Relationship status: scanning the horizon for the giant form of my boyfriend to appear over the treetops to rescue me from the flood waters that have trapped me on the roof of his wife’s cabin. Or, put another way, it’s complicated.
“Sara’s driving as fast as she can,” Eric promised over the phone. “I haven’t sizeshifted since Thursday, so I should have enough to make it to the cabin.”
“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “I’d probably make it to shore.”
“Fuck no,” he said, his voice changing in depth and volume. I heard his wife’s softer voice in the background caution him to stay small. “Promise me you won’t try to swim.”
My heart wrenched at the thought he was distressed enough to sizeshift. “But… are you sure you want to risk being seen?”
“Yvonne,” Eric said. “You’re more important to me than keeping a secret. I’m not going to hold back this time.” His voice took on a deeper strain, and I knew the memories of his parents loomed large in his mind. “I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. I love you.”
“Love you, too. Hurry, yeah? The water’s getting closer.”
Hanging up was hard, but my battery was already dangerously low, a match for the dangerously high waters. “He has no idea,” I said aloud, wrapping my arms around my knees. “How much I wish I were the one rescuing him.”
Five white-knuckled minutes later, my whole body went taut at the sound of splashing. I had time to pray it wasn’t another snake before I heard a shout too deep and loud for a human voice. Tears of relief sprang to my eyes at the sight of a familiar head of curly brown hair rising and falling through the oak trees.
“YVONNE!” came his voice like a rockstar at a concert. My name echoed out over the lakeside valley.
“ERIC!” I called out, my own voice muted by comparison. “I’M HERE!” I had to hold tightly to the stone chimney to keep from sliding down the roof to the waterline, which was now closer than ever.
Eric stumbled out into a clear area between trees, easily thirty feet tall. Silty riverwater and debris pushed open a ragged flannel shirt. I saw movement halfway up his shirt--the pocket where his wife and I often took turns riding whenever he sizeshifted. Sara tapped Eric’s chest and pointed towards me with excitement. The unlikely looking couple waved at me.
I waved back, my heart suffering its own flood of emotions as the giant’s soft green eyes met mine.
I felt a small twinge of sadness to see the shirt torn in this way--not from flood water, but clearly because he’d been in a hurry to sizeshift. He hadn’t taken care to control the magic to include the buttons as well as the cotton, and his jeans were probably in a similar state. It also filled me with fear for him. Growing this way could be difficult and costly, and I worried about him with every step he took through the powerful current. What if he overextended himself? I’d seen him shrink by accident before--what if we were all swept away by the flood?
“Hey baby,” he said, his face fighting between worry and relief. “Enjoying your writer’s retreat?” Thunder rumbled in the distance as he spoke, undercutting his attempt at humor. I grinned at him anyway.
“Damn right I am,” I said, trying to keep my smile brave as he made his slow way towards my perch. “You drop this backpack in the river and that’s a good fifteen chapters gone.”
Sara laughed. “As much as we want to read your book, darling, I’d rather have you safe here in this pocket with me.”
“You’re okay to hold this size, right, baby?” I asked Eric, whose face looked strained.
“Yeah. The current’s just getting stronger.” The closer he came, the more I could see the fear in his eyes. My heart wrenched to put him through something like this. After the way his parents died, why did I have to be the one to ask for a rescue like this?
Eric braced himself against an oak tree with his left hand and extended his right hand to me, all twitching muscles and fear. I slipped off my lucky red backpack and tossed it across to his palm, as wide as a twin-sized bed. He plucked it up like a strawberry with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, then carried it down to Sara.
It never ceased to give me a thrill to watch him like this. I didn’t envy Sara often, but I was painfully jealous the experience she’d been granted, an intimate sharing of magic powers that allowed her to sizeshift with him--once. It hadn’t gone well, and I had been afraid to ask for details or push for the right to take my own turn. As much as we wanted to dismiss hierarchy in our relationships, I was still new in his life. Half a year didn’t seem like it was worthy of something so powerful and important, no matter how much I wished I could ease his loneliness.
Sara had just settled my backpack on her shoulders when a haunting groan from under the water startled all three of us. The entire oak tree bent suddenly under Eric’s weight, snapped its branches off with an almighty crack, and floated past the cabin.
Eric yanked his left hand away like a kid who’d broken someone else’s toy. None of us were smiling now.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and I saw in him that older, deeper fear of breaking everything he touched, the fear that came from not knowing if there were other sizeshifters out there like him, or if the death of his parents had made him the last.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “Please, baby.”
Eric sloshed through the rushing water to the edge of the cabin and opened his right hand.
