Chapter Text
It happened in the blink of an eye. One minute he and Bodie had each been reaching out to hold the fence down, ready to leap over and continue pursuit, the next...
... the next, what the hell?
Because the next they were standing, each at one end, on the frost-covered barbed wire, and even Carrie Mulligan's fast-receding back was a hundred times bigger than they were.
Because they were...
"Oh, fucking hell," Bodie said.
Because they were both standing on the barbed wire, barely a couple of inches tall, and... yeah, alright, and...
And they were barely a couple of inches tall!
On the bright side, that meant the barbed wire was the width of a decent-sized plank, and weirdly enough the frost was making it sticky rather than slippery to stand on. Doyle turned to look down - the ground was a skyscraper's fall away, and he was good at heights, had never had a problem with heights in his life, but... he stretched his arms out for balance, just in case.
"Ray?" Bodie was making his careful way along the wire towards him, and Doyle didn't miss that he had his own hands splayed by his side, ready to reach out and grab... nothing. Nothing for them to grab.
"Yeah," he said. "Alright?"
Bodie'd reached a barbed wire spike that pronged aggressively into the chilly winter morning, was eyeing it unhappily. "Not bad," he said, wrapping both arms around its tip, knocking off shards of frost as he did so, and swinging himself around to the other side. Nearer Doyle. "That witch Mulligan's chucked a shrink-spell at us, mind."
"A shrink spell," he said, because he wasn't going to ask, because this was just a bad dream, because it had to be. He'd been knocked out by something, that's all. Tripped and hit the fence pole, Bodie'd never let him hear the end of it.
Bodie answered him anyway. "I should've remembered - that branch of the Mulligans were always witches. Came across 'em in Belfast. Searg. gave us charms against 'em." He waved his hands at Doyle, shooing him further along the wire.
Doyle took a breath, then shook his head and just obeyed because it was easier. They'd get to the relative safety of the fence pole, and maybe by then he'd be coming to, waking up.
Because there were no such thing as witches, and Bodie didn't believe in witches any more than he did, and... he stepped carefully, concentrating more than he needed to, and definitely not thinking about the fact that Bodie wouldn't walk under a ladder if he could help it, wouldn't go with him to talk to Djambe Pete, and threw spilled salt over his shoulder every time he saw some.
Because they couldn't possibly have been spelled by a witch into being two inches tall.
Story inspired by this picture by Cim3745