When Soleena first arrived on Earth, having beamed down to the planet's surface from her moon base, the young Siderian found it flat as could be, never rising nor falling from its regular level by more than the height of her ankles at most. More than that, the planet seemed devoid of any macroscopic life, animal or otherwise, although the rich tapestry of colors painting the planet's surface over suggested a richness of microbial life.
And indeed, there was a rich diversity of such creatures down below, too small for the naked eye to distinguish any one of them. Only, they weren't quite the mindless microbes that all young Siderians learned about at school. No, these life forms were more like the flora and fauna that any visitor to Sideria might see roaming about, as pets, working animals, livestock, or simply wildlife, only exceedingly miniaturized. And, more astounding that that, among all the tiny creatures on this planet was a real sentient species!
Human beings, as they called themselves in one of their many languages, were by far the smallest of all know sentients. Shiiks, the second smallest, were a tenth the scale of the average Siderian, and it was thought that was about the smallest any sentient species could be, yet even to them these humans would be nearly microscopic. Humans were an astounding one hundred thousandth the scale of Siderians.
The entire field of biology said anything that size should be nothing but a mindless collection of cells, and yet, somehow, human beings displayed a level of intelligence not too different from that of other known sentients. They even had a level of technology which closely paralleled that of Siderians before their space-faring days.
To Soleena, humans were the most remarkable species in the known universe. After her discovery of their civilization, she had set up an observation post on the far side of their moon to study and watch over them. Before long she figured out how to communicate with their technology, and once her computer had worked out a rough translation of a common human language, the whole world of human knowledge contained in their internet began to open up for her.
The Siderian greedily consumed every piece of information she could find about humanity, even took to watching their shows and movies, reading their books, and playing their video games. She started communicating with them as well, joining of their websites and asking them all manner of questions without ever letting on who or what she was.
The more she learned, the more remarkable they seemed, simply for having achieved so much while being so small. They were so very likable too, reminding her of her own people. In time, simply reading about them or looking at them on her computer screen was no longer enough for her. She wanted to meet them in person, to introduce herself to humanity and make friends with them.
It would be difficult, of course. At such a monstrous difference of scale, unmediated interactions between the two species were impossible. But Soleena had come equipped with technology to help. Over her eyes she wore a device made to look like a pair of the humans' “sunglasses”. The device was operated by her mind and had a number of useful functions, among them the ability to scan for human life signatures.
Once she was on the Earth's surface, Soleena used this function to detect where the human settlements were, and by extension where she should avoid stepping on which spots to avoid stepping on. As expected, there were very few such places out here—it was, after all, the middle of a scorching desert with a very sparse population.
Her destination was the biggest source of life signatures in the region, and lay just a few short steps ahead. Before she went to visit it, however, she looked at all the other human settlements with what she hoped would seem a friendly smile and waved at them. “Hello, everyone,” she said in the locals' language, very pleased with herself for having learned it in just a couple months. Nor was that the only area where she had tried to make a good impression; she had made efforts to cater her appearance to the humans as well.
It really helped in that regard that humans looked so similar to Siderians. All known sentients followed the same body plan, actually, a phenomenon on which there were many competing theories, but humans in particular were almost perfect miniatures of her kind. Aside from her size, the only notable difference between herself an an average human woman was the color of her skin and hair—grey and white, respectively.
Aside from that, she had made efforts to procure clothing that would be appealing to them. After asking around for advice on various human websites, she had decided on the outfit she now wore: a matching skirt and top, mostly white but with red floral patterns, and a big floppy sun hat.
If not for her size, there would have been little disagreement among anyone who saw her that she made for a beautiful figure. As it was, though, everyone around was too overwhelmed by her sheer immensity to appreciate her fashion choices. In particular, the inhabitants of one little town lying right beneath her were staggered at the sheer immensity of the bare feet that now flanked their homes. It was to all of them as if a pair of mountains had materialized beside them, each one culminating in a vast pillar that reached to the very heavens. Soleena herself was beyond their comprehension, and she was so far away that the locals preferred to ignore her in favor of those feet which posed a far more immediate and comprehensible threat to them.
Minor shifts of Soleena's weight rattled the locals like nothing else, and kicked up huge clouds of sand which threatened to ravage their homes if the wind were to change direction. Even the casual drumming of her toes against the earth in ill-contained excitement birthed clouds of dust a quarter mile tall and wide that only grew bigger with each earth-shaking impact, all while the Siderian remained completely unaware of those thousands of frightened souls, as she hadn't bothered to scan the land right at her feet. Why should she when the map had said this spot was uninhabited?
