Lula - help yourself

An image designed mostly to show the differences and similarities between Lula (on the left) and her "Reflection" (on the right).

Please note that the two versions of Lula were made with Azelea's Dolls (Main Lula with the Snow Queen one, and 'Lected Lula with the Heroine one), and then color-edited by me in Paint.NET.  The hand was obtained through Google Images and then put through an oil-paint filter to try to make it match the art style of the dolls.

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In the Mirror Universe, the Great Tiny War in the early Middle Ages had the exact opposite outcome: rather than the side that saw tinies as people barely winning, it was the side that saw them as pests.  As such, the compromise that was reached was not to send the tinies to North America, but to capture them and start selling them.  By the year 1800, tinies were firmly established as servants and pets.

This was to be 'Lected Lula's fate, as well, if it weren't for two dimensional interlopers.  If Normal Universe Mark hadn't entered the store at that time, she would have probably been bought and sold to a woman looking for a maid, and the shop owner would have to had looked for some other redhead to be Mirror Mark's "frequent customer" prize.

She was confused about her new owner.  He asked her if she was comfortable in his pocket (which in itself was odd since usually tinies were carried to their masters' homes in plastic eggs so they wouldn't know their way back to the store) before walking away from the store, and he acted as if he knew her somehow.  What was odd was that he really must have known her - he knew the name she'd given herself without being told, he knew which jokes would make her laugh, exactly how much pressure to apply to the pocket to make her feel his warm hand but not hurt her, and a lot of little nuances like that.  And yet there were times that she would surprise him.  It was almost as if he had known her mother, and was learning how she was the same and how she was different.  But that wasn't possible - her mother was a Birthgiver, which meant customers never got to see her.

But it was when a band of thugs started chasing him that he really threw her for a loop.  After ducking into an alley, he set her down on the ground, then was suddenly her size!  Before she could process what had just happened, he'd grabbed onto her arm and pulled her into a corner behind a box.  He waited for five minutes before suddenly returning himself to human size - and taking her with him!

There was no explanation for this man - but he was her master, so she wouldn't even want to question him.  No tiny had ever before grown to human size, but she was still a tiny in her mind, and therefore he was her master.

She must have looked uncomfortable, because after a while aimlessly wandering, he asked her if she was disoriented by her size.  Not wishing to anger him, she shook her head, even though she was truly disoriented.  But instead he smiled knowingly, and gently grabbed her arm.  Again they shifted sizes, and again he let go.  He returned to human size and gently scooped her up.  Slipping her into a pocket, he uttered the phrase that would begin her journey of understanding him: "I'm not your master, Lula...I'm a friend."  But she misinterpreted it, taking it to mean that he was a friend of the person who would become her master.

"Until you give me to my master, you ARE my master," she tells him.  After all, that is the way it was supposed to work.  Sometimes tinies would be given as gifts, but the gift-giver wanted the tiny to present themselves in a particular way.  And anyway, the shopkeeper had given her to HIM, not is friend.

He continues wandering aimlessly, as if he was looking for someone but didn't know where they were.  "No, no, no," he says.  "I'm setting you free.  No one is your master."

"No!" she cried.  In her timeline, being 'set free' was the equivalent of being 'put down': death.  Tinies only enjoyed death if it was a death that pleased their master - but being let go was obviously because the tiny WASN'T pleasing.  "Give me to someone else, but don't let me go!"

At this, she felt his step slow, and immediately she knew she'd said something wrong.  "Sorry, master," she said.

But then his heartrate behind her back seems to shift a bit as he repeats "I'm not your master", and she had an odd thought: was he being serious?  Would he let her go to be a human instead of a tiny?  Is that why he showed her his power to size-shift?