"I hate my body," Katja thought, standing in front of the mirror. The 25- year-old looked at her reflection. A slim, blond woman looked back. Small breasts, thin legs, hardly any hip. But the thing she hated most was her height. Katja was an unbelievable 6'9 tall! And then her feet! Size 17 men's! A disaster.

Katja felt tears welling up in her bright blue eyes. Oh, if only she was smaller! But ever since she had been a child, she had always towered over her peers, and usually over most of her elders as well. Nothing could be done about that. Well, taking medication to stop her growth. But she had refused that. Period.

Katja had always been suspicious of normal medicine. Instead, she had often sought remedy in all kinds of paranormal stuff. As a kid, the tall blonde had tried to "conjure" herself "normal", with rituals or spells, either made up or out of books. But of course she didn't succeed in halting her growth this way, let alone reverse it. Not that this made her realize all this mysterious stuff didn't work. Katja kept refusing medication, so she kept growing.

At the age of 11 she had already been taller than most of her teachers, and now... she could only find men taller than her at a basket- or volleyball team, and even there such men were rare. 

Katja didn't play either sport. She had been asked so many times if she play basket- or volleyball. Katja hated that question. As if every tall woman balled! Dumb! 

Katja didn't go in for sports at all. She didn't like to be in public because of the stares and dumb remarks. She even took a job that didn't involve direct contact with people because of this. The tall blonde worked in the library of the university of Boston, not at the front desk, but in the books storage down in the basement, where those books that were not often asked for were kept. Katja looked after the literature there, waiting to get a request for whatever book, to fetch it and send it up via a small elevator. Not exactly challenging work, but she was a civil servant (good pension plan!) and didn't need to appear in public.

But the work was often dull, especially when the administration updates of the storage were done and requests didn't come. Katja then usually fell into pondering about her ridiculously tall body and its problems. Expensive shoes, hardly finding clothes that fit, dumb remarks and men usually too small. Katja wanted a taller man, to feel protected by him, putting her head on his shoulder, that sort of thing.

Being at her job one day, a request for a rather rare book came in. "The Magic of ancient Babylon" was its title and it was about all kinds of rituals of that old civilization. A book, the computer informed her, that was 200 years old itself and was about a culture in modern-day Irak now gone for about 25 centuries. Well, another project for a history student for sure, Katja thought.

She retrieved the book, being careful because it was so old. Dust flew around as she moved it, so it had certainly been untouched for a long time. Then a small scroll fell out of it.

Katja picked it up. Curiously, she checked what it said. Though she could only partially understand the 200-year-old english, she got interested in the text and the illustrations accompanying it. She quickly put the book in the elevator, sat down and read the scroll. And the more she read, the more excited she got.