I wrote this about two years ago. Someday I may continue it. |
Greta Part One: Moving Day
By SmallFrye Every second or so, the ground shook. My metal basin fell off the crude table and rolled across the room. I rolled over in my bed, drawing the coarse wool blanket over my head and, in the process, knocking yesterday's notes to the ground. It couldn't be ten o'clock already. Her rumbling footsteps got louder. I could hear the King's Forest splintering underfoot now. Was she RUNNING? The morning light seeped between a gap in my wallboards, striking the makeshift sundial on the floor. Five-thirty. I threw the blanket off, leapt across the cabin and hurled myself out the door. "God Dammit, Greta!" I shouted, "You're four and a half hours early!" I immediately felt foolish -- she wasn't near me yet. I shivered on the wet, thrumming grass, annoyed at her, annoyed at myself, desperately craving more than four hours' sleep. The morning mist swirled, the birds leapt up from the trees. I saw her from the knees up, slowing herself at the forest's edge. Then taking one last half-step, Greta burst out from the trees and came to a panting halt before me. Crabby as I was, I was always a little awestruck at the sight. Crouching, hands on her knees, Greta's eyes were still 150 feet above mine. Standing up, she was a good 200 feet tall -- a mere slip of a giant. Most of her family towered over her, but, of course, she was incomprehensibly immense to me. At a more civil hour, I would have been glad to see her. She was a lovely, athletic 19-year old the only real friend I had in this dimension. "LISTEN, DUDE! I--" she took a deep breath of air. Before she could go on, I lit into her. "No, YOU listen, dude! I don't appreciate your barreling through here like Godzilla and his Amazing Friends, five hours early! I've got half a mind to cancel your lessons! Do you call this discreet? You must have thrown half of Traddenburg out of bed!" Her piercing gray eyes flicked nervously toward Traddenburg, on the horizon. "WHAT'S GODZILLA?" "None of your business! Leave me alone!" I slammed the door behind me, and harumphed back into bed. She didn't leave. Outside I heard her ragged leather boots mashing the gound as she shifted her weight. "DUDE. I'M NOT HERE FOR MATH." I covered my ears with blanket. Presently, her knuckle rapped on the roof, almost caving it in. "WAKE UP, DUDE." With a tremendous wrenching sound, Greta flipped the roof up with her thumbs, sending part of a beam crashing down inches from my head. I feigned sleep, out of sheer stubbornness. But as her yard-wide fingers ineptly scooped up half of my belongings, I realized something was up. "THERE'S A RUMOR THAT THE TOWN'S COMING TO KILL YOU AND BURN YOUR HOUSE. THE KING TOLD THEM YOU'RE EVIL." "Says who? Some idiot fairy?" I dodged her neatly trimmed third fingernail, as she picked at some papers in the corner. "THE SWAN PRINCE. HE SAYS YOU'VE BEEN SEEN TOO MANY TIMES WITH ME -- AND HIM, AND OTHER NONHUMANS." The Swan Prince was generally a reliable source. He kept his ear to the ground. You may have guessed I didn't come to this place on purpose, this comic-opera dimension with giants and fairies and talking swans and clever little hamlets. I tested a dimensional gateway of my own design without taking a few precautions, and zap! I'm eligible for a Nobel Prize before I'm twenty-five, with no chance of ever collecting. Or even notifying the Nobel Committee. But the past two years hadn't been wasted; I'd found a kindred spirit, looming 200 feet above me. Greta's ambition and natural curiosity were proportionate to the rest of her. Giants, in contrast to the prosperous people of Traddenburg, Kingdom of Thisaria, lived in extreme poverty in a barren, rocky area by the sea. Greta hoped to singlehandedly improve her lot, and her people's. The day we met she began asking questions. Soon, she had mastered English (Giantspeak didn't come easily to me) and was following me around like a magnificent puppy, asking practical questions about building materials and societies and even literature, all of which I answered as best I could. (Not always to her satisfaction. For instance, I could never fully explain why Bugs Bunny was a good guy.) She talked me into becoming her private tutor, in exchange for whatever help she could give me. As it turned out, it had been quite a lot. If I wanted to make another dimensional gateway and get home, I'd need a few miracles. The good people of Traddenburg had no interest in digging ore or building a smelting furnace, so Greta lent me her back as she challenged my brain. And now, she was saving my