Her stepping away was no less catastrophic. Air currents of unimaginable strength followed in the wake of her foot as it rose up at supersonic speeds, so that her mere movement was heard across the land as a thundering sonic boom. When it swung forward, sandstorms of biblical proportions followed after, sweeping over miles and miles of desert, and when it came down, massive earthquakes spread out for miles around. It was lucky for everyone that she chose her route carefully to avoid walking her foot passing over any populated areas. And all the while, Soleena just smiled and waved innocently at everyone she passed, greeting the settlements one by one.
At least the sandstorms decreased in intensity as she approached her destination, where there was less loose sand to be swept up with her steps.
Soon Soleena stood over the capital of this rich land—a sprawling, storied city, blossoming on the banks of a powerful river, where a million glass windows glittered in the sunlight and magnificent towers of steel and concrete challenged each other in a bid to pierce the sky itself.
So she had heard in all her research, at least, though to her naked Siderian eye it seemed no more than a patterned greyish patch about the size of a welcome mat. Still, she was elated to be here, and once she stood as close to the city as was safe, her feet resting just a few inches away from its outskirts, she crouched down for a closer look.
To half the people standing under her, the descent of her body felt as if the sky were falling on them, and to the other half as if the earth were rising up to meet her. Many grew dizzy and fell at the perceived motion, at least those who hadn't fallen or thrown themselves on the ground during the earthquakes that accompanied her arrival.
Crouching didn't make the humans any less microscopic to their, but that's what her glasses were for. Activating the magnification function, her view zoomed in on a nearby part of the city, just enough that she could make out some hundreds of little humans and their little cars filling the little streets, and all of them staring back at her.
“Hi, there!” she said, forgetting in her excitement to whisper for their sake. Her cheerful greeting exploded into the world with such force that it broke the normal speed of sound and reached their ears in only a second, dispersing the scant cirrus clouds that had been the land's only cover from the scorching sun—not that they needed it now that her shadow covered almost the entire city so that it seemed like twilight had come at ten in the morning.
The sound weakened enough by the time it reached the city to not blow everyone's eardrums, but everyone who could covered their ears once those deadly syllables reached them. “Ah! Sorry,” Soleena softly said when she saw their reaction. “It's just I'm so excited to be here. I mean... I've wanted to meet you humans for so long! You could even say that I'm your 'biggest fan'!” The Siderian chuckled, oh-so-proud of that cheesy joke, though she stopped when she saw that no one else was laughing. Had she made a mistake? Maybe she didn't understand human humor as well as she thought. Or was it that she had said something wrong in greeting them?
Her toes curled with nervous energy, tearing up ten thousand acres of land. Soleena failed to realize what terror was spreading as the gesture sent a powerful tremor all over the city, one which thankfully weakened enough by the time it reached the center to keep it from collapsing all its skyscrapers.
Suddenly, the titan snapped her fingers, releasing a sound like that of a nuclear explosion. “Almost forgot! My name is Soleena, everyone! Just Soleena; my people don't use these 'last names' of yours. I'm very happy to meet you at last!” She leaned forward excitedly, lifting her heels off the ground and leaving the whole of her incomprehensible mass balanced precariously on just her toes and the balls of her feet. Her head was almost horizontal as she looked down on them all, and the brim of her hat reached dangerously close to the ground. If it happened to slip, then... But those were worries for the little humans alone; the thought that she might lose her balance or her hat fall off never even crossed Soleena's mind, nor could she even imagine how threatening her face looked looming over the city and blotting out a huge portion of the sky.
“You know, I really meant it when I said that I'm your biggest fan. I think you humans are incredible! Just look at you all! You're so small, if it weren't for these glasses I couldn't see you at all! To my species, you're all small enough to be considered germs. I bet a million of you could fit on my fingertip n oproblem! But even though you're so small, you can do these things that are so incredible for your scale. Seriously! You're all smaller than I can even picture in my head, but still you go and build things like... like these!”
The whole city fell into panic as she reached towards its heart with a single outstretched finger. Her fingertip hung over some of the tallest buildings in the city, its glossy black nail hovering just a thousand feet above them—a paltry distance at her colossal scale, easily overcome by any errant twitch.
The fingertip snaked up and down the city, as if searching for something, and shortly came to a stop right above a building still in construction which even so almost matched the height of its tallest neighbors.
Soleena zoomed in on it. “This here will be the tallest human building ever built, right? That's amazing! My people... well, we have many things that you haven't figured out yet, but at your scale our tallest buildings wouldn't even be half as tall as this one already is! Don't you think that's incredible?” Her vision now zoomed in on the ground some distance away, to the middle of an open square where a hundred people all huddled together near the center, where they hoped they'd be safe if any buildings collapsed. She zoomed in still closer, picking one face out of the crowd to focus on—a young woman. At her direction, her glasses flashed a very thin, very soft beam of light precisely onto her face to grab her attention. “Don't you think that's incredible, miss?”
