Ty thought it through for a bit, letting Dustin stew. Then he said, "Nah, I don't really believe you."
"But, Ty. I-" said Dustin.
"You're just scared because I turned you into a boy. You haven't really changed who you are, just how old you are."
"Ty, come on. You can't just leave me like this," said Dustin, who appeared to be ready to cry. "I can change."
Ty rubbed his chin and thought a few seconds about that statement. "You know," he said. "I think you're right. It's time for another change."
"What?" Dustin squeaked.
"I'm going to really stretch my powers this time..." said Ty cracking his fingers. "...just to see how far I can go with them." Ty closed his eyes and focused intensely.
Dustin was panicked. "Ty, please. Please don't!" he shouted. But, Ty didn't listen. The world felt fuzzy and out of focus for a few seconds, as if reality was being rewritten, which is was. Dustin felt himself shrink and his skin started to feel strangely damp and stiff at the same time. The room they had been standing in seemed to fade away. When the world came back into focus, Dustin was lying on some soft surface in the corner of the kitchen. The kitchen seemed huge. From across the room, his mother approached him. She seemed to be a giant now as well.
"Up, you," she yelled at him. "You're late tending the garden, lazy gnome."
"What?" said Dustin, still dazed from the transformation. His voice had a strange pinched tone to it. Like he was pretending to be one of Santa's elves. "What are you-"
His mother reached down a giant hand and grabbed him by his hair, which seemed strangely long and thick. He doubted it even was hair as he realized that it had been standing up straight on his head. She lifted him off the ground with ease and held him before her huge face. Her size and angry look terrified him into silence. "I want you out in that garden now, or I'll feed you to the crows," she said. "You hear me?"
Dustin tried to nod, which was hard to do when hanging by his head. He ended up just muttering, "Y-yeah, S-sure." She let him drop. The fall seemed to last forever. As he fell, he imagined the pain to come as his body crashed into the floor, but he landed with a bit of a light thud onto something soft which puffed up into the air like dust around him. He smelled it, dirt. He had been sleeping in what appeared to be a cat box full of dirt.
He saw his mother standing over him, waiting with her arms crossed. He crawled out of the cat box, noticing that his hands appeared to be orange now, and chubby, like a baby's. He felt naked, but he didn't stop to look at his body. Looking over at the door, he noticed a flap on the bottom, like a doggy door, only this one had a lock on it. He slipped out of the cat box, verifying that his whole body appeared to be orange and stiff and, yes, naked for some reason. He appeared to be only a baby, at least in the shape of his body, but he could stand and move normally. He hustled to the door and was about to open it when he hear his mom say, "Forgetting something?" She nudged a stick that had been propped up against the cat box of dirt. It feel over with a bit of a metallic click. He rushed back over to grab it. It was little more than a twig, though a big twig almost as tall as him, with an X-Acto knife blade tied to one end like a spearhead. "Wouldn't want you to get gobbled up by the rabbits now would we?" she said, cruelly.
"Rabbits," he said, fearfully.
"Yes," she said, enjoying his fear. "They'd just love to munch on a little carrot gnome like you."
"C-carrot?" he stuttered, clutching his twig spear tightly. He looked down at his tough, orange skin. It was true, he appeared to be a baby made out of a carrot.
His mother's cruel smile faded, and she ordered him, "Get outside now." She pointed to the door. "I want that vegetable garden watered and weeded by noon."
He started to back away towards the door, when he noticed Ty run down the stairs. Ty saw him, and smiled. Dustin though he heard Ty whisper the word, "Sweet," under his breath. Ty called to their mother, "Having trouble with the gnome?"
"No trouble, Dustbin was just getting to work," she said and stared at Dustin (now apparently called, "Dustbin") threateningly. "I mean, really. You would think having a gnome slave wouldn't be this much of a hassle. They're supposed to be obedient. Maybe we should have gotten a potato gnome instead." She stared at Dustbin. "Well? You going to move your orange ass and get to work?"
Dustbin backed away to the door and fumbled with the lock. He slipped through the doggy door and was outside in their yard. As with everything else in the world, it appeared to be gigantic to him now. He noticed a puddle on the ground near him and headed for it, hoping to get a glimpse of his new face in it. Peering into the murky water, he saw his face, orange now and round like a baby's. His nose was comically bulbous and his ears stuck out big and round. One of his ears appeared to have a big chunk bitten out of it. In place of his hair were several leafy carrot stalks growing straight up from the top of his head. He stood up. Guessing from the size of things around him, he estimated that he was a bit less than a foot tall now, maybe only 10 inches.
Taking stock of his situation, Dustbin clutched his twig spear close and looked around for signs of rabbits. "Right," he said to himself in his embarrassingly pinched voice. "Okay, so, your foster brother just turned you into some kind of tiny gnome baby thingy. Mom thinks you're her slave. You're supposed to water the vegetable garden or something, however the hell that's supposed to work. And, you're a carrot."
Above him he heard a sound that chilled him to his carrot core, a crow had just cawed.
"Shit!" he said, and took off running, looking for cover somewhere.