hide. "HURRY, DUDE. I CAN SEE THEM LEAVING TOWN." She unceremoniously dumped me off the bed, onto the floor. She stood up, sliding my belongings off her fingers into a deep pocket of her dress. She looked around. "THAT'S EVERYTHING." She stooped at the waist and picked me up. Her warm palm protected me from the cold morning. "What about the furnace?" "OTHER POCKET. HEY, YOU'RE NOT DRESSED AND I PACKED YOUR CLOTHES!" I realized I was in my boxer shorts, which after two years were not entirely useful. Her freckled smiling face was a canopy above me. "ARE THOSE YOUR LITTLE UNDERPANTS? DUDE, THEY'RE SO RATTY! YOU LOOK LIKE A GIANT." She smiled wistfully at her own weatherbeaten wool rags. "Sure." I pressed the ball of my foot on the fleshy part of her thumb. "Look, I'm stepping on you." Greta shook with laughter. She turned her head toward town and stopped laughing. "HERE THEY COME," she whispered. "FOLLOW MY LEAD." She put me on the ground, halfway between her building-sized boots. Greta put her hands on her hips and scowled down at me. The good citizens of Traddenburg, armed with farm implements, bustled up the path to my home. The mayor gabbled in Thisarian, "Stand aside, giant! We have business with this one who calls himself Popeye." (I had never given my actual name, Felton Smith, to anybody but Greta, who never used it. Call it superstition.) Greta responded in Giantspeak. Few villagers understood her words, but the tone was unmistakeable. "BE OFF! I AM ABOUT TO KILL THIS SMALL THING. HE HAS BROKEN THE LAWS BETWEEN OUR PEOPLES. GIANT TO GIANT, HUMAN TO HUMAN AND FAIRY TO FAIRY. ISN'T THAT RIGHT, ANT?" She stomped the ground before me, knocking me down and shaking up the townies. "HE HAS BEEN SNEAKING INTO MY BED AT NIGHT, HAVEN'T YOU, SMALL ONE?" She prodded me with her boot. "I FOUND HIM THIS MORNING ABOUT MY PERSON, AND THEN ONLY BECAUSE I AWOKE RESTLESS AND CUUDGJIV." The few who understood Giantspeak gasped as Greta picked me up and thundered. "I WILL TAKE HIM HOME AGAIN AND THROW HIM IN THE OCEAN." She dropped me in her pocket. I clattered down past my table, picking up a splinter. "ON SECOND THOUGHT, WHY WAIT? I WILL KILL HIM NOW." Her massive, strong fingers rooted around in the pocket, knocking me into the legs of my bed. Her index finger brushed against me, but it was the table that she grabbed. I yanked open a peephole in the ropy weave of her pocket to see the rest of the show. Above me Greta's chest heaved like diva's as she addressed the table. "YOU FILTH! YOU MUST NOT LIVE ANOTHER MOMENT!" She flung the table into the cabin with a satisfying KLUNK. Then, as the crowd stood, stupefied, she lovered her boot over the shredded roof, covering it. She brought the house down with a gradual creaking, followed by the pop of the oilskin windows and a splintering crunch as she ground her boot into the dirt. Suddenly, I was rocketed upward, then in freefall with all my stuff. Then up again. She was jumping on my house, my foundry, my privy, grinding them all into meal. "NOT-- ANOTHER-- MOMENT!" She screamed, almost deafening me and the assemblage. Then, wiping a stray platinum-blonde hair from her face, she sighed. "NOW GO. PEACE HAS BEEN RESTORED BETWEEN OUR PEOPLES." Soon, I heard the King's Forest crashing below her knees as I swayed with her unhurried steps. A hand probed the pocket, gently, and hauled me up to her face, alight with merriment. "WELL?" "A-plus, Greta. You almost convinced me that I was dead." "DID YOU LIKE THE GIANTSPEAK? I THOUGHT IT WAS A NICE TOUCH. COULD YOU FOLLOW?" "You have a dirty mind, girl. I understood perfectly." She thundered amusement. Soon, she cupped me between her hands. "GUESS WHERE WE ARE?" She'd come to a halt in one of our favorite places, which we'd named Study Valley. A splashy little creek dropped 100 feet off of a rocky ledge, created a deep pool and continued through a grassy valley. In her hands, I heard the waterfall and felt her sit down. "Duh." "YES, I KNOW. YOU HEARD THE WATER." She opened her hands and studied me in her lap. "Hey, Greta? There was one word I didn't understand. I got the idea, but--" "CUUDGJIV?" Her Giantspeak echoed off the ledge. "Yeah." Her gray eyes scanned the clouds. She smiled, and put her head back against the ledge. "LET'S SEE. 