“Jump, Lexi, Jump!”
“That… sure is a long way down,” Lexi muttered. She gnawed her fingernails and shifted her weight from foot to foot, looking down at the bowl of water from the back-end of a spoon her adoptive sibling had fastened to a giant cereal box. The metal was cold under her toes, but still more inviting than the relatively short but still stomach-turning plunge between here and the Alpha-sized “pool” the two youngsters had constructed. This sounded like so much fun in principle, but now that she was here, standing on the diving board while a pair of expectant Omega eyes watched her from so close that Bridget’s huffed breaths fogged her reflection in the spoon, stage fright had set in.
“Are you scared?” Bridget whispered. “It’s okay if you’re scared, Lexi.”
“I’m NOT scared!”
“You want me to pour in more water so it’s closer to you?”
“No, that’s okay,” Lexi sighed. She took a step back from the edge of the plank. “I just, um… don’t know if I feel like swimming today anymore.”
Alpha and Omega sat quietly for a moment.
“Do you want me to get you down from there?”
“No.”
“Okay. Well… we can just wait ‘til you’re ready.”
Peering off the narrow silver platform into the pool, Lexi watched her own partial reflection distort whenever a gentle breeze unsettled the water. She was vaguely aware of Bridget seated to the side, pretending not to look at the tiny diver but only relatively successfully in her eagerness to see Lexi make the leap of faith. The water wasn’t going anywhere, neither was the spoon, but still the tiny Alpha wondered what would happen if she missed the liquid surface and slipped past the edge of the bowl for an even-longer and more painful plummet to the tabletop. That would’ve been impossible, of course, even if she took a flying jump in either direction, but still the sensation pre-emptively chilled the girl worse than the metal under her heels.
Then, looking back at Bridget’s arm resting contentedly beside the bowl, digits quivering at the ready, it occurred to Lexi that her sister was priming herself to swoop in for the save in the totally-improbable event that such a thing was needed. Just as she always did, no matter how long of a shot it was that her guardianship would be required. It was easy to spot, even when she was trying to hide it, from the way Bridget’s thumb twitched while her other fingers flattened to the shape of a mattress for a pillowy last-second landing.
Though her stomach was still flummoxed with nerves, Lexi smirked. She pressed herself up off the utensil handle, let her toes hang off the edge, and took a deep breath.
###
“Lexi?” The Omega’s cracked whisper rumbled around the Peace Garden.
This melancholic pair of syllables was all Bridget could get out before her gaped lips closed again, though a sound of any kind, wistful or not, was welcome to Lexi, as a final confirmation that she was, in fact, seeing her big sister now, and not just a hopeful mirage amongst the artificial woodland. The Omega herself seemed to be having more difficulty in convincing herself that this reunion was happening, blinking rapidly while clenching and unclenching her fists as though squeezing a stress ball the size of a car. Even turned to face the high-rise platform now, there was still a healthy gulf between them, a solid three steps’ distance for Bridget, which she’d made no effort as yet to close. To Lexi, those colossal shoes appeared paralyzed in place down in the walking canyon.
“It’s me,” Lexi said. Bellowing was no longer required, now that she’d learned just how far an echo could carry in the palatial garden. She patted her chest, then reached over the guard rail at her distant tower-sized target, fingers outstretched. Not sure where else to begin, she added almost too quietly to perceive: “I’m here.”
“What are you doing here?” the Omega murmured. She took the first shuddering step necessary to seal the gap, delicate enough that she could’ve almost walked on eggshells, if she didn’t happen to be the size she was. Her hands united over her waist, wringing incessantly. “How… how did you…”
“You’re not that hard to find,” Lexi said, bending the truth just a little. “If there weren’t all these buildings, I could’ve probably seen you from the front gates.”
The anxiety and guilt-ridden dread currently stormed within Bridget so violently at this surprise encounter that her blue eyes had started seizing with a sheen of welling liquid. Despite this, seeing the Alpha standing there, not broken as she’d last seen her, hearing her voice again, made it impossible for the bigger sister to suppress a half-moon smile in the corner of her lip. She soldiered through a second thudding step, looking unsteady as Lexi had ever seen her before.
“Did they… did… did someone…” Bridget fumbled. “…did someone make you come to see me?”
“Nobody made me do anything.” The very idea was so ludicrous she almost had to hold back a sickly laugh, but knew Bridget wasn’t kidding.
“How… how did you know where to find me?”
“Well, you have a whole Beta fan club in the market.”
“N-No, I mean… Sanctuary.”
“I went home first,” Lexi replied. “It took me a little while to, you know… get brave enough to come this way. To find you. But, um… better late than never, right?”
