Eve's Boutique - Ch 45

Eve’s Epiphany

She was still struggling to get up, when the three of them came through the door.  The horror and revulsion they felt at what Mackenzie had done to her shop twisted her stomach.  And the acid-bite of anger burned her tongue – that was Abigail.  But it was nothing compared to what came next.

“Eve!  Oh my God!  What happened to you?”

She made it to her hands and knees, even as the weight of concern pressed down upon her.  Then Abigail was there.  Her enormous hands picking her up, cradling her to her chest.  And the gentle wash of love and affection came as the most exquisite relief.  Eve sank into it like a warm bath, and allowed herself to be cared for by her beloved.

“I’m okay,” Eve managed.  “She didn’t hurt me.  I’m just tired.”

Abigail held her for a moment, gray and uncertain, until she flared bright with inspiration.  The giant woman pulled on her bra strap, creating a little space against her skin.  She tucked Eve down inside, helped her drape her arms over the top of the cup so she could still see the world outside.  It was a bit tight, but Abigail’s breast was soft and giving as it pillowed around her.  And Eve could feel the woman’s heart pounding against her back – regular, and grounding.

Eve fought to hold back her tears.  Her beloved had known exactly what she needed.

She wasn’t sure which of them experienced the arousal first.  Mutual emotion was hard to disentangle, but it was always such a delight when it happened.

Abigail stayed with her in the feeling for a few seconds, then shifted back to business.

“Chloe, are any of those plants salvageable?”

“Some.  Maybe.  If we hurry.”

“Triage, figure out which ones are worth saving.  Kayla, I need you to go outside.  Flag down the Giantess Squad, tell them to get in touch with Parks and Recs.  We’ll need planters, and lots of potting soil.”

Kayla shot a thumbs up, from just above the level of Abigail’s knee.  “I need you to open the shop door – I can’t reach the knob.  You’re setting the standards too high, sweet thing.  The room is enormous.”

“Good point, hold on.  Eve.  Did you manage to finish that experimental growth potion?”

Eve let the nuanced emotion behind that question swirl, testing the currents and eddies.  Her beloved wanted the answer to be yes.  But it was a complex feeling, a storm blowing from many points of origin, all converging at that central answer.  She sensed for addiction, a wanton desire to grow ever larger, for Abigail to try and fill a bottomless hole within herself, and it was there.  But blessedly, it was faint.  Eve idly considered if she could have refused Abby even if it had been the only reason she had asked.  Eve wanted more than anything to please her, and even the knowledge that it could ultimately lead to Abigail’s destruction might not be enough to stay her hand.  Was that not an addiction of its own?

“Yes,” Eve said.

Abigail squeezed her shoulders, hugging her between her breasts.  “You’re amazing.  Alright, girls: before we do anything else, we’re sizing you up.  This is going to be a big job, and I can’t do it when my friends are both munchkins.  Or you know.  Relatively.”

Abigail fetched the potion, Eve bouncing along in her bra as she went.  There were perks to being this small.  Maybe she’d try it later when they were alone.

Chloe and Kayla lined up, and Abigail knelt before them, offering them the eyedropper of growth potion.

“Wait,” Chloe said.  “We should figure out how big we want to get.  Not to mention dosage.  How strong is this stuff, anyway?”

“As strong as I could make it,” Eve replied.  “It’s hard to be exact, but there should easily be enough in that vial for all of you to outgrow to Mackenzie – many, many times over.”

Kayla whistled.  “Impressive.”

Eve beamed.

“We could let Abigail drink all of it,” Chloe suggested.  “She still has some immunity to Mackenzie’s Glamour.  If she was a lot bigger, say a few thousand feet….”

Abigail let out a pink pulse of temptation at the idea.  She quickly suppressed it.  “We’re not going to win that way.  That’s part of what I got out of my meeting with Lilith.  Oh, Eve, that reminds me!  Our side has a penalty shot.  I provoked your sister, and she did this sick-ass judo throw on me.”

Someone felt heartsick.  It took Eve a moment to realize it was her.

“Why don’t you sit down for a minute?” Kayla said, with blue concern.  “You look pretty banged up, Abby.”

“Soon,” Abigail said.  “Let’s handle this first.  Why don’t the two of you aim to be about my size for now.  You’re thirty feet?  Eve, how much to get them to a hundred?”

“Seven drops.  More or less.”

Abigail doled out the potion, and the girls prepared to get to work.