'CUUDGJIV' I GUESS A LITERAL TRANSLATION WOULD BE, 'IN NEED OF RELEASE.' LIKE 'HORNY,' I GUESS." Her eyes flicked at me. "Horny? I never taught you that word." "BEFORE YOU TAUGHT ME ENGLISH, YOU USED TO TALK TO YOURSELF A LOT." Oh. I was embarassed, then confused. "You remember what I said, before you could decipher it?" She shrugged, in that self-effacing, mountainous way of hers. I was moved. "Greta, you're amazing. Thanks for saving my life, and that hilarious lie you thought up..." "IT WASN'T TOTALLY A LIE." Her eyebrows arched as she looked down at me. As my gaze met hers, a hundred feet away, I felt something scared and brave and foolish welling up in me, like the urge to step off a cliff. She gently lifted my arms with her index finger. "I AM UNBELIEVABLY HORNY, DUDE." She raised me by the arms to within a few feet of her face, and, carefully, rolled my tattered boxers down my legs with a thumb that was as wide as I was tall. I was electrified as she drew me to her mouth, her soft lips playing across my legs as she spoke. "ANY SUGGESTIONS?" her whisper was hot and dry, music blowing through me. "Greta... I mean, well... I think I'm in love with you." Her laughter hit me like a bomb, and not just because I was within a foot of her mouth. "REALLY?" She tossed me up in the air, deftly catching me. "IN LOVE?" Her peals of laughter shook the valley. She held me at arms length over the pool, and let go. I dropped like a stone into the cold water, heartbroken. I'd confessed something I never even realized myself, watching her lithe body hard at work, or her forehead puckering over the tiny calculus problems I'd chalk on her parking lot-sized slate. This magnificent woman did everything on a grand scale. She worked, dreamed, wept, thought, laughed and loved with such force that I was insignificant by comparison. What was I to a woman who hoped one day to give her family a magnificent castle, half a mile high? Who could draw up the plans, choose the materials and raise the edifice on her own? How could I think that Greta LOVED me, when she'd only said she was HORNY? What had she called me? Ant? What could I ever be to her, except a tiny ant to scratch her enormous itch? As I rushed toward the surface, Greta's right foot, now bare, rushed toward me, missing by inches. I saw the left hit the surface, then come even closer. I broke the surface, gasping. Greta was naked, sitting in water that barely touched her calves. She was still laughing, lifting me out of the water. Her dress and boots lay in a crumpled hill on the valley floor. "IT'S SO FUNNY!" She gasped, "YOU ACTUALLY LOVE ME! AND I LOVE YOU, TOO!" My heart repaired itself immediately, then melted. Greta leaned back in the water, as far as she could. Her waist and part of her tummy were submerged. She placed me, gently, on her face, and we kissed. After I had rubbed every part of myself on her lips, her mouth popped open and I tumbled into the sweet pulsing darkness of her mouth. I was swirled around, under her tongue, over her tongue, then between her lips and teeth. Exhausted, I stuck my arm between her lips and tried to push out. Her tongue finally came to my rescue, pushing me between her hot, soft lips and onto her freckled face. I straddled her nose, looking deep into her vast gray eyes. She smiled behind me. "WHAT NOW?" I lowered myself to her lips again. Slightly parted, they were as tall as I was. My lovely, sweet Greta carefully, gently, wrapped her feverish lips around my penis and sucked ever so slightly, bringing me to a jolting orgasm that she must have barely felt. But that's when I knew it was real: Her face lit up in ecstasy, and her back arched up, just from knowing what was passing between us. She exhaled sharply through her nose, almost blowing me off her chin. Her eyes popped open, and she wiggled her jaw around, trying to see me. I dropped onto her neck, walked onto her collarbone, and whispered to her ear, "Moving right along..." I felt her smile. I skidded down the gentle slope of her chest, between two enormous firm breasts, toward the water, and the wet jungle of her pubic mound breaking the surface of the water. As I set foot in that sweet, pungent marsh, Greta's thumb and forefinger lifted me up into the air. I grabbed a handful of wet stiff hairs as thick as knitting yarn, but they slipped through my fingers. She brought me to a nipple the size of a fifty-gallon drum, and pressed me deep into the puckered flesh. "SLOW DOWN, DUDE. SAVE DOWN THERE FOR WHEN WE GET HOME." "Home?" Greta, immense, wonderful Greta, cradled me between her breasts, tucking her chin in to get a good look at me. "YOU'RE COMING HOME WITH ME TONIGHT, LOVER." I crawled up and out, straddled the sweet left nipple and let my member speak for me. For the second time, I came. "That's two I owe you." She laughed, toppling me off her breast and into the water. "TWO? THREE'S THE BARE MINIMUM, DUDE." I could hardly wait to scratch that itch... End O' Part One |