“I just… I never thought…” Bridget stammered. “I wasn’t even sure I’d ever see…”
“Yeah, I know. I, um, said a lot of stuff the last time I saw you. Yelled a lot of stuff.”
“Only everything I deserved.”
Even as recently as six months ago, while still emerging from the mire of uncertainty and regret over everything that transpired after her framing, Lexi might’ve bitterly agreed with her sister’s admission. Certainly she would have felt this way nearly two years ago during that fateful two-and-a-half-week period, when everything changed. Now, though, she was too tired of living with the brokenness to lay blame anywhere, on herself or others. The last of the burden had been dropped the moment she left a shrunken Alma cowering on the ground.
Yet Lexi could see now, projected in the titanic blonde’s spectral expression, indeed like she was seeing a tiny ghost in the great garden, that Bridget had yet to lessen the weight of her own responsibility, earned or not. It was strange to see a creature so colossal, taller than most of the Omegas that Lexi was even acquainted with, and a being who could carry buildings on her back without breaking a sweat, but who also appeared immobile when faced with the living reminder of why she had come to Sanctuary in the first place.
“Are you all right?” Bridget asked quietly enough that somehow her words only reached their singular target rather than ricocheting around the space. Her boat-sized sneaker arched off the ground again, considering taking the final lurch to place her in range of Lexi’s balcony, but she didn’t quite make the jump.
Lexi bristled, feeling as though she’d been yanked back in time. There was something familiar in the sight of that curly-haired golden giant standing just out of reach. It took her back more than a decade, to the moment a certain unknown Omega had selflessly approached a certain friendless, motherless, sisterless Alpha on a desk in Aegis headquarters, and offered her comfort in her neediest hour. Only now, size difference notwithstanding, the one-time victim was here to do the rescuing.
“Yes. I’m fine,” Lexi insisted. It was refreshing not having to answer that question with a lie. She lifted her leg, the same which had snapped like a twig back when her innocence came to light and she tumbled out of Bridget’s palm. That was also the last time she’d touched her sister since then. Demonstratively, Lexi planted her foot up on the railing and wiggled her ankle.
“Good,” Bridget croaked. She blinked back the watery glow in her eyes. “I… d-didn’t just mean your… leg, though.”
“I know. And… I’m still fine.”
“Oh.” A touch of frost in Bridget’s tone suggested she was unwilling or unable to completely buy this. Her hand rose to her chin, thumbnail digging against the corner of her mouth.
“You, um… come here a lot?”
Before everything had gone sour so long ago, Lexi would’ve jokingly asked this question like it was a pickup line, volleying back and forth with increasingly terrible flirtations and puns, all while sharing chortles with her sister for minutes on end. But that didn’t seem possible now, not yet. Taken aback, Bridget regarded the surrounding plant life again, for the first time in many burdened inhales breaking direct sight with Lexi.
“Yes, I do.”
“It’s really nice.” Lexi’s gaze meandered from the vines lining the shielded ceiling, down to the rainbow explosion of flowers in every stripe stuffed into the soil beds on lower decks. “The name definitely fits.”
“I probably come here too much,” Bridget said, steadily recalibrating herself to carry on a conversation. She reached for the willowy canopy of another tree, sifting the verdant threads over her fingertips. “There’s… a lot of work to do in the city. Lots of people who need help, and…”
“It seems like you do a lot already. Everybody I’ve talked to here so far knows you. They really look up to you here. I mean, besides the… obvious reason.”
Seemingly embarrassed, the Omega bowed her lofty head. Wiping her forefinger and thumbpad in toward her nose just under her eyelids, and mopping up a pair of gallon-volume tears before they could plunk, she spoke so quietly then that Lexi had to strain to hear:
“I just had to do something.”
Bridget’s foot shuffled on the ground far below, likely involuntarily, but was still unable to take another step. Having made this last statement, she stopped watching Lexi, and fixed her attention on the lowlier shrubs. The silence returned, but didn’t grow stagnant, instead returning to the normal white-noise pleasantry of bird chirps and spades digging through loam. The waiting made Lexi’s chest sting.
“C’mon, Bridge,” the Alpha sighed at length, waving again to beckon the giantess closer. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“Home.”
The Omega’s sapphire irises widened, her face paling just when light through the domed greenery dappled over her features. Her fingers soaked up another drop from the corner of her eye and she pursed her lips until they turned almost as white as her cheeks. Then, exhaling heavily, Bridget shook her head from side to side.
“I can’t.”
“You can’t come home?”
“No.”
“Not yet, or not… at all?”