“I can’t lose you, too.” His sad eyes pleaded with me, and more than anything I wished I could protect him, wished I were the one rescuing him. Maybe that’s why, as soon as I put my small hand onto his enormous palm, I felt my body fill with heat like concentrated emotion, and I began to grow.
I gasped at the sensation, looking down to see my leggings and shirt suddenly fill, then strain to hold my thighs and breasts. It was like taking a deep breath, only without stopping to exhale.
Eric jumped back again, instinctively afraid he had hurt me in some way. He stared at me, his hand opening and closing. “Wait--are you?” His eyes widened. “Are you growing? I thought for a moment I was shrinking…”
I lay back against the roof in the rushing floodwaters and this time it was my turn to groan. My shirt split along the seams and down the collar to reveal the iron band of my sports bra. It popped open with a loud snap. My leggings stretched themselves to threadbare, painfully tight limits before shredding completely. My panties squeezed my growing buttocks and pussy so tightly that I cried out and tore them open myself.
I panted for a moment, then opened my eyes to see my boyfriend and his wife staring at me with wide eyes. I fought down a sudden fear of my own, that I’d crossed a line and they’d leave me here alone. I looked down at the remnants of my panties in my hand, and the space left on the cabin roof, which looked far smaller now than it had before.
“Fuck,” Eric said, taking a step backward again. “This isn’t what I meant to happen--I’m sorry--”
I threw my handful of shredded fabric into the current and reached for him. “Wait, baby.” My bare ass rubbed against the roof tiles and my toes edged into the water as my body continued to expand. “Please. It’s not your fault. I think I’m doing this.”
He looked at me, incredulous. “You want to be big right now? I could’ve just picked you up and walked back to shore! This isn’t the time to experiment with magic! My magic!”
“Hey,” a small voice interrupted from between us. We glanced down at Sara, who looked like a slightly astonished doll to me now. “Yvonne, you’re practically a natural at this. It might be his magic, but I want to point out, you took to that far better than I ever did.”
I ran my hand across my collarbone, then down my bare chest. “You... don’t mind?” I asked the smaller woman swaying in Eric’s torn flannel pocket. I held my hand out to her.
“It’s actually kind of a relief to see how much you like it,” she said, pulling my fingertip towards her and giving me a small kiss that sent a thrill through my still-expanding nervous system.
Eric made a small, embarrassed noise that must have been impossible for her to ignore, but she continued. “I only tried it before because I didn’t want him to feel alone…”
Eric shot her a hurt look and she ducked her head, shrugging. I took my hand back from her and reached up to stroke his jaw. My height seemed to expand with my desire to reach him. I moaned.
Flood water rushed around him and the cabin and I could see the rising panic in his posture.
“Neither of us want you to feel alone, babe.” Those green eyes again, straight to my heart.
“Besides,” Sara said with an undercurrent of excitement. “You know how I like to watch. You have any idea how hot this is?”
Eric turned his incredulous look to his wife. She looked to me and winked.
He’d been so far beyond my reach so many times. Now, with my considerably longer arms, I reached to the shoulder of my giant boyfriend and tugged him towards me.
My touch anchored him in the strangeness of the moment. I slipped my legs into the water, around his hips, then reached up to cup his face in my hands. My body grew hungrily and easily with each instance of skin on skin contact, and in moments my lips rose to meet his.
I kissed him hard, my lips hot and wet on his as cold water rushed all around. I held him and felt the heartbeat in my breasts pulse against the tiny warmth of Sara’s small body pressed between us. I couldn’t tell if my growth was caused more by my desire to protect him, my desire to show her what I was capable of, or my desire to ride this flood and overpower it myself.
The cabin creaked and groaned under me as flood waters washed up the side of the roof and my legs. Driftwood scraped past my knee. I lifted it in one hand and threw it as far as I could into the swollen river.
“That was a tree,” Eric said, more than a little impressed. “Baby, you’re nearly as tall as I am…”
I pulled him closer and felt under the current of the water for the bulge beneath his jeans. “So grow with me.”
Eric’s hands tightened around my shoulders as if he were afraid I might disappear. “You don’t know how to control this,” he said. “I can’t lose you. What if--”
“We’re both here with you,” I whispered into his ear, running my hand down his chest and over Sara’s miniscule body. I felt her tiny hands touch mine in passing and grinned. “You can show me. Let’s grow together.”
I arched my body against him and felt him give in. Our bodies rose together above the water, fighting the current, then grew powerful enough to make our own currents.
I heard Sara moaning with us just before the cabin collapsed beneath giant groans.
Like I said. It’s complicated.