7

Over the Amharic Highlands, night has settled. Hence, so has Ms. Ophir...whether she wants to or not.

Downhill, there are very big flowers. A few pollinators fly around them. Alas, most of them dare not get too deep into them. At night, there's no telling what could crawl in there, and use the flowers' depths as an ambush foxhole...

Bat-eared foxes crawl from their holes, and hunt. Alas, they stay close to the security of their holes. There are wolves around...and they've somehow forgotten that foxes are their kin.

Back at the President's estate, things have gone awfully quiet. But then, that should be expected. Ms. Ophir's not that much of a night person...as much as she once loved shooting at hogs when she was a girl. (She just shot them; she didn't eat them.)

Here and there around the estate, a mouse scurries. They'll all be lucky if a scops owl doesn't find them before morning.

Upstairs, Ms. Ophir sleeps atop her bedding. She's asleep...but she turns a lot. She's topless, and in a pair of hot pink panties. Her bedding is almost a matching color.

She reaches down into her crotch, and squeezes the hell out of her pussy. It's hard to tell if she's dreaming of Elias... But it'd be shameful to think she's not...

From mounts downstairs, the heads of elephants, rhinos, buffalos, lions, and leopards hang. For lower-ranking subjects of Afroasia, it's illegal to hunt the Big Five...with all due respect to the buffalo, which is always legal game...if not too dangerous for an amateur to hunt. But of course, being on of the Ten Elected Emirs of Afroasia has its advantages.

One of these is a lioness. She seems to have the place of honor among this collection of taxidermy. She wouldn't have such a place in the wild. In the wild, there'd be more of her. And they'd all have the same husband.

Throughout the night, Elias sits on the lioness's back paw. He thinks he should go upstairs, and let the President know he's okay... Alas, he's not sure if he should. He's not sure if she'd have him, now that he's...short-changed in every way.

He's still a thousandth his old size. This is no major demotion; he was too small as it was, back in Rhineland-Palatinate. Even so, he's small enough to get eaten by a predator. Hence, he might need his domina's protection before long... And he doesn't mean cellophane wrapped over her pussy...

He never had much luck with the women back in Rhineland-Palatinate. He just...can't bring himself to believe that the President of Afroasia likes him for who he is... Seriously; she's a Jew. And if he couldn't get a German girl to fall for him...

Near him, a shadow clears. Across the space it concealed up to now, it's apparent there's a mouse hole in the wall.

Elias...feels obligated to stand watch at this mouse hole...as cheap as that sounds. Even so, he wouldn't want his domina to think that he's spent all this time hiding from her. She might get the wrong idea. Even worse, she might squash him like a bug. She wouldn't have to try very hard; he'd be like an ant under her big toe.

There's something strange about that mouse hole. Elias is starting to think that...that's more than what it looks like...

Intrigued, he stands. He leaps of the lioness's paw. He creeps across the floor, making his way towards the hole...

In the dark something big moves. Elias freezes...and waits...

It's a sengi...(i.e. an elephant shrew). It's got a long flexible nose. It stops, and sniffs around. Shit; Elias sure hopes she doesn't mistake him for a bug...

Alas, she moves on. Elias brings relief. She sure hopes there's no company behind her. But then, there ought not to be. Sengis aren't known for their gregariousness...unlike the multimammate mouse...or the naked mole rat. ESPECIALLY unlike the naked mole rat...

He stands at the mouse hole. At his size, it towers over him like a grand archway. It's so funny how small he is, it's not funny. He doesn't have to try very hard to walk right in. He doesn't even have bend over, or do the limbo.

Inside, the hole still calls to him. He wouldn't believe that this is a portal to another reality. So, he finds out for himself. He walks right inside...and vanishes into a dark brown cloud of dusk magic.

On the other side, it feels like Madagascar. Sadly, Elias is like a bug in this world, too. And that's no fortune. The chameleons here are as big as dragons...and the Jackson's ones look like Triceratops...

The fossas are even bigger. And they prey on the chameleons...as they do the mice lemurs and galagos.

This is the Afrosoricida Dimension. Here, the tenrecs, otter shrews, and golden moles are always in a primitive state of development. Meanwhile, the Great Powers grow, breed, and build new technology all around them. And here, those powers include, but are certainly not limited to, fossas, fish-eagles, boas, colubrid snakes, and cave crocodiles.