Bridget’s eyes wandered around the floral arena again. When she looked back, it was in haste, almost like she expected the much-smaller girl to have vanished in the time between. She still spoke faintly as though in a dream, still not quite believing yet that her visitor was truly here, even now.
“I don’t know, Lexi.”
“How much… longer do you need?”
“I don’t know.”
This was what Lexi had feared would happen, though still not the rock-bottom possibility sticking at the back of her mind during the journey here. In fact, the Alpha had walked into the dome-top city today with the full knowledge that Bridget might simply power-walk in the other direction without speaking to her at all. Thus Lexi counted it a victory that the former Enforcer was walking toward her, albeit at the speed of a glacier, rather than exiting Sanctuary immediately to keep outrunning her sorrows. Part of Lexi wanted to take her sister by the shoulders and shake her into sense, metaphorically speaking of course, perhaps with the taller girl’s thumb as a shakable substitute for shoulders, less effective though that would be coming from someone so comparatively puny. At the same time, however, Lexi too had taken flight in the wake of their familial separation and utilized every moment of healing time required before bringing herself back. Surely Bridget deserved that same chance.
That possibility threatened to make Lexi droop, but she didn’t let it show, not when she’d come so close to reaching the Omega, physically if not emotionally. And if she couldn’t magically absolve Bridget of surplus guilt in a single conversation, she could at least work on putting them back in the same proximity. For many years prior, the two girls’ personal bubbles had been one and the same, as they giggled and adventured all over the capital, with Lexi seated safely and comfortably in Bridget’s hand most hours of the time not spent eating, sleeping, or studying, and even then exceptions were often made.
While the idea of returning to that same palm which had cooped her in a glass cage would’ve once been frightful, Lexi had learned to let it go, much like all exhaustive feelings of betrayal. Not even the recollection of spilling from Bridget’s hand into the creek bed was enough to deter her. If anything, she realized only now, upon standing in the same place with Bridget once again, that she desperately wished to be held by her big sister. Somehow Lexi intuited that everything just might be perfectly all right again if only she could achieve that, silly a conclusion though this was.
Gripping the rail, Lexi eyed the narrow ledge on the other side. She could’ve vaulted herself over easily, but there were mere inches of platform left to unstably hang off, and with the long drop between the earth and this high-up balcony among the garden’s treetops, the guardrail certainly wasn’t meant to be climbed past. Still, that earlier semi-crazy instinct made Lexi hope if only she could cross more of the distance between them, even if it only amounted to six more inches before the perch gave way to dead air, it might still help Bridget on her last stride-long voyage. With her healed leg still propped atop the railing, the Alpha slid her foot over and straddled the safety bars.
“What are you doing, Lexi?” Bridget asked suddenly, the first sign of urgency she’d demonstrated since laying eyes on the little brunette. Her eyes engorged again, perhaps reminded of the last time she’d watched the girl precariously poised over a vertical plunge.
“Coming to you, if you won’t come with me.”
“Lexi, that’s not… you’re not supposed to stand on that side.” Instantly the Omega’s body language coiled like a spring. “P-Please, you can’t just…”
“It’s safe,” Lexi insisted. She swung her other leg over, now teetering solely on the precipice inches beyond the rail. Though she kept a firm backward grip on the bars, only the rubber heels of her shoes touched solid ground still. The front halves of her feet hovered over nothingness, a sheer hundred-foot drop uninterrupted by other balconies or pretzeled bridges. Lexi’s palms clammed, but this only made her clenched the railing harder. She felt the eyes of most people in the garden upon her now, but only one pair mattered. “I won’t fall.”
“You don’t know that.”
Bridget looked more upset than ever now, tearing up and breathing harder. Her nervous reaction was far disproportionate to the act itself, risky though it was. This made Lexi take a breath to consider whether she was only making things worse, but she was committed now. Her sister had been gone so long, it obviously wasn’t going to take an out-of-the-blue surprise greeting alone to bring her around. A forceful event had split them apart, and it would likely take something equally significant to patch the wounds, starting with this.
“Then help me off of here. Please? Pick me up, Bridge?”
If the Omega was an anxious wreck before, she looked downright distraught now, but just managed to bottle it up by tensing tight as a drum again. Though mountain-steady like always, if only judging by the girl’s thousand-yard stare, one might’ve assumed a strong gust of wind could’ve knocked her onto her haunches.
“Lexi, I… I c-can’t…”
“Yes, you can,” she encouraged. “What about everyone in this city who trusts you to hold them?”
“I can’t… let something hap-” Bridget whispered, choking herself mid-cry. She shook her head again, fearful and powerful, until centrifugal forces launched a saltwater bead in either direction against the treetops. “Not again. Not to you.”
