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Kani's Story 3: Oh, She's Big
🕑 Added 2020-02-15 19:00:03 +0000 UTCKani had been gaping at the campus’s entrance archway for at least a half-mile. Once the coyote stood underneath it, it seemed, if anything, even more incredible.
It wasn’t a classical arch, straight sides with a semicircular curve at the top; the sides curved gradually inward, the base thicker at the bottom than the top. But the stone structure rose at least three hundred feet into the air, a huge metal sign reading MENSURA COLLEGE bolted across it about three-quarters of the way up. From a distance it looked almost like one single, impossible piece of concrete, and even up close it wasn’t easy to spot the seams.
The arch towered over what Kani had thought were two roadways at slightly different levels. As they approached, though, it became clear only one was for cars: the wider surface, sunk about five feet into the ground and stretching out parallel to the road toward buildings far in the distance, was a giant sidewalk.
By the time they reached the end-of-line stop, about two blocks east of the campus entrance, Kani was the only one left on the bus who didn’t look like a college student. They were certainly the only one gawking. All the students got off and headed toward the arch. Kani followed, just to find they were all walking to another bus stop, right on campus, this one by a normal-sized sidewalk. The coyote stopped, staring, and looked back over their shoulder. “Why…”
A tall, lanky wolf flashed a wry grin. “‘Safety.’” He made air quotes with two claws. “That’s the default excuse for everything the city does with the college.”
“I heard the city has traffic lights for giants.”
“Only because the college paid for them. And probably paid enough bribes.”
“Before I came here, I thought wizards meant you’d get away from politics,” a skunk girl chimed in, laughing. She was even shorter than Kani’s five and a half feet, with a mohawk-style haircut and big earrings. “But nope, you just get politics and magic together.”
Kani sighed, smiling wryly, too. “Great.”
The wolf gestured at an approaching bus. “Where are you visiting? This is the Red Line bus, so you might need to wait for the Blue depending on where you’re going.”
“Well, uh, I’m supposed to be meeting someone here in just a few minutes.”
“Then they’ll be on this bus.”
“Unless they’re a giant.” The skunk laughed. “But then, you know, you’ll see them.”
“I’m surprised I haven’t seen any yet. I don’t know whether she’ll be giant or normal.”
“Little,” both the skunk and wolf said together, as a couple other students looked over disapprovingly.
Kani’s ears folded back. “Uh, little?”
“We don’t say either size is ‘normal,’” the skunk explained. “Don’t worry, most of us do that a few times. You haven’t seen any giants because most of them don’t leave campus, but if you watch the SU building,” she pointed off in the distance, “you’ll see ’em coming and going even from here. So she’s a shifter?”
“I guess.” Kani swallowed, looking down the length of the giant sidewalk in the direction the skunk had pointed. Were those giants? Was that someone approaching, or was it a building? “She said she was normally a giant.”
“Huh.” The skunk folded her arms, looking thoughtful. “That’s unusual. I know there’s some MAP students who learn size transformation, but the only ones I know are littles who want to see what it’s like to be giant.”
The bus rolled to a stop, doors opening just in front of the skunk. “I know of a couple giants who learned to shift down,” the wolf said. “Anyway, good luck.”
“Thanks.” Kani stepped back.
As the students got on and the bus pulled away, the coyote looked back at the “building.” No, that was—definitely—
—Jillian.
She’d changed outfits, switching from shorts and T-shirt to a short-sleeved blue blouse and a tight black skirt, flip-flops to heeled dress sandals. It was a gorgeous look, but it was hard to focus on anything but her size. How big was she? That streetlight she just passed was past her knee but didn’t reach her hip. How tall were streetlights? Twenty feet? No, more than that. Thirty?
Her strides were slower than someone normal—uh, little—but so, so much longer. Even though she stayed safely to the giants’ sidewalk, Kani got a vivid illustration of her size as one paw came down directly in line with a car going past. A midsized sedan. Her sandal would have completely covered it.
“Oh, she’s big,” the coyote whispered under their breath.
Jillian looked across the road just a moment later, giving a cheerful wave and motioning the coyote over. She’d just about come parallel to the bus stop.
