“I wish I could be your assistant, on stage.”

Phian’s eyebrows raised in surprise at the sudden remark, and she looked down questioningly at the pretty head laying on her stomach. Tracie was facing the other way, however, so the question had to be vocalized. “What makes you think you can’t?”

“I’m too tall,” Tracie replied, with a tinge of annoyance that suggested it should have been obvious. “I can’t cram myself into the little boxes.”

At 5’11”, it was true, she certainly stood out, but… “There are tricks a tall assistant can do,” the magician tried to reassure her. “Some that even require it.”

“Yeah, one or two,” Tracie grumbled. “And none of the really fun ones.”

Ah. As Phian stared thoughtfully at and beyond the closed lounge’s ceiling, idly playing with her friend’s hair, she thought she understood.

The thing was, this sounded like a problem she could solve. Images drifted through her mind of props. Twists and variations on Stretcher illusions. As she plotted, her mind kept returning to one image in particular, niggling at her. A box made up of smaller boxes, with an 80s pin-up girl with big, blonde hair in a red one-piece swimsuit painted on the front. Most of it was thin, so it could slide into the wider portions at the elbows, knees, chest, and hips, collapsing in on itself.

If she was trying to design a new prop, why was this image so persistent in her mind?

When it hit her, she couldn’t help but chuckle. It’s because she already had it.

“What if you could be shorter?”

Tracie rolled over to sit over Phian, eyes sparkling. “For real?” There was a moment of nervous hesitation. “You’re not just talking about cutting off my legs, are you?”

Phian smirked, heart lifting at the other woman’s joy. “What if you appeared on stage as my gorgeous, petite assistant,” she raised herself up on her elbows to give her a quick kiss, and purred “and no one could tell the difference?”

”Oh my God!” Tracie squealed with a huge, excited grin. An arm wrapped around Phian’s back to pull her in for a longer, more enthusiastic kiss. “Oh my God,” she repeated, flustered, as she rose to her feet, pulling her clothes straight. “Yes! Could I, please?!”

Laughing, Phian rolled to her feet, and danced to a prop she’d used in the night’s show: a curtain on a wheeled frame, mimicking the sort you’d see in a hospital. She pulled it into a closed triangle, and snapped her fingers. A light shone from within. A second snap turned the light off again, but made the connection she needed.

Closing her eyes, Phian parted the curtain just a few inches, and reached within. While she’d honed in on the prop, she had a vague sense that she was reaching to near the back of her warehouse. Her hand brushed the wood of the crate that contained it. She shivered uncomfortably. It was flakey, and somehow too dry. Dryness was a desirable quality to a warehouse, but there was something unsettling about it. Something deep. Something… old?

Her hand made contact with the prop. She blew a heavy, relieved breath through pursed lips, and pulled it through into the lounge.

The prop that met her eyes didn’t quite match her memory. The colors were faded, the swimsuit now mostly white, and it had somehow accumulated a thin layer of dust.

The magician took a step back to admire her prop. Though it was worn, she couldn’t help but feel good about it. Was it just pride in what she’d built? Or were there more memories connected to it? Things she couldn’t picture, but could feel.

Tracie stepped up beside her, scratching her arm nervously. “Oh, wow. Is it…” she seemed to have trouble placing the exact question. “Is it okay?”

Phian looked up to her with a casually cocky smirk. “You might want to take a step back.” Doing so herself, she closed her eyes. With the slow, drifting motion of someone practicing Tai Chi, she raised her arms in front of her, made a gathering motion toward her stomach, turned sideways, and lowered it down by her hip. Then, she quickly thrust her palms toward the box. As she did, a blast of air rippled over the prop, rattling it. Dust sprayed over the floor behind it, and showed much more clearly on the white curtain.

She turned back to her assistant with a grin, right arm still extended to present the now-clean box. “Presto.”

Tracie clapped excitedly, bouncing on her toes, and stepped up to the prop for a closer look. “Oh, wow,” she murmured. “How do I get in?”

“Around the back,” Phian informed her, and trotted over, knowing it was far from that simple.

The back of the prop was composed of numerous small doors on hinges, partially carried by ninety degree offset gears. Beautiful, perhaps, to a clockwork enthusiast, but certainly not for viewing by general audiences.

The puzzlement growing on Tracie’s face was expected. Phian opted to head off any questions by quickly working the doors in order: three on the torso section, then three on the right leg. “Stick your foot in here.”

Though her feelings toward the doors seemed conflicted, her face lit up seeing the tight, confined space within, and she quickly did as instructed. Well, she had been wanting to cram herself into little boxes!

More than a minute later, Phian closed the last segment, covering Tracie’s head and shoulders, closing her in completely. Her heart jumped in surprise as something clacked loudly to the floor, and she leaned around the box to see what it was. Ah. Of course. The cut-out oval of the painted face. In closing the box, Tracie’s head had been pushed forward, pushing that out. She really should have removed that in advance, but she’d been too preoccupied with the doors.

Tracie’s face beamed through. Even boxed in as she was, she couldn’t help moving around a little with eager, anxious energy. Phian noted with some amusement that it would now be a long, complicated process to get her out, a thought that no doubt boosted her assistant’s thrill.

Standing upright behind the box, Phian closed her eyes, drew up her hands, and drew a deep breath. With no one to see it, her clothes fluttered around her.