Lexi’s wrists trembled as she clung to the bars, keenly aware of gravity tugging at her harder than usual thanks to her uneven footing on the ledge. Biting her lip, she felt some wobble in her knees thanks to Bridget’s raw state, which was an unfortunate thing to happen after putting herself in this treacherous position just to make a point, but there was no turning back now. Her sister needed medicine.
“I believe you can. I want you to. You did for so long, and I always knew, always, that I was safe. And… I know why you’re scared, but when I… fell… it wasn’t your fault, Bridge.”
Incredibly, hearing this statement seemed to injure Bridget the most, even after watching the Alpha crawl over the railing and hearing her make such an impossible request. Looking first to ensure the way was clear, she steadied herself by placing a gigantic hand on the concrete embankment of the Omega walkway-gulch, and in the process lowered her body and her eyeline below that top-level Alpha balcony. She looked up at Lexi now, beseeching soundlessly by the quake wracking her vast frame.
“Don’t say that,” Bridget slurred. “Don’t… don’t do this, Lexi.”
“Okay. I won’t say it again. But… it is true,” Lexi practically shouted. She chanced another sobering glimpse of the vision-swirling plunge below, a distance far greater than any swan dive from a spoon she’d taken before, and certainly worse than the short drop that had snapped her leg in the backyard. Air thickened in her lungs, but the Alpha was running on pure uncurbed adrenaline now, and at this point she saw her only path forward, or rather their only path. Down. The thought made her grip on the guardrail even more slippery, but that was to be expected, all things considered.
“I don’t… I can’t…” Bridget sputtered like her brain was in full-blown arrest. The Omega took a step back now, even turned her shoulder like she was considering skulking away from the Peace Garden after all, but following a few hard sniffles, brushed tears, and gnawing her lip until it nearly split, she got out the rest cleanly: “I don’t deserve to touch you.”
That was it. Her cue. Lexi could see Bridget fighting herself already to remain in the presence of someone who served as painful proof of her crimes. Who was to say how much of the duty-bound Omega’s grief and self-flagellation was deserved and how much went far beyond the call of duty, but the Alpha couldn’t have cared less now who had done what. All she knew was that her window to make contact was slipping away fast, as Bridget pivoted slowly on her heel, preparing to make a retreat.
Yet through this whole encounter, probably unconsciously to the Omega herself, her hand hovered at her side whenever out of active use: thumb tweaking, fingers planked flat. Lexi, though, had noticed this from the first words they spoke to each other, and it was enough.
Was she really about to do this?
Yes. Of course she was. Because Bridget would have done it for her, too, if their sizes and series of unfortunate life events were reversed, and probably with even less hesitation than this.
“Bridge,” Lexi sharply intoned, catching the Omega’s attention just as she was revolving to depart. The Alpha’s fingers unfurled from around the railing. “I’m ready now!”
And then Lexi tipped forward, pushed off the surface, and leapt.
From the instant her shoes fell away from the thin balcony cusp, her stomach was naturally thrown into a high-velocity spin, though she hardly detected it, as it was still nothing compared to the strung-out nerves and emotional pangs she’d been feeling all day in anticipation of this reunion. She saw little except the whirling vortex of multicolored flora sprinkled through the leafy horizon, though the ground below eventually took the center of her vision, as though viewed through an eclipse pinhole. Tangentially too Lexi noted an expulsion of panicked air bordering on a screech from beyond, followed by a hurdling jet-stream of wind that was largely drowned by the deafening whir of Lexi’s rapid downward trip. She couldn’t tell how close the earth was now, except to know it was very swiftly approaching, but wasn’t troubled. Long before the ground arrived, and mere thumps of her heightened pulse after she’d jumped, the green blur was supplanted by a flash of halcyon cloud-shaped swirls like the first signs of a gathering maelstrom.
Lexi gasped, and rightfully so, with relief and gratitude as she plopped roughly but safely, and sans broken bones, into the warm, sweet-scented padding of Bridget’s palm flesh. Her enormous hand had thrust with innate precision right where it was needed at the right time, as though less than a day had passed since she was last called upon to cradle her sister aloft. The Omega was still trapped in a place of glassed-over distress, lip quivering and blue eyes in a terrified dam-burst glow that soon gave way to damp salt-streaked cheekbones. Nevertheless, the feeling of resting in this most secure of places made Lexi feel more at home than she had even when arriving back on Evelyn’s stoop two weeks before.
“Told you,” Lexi muttered with a smile.
This was a start.
Giantess World
