to hold down the panic that he felt. He’d suddenly found himself faced with a finger sized woman who was crying inconsolably and he had not the slightest idea what to do about it. Thinking that he needed to do something, he awkwardly draped a small clean square of cloth around her shoulders, which Molly instinctively pulled tighter around her shoulders, which were shaking from her anguished sobs.

“Oh Mama was right about Hollywood.” Molly blubbered. “She said I’d end up in a bad way if I left home. She told me becoming an actress was a fool’s dream and I should have looked towards a career that actually accomplished something. I should have listened. She was right.” The young woman sniffed and buried her face in her arms.

Awkwardly, Vanser gently stroked Molly’s back with his fingers. He really hoped she’d be able to calm down soon. He… wasn’t very good with tears.

“Although I suppose she probably meant I’d end up on drugs or pregnant… not abducted by aliens and turned into a pet!” Another heartbreaking cry escaped her throat and Molly once again curled up into a sobbing heap, buried completely beneath the cloth Vanser had given her.

“Whoa… hold on a second Molly… No one’s making you into a pet.” Vanser seized on the topic like a lifeline.

The sobbing quieted and a single hazel eye peeked out from under her cloth cocoon. “But you said…”

Vanser kept his voice as comforting as possible. “Yes, I said that most people view humans as pets out here in the Empire.”

Molly sniffed again and Vanser hurriedly pressed on while he still had her attention. “But I never said that I was planning on treating you that way.”

The second eye joined the first and the pair blinked at him. “You’re… you’re not?”

Vanser sighed in relief and shook his head. “No. Of course not.”

Molly sat up and dried her eyes on the cloth around her shoulders. “So… so what’s going to happen to me then?”

Vanser shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t… I don’t really know, Molly. But… well… there’s a place I know of… a sort of sanctuary for humans, where they’ve built their own civilization. A friend of mine works there… it wouldn’t be quite like on Earth but you’d be around other humans.”

“Well… that probably would be better than being surrounded by giants.” Molly muttered thoughtfully. “Wait… I… what about Charlotte?”

*.*.*.*.*

“Who?”

“My friend Molly. She was with me when those… bug-things… came. She was probably taken too…”

A sinking feeling developed in the pit of Lenya’s stomach. The odds weren’t very good but… “What… what did your friend look like?”

“Uhm… a little shorter than me, although I suppose that won’t mean much to you.” Charlotte ran a hand through her hair. “Red hair, maybe a little lighter than yours, shoulder length. Pale skin. Hazel eyes. Some freckles… although again, I don’t suppose you’d be able to see that.”

The sinking feeling got deeper. “I had seen a human like that…” Lenya sighed. “She was with you in the shop that I took you from.”

“But you didn’t grab her too?” Charlotte asked.

“No… I did… but unfortunately, as I was running from the shop… I lost my grip on her.”

Charlotte jumped to her feet in alarm. “So she’s still back on that station? She could be lost or… We have to go back!”

“I can’t!” Lenya shook her head. “The pod had a tracker on it; no doubt the station security picked her up.”

Charlotte stamped her foot in frustration. “So that’s it? She gets shoved back in that tube by some pig and gets sold as a pet?” Charlotte turned away and wiped an angry tear from her eye.

Lenya bit her lip and nervously tapped her fingernails on the desk. “Look… I uh… I’ll find her.”

“You will?”

Lenya nodded. “Yes. Look, there’s… there’s a place I can take you where you’ll be safe. They don’t much like me… but they’ll protect you, and they’ll treat you right. There’s a group of humans who… who have built their own civilization… they’ll probably take you in…”

“No.”

Lenya blinked. “What?”

“I’m going to come with you. I’m going to help you find Molly.”

Lenya hesitated. She stared down at the resolute look on Charlotte’s face and realized there wouldn’t be any other outcome. Besides, she really had no right to leave the human behind.

“All right.” Lenya nodded. “We’ll look for her together.”

“So… How do we go about that?” Charlotte spat bitterly. “She could be anywhere by now.”

“Probably.” Lenya admitted. “But it’s not fair what’s been done to you… and I want to make it right… even a little bit.”

“Thanks.” Charlotte sniffed. “Molly, she… she’s just some kid from the middle-of-nowhere in Nebraska. She… she needs me to look out for her… I don’t think she’d last long in a place… like this… by herself.”

“We’ll find her.” Lenya promised. “I don’t… I don’t know how, exactly, but we will.”

“But first…” She muttered, looking out the window at the passing starscape. “We’ll need to land on Azatlia.”

*.*.*

“I can’t be certain,” Vanser shrugged. “But your friend might have been stolen from the pet store the same time you were.”

Molly hugged herself tighter. “I have to find her, Vanser.” The young woman sighed. “She’s always looked out for me, and I can’t stand her being in the clutches of some… criminal. Who knows what that woman is going to do to her? She’ll probably try and sell Charlotte to some evil criminal kingpin or something. Or worse.”

Vanser shook his head. “I’ll… I’ll do everything I can, Molly.” He said in a quiet voice. “But you have to understand the odds aren’t very good.”

“I… I do know that.” Molly replied, pulling herself to her feet. “But Charlotte’s done a lot for me ever since we met. She’s… she’s looked out for me. Like a big sister. I… I can’t just turn my back on her now…”

“Okay.” Vanser said. “There is someone who might be able to help… I mean if anybody could know where Charlotte is going to end up… well, she would.”