Day 23 of the 25 Days of TF-mas! (contains shrinking and petrification themes)

That night, Elliott had a dream. In the dream she bore witness to the entirety of her existence in a series of instances. She watched her birth and her school years. She saw herself deal with grief and triumph. She saw the rejection letters and the confusing alternate routes to success. She saw herself question what it was that she wanted out of life, serving the same ten drinks and three cookies day in and day out. With it all laid out like this - like a timeline of highlights, it came across to her as painfully mediocre. She watched a single disappearance drive her to the brink of obsession, and then everything went dark.

When her vision returned to her, Elliott was different. She was detached. Separate. Above. She recalled the life she had watched play back to her, and then began to remember what came before. A vast sea of lives coiling and intersecting into a marvelous if overwhelming tapestry. The sheer level of information available to her at any given time conflicted greatly with her understanding of her self. Self. Singular. Complete. This formless void she found herself floating within must be a dream because it does not align with that which is most important. The preservation of the self. These were the ideas that rushed in to reconcile her scattered mind and bring her safely out of the void in which she now drowned. It was a nice little fantasy, but it did little to help her cope with the truth. That was the problem. Her current state, whatever it may be defined as, simply knew too much. She didn't believe herself to be this way, she was simply aware that she was. However, paradoxically, there was a solution in all of the madness. A self-solving loop of the self.

'I think, therefore I am.'

It was a fallacy for Elliott, who was whether she was capable of thought any longer. She had become a fundamental truth of the world, and yet, she was still human. She came to possess the ability to alter and mold all of human existence at a whim. And now, to save herself from the burden of her Self, she chose to mold something else. Elliott drifted towards a reflective surface of the void. Or was it the bottom? She looked at Elliott. Elliott looked back. They both opened their mouth to speak.

"Vanessa! Let me in, please, its freezing out here!"

Elliott snapped awake, slowly becoming aware of her surroundings again. Her body ached with the familiar regret of falling asleep on the couch. She smacked her lips, having an awful taste in her mouth. Different parts of her body felt cold while others were sticky with sweat, and most of all, her head pounded to the beat of the stranger at the door. She pushed herself to stand and trudged towards the door, bags under her eyes as though she'd been awake an eternity, despite the fact that she'd only just awoken.

"What?" She groaned upon wrenching the door open. Her hair, which had become long and tinted a sheer white at the ends was a frizzy mess from her misplaced sleeping area.

"Oh- you're not Vanessa-" The woman on the other side blinked, "Is she... in? And, who are you?"

"Elliott. Who are you?" She replied curtly, getting a little sick of all these random strangers banging on her door asking for Vanessa just because Vanessa owned the place before she was turned to wrapping paper.

"I'm a friend of Vanny's. I came to check on her because I haven't seen her around in a while now. Is she in?" The woman pressed, growing more concerned.

Elliott was hardly paying attention. She was busy looking past her to the yard. That woman she'd blown up into a pear was gone now. Even so close to the holidays, the disposal companies worked fast. Finally returning her gaze to the person on her front porch, her eyes rolled, "Yeah. Come on in and check if you want." She said, backing up and heading towards the kitchen to eat one of the cookies on the counter. Whether this was a cookie her brainwashed former boss made or if it was one of the cookies made from a different nosy person looking for Vanessa, Elliott didn't bother to check.

Vanessa's friend, Jessie was rather perturbed by Elliott, but she chalked it up to being some new friend of Vanessa's that woke up on the wrong side of the bed. The decorations definitely helped to set her mind at ease. She knew how big a deal holiday set up was to the girl, and their presence seemed to indicate that Vanessa was at least okay. Still though, she didn't see her anywhere, despite the transformed woman sitting atop the living room coffee table, wrapped around a gift box. As Jess peeked around, Elliott watched her from afar. When Jessie rounded a corner out of sight, Elliott contemplated the ways to get rid of her. While it was true that her presence annoyed Elliott and she had far better things to do than to explain to some random girl what happened to her friend, she found herself hesitating simply getting rid of her. The reason for the hesitation was found quite easily for her. It was too simple. Boring. With but a thought, Elliott could excise Jessie from her life entirely, but where was the fun in that? If that were ever going to be her solution when dealing with an agitating, entitled human, what was the point in all of the other, more fun ways she'd gone about doing it up till now?

