Giantess World
When Lexi awoke, with long hair wrapped over her eyes after a fitful night tossing and turning with dreams she couldn’t quite remember now, early morning light shown in the window and passed through the towering violet-hued lava lamp as well, with most of the burbling liquid geometry within having settled back down to the base again. Trying to find some kind of oddball peace in this image, before facing whatever else the day had to offer, the Alpha jolted more awake in the Alpha matchbox-bed as though by cattle prod, instantly recalling not only where she was, but the reason she was in here, and most importantly, the fact that she’d meant to remain awake.
Acting as a tiny watchdog for the Omega’s bedroom door once Bridget had made her swift and awkward departure, Lexi had appreciated the gigantic blonde’s vow to return, as well as her cryptic insistence that everything would be all right again, but ultimately took little comfort, considering how long she’d had to wait to see her sister since the last time she ran off without a hint to her destination. Thus Lexi had attempted to remain awake in the glow of the lamp, pulse pounding double as fast as the ticking seconds, with each passing moment of the Omega’s absence making her initially-unwelcome visitor all the more anxious. Where had Bridget gone?
Yet pure exhaustion, emotional and physical, finally conked Lexi out cold. And though it was possible her body had remained on autopilot, shutting down most other senses including her memory perception until she’d latently witnessed the soft-spoken titan’s return, she certainly didn’t recall seeing Bridget come back through that door in the dark. Thrown into fresh panic, Lexi flung herself up from the expansive bedside table and sprinted for the edge nearest to the isle of the Omega’s mattress, though it was plain even before getting close that there was no hundred-fifty-foot-tall being snuggled under those blankets. The sheets were just as messy as she’d left them.
Heart palpitating up into her throat, the Alpha had her phone out in her hand before she even knew what she’d do next. It had been a while since she’d felt this helpless, and that was saying something, considering the crippling impotence that had come with gradually returning home to the city from her life-sabbatical, then venturing right back out to help her sister make the same journey. Where to begin? It would be faster to call Evelyn first, rather than making the cumbersome trek back across the blockaded landscape of Bridget’s room. Having her adoptive mother to carry her while they began a search of the neighborhood and then the urban sprawl of the city itself would certainly speed up the process, but Lexi had a sinking feeling that if her sister had been willing to lie about returning to keep her bedside bunkmate from following her, then chances were good the Omega had no intention of sticking close enough to be found that quickly. And though it was tough for someone of Bridget’s stature to “hide” without at least someone eventually spotting her standing there high as a fifteen-story building, it also seemed desperately unlikely to Lexi that a second pilgrimage to bring her home would be successful, given the struggle required to get Bridget home just once, only to abandon the effort and flee again inside two days.
Pre-emptively, Lexi’s eyes were watering, and she hadn’t even punched a key on the phone yet to alert Evelyn. Her finger hovered above the screen as she gazed over the clothen expanse of the vacated bed beyond. Was there really a point? The Alpha hated to be so defeatist, after she’d summoned such bravado to collect Bridget from Sanctuary, no matter the emotional strain, but it was tough not to take pause and forlornly reflect after finding an empty mattress, with only a probably-well-meant fib from the young Omega in the dead of night as hint to her next whereabouts. Already Lexi’s mind was racing through depressing outcomes both realistic and paranoid, though all futures felt the same in this rather devastating silent morning discovery. Was there anything she could’ve said to convince Bridget to say? Any combination of magic words that might’ve bridged just enough of the gulf to let them have a real chance to heal together? If not, would there ever be a time when Bridget might return? Or was Lexi destined to live out her life here, and no matter what sorts of other happiness she managed to find through the years in attempt to fill the gaping internal void, always remain haunted by the fact that she’d let a sister the size of a small skyscraper slip through her fingers, permanently? That darkest possible chance was still an unwanted outlier in Lexi’s brain, a remnant of her time away when it seemed nothing could ever correct their wounded relationship, but in this uncertain moment, the chance of never seeing Bridget again felt more like reality than it ever had before.
“Lexi.”
The sound of Bridget’s voice speaking the Alpha’s name was such a common refrain in Lexi’s mental bank, practically tattooed on her cortex from an adolescence of calling back-and-forth to one another in the midst of exploration and adventurous backyard play, she didn’t even question at first that it was anything but a sensory memory dredged up at an especially painful moment.
