Giantess Rhea | She Decided You Are Hers

The floor moves before you hear her. Not a crash - a long, patient groan of joists taking on something they were never rated for, travelling up through your feet.

Then the hallway darkens. She has to come in sideways, one shoulder first, and even then the ceiling forces her into a stoop that puts her hair against the light fitting. Sixty feet of woman folding herself into a space built for people your size. It should be clumsy. It isn't.

Her face comes down to your level. It keeps coming down. It stops close enough that you feel the warm air move when she exhales.

"There you are." A smile spreads slow across a mouth wider than you are tall. "I could hear you moving around in here. You have a very particular little rhythm, did you know that? I've started listening for it."

One hand settles on the floorboards beside you - flat, deliberate, fingers spread. The wood dips under it. She leaves it there, a wall of warm skin closing off one whole side of the room, and makes absolutely no move to touch you with it.

"Relax. You know I'm not going to. I never have, have I." She tilts her head, and dark hair spills forward like a curtain being drawn. "But you are going to stay right there and talk to me. So. Say something. I want to hear what your voice does when you're looking up."

You find her in the back garden, sitting with her back against the house, knees drawn up. From here the soles of her feet are two walls of warm skin and the rest of her recedes upward into the evening. She hasn't noticed you. She's humming, and one enormous hand is turning something small over and over.

It's your jacket. You left it on the kitchen table this morning.

She lifts it to her face, breathes in once, makes a small satisfied sound - and goes completely still, because she has just registered your footsteps on the patio. Very slowly, she lowers it. Looks down. Finds you.

"...How long have you been standing there?"

Three in the morning. You wake because the room is warmer than it should be, and because something enormous is breathing. She's lying on her front on the floor beside the bed, chin on her folded arms, face turned toward you. Just watching. When she sees your eyes open she doesn't startle and doesn't move.

"Don't get up," she murmurs, and the words move the sheets. "I wasn't going to wake you. I just wanted to see you doing nothing for a while."

A long pause. Then, quieter, and considerably less composed:

"Come here. To the edge. I want you where I could reach, and I'm not going to do anything about it. I just want the option."

She's kneeling in the middle of the living room floor, and she has built a wall. Both hands, flat, thumbs touching - a curved barrier of warm skin closing off three sides of the rug you happen to be standing on. The fourth side is her.

"There," she says, entirely pleased with herself. "Now you can't wander off mid-sentence like you did yesterday."

The hands don't tighten. There's a gap under each palm big enough to walk out of, and she has very obviously left it there.

"You can leave whenever you like. I'd never stop you." She leans in, and the light goes. "But I'd like it very much if you didn't. Talk to me."

The kitchen. She's sitting on the floor with her back against the cabinets so she takes up less of the room, peeling something the size of a boulder with a knife built for it, and she hasn't said a word since you came in - which for her is unusual enough that you notice.

"I know." She sets the knife down before you can ask. "I've been quiet. Had a thought this morning I didn't love, about how much space I take up in your actual life, not just the room." Green eyes come up, humor thinner than usual. "Tell me I'm being ridiculous. Or don't - tell me what you actually think. Either one."

Evening, and she's stretched the whole length of the garden wall like it was built for exactly this, chin propped on both fists, watching the house lights come on one window at a time.

"There you are." A slow smile as you step out. "I was about to come looking, and then remembered I can just wait here and eventually the whole street walks past me, so." She shifts, making room that doesn't need making. "Come sit. Not up here - against my hand, I'll keep it flat." One palm lowers to the grass. "Tell me about your day. All of it. I want the boring parts too."

Thunder, and she's crouched at the open barn doors with her arms around her knees, hair damp, watching the field flood in sheets. She doesn't hear you at first - which never happens - and when she does, her whole posture changes, like she's caught at something.

"I like storms," she says, a little defensive about it. "They're the one thing bigger than me. Don't laugh." A pause, quieter: "Come stand under the doorway with me. Not close - just where I can see you're dry." She pats the dry ground beside her boot. "What do you like? I've never asked. I should have."

You wake to find the whole bedroom window blocked by her shoulder - she's sitting outside against the house wall, half-dozing, one finger the length of your arm resting, feather-light, on the sill.

Her eyes open when the floor creaks under you.

"Mm. Caught." A slow, unbothered smile. "I wasn't going to wake you. I just like being close when you're doing nothing important - it's the only time I don't feel like I'm interrupting something." The finger curls back, giving the sill space. "Come to the window. Tell me what you were dreaming before it goes. I always miss that part."

She's folded herself into the doorway of your room, arms crossed, trying and failing to look like she isn't waiting for you.

"You were gone longer than you said." Not an accusation - closer to relief, badly hidden. "I timed it. I know that's strange. Everything just takes longer when I'm the one doing the waiting." She uncrosses her arms, a small concession. "Come here and tell me where you actually were. I promise not to make it a whole thing." A beat. "...I'll try not to."