Jessie nearly screamed when she rounded the next corner, nearly running into Elliott from out of nowhere. One hand on her chest, she tried to catch her breath, "Good god, you scared me! What is it? I haven't seen Vanessa yet, I thought you said she was here," Jessie pointed out.

"That's what I came to tell you," Elliott lied as easily as she breathed, "Vanessa stepped out a few minutes ago to get some more things for the holiday setup. Since you're looking for her anyway, I thought I'd ask if you want to help me out while you wait."

"Help you with what?" Jessie asked, buying the lie since it was very much a Vanessa move to be scrambling for last-minute décor.

"I've been trying to spice up the times with some traditions from my own childhood," Elliott explained, "Ever heard of the shelf elf?" She asked, leaning forward a bit.

"What, that elf doll you hide and whoever finds it gets an early present? What about it?" She asked, taking a step back from Elliott.

"Wanna help me find a place for it? It was one of my favorite traditions as a kid." Elliott's eyes glinted with mischief, though it was easy to assume this was because of her fond memories of hunting for the doll as a child.

"Uhm... sure, I guess," as much as Elliott creeped her out, Jessie wanted to stick around to see Vanessa anyway.

"Perfect!" Elliott's grin took on a sinister appearance as she eyed Jessie like hawk might measure a meal's worth. Jessie had precious few seconds to ponder the reason for that, though, because her world was getting very suddenly large. Despite feeling her feet planted on solid ground, she felt the sensation of falling, not unlike the feeling one would get from drifting off and feeling their head start to fall a bit. This time, instead of heavy eyelids to snap awake, her vision was obscured by an impossible shift in perspective. Elliott and the room around her shot straight into the sky, blowing up to be utterly gargantuan, and when Jessie stumbled back, she found herself to be hardly bigger than one of Elliott's boots. The utter shock of this foreign sensation distracted her from noticing her clothing had changed as well into that of a traditional holiday elf.

Jessie scrambled to her feet and shouted up at the giantess Elliott had become. "What the hell did you do to me!?"

The woman's miniscule voice barely reached Elliott, so she squat down to her height, looming over her like some kind of deity, "So," she began, disregarding the woman's panic or rage, "You'll have a small head start to find a good spot, little elf. If I find you before five minutes are up, I'll have to find a place for you... And since you'll have proven yourself useless at hiding, I'll have to remove your autonomy." Jessie's stunned expression gave Elliott no pause, "Off you go, unless you're giving up already?"

That was apparently all the motivation the shrunken girl needed. In a blind panic, she took off in a sprint. Her mind raced. She was tiny now! Shrunken down to the size of a doll, the entire world felt imposing and foreign, and simple stairs became impassable mountains. Unable to parse how this was even possible or what she should do to get back to normal if she tried to escape, her mind settled on the flight end of her fight or flight system. She ran. She ran as fast and as hard as her little legs could carry her. Jessie's lungs burned but she pressed on, determined to get away from her tormentor. Unfortunately, her little legs were in fact quite little, and the distance she needed to travel seemed to stretch out into infinity. Relief washed over the mini woman as her foot left the carpeted room she'd started in and struck the kitchen tile. She was making progress! She could get away! She- she was getting grabbed? Jessie felt a gigantic hand wrap around her entire torso and lift her with perfect ease. Time was up. It had taken Jessie a full five minutes to even reach the next room. She'd been doomed to fail from the start, and yet Elliott had let her run just long enough to feel a spark of hope. It was undeniably cruel, and between that and the supernatural control Elliott seemed to have over her, she wondered if this insane woman was even human. Such thoughts were not to be shared, though, as she felt her entire body lock up. She was paralyzed, utterly incapable of lifting a finger or tensing a muscle. She could only stare unblinkingly at Elliott when she was set down in a new hiding spot.

"Maybe this spot will do you better," her captor told her. Jessie did not reply. She simply sat, limp as the doll she was made to look like as Elliott walked away, satisfied with her impromptu morning entertainment, and feeling much more energetic to handle the rest of the day.