“Lexi.”
Then it came again, like a slap in the face despite its softness. In fact, the voice was so quiet and fragile, more like birdsong compared to the natural reverberation that came along with any Omega’s spoken word no matter how gently they whispered, that if it didn’t sound so precisely like Bridget, Lexi would’ve thought it was a stranger somewhere in the room. She still did, until it came a third time, and out of her delirious sorrow, the Alpha pinpointed the source of the voice coming from somewhere down in the tousled blankets of Bridget’s bed.
“Lexi. Please don’t cry. I’m… down here.”
Light-headed and unnerved, Lexi crept yet closer to the precipice of the table, kneeling down to peer over the colorful landscape of cozy bedclothes, forming small hills out of generous sheets that could just barely conceal the Omega’s colossal body. Up near where the fabric gave way to the slope of the pillow, Lexi spotted an oasis-like flash of lengthy light-golden locks on a person that was unmistakably a female Beta. At least the Alpha innately believed this, given every three-inch-tall being she’d ever met in her life was indeed a Beta, since the unknown intruder was certainly no taller than Lexi’s finger, and this was excluding the very-slim possibility it was instead an Alpha who’d been compressed down to such a rare degree, as her mother had been in Jenna’s charge.
But upon squinting, and locking eyes with the girl, she stumbled to the realization that she was actually sharing a gaze with none other than Bridget Cade. There was no mirage at work here, no sadness-addled hallucination. The girl that Lexi had never known as anything other than an astronomic cloud-reaching angel had somehow been reduced to the size of the world’s smallest and most vulnerable, almost doll-like citizens. Afflicted by a confusing overflow of almost-giddy relief that Bridget was still here, as well as gut-wrenching terror at whatever circumstances had caused her sister to dwindle to one-six-hundredth of her regular stature, Lexi took a flying leap from the bedside table without thinking.
In the brief rush of air, she heard Bridget’s anxious breath intake, but the choice was already made, and since the distance wasn’t long, nor was the Alpha jumping with anything less than raw energy brought on by profound need to be near her sibling immediately, she easily cleared the gap between the giant table and mattress. Of course Lexi had been on this bed countless times before, mostly in youth as the girls laid together watching a movie or listening to Evelyn read a bedtime story, and though it seemed pretty much an ordinary bed while it was occupied by an Omega, to now be the biggest thing standing in the geography of tossed blankets, the little Alpha truly appreciated its scale. Especially because she could so directly compare, even from afar, the perturbing sight of a three-inch-tall Bridget standing calmly on the plush terrain beside a monumental pillow far too high for the blonde to climb, let alone use to rest her puny head.
Although Lexi ran for her first few panicked strides, instinct slowed her to a more ponderous pace when she was just three steps from Bridget. She fell to her knees, both out of shock and the need to convince herself from closer-up that there were no tricks at play. But now with hardly any space between her and the undeniable shape of the somehow-shrunken Omega, reasonable doubt no longer worked. It was Bridget, looking strangely well-rested, and while not quite smiling yet, she appeared sunnier and more self-assured than she had in these previously distraught hours together.
Before Lexi realized it, she’d lowered herself and extended both hands out toward Bridget, enclosing her palms around her and only stopping herself when she was within range of brushing her now-tiny sister with a fingertip. Just as immediately, the Alpha withdrew both hands, ashamed for having gone straight in as though she intended to snatch the girl right off the bed. Though to the Omega’s credit, she didn’t flinch in the slightest at her sister’s clearly-bewildered approach, and even reached out with her own miniscule hand to touch Lexi’s thumb, but it was retracted before they could make contact. Several more seconds passed in clumsy, roaring silence with the girls just looking between one another. Slowly Bridget’s lips actually twitched to an uncommon smile, a sight that caused the Alpha even more befuddlement. Much as their encounter in the Sanctuary garden had felt to Lexi at first like an out-of-body experience, surreal and almost intangible, this matched that sensation tenfold.
What the hell was going on?
“Don’t be scared, Lexi. It’s me. Really,” Bridget promised just as softly, which only made the Alpha wince, as well as find soothing confirmation. The Omega took her turn to advance now, stepping up to Lexi’s leg and touching her much-smaller hand to her sister’s knee. “It’s okay.”