She strutted around the front in a leather jacket, bikini top, and spandex workout pants. She whirled around to flash a grin at her trapped assistant, whose eyes twinkled back at her. She thrust her hands out, extending her arms fully, right hand pointed over Tracie’s head, left below her feet, then bit her lower lip, and grunted with effort as she lowered her right.

Tracie squeaked with surprise as the box jerked. Then, though there was already clearly no room, it started to ease into itself. Arms withdrew into elbows and shoulders, legs into hips and knees, and chest settled toward hips. Maybe this was the part she was so proud of: every part of such a complicated box working in perfect tandem, taking an inch here, two inches there, to make an assistant shorter while keeping everything in perfect proportion.

Handling the box wasn’t easy. While it was meant to shift at a slow, perfectly even pace, it kept catching, requiring her to force it so it would jerk an inch, then slowly settle again.

Was that far enough? She still felt like she was looking up at Tracie, just a little, who seemed ecstatic at the fact. Maybe she could shave off just another quarter-inch. She pressed, the box jerked, and Tracie was clearly looking up at her, giggling uncontrollably. A 4’11” assistant was fine.

With a sultry smirk and eyes half-lidded, Phian strutted up to the box. She laid a hand on Tracie’s cheek, caressing down it, then leaned in to plant a light kiss, given what the surface of the box would allow.

Tracie’s face dropped away, the box settling with a loud, wooden clatter. Phian jumped back, crying out, accompanied by a similarly startled yelp from Tracie.

Phian dropped to her knees, and scooted up to the collapsed box, hand searching for somewhere to support it, but all the thicker portions had settled completely against one another. “Tracie! Are you okay?!”

The other woman glanced around in nervous confusion. “Yyyyes?” she responded noncommittally. “I’m not hurt.” She squirmed slightly within her limited capacity to do so. “What happened?”

The magician let out a deeply relieved sigh. The possibility of having hurt her had been almost too terrible to contemplate. “The box collapsed completely.” Deformed? There were ways to deal with that. As she eyed the box, however, the shape of it seemed reassuring. Symmetrical, human, even the painting didn’t look all that wrong.

Pounding heart starting to settle, Phian took ahold of the head portion of the box, and lifted. How easy it was wasn’t exactly reassuring, and when she eased up on supporting it, the box slid back into itself, no longer providing any resistance. “Oooooh,” Tracie complained, “this feels weird!”

“Okay,” Phian said firmly to herself, her only course of action clear. “I can fix this, but it’s probably going to take a while. But!” she snapped Tracie’s attention away from her worries and back to her. “You’re probably fine.” She smiled softly, reassuringly at her. “Let’s get you out of there.”

As Phian crawled around behind the box, the guilt she wouldn’t let herself show settled in over her. Keep up the show, the words jingled through her head. If you act like everything’s fine, the audience will believe it.

The tension eased as each piece of the box she opened failed to reveal disaster. It just seemed a little strange and out of place that her head was the same size it had been to start with, and her butt only mildly altered. She’d also largely expected short, stubby limbs, so it was a surprise when she opened an arm portion and found it looking much like a miniature version of a more average adult arm, complete with delicate, slender fingers.

When Phian finally got Tracie all the way out, she flopped into the magician’s lap. She might have been off-balance, but more than that, she seemed drained, and relieved to be able to lie down. “Phew!”

She raised her arm up before her face, examining it. “Huh.” She extended a leg, examining it in a similar manner. “Not really what I was expecting. Wait…”

Gripped by an idea, Tracie pushed herself back to her feet. Her arms extended like she was expecting to have to catch herself, or at least wobble. “Oh!” she exclaimed with delight. “Easier than I thought! Get me a mirror!”

Phian quickly scurried over to the curtains, retrieving - with much less ceremony than her first prop - a standing mirror on wheels. The other woman followed her, and she turned it to face her.

Getting a look at herself, Tracie was briefly surprised, then her face lit up. “Oh! My! God!” She laughed as she twisted and turned to examine herself. She was now around two and a half feet tall, and almost a third of it was head. Her breast nearly hid her torso completely, making her middle third a sort of ultimate hourglass. Her lowest third, of course, was all leg.

It looked strange, but in a way that seemed to work. In an odd way, she was cute, even sexy.

Tracie’s shining eyes turned back on Phian. “I’m a chibi!” she laughed.

“Pfff!” Caught off-guard, Phian joined in the laughter. “Yeah, I suppose you are!”

Watching Tracie enjoy herself gradually lifted the weight from Phian, and as the tiny woman continued to inspect and get used to her new shape, the less tiny woman slipped lightly away. She retrieved a chaise longue, placing one hand on it and making a lifting gesture with the other to levitate it, and guided it over. If her assistant was still tired, she wanted to be ready to accommodate her. She considered making some tea…

Arms wrapping around her thigh snapped Phian from her thoughts, a delicate caress nearly making her drop the sofa. “You look way too tense,” Tracie teased.

Phian laughed nervously, feeling like she’d been caught. “Well, yeah. I mean, I fucked up, and now you’re probably gonna be stuck like that for a few days. You can’t go out in public like that, either.”

“And you’re going to fix it,” Tracie finished. She took Phian’s hand and kissed her palm, sending pleasant tingles up her spine. “I trust you.” They always did. That touched more deeply than any kiss.

“As for not being able to go outside,” Tracie continued with a suggestive smirk, “I guess you’re just going to have to take care of me and keep me entertained until then.”

A hand crept up from beside Phian’s knee. “I can think of a few things I’m now just the right height for.”