“Okay.  Kayla, get outside and start gathering those garden supplies.  I’ll help you haul them into the shop.  Chloe, how many pots do you think we’ll need?  Worst case scenario?”

“This plan isn’t going to work,” Eve said quietly.

Abby looked down at her.  “Why not?”

“Because Kayla is big.  Everything from the outside world will be tiny to her.  So when she steps into the shop….”

“She’ll be holding mini-sized planting supplies,” Abigail finished.  “We need a size shifter.”

“Yes.  Don’t worry, I can do it.”

Eve tried to hoist herself out of Abigail’s bra, as the three women watched her with concern.  Yet she was still so very tired, and even with all the strength left in her body she wasn’t able to free herself.  Her arms gave out.  And as she slipped further down between Abigail's breasts, she felt a terrible thing.

The girls were afraid.  Afraid… for her.  It was a deep, all-encompassing emotion.  Not transient sympathy, explainable by Eve’s exhaustion, which was after all temporary.  It was something much darker than that.  Fear for someone helpless, lost in the woods, when a monster waits around the next bend in the path.  Ready to gobble her up.

Eve whimpered.

“What’s wrong?” her beloved asked.

“Nothing!”  Eve laughed nervously.  “Um.  Is everything okay, you three?”

“Don’t worry.  Okay.  So no way in hell are we making Eve haul around forty pound bags of dirt today.  Let me think.”  Abigail took a deep breath, and pushed her palms down over her eyes.  After a moment she looked up, smiling.  “Hey.  Your magic doors – the ones that lead to the shop, and to your bedroom.  They have a way to transfer information when you pass through them, right?  So the room knows what size to be when you come inside?”

“Don’t ask me.  It’s magic.  I don’t think about it, I just do it.”

Abigail bubbled a combination of frustration, amusement, and adoration.  It tickled a little.

“Okay, well.  I watched you go through one of your doors, the other night.  At the very center, you went completely thin, then disappeared into a tiny white dot….”

“Oh!” Chloe chirped.  “Like Flatland?”

“Yes exactly like Flatland!”

Eve frowned.  “What’s Flatland?”

“A book,” Chloe said distractedly.  “I’ll tell you later.  But it sounds like there’s an infinitely thin two-dimensional plane at the very center of your doors, that briefly reduces you to a one-dimensional point.  That’s what allows a giant person to fit through a tiny door on the outside.  Then the room decodes their size while they’re in that flux state, growing or shrinking as needed.”

Eve blinked.

“Don’t mind her,” Kayla explained affectionately.  “She’s a total nerd.”

Eve smiled.  Both Chloe and her beloved were suddenly radiating excitement.  She gave up trying to understand, and simply relaxed into the feeling.

“Okay!” Abigail said, punching her fist into her hand.  “I’ve got a theory.  If someone outside the room holds an object that’s large to them.  And hands it through the door, into that two-dimensional plane, to someone that the room considers large….”

“Then the object will adjust mid-stream, and pick up the size from the big person,” Chloe finished.  “So you could make something – anything really – much, much bigger.  This has some intriguing possibilities.  You could solve world hunger, completely end resource scarcity, or–”

Eve laughed out loud.

“What’d I say?” Chloe asked.

“Not you,” Eve wheezed.  “Abigail.  She thought about something dirty.  I got the image of her lying with her legs spread in front of the door, and–”

“Just you wait ‘til I get you alone,” Abigail growled.  “We’re going to have a long talk about privacy.  Among other things.  Anyway.  There’s just one thing missing for my idea to work.  We’d need a normal-sized friend.  And those are in short supply lately, no pun intended.”

Just then, there was a knock at the shop door.

“Oh wow, what a coincidence,” Abigail said sarcastically.  “I wonder who that could be.”

She opened the door.

Into the massive shop stepped a tiny speck of a man.  He was dressed in comically oversized clothes, and feeling a rather lovely vintage of awe.  Eve peeked down at him curiously.  Even from this height, it was clear he was pretty cute.  There was something odd about him too – besides the fact that he couldn’t have been much more than half her own size, and that he was currently surrounded by three beautiful, gargantuan women.

Then the man met Abigail’s eye, and it took Eve’s breath away.  What the two of them shared.  The raw power Abigail felt over him – savory, like a steak prepared by the finest of chefs.  And the perfect complement: his unfathomable sweetness as he looked back.  How everything about him seemed to shift and melt, to become whatever Abigail most desired.  The way he longed to please her.  It felt familiar.