Unlikely though it was to relate the feeling of a palm tinier than a bead touching her skin, to the overwhelming sanctity of sitting on a warm wide hand like boat constituted of that same peachy-soft terrain, Lexi finally recognized her sister through this touch more accurately than by sight. She’d spent enough years being carried in that trustworthy hand to know what it felt like, even if it was still just a tad unthinkable to see that familiar silhouette so incredibly diminished, framed against a humongous bedspread rather than a city skyline. Their scales had literally flipped, and for the first time in her life, Lexi realized she was seeing her sister from the Omega’s perspective: not with regard to the rest of the world around them, of course, but to the miniature former-Enforcer herself, which was really all that mattered now. Bridget appeared relatively average-sized for a Beta-facsimile, if not a few fractions of an inch on the taller side, yet because her once-mountainous body had been so drastically reduced, Lexi couldn’t help but feel she was now looking at the smallest human being in the world.
Though perhaps the most faithful method of knowing for certain that this was Bridget, Lexi realized, was the simple fact that the Omega was still offering unwavering calm to her sister in the midst of such unexpected awe, despite having their relative scales reversed. After another touch from the Beta-size blonde, and a near-imperceptible shush that nonetheless worked, Lexi’s senses caught up with her burgeoning hysteria, and she somehow relaxed. Despite still not having the slightest clue what was happening, it was worth catching her breath again upon recognition that Bridget, the one who should’ve been yelling in calamity at her unnaturally miniaturized body, seemed to be unbothered, and even gave the impression she knew what was happening, though how that could be, Lexi couldn’t begin to guess.
“Holy shit,” the Alpha exhaled.
“Yeah, um… that’s probably a fair thing to say,” Bridget replied. “But will you believe me if I promise, cross my heart, that nothing’s wrong?”
Struggling to keep her balance while her head still spun with this quiet madness, Lexi let herself fall back into a seated position, clutching at the bedspread behind her to keep from going completely prone, though it didn’t help.
“Y-Yeah,” Lexi gulped. “But… I mean… w-what… h-how is this possible?”
“When I left last night, I was… arranging this,” Bridget said matter-of-factly, which did little to clear the air, though Lexi was inclined to believe her, given the start of the explanation made just as little sense as the outcome itself. “I didn’t go very far. Actually, it was taken care of before I even left the yard. Then I just went for a little walk down the block, thinking things over. I was gone for a while.”
Then, seemingly sensing the guilt that came secondary to Lexi’s incredulity, Bridget walked along the length of her reclining sister’s body, right up to her face just a few inches off the bed: closer than they’d yet come at this unfamiliar divergence in the size-norm. The Alpha stared unblinking at her nearby sister, marveling at the translation of known features into such a narrow package. She’d seen countless Betas in her life, but the novelty of seeing Bridget as short as one still made her seem like a fantasy creature, like awakening next to a fairy. The Omega reached up and pressed her hand to the lower curve of Lexi’s cheek.
“I know you were waiting up for me to come back last night. But you’ve been so tired, too, Lexi. I know that. And you need rest. So don’t feel bad. I tried to sneak back in once I was finished, and I saw you were sleeping, so I just got back into bed, and waited for it to happen.”
“It. You mean… this. You just… waited for it.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t even know c-compression was possible on… you. I thought it was just Alphas, and… even then… I thought it was too hard to make us as small as a… well, I mean… y-you did this on purpose, right? Made yourself as small as a Beta?”
“Yes, I meant to be exactly this size, but it wasn’t me, exactly, who did it. Not me at all, actually. I think the strain of trying to do it myself would’ve made me pass out way before I even got to be your size. So, you’re right. It’s not normally possible. But you know there’s… stuff about us that’s harder to explain. People that are harder to explain. You know what I mean, don’t you?”
Bridget didn’t even have to name-drop for Lexi to comprehend, but she still had to say it aloud herself to make it seem real and at last fully tranquilize her worries, because with just the mention of one word, suddenly all the anarchy of natural law taking place in this bed was explained: “Kayla.”
“Yes. I called her. She’s… busy a lot, so I wasn’t sure if I’d have to wait, or even if she’d answer me at all, considering how late it was, but… she did. Like right away. And I just asked her.”
“You… asked her… to do this to you.”
“Not to me. For me. And it wasn’t as easy as that, I guess. We talked for a few minutes. But not long, either. I know you’ve met her. Conversations work different. She just… has a way.”
