Happy Voreday (Chapter 2) (Patreon)

Shortly after sunrise the next morning, Marcus awoke to the feeling of his bed tremoring. At first assuming it was an earthquake, he experienced another reverberating impact just like it, only stronger. Each blow was accompanied by an apparent thunderclap. Then another, and another, until the furniture was clattering. That was all he needed to comprehend, and a glance out the window confirmed his suspicions. Scrambling to his feet, and walking reluctantly yet purposefully downstairs to the front door, Marcus stepped out into the front yard and craned his neck skyward. Even though he’d been expecting it, and in fact dreamed about it last night, he still wasn’t fully prepared for the visage currently towering above him.

There stood Elise, looking just as perky and smiley and lovely as she did every other day, only instead of being about six inches shorter than her best friend, the girl had adopted a stature of almost three hundred feet tall, and expanded in perfect proportion as well. If Marcus had closed one eye and cropped out the rest of the environment around them, he might have tricked himself into believing he was simply looking up at his friend while lying on the ground. But reality was too overwhelming to ignore. Sure as the sun rose, Elise had received her most coveted twenty-first birthday present from Mother Nature.

“H-Hi…” Marcus gawked, waving up at her. Though the likely reason for her early morning visited stuck in his mind, he was too blown away by the sheer scale of the golden-haired young giantess to let it render him speechless. “H-Happy birthday!”

“Thanks, Marcus,” she snickered. Even at a low volume, and with a laugh as feminine and lilting as hers, the sound still boomed and echoed across the neighborhood. She waved too, with a hand that so easily could’ve swooped down at any instant and scooped Marcus into a fist, completely enclosing him there. But it didn’t, at least not yet. “Guess you’re not the tall one between us anymore now, huh?”

“I guess not. How do you feel?”

“Better than ever!” she cheered, gracefully spinning to grant him a 360-view. Her skirt billowed out like ship sails, and the shuffle of her feet caused the ground to shudder again. “It’s so amazing. I’d always imagined it would be great, and so much fun to look down at everything, but even those times I’ve let my mom hold me in her hand to see from up here, it’s still not the same at all as actually being like this. I love it so much.”

Marcus just had to drink in the sight of her. It was tough to say for certain, but he was pretty sure the growth had actually accentuated Elise’s already-beautiful features even more. Her hair practically gleamed in the sunlight. She looked like a living billboard model who’d crawled right out of the zoomed-in image and marched across the landscape. Her assets, from her pert bust to her cute behind, were more alluring than ever. Those feet, as advertised large enough to stomp cars like soda cans, left craters in their wake; Elise’s bare toes scrunched at the grass, pulling up whole tufts at a time. Her hands were planted authoritatively on her hips, suggesting the confidence boost she’d achieved after waking up at as exponential version of her old self.

“I’m glad you finally got your biggest wish ever,” Marcus said. He cleared his throat. “What more is there to look forward to, after this?”

“Well, there’s a few things still. At least one today,” Elise muttered with a sly grin. “And I think it might just be the one thing even better than growing, crazy as that sounds.”

Though he’d subconsciously realized it, Marcus wasn’t sure that Elise meant to eat him today until this exact moment. A chill traveled down the back of his neck, and his knees went to jelly, but he stayed standing: mourning, certainly, but not exactly depressed either. It was too surreal a situation to react with either horror at his upcoming fate, or devotion for his secret beloved.

“So… are you ready?” Elise asked. Her gigantic new frame exuded natural dominion over everything below her, but her tone still revealed a hint of the quiet, more introverted girl that Marcus had fallen for. Despite his internal reservations, upon hearing this question, and locking eyes with her, he knew it was indeed time.

“Yes,” he said, a little shakily, but didn’t turn away.

“Good. Because I can’t wait for this, either,” she murmured. Elise knelt down slowly, almost as though she was afraid of spooking her tiny friend, and laid her hand down in the grass, palm up, with her fingers flattened to a soft plank. “Climb on in, then. I thought maybe we could go to that clearing in the woods, just past the first trail? You know, since we’ve spent so much time there, it just seems right.”

He silently agreed, then worked on summoning the courage to climb into Elise’s hand. It wasn’t so much the act of coming aboard that made this challenging, of course, since Marcus trusted his friend with his life, giant or not. Giving his life to her willingly, however, was another matter, but one he knew had become inevitable. She was giant, he was small, and he loved her; what more was there to say?

Every step took considerable effort, but by thinking only of Elise, their friendship, and his undying feelings for her, Marcus was able to walk down from the porch and up to her waiting hand. Her flesh was smooth, cushy and inviting, and though the terrain was unfamiliar to walk upon, Marcus felt just as assured as when Elise had held his hand the day before. Now she could hold all of him, and it was just as meaningful. Once the little man was safely seated in the creamy center of her palm, Elise’s fingers curled protectively upward into a fence, and she began to rise up again, lifting her hand and her best friend along with it far above the treetops.