Great Dessert

Kendall stared at Ray’s name in her contacts for the twelfth time in as many days.

It had been two weeks since she’d gone to the Dance Party of the Giants—she’d never heard an actual name for it and that name was manifestly ridiculous, but she couldn’t shake it—and gotten the bartender’s number. The giant bartender. The incredibly beautiful, giant coyote bartender who’d played a drinking game with her that had gone way beyond flirting, and goddamn but it was hard to reconcile “I’ve never been so turned on my life” with “holy shit she stepped on me.” A paw bigger than her body step, coyote the size of a small skyscraper step, a GAME OVER YOU DIED step.

Except, of course, here she was, alive, unharmed, and with far less PTSD than she was positive she should have from the experience. Somehow, she suspected that was the mental block she had about giving Ray a call: a tiny huffy part of her screamed no, act like you’re properly traumatized, bitch whenever she pulled up Ray’s contact info. Being crushed shouldn’t give you a crush, ha ha oh Three Lords.

For the twelfth time in as many days, the ringtail held a finger right over the call button, wavering, gritted her teeth, almost pressed, pulled back—

Oh, shit, she got too close, it was calling the number, maybe if she hit disconnect real fast—

“Hey.” She could barely hear Ray’s voice since she didn’t have the phone on speaker or held near her ear, but the coyote sounded pleased. Or maybe that was wishful thinking.

Nggggggh she quickly fumbled the phone up to her ear. “Hi. This is Kendall, uh, if you remember from—”

“I definitely remember.” Ray also definitely sounded amused. “And I’ve been wondering if you would work up the nerve to call.”

“It, uh, took more nerve than I imagined.” Kendall laughed nervously. “I’m not actually sure how to ask someone I’m ankle-high to out on a date. Um, can you get smaller?”

“Yes. I’m not going to, but I can, sure.”

“Ah. Heh. Where can we go when you’re, like, what is it, a hundred feet tall?”

“Ninety. We can go just about anywhere, although the only places made for it are here on the college campus. I live on the edge of it myself.”

“Oh. You’re not a student there, right? Are you staff?”

She laughed. “No, and no. But there’s some housing here that’s open to giants who aren’t affiliated with the school, and that’s what I’m in. Small studio apartment.”

“‘Small.’ Uh huh.” She took a deep breath, then confessed, “I think this feels weird because it feels like a first date, except that, uh, you know…”

“I’ve already had you in my mouth and gotten you off under my paw?”

Kendall’s ears grew hot. “Yeah.” She hesitated. “Did you…it kind of seemed as if you were, you know, also a bit…”

“I wouldn’t have given you my number if I wasn’t.”

She curled her huge tail around herself, squirming in her seat. Okay. Focus. Date. Go for simple. Coffee. Pizza.

“So,” she began, but her mouth had gone so dry that she sounded hoarse. She cleared her throat and tried again. “So I’ve kinda peeked at the campus, but I don’t really know much there. There’s, like, a pizza parlor that somehow handles mixed sizes, right?”

“The Beanstalk. The pizza’s even pretty decent.”

“In the Student Union building, right?”

“Yep.”

“Okay. That sounds good. What night are you free?”

“How about tonight?”

Kendall’s tail puffed out so fast she suspected it was audible. “Tonight. Yeah, I can do that. Uh, six…thirty at the Beanstalk, then?”

“Six-thirty is fine.”

“Yes. Great! Looking forward to it.”

“So am I.”

After she hung up, Kendall fell back on the couch, staring at the ceiling. “Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.” She covered her face and dissolved into giggles.

When Kendall had said she’d “peeked at the campus,” she’d been uncomfortably close to literal. She’d driven through it a few times after moving here, and actually stopped at the Student Union building once to look around. She was surprised she’d remembered the name “The Beanstalk”—she’d seen signs for it, but that was it.

She’d grown up in a town about two hours’ drive up the coast from here, but as pretty as that area was, it lacked a capital-C City. If you were looking for work that didn’t involve tourism, wine, or retail, you had a hell of a lot more opportunity around either San Valerio or Mensura. San Valerio was a hundred years older and far more of a cultural center, and definitely saw itself as the real city despite Mensura technically being bigger in both land area and population. She understood why—Mensura lacked the history, had far more of a suburban vibe when you strayed from the downtown core—but that downtown turned out to be vibrant, diverse and fun, and the cost of living was…well, still high, but a good twenty percent less than its snooty neighbor’s.

Also, there was the whole thing about having magic and giants.

Incredibly, she’d heard next to nothing about either of those back home; locals in Mensura said there was a mysterious magic protection around the college that made people forget about it when they got too far away, unless a news story reminded them. She’d been dubious of that, but after the night at the dance, she was far more ready to accept real magic.