Swallowing, Kani looked around. Sure enough, there was a pedestrian crosswalk with signals. When they pressed the button for it, lights flashed on both the road and the oversized sidewalk, right by Jillian. The coyote hurried across the street, unconsciously dropping in speed as they got closer to the giantess.
“Hi, Kani.” Jillian’s voice both was and wasn’t what they expected. She still sounded like she had before, no appreciable change to her speech’s pitch or speed, but new lower-register harmonics made her casual words bone-rattlingly authoritative. She slowly moved into a crouch, eyes on the coyote. “I’m glad you came.”
Kani smiled, trying to keep it from being the kind of smile you’d see on a shaky video filmed of a hostage being held at gunpoint. Their eyes kept drifting back to those sandaled paws, to arm-length toe claws painted a deep, glossy violet. The coyote couldn’t walk under the space formed by the shoe’s heel, but they could crawl under it with room to spare. “I s-said I’d come, and you’d show me, uh, show me, uh, God, you really are a giant.”
She laughed. “I’ll hold still if you want to walk around me and take a look.”
“That’s, uh.” Kani ran a hand between their ears. “I don’t want to walk, uh, under your skirt and I’m afraid I’d get lost in your tail. I think maybe here is, you know, fah, fah, fine.”
“I don’t think I’ve made anyone this nervous since I was a freshman. Should I become little again before you have a heart attack?”
Kani’s heart was thudding, but they shook their head. “No. If I’m going on a date with a giant, she should be… that. You should be giant.”
Jillian grinned, this time letting her teeth show, and Kani felt a little weak-kneed. Was she more attractive now that she was giant than she’d been little earlier? No. But maybe? But how? Why?
“I’m glad you think so, too.” She tilted her head. “Now. We’re going back at the Student Union building and that’s about a mile off from here, so you should let me carry you.”
“Carry?” What little cool Kani had been able to muster immediately evaporated. “In your hand?”
“No, my pocket.”
“Your pocket.” Kani knew they were just dumbly repeating the squirrel, but…
She smirked, touching a finger to her blouse pocket. “It’s a lot safer than riding in my hand or on my shoulder.”
“Uh. Safer.” Kani’s ears felt like they’d just caught fire.
“Mmm-hmm. You could wait for the next bus or walk yourself, but either of those will mean about twenty minutes instead of five.”
The coyote swallowed, forcing their voice level again, and straightened up. “Okay.”
Jillian slowly lowered her hand to the ground, palm pad up. Her claws—the same bright purple polish as her toe claws—were big enough for the coyote to wrap a hand around. Taking a deep breath, Kani walked between her spread fingers and climbed up onto the black pad.
“Sit down and keep your center of gravity low,” she instructed. The squirrel’s fingers partially curled, and the coyote found themselves lifted up nearly as smoothly as an elevator. They turned to face the squirrel and felt a dumb stare creep over their muzzle again.
“Okay,” Jillian continued. “My hand’s going to tilt a little as I bring it close to my body. When you’re ready, just slide on into the pocket.”
Kani nodded shakily, eyes wide. Yes, just slide on in the breast pocket of a beautiful college girl you just met and be totally cool and nonchalant about it. Easy.
The squirrel’s hand came closer to her body, closer to the pocket, closer to a bosom bigger and heavier than all of the coyote. Swallowing, Kani climbed down a few feet, then let themself slide into the pocket.
At this scale, the cloth felt and looked more like burlap than linen, but it wasn’t uncomfortably rough. The space was tight, though. Not cramped—the pocket front came up almost to their shoulders, and the coyote had more than enough room—but taut in a way that made it impossible not to be pressed up against Jillian. Kani had slid in facing her; looking up at her face meant looking straight up, gazing across cloth tightly following the curve of her breast. The squirrel’s face, nearly two stories overhead, showed her distinct grin. “You should probably turn around, unless you just want to stare at me for the walk.”
Kani felt like there should be a clever, semi-romantic quip as a comeback for that, but they barely managed a shaky nod. Twist around, push—wait, no, don’t push, oh God. The coyote squirmed into a position where they faced outward, the warm press of Jillian’s body inescapable from Kani’s paws up to their shoulders.
“You set?”
“Yes… uh…” Kani gripped the pocket front with both hands. “Yes.”
Jillian rose to her feet.
This time, the motion wasn’t as smooth. Despite the tightness of her blouse, the cloth—and the coyote—slid subtly against her body as she moved, and she didn’t stay perfectly straight, shifting the way anyone might moving from a crouch to a stand. But at the squirrel’s immense scale, a few degrees of sway translated to a couple feet of back and forth movement. Kani gripped even more tightly, hunkering down. That pressed them back against the squirrel’s body even more, but also steadied them.
“Still okay?”
“Absolutely. Fine.” Kani took a deep breath, willing themself to relax. Or at least unclench.
Jillian laughed, vibrating the coyote against her breast. “Good.” She started walking.
She’d said about five minutes to walk a mile, hadn’t she? Not car-fast by any means, but her stroll was as fast as a little’s run. The “ride” wasn’t smooth, given the sway of her walk, but that made it… God, what did it make it? Thrilling-comfortable-unsettling-arousing-frightening and where the hell had arousing come from in that mix?
As they approached the Student Union, they started passing by more students—more giants. Littles, too, but the littles weren’t glancing down at Jillian’s breast pocket and smirking. Kani had to fight the urge to just sink into the pocket out of sight. It wouldn’t stop the looks, but at least the coyote wouldn’t have to see them.
“Don’t worry,” Jillian said. “Most of them won’t eat you.”
“That’s—wait, most?”
“I’m just teasing.” She giggled, then just gestured ahead. “So to me, the Student Union is one high story, but I think it’s around fifteen for someone your size.”
Kani’s ears were still back, but they looked ahead at the monolithic building, set into the side of a small hill behind it. “Probably more like twenty. But it’s the length that’s just—incredible. It looks like it’s a mile long!”
“I read it’s around nineteen hundred meters on the long side, and around eleven hundred on the short.”
“Holy—how could they build something like that in less than a decade or two?”
“I’m pretty sure they used magic. There’s a few really powerful mages on staff.”
“I… wow.”
“I said that a lot when I first got here, too.” She walked up a few small-for-giants steps toward the immense front entrance. “While there’s a door over there for littles,” she pointed, “most come in the opposite side, up the hill. That takes them right into one of the higher balcony levels, at about my chest height.”
By now, Kani had gotten comfortable enough to look down where she was pointing. “Huh. Okay, that’s clever.”
“Yeah, they put a lot of thought into managing different sizes. I’ve explored some of the campus as a little. You get catwalks in some places, subway tunnels in others, and separated paths in most of the rest.” She opened the door, stepping inside.
“So a lot of the design is about keeping students…” The coyote trailed off as they entered, their eyes widening. “…uh…out of each other’s way.”
The room past the front doors stretched out impossibly far ahead, to the left, overhead. Other than the scale, though, it looked very much like the lobby of the Student Resources building back at Clarita State College: a polished concrete floor rather than worn carpet, but a similar information desk, a similar scattered collection of seating, a similar “tiny” nondescript coffee shop.
But you couldn’t ignore the scale. A balcony ran along the atrium at about Kani’s current level, a second balcony several stories over that—and the roof stories past that. There were only a half-dozen other students here, but all of them were giant—most taller than Jillian. Was she… was she short?
From what they could make out of the lower balcony, it was another open floor very much like the giant atrium: another generic food service coffee shop, another information desk. Many more students there, though, with many more tables and chairs, some right up against the balcony. Surprisingly, though, no gawkers. Kani could see a rat and a cheetah woman sitting at one of the balcony tables talking to one another over coffee, but they weren’t looking at the giants.
“Yeah,” the squirrel said. “Nothing keeps littles from walking along the floor down here,” she waved down at her feet, “or anywhere else, really, but they have to make an effort to get there in most places.”
“Unless a giant just picks them up and puts them down on the floor.”
She laughed. “Sure. We’re not supposed to pick up people without explicit permission, though, and only if we’ve gone through handling training.”
“Handling training,” the coyote echoed. “And you’ve gone through that?”
“Aren’t I handling you well?” She looked down with another mischievous grin.
Kani bit their lip, tail twitching between their leg and the fabric of the giant blouse. “That seems like a really leading line for a first date.”
Jillian giggled, shaking the coyote enough to make them tighten their grip on the blouse again. “Anyway, there are some places where littles and giants are supposed to mix. And we’re going to one now.”