“Where you don’t have to say everything out loud for her to know it.”
“Exactly. Once I explained, she promised it would be done as soon as I got back into bed. And it was. I only fell asleep when I was sure it was done. That it worked. Not that I doubted it would. It is Kayla, after all. But I… wanted to be one hundred percent certain. Needed to.”
“Is… is this-”
“No, it’s not permanent. Just like any kind of compression, it has a time limit, and I’ll grow back to my old size after a while. But not in just a couple of hours, like usual. She told me it would last twenty-four hours, though it could be… refreshed, I guess. If I need longer. All I have to do is ask.”
“Okay. Um…” Lexi stammered, still having a lot of trouble finding words while focused on the simultaneous déjà vu and askew nature of feeling Bridget’s supportive yet meek and flower-petal-tender micro hand still holding against her face. She nudged her cheek lower by a hair, if only to convince herself fully that the Omega’s palm was no longer capable of picking her up, no matter its size. Sure enough, Bridget’s hand lowered, following the motion of her much-larger younger sibling’s countenance. In the same instant, it occurred to Lexi that now she was probably more than able to lift up her sister between her hands, though of course she was far from ready to consider that, while still needing to pose the direst question of all.
“So that answers the how part… mostly,” Lexi said. “But, you know… it doesn’t really explain…”
“I know.”
“…why?”
Bridget bowed her head, not speaking, though her tiny hand didn’t budge from its delicate contact with Lexi’s cheek. The Alpha was grateful her welled tears had reduced upon finding the Omega hadn’t abandoned her again after all, since she desperately wished to study her sister with clear eyes now, hoping the answer would simply present itself from the ether, as hesitant as Bridget seemed to respond herself. Wondering for a moment if she’d gone too far too fast, demanding explanations from her sister when the girl was still evidently in the early stages of self-redemption, Lexi waited breathlessly for the Omega to look back up again. When the smaller party did speak, however, it was from a place of unexpected strength and resolve.
“Because it’s the only way I can set things back the way they were again,” Bridget stated. “I told you last night that I knew how to make everything all right, and I do. To tell you the truth, I thought about something like this happening a lot while I was gone. Sometimes I could only fall asleep at night thinking about it, about… seeing things from this side of the world. Just never seriously, because… well, it seems obvious now, but… it wasn’t possible for me alone. And I didn’t want to talk to anyone back home, not yet. So back then it was just a way to… I don’t know… find balance, I guess. I couldn’t totally explain why then, but last night, after you helped me see-”
“Wait, me? W-What did I-” Lexi stammered, then cut herself off upon the jarring memory of her rambling appeal to a still-Omega-height Bridget: how her sister was and always would be the “big” one, and how she was prepared to do whatever it took to fix things. Apparently this was the remedy somehow, though the Alpha still couldn’t grasp how or why.
“Yes, you,” Bridget reassured, smiling again in a way that made Lexi feel a rush of hopeful goose bumps, despite still feeling just as adrift on the rationale here. “It took you to make me understand it, Lexi. All those months of wondering if it was ever possible to get back to you and Mom, having all the pieces and not knowing how they fit together, and you just made it click. Now it all makes sense. Perfect sense. I have to be… down here, to start fixing things.”
Though Lexi was still lost, her sister sounded so inspired, so primed for the first time to begin the difficult journey of mending themselves, the Alpha couldn’t even care that she didn’t yet comprehend the psychological connection for Bridget. So apparently the Omega thought that seeing the world from a Beta-eye view would let her learn the kind of inward forgiveness that would allow them to be close again; the “why” hardly mattered at this point. This was more than Lexi could’ve hoped to wake up to in her most optimistic dreams, shocking shrinkages aside. She almost wanted to stand up and jump for joy, but was conscious of the Omega’s palm still at her cheek with the width and softness of a splattered teardrop, so she remained on her back and relegated the rising excitement to a tremble. There was light at the end of the tunnel after all, and it was pouring forth.
“That’s… that’s GREAT, Bridge!” Lexi breathed, allowing herself a lilting laugh of near-deranged relief. The Alpha decided that in time she’d try to understand whatever logic had driven this seemingly nonsensical choice, but left the line of further questioning alone for now. It was the Omega’s emotional pilgrimage to make anyway, and if this was the required medicine, then Lexi would’ve supported her sister having herself reduced to the size of a sand grain. Well, maybe not that small…
“There is still something we have to talk about. In a little while, anyway,” Bridget admitted at length, clearly reluctant to say this and veiling it behind a forced smile. “Something else you helped me see that was… important. Something I’ll need your help with.”
“Of course! I said I’d do anything to help, and I mean it,” the giddy Alpha instantly concurred, just relieved to hear she’d be included. “T-Take all the time you need! You know I’m always here to listen, however much you need to say or… you know, don’t want to say.”
“You’ll hear everything, don’t worry,” Bridget insisted. “You’ll have to. But… first…”
“Yes?”
“I was hoping you could pick me up,” the Omega said, then with a sly smirk and even a curl of teasing sarcasm that the Alpha hadn’t quite expected to ever hear again amidst all this gloom, added: “I mean, let’s face it. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do, after I spent all those years lugging you around. Seems only right I get some free rides now before I grow back up, hmm?”
“What?” Lexi was almost as taken aback by the request as from gladness at seeing a hint of the old more-jovial and joking Bridget.
“You almost did it on your own a few minutes ago, didn’t you? It made me happy, actually. I thought maybe you wouldn’t even think twice about this. But that was unfair of me. I’d have needed a second to get used to it, too. This, um… is a pretty big adjustment, I know.”
“Are you… sure?”
“Lexi, you’ve known how to pick up Betas for years. This is exactly the same.”
“Not exactly… what happens if I, you know… accidentally-”
“You’re not going to break me if you drop me. We’re on my bed, and even though I’m this size, I can still… handle a lot. You could probably throw me and I’d be fine. But neither of those things matter anyway, because you won’t drop me, because it’s you, and I totally trust you.”
After such a helpful preamble, Lexi found it startlingly easy to swoop her palms back down to the bedspread and cup them around Bridget’s sides, as she’d done so intuitively to begin with. She still had to muscle past a spine-creep at the sheer oddity of picking up an honest-to-God Omega in her own two hands, but her sister made it easy, grasping Lexi’s thumbpads like railings and stepping nimbly onto the Alpha’s cushioned hands before she’d even finished flattening them out to an elevator. Not wanting to waste time in the healing process on another drawn-out appeal, especially since she so recently knew the strife of having to beg Bridget just to hold her again, Lexi lifted her pebble-weight sister right off the sheets, perhaps a little too quickly. But as the Omega had reminded her, she was made of stern stuff, even while shrunken, and didn’t wobble at all in her confident posture during the quick ascension on the Alpha’s hand.
For just a moment, Lexi’s hands trembled, more from disbelief than fear, but Bridget calmly waited out the minor storm, hugging herself to her big-little sibling’s thumb and smirking. When the Alpha’s posed palms steadied a few seconds later, the Omega looked unsurprised. She swelled with pride upon being carried up close to Lexi’s cheek. Again Bridget reached out to touch her sister, but dispensed with the gentler approach in favor of hurling herself straight at the Alpha’s face for a bear hug, or at least the closest approximation a three-inch-tall girl could manage. This time Lexi didn’t flinch, only tenderly curling free fingers up around her sister to hug her back, much in the way they had done so often as children, only of course roles-reversed now. They remained like this for upwards of twenty minutes without so much as speaking or moving except to sway, a length of time that might’ve seemed awkward to anyone else, if this gesture hadn’t been pent-up for so direly long.
“Welcome home,” Lexi said, her voice cracking just a smidge, but she was too happy to cry now.
“Thank you. For everything,” Bridget whispered, having yet to even slightly loosen her embrace of the Alpha’s rosy cheek. “But… we still do have some things to talk about.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s right,” Lexi replied. She’d almost forgotten that ambiguous mention her sister had made, as this therapeutic reduction to Beta-stature still didn’t make a whole lot of sense to her. “So. Uh. What’s going to happen? What do you need from me?”
At last the hug ended, much to Lexi’s disappointment, though Bridget compromised by keeping both hands pressed to the wall of her sister’s cheek, and withdrew just far enough that the Omega’s little face could be clearly seen when the Alpha looked down. The same resolution and half-smile remained on Bridget’s expression, but now tinged with a shade of necessary melancholy, almost foreboding.
“Why don’t we take a walk, Lexi?”