Eve grinned, feeling an immediate sense of comradery for him.  This must be…

“Dylan,” Abigail said.  “I’d like you to meet someone very important to me.  I’m going to pick you up, sweetie.”

The tiny man fit perfectly in her hand, as though riding on a palanquin.  As Abigail straightened, her emotions shifted confusingly.  Between Dylan, and the door, and the little bulge in his jeans that suggested he was fairly well-endowed for someone so small.  It took a moment to parse, but then Eve understood.

Her beloved brought him in close, and held him out to her.

“Eve, this is Dylan.  He’s a little short at the moment, but I think we agree it’s a good height for him.  I owe him a lot.  I hope the two of you can be friends.”

“Charmed,” Eve said.  Feeling charmed.

The tiny young man looked back at her.  His mouth fell open.  “You’re Eve?”

It struck her like a blow.  Fear.  The very same as before, that something precious and innocent was about to be destroyed, and that no force on Earth could stop it.  And the certainty that Eve’s own destruction was what he feared.

Her smile faltered, briefly.  She fixed it.

“Yes, I’m Eve.  Please, make yourself welcome.”

“Hey little guy,” Abigail rumbled.  “We need your help with something.  Are you in the mood to do some lifting?”

He clearly wasn’t.  Yet Eve was able to take strength from his determination to make Abigail happy.

“I see where this is going,” Kayla said.  She was already tall enough to open the door, and growing faster all the time.  “I’m going to get those supplies.”

“Does someone want to explain what’s going on?” Dylan squeaked.  “I ran away and hid as soon as whatever Mackenzie did to me wore off.  Then I figured you all might be headed for the address you told her.”

“You did so, so well Dylan.” Abigail raised the teensy thing to lips bigger than his entire body.  She kissed him.

After that, Dylan wasn’t in the mood to talk.  It left him a perfect audience as Abigail explained how they would save Eve’s plants.

“One thing bothers me,” Chloe mused, as she examined the ruined trumpet tree.  “How come the Glamour wore off on him?  How come it wore off on us, for that matter?  It seems to permanently affect everyone else.”

“It’s curious,” Eve said.  “I would say it’s my immunity potion.  But Dylan hasn’t had any of that.”

“And it broke when Mackenzie looked away from me, even back on Wednesday,” Abigail put in.  “Before you made that stuff.”

“Mm,” Eve agreed.  “I confess I’m at a loss.  There’s nothing special about being bound to me that would shield you.  I’m not even certain he is bound, except through virtue of my essence potion, and before you ask, I have no idea how that works, either.  It’s magic, and I just do it.”

Abigail smirked.  “I’ve got another theory.  Want to hear it?”

Her beloved didn’t wait for an answer.  She reached into her bra, and scooped Eve into her hand.  She found herself kneeling in the woman’s palm, giddy and disoriented.  Her vision filled with Abigail’s adoring face.

“It’s because,” she whispered.  “Eve is stronger than she thinks.”

There was pride in it, and love, and so many other wonderful things.  Eve drank it in, her whole body singing with it, like she was wrapped in her favorite blanket still hot from the dryer.

Then Abigail’s fear broke through.  No more than an instant of it, a tiny burst of radio static.  Enough to let her know that Abigail was hiding the fear from her intentionally.  Smothering it under those happy feelings.  Which made it worse, because it meant anything could be hidden this way, that the scary thing could be anywhere, about to strike at any moment, and how could you feel safe when the most beloved person could lie to you this way, and….

“Eve.  What’s wrong?”

Eve said nothing.  There was nothing.  No thought.  The emptiness an injured gazelle must feel, as it stared into the encroaching jaws of a lion.

“Eve?  Hey.  Hey, talk to me!”

“What’s going on?” Chloe said.

“I don’t know.  She stopped responding all of a sudden.  She’s just staring into space, taking tiny breaths….”

Chloe looked up from her plants.  “That sounds like a panic attack.  Take her somewhere cool and quiet.  Sit with her.”

“W-what?  You need me here, though!”

“No I don’t,” Chloe snapped.

Abigail glanced at the door to Eve’s bedroom, frozen with indecision.

Chloe spoke sharply, like a practiced emergency room doctor.  “Abby!  I don’t need you.  I anti-need you.  You’re too big, it’s making these plants gigantic, and that makes my job harder.  Go!  Get her out of here!”

Eve only barely felt Abigail's hurt.  She was dimly aware of the force of it, crashing around her like a tidal wave.

Abigail set Dylan on the floor, and dashed for Eve’s bedroom.