The woman looked around, unwilling to believe that this colossus could be talking to her specifically. She looked up again and meekly pointed to herself. “Me?” she mouthed.
“That's right, I'm asking... you!” Soleena declared with another couple flashes from her shades. “It's really amazing, isn't it?” The woman nodded vigorously—anything to placate this giant. “And what about you, sir?” she asked another. “Are you aware that this building will be sixty of your human meters taller than the current record holder?” The man shook his head belatedly. “Huh? You really didn't know? But your people are the ones building it! You should know all about it! And you should be proud to be able build such a thing! Did you know that they had to invent a completely different type of cement for this building that would be able to support all its weight?”
To everyone's surprise the colossal young woman started lecturing the entire city about the latest addition to their family of skyscrapers, describing it at such length as would make any architect blush to hear someone speak of their work with such honest excitement. Even the city's tour guides would have been hard-pressed to match the information she had learned about the project, not to speak of her delivery. Her passion was so contagious that many people forgot their fear of her and grew immersed in her narrative. The interest in their little faces only made Soleena all the more eager to share her knowledge. Yet, in her excitement, she forgot to remove her finger from over the construction.
Her hand dipped down just a bit in the middle of her speech. As everyone had thought, it took only the slightest twitch for her fingernail to reach the building, and just like that she had swiped away the top half of the would-be record-setter. Luckily there hadn't been anyone working on it at the time, and her nail had swiped it up with such speed that the lower half's integrity wasn't compromised; it wobbled for a minute, then settled down without harm to anyone.
Soleena didn't realize what had happened until she noticed the alarm on everyone's faces and saw them pointing toward her finger. It's impossible to describe what dread the Siderian felt when she saw what she'd done. Quickly she pulled back her hand and searched the tower's surroundings for any further damage, and for the location of its top half. When the people kept gesturing at their fingers, though, she finally spotted it right under her nail, stranded in a pile of dirt she had neglected to clean.
“I-I'm so sorry.” Soleena almost choked on her words. “Is... is everyone alright? I swear it was an accident! I didn't mean for this to happen! Oh, goodness. M-maybe you can fix it if I put it down?” She lowered her finger to the ground outside the city and scraped off the dirt under its nail, but once it was off she could see plainly that it wouldn't do them any good, especially half-buried under dirt as it now was.
The giantess sniffled. Then, she started to cry. Huge rivers of tears flowed down her ashen cheeks and dropped down. The massive teardrops separated into many finer drops as they fell, reaching a few city blocks as a torrential rain by the time she had gotten herself together.
“I knew I shouldn't have come here. I'm really sorry about your building, everyone. I promise I'll make it up to you somehow. Maybe I could give you more resources, and... and...”
Before she could start crying again, Soleena beam herself back to base, disappearing in a flash and leaving a very confused population behind. She spent the rest of the day and all of the next lying despondently in bed, too upset at herself to do anything. She knew that eventually she would have to contact the city's leaders to decide how she'd make it all up to them, but she was scared to see what people were saying about her online.
On the third day she finally mustered up the willpower to go online and face their reproach, telling herself that she deserved to hear whatever nasty things they had to say. She had steeled herself for the worst, expecting that everyone would be calling her a horrible monster, or preparing to defend themselves if she ever came again, but she found nothing of the sort. Mostly, the humans were curious, wondering who she was, where she'd come from, whether or not she'd be returning. Others were more passionate; apparently she'd gotten something of a fan club overnight, and there was already a huge influx of tourists coming to the country to visit the footprints she'd left behind. Even the broken skyscraper was becoming a popular attraction.
Most moving of all, there was a trending tag on social media—#HeyMissGiant—full of people sharing their messages for her in the hopes that she might read them, including many coming from people who had seen her during her visit. A few were insults or injunctions to stay away, but the vast majority were encouraging her, telling her not to be sad over their building, saying they forgave her and there was no reason to be so upset, even asking her to visit them again.
Soleena spent all day long browsing the web, taking in everything that people had to say about her. Come night time she was already thinking of her next trip to Earth, and planning on how to make it an even better (and safer) one.
Giantess World
Author's Chapter Notes:
After discovering humanity and learning everything she can about them, a young alien woman tried to meet those beings she admires so much. Only problem is she's a hundred miles tall.
RATING: PG
TAGS: Giga/Tera, Gentle, Sci-Fi, Feet, Footwear. Mild Destruction and Unaware.
RATING: PG
TAGS: Giga/Tera, Gentle, Sci-Fi, Feet, Footwear. Mild Destruction and Unaware.