No one at the agency she worked at as a web designer gave the college much consideration, pondered what it all “meant”; she got shut down the few times she tried to bring it up as small talk. She got shut down a lot there, though. In two years, the job had gone from New and Exciting Career to Toxic Slimepit. She still liked some of the work, depending on the client, but when she’d joined she’d been one of four women on the technical side of the firm. Now she was it. And, since one of the misogynist dudes who drove the other women out was a hiring manager, two of the three new men who’d come in as replacements were also toxic. She’d caught herself daydreaming about Ray striding over and stomping the office to rubble three times in the last two weeks.

She left the office precisely at five-thirty, ignoring the looks from the techbros who tended to come in around ten in the morning and stay until nine at night, getting both lunch and dinner delivered to their desks. She did all they paid her for—and sometimes more—working normal hours. Back home for a quick change into…

…what did you wear for a date with a giantess?

She pushed a hand through her hair, then shook her head. Don’t overthink it. Ray didn’t strike her as someone who’d go formal—especially not at a pizza parlor—so keep the jeans, switch to a designer T-shirt, slip on a prettier belt, put on a necklace. Bang. Sharp. She hoped. As sharp as she was gonna get on short notice.

Okay. She needed to get a move on if she was going to make it to campus, find parking, and…Three Lords, how long might the walk inside the Student Union building be from the entrance to the pizza parlor? Shit, she was probably already late.

As it turned out, parking at the Union building was easy—just mind-blowing. The building looked massive when it had to be a mile away, and the closer she got, the more its essential giganticosity—if that wasn’t a word, it should be—revealed itself. They’d built it into a hillside, the structure emerging from it as a squared-off concrete and glass mountain. What she’d seen of the other campus buildings looked all ivy-and-brick stately, albeit at equally ridiculously huge scales, but the Union looked modern. Maybe retro-modern, kind of brutalist but without the sad prison barracks look that style too easily slipped into.

She saw a few giants on the way in, walking on huge sidewalks separated from the road, but as she followed the signs for the parking garage she saw a lot of giants. Dozens. How many students did the school have? She knew she’d come across that number at one point in the past, and in terms of attendance numbers it was tiny, under a thousand, and a significant majority—like seventy percent—of the student body was “little” like her. That still meant a few hundred giants. Until the dance, “a few hundred giants” was an abstract number, a wow, that’s a lot value you didn’t have to come to grips with. Now, it had become real, and seeing groups of tree-sized students standing around idly chatting tripled down on it.

The parking garage took up a proportionally minuscule corner of the building, but it was still three levels, easily three or four hundred parking spaces—given how few cars sat inside, many more than it needed. Planning for the future, if the attendance increased, she supposed.

She pulled her Civic into a spot near the elevator, glancing at her phone as she got out. Six twenty-six. Cutting it close. As she walked down the hallway, she texted Ray. Just parked, heading inside.

Waiting right inside, the response came back as she reached the elevator.

According to the elevator, the entrance to the union building was on the fourth floor, so over the three parking levels. She got out, walked down a short concrete hallway, through automatic doors (were those magic, or standard electric—electric, she decided), and stepped into the Land of the Giants.

She’d entered on the lowest of three balcony levels, all clearly designed for “littles,” overlooking a common area clearly designed for—and occupied by—giants. It had sofas, chairs, tables, and an information desk, all pleasantly normal yet at a scale Kendall wouldn’t have been able to imagine before a few weeks ago. (Since then, she’d envisioned more than a few giant scenarios, usually with Ray, occasionally with someone else she recalled seeing there.)

And, there was Ray, sitting on one of the sofas, legs crossed at the knee, looking at her phone. Kendall had guessed correctly about the dress style the coyote had chosen: just jeans and T-shirt. They were tight jeans and a shirt one size too small, so it stretched tautly over her chest and ended far enogh above her belt line to show her navel. It took the ringtail several seconds to gather enough willpower to tear her gaze away and text again. Over on the first balcony.

Ray looked up from her phone, gaze traveling around until it settled on Kendall, who stood by the balcony railing waving. Grinning, she put her phone away and walked over.

“Right on time,” the coyote said. “Nobody tried to step on you on the way?”

“Hey, I wouldn’t let just anyone step on me.”

Ray laughed. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“It’s nice to see you, too. Kind of overwhelming. But nice.”

“So. You can either follow the signs on your level to the Beanstalk, or I can carry you there. Have a preference?”

Kendall swished her tail. “Carry. Obviously.”

“Good choice.” The coyote moved one hand to hover palm up in front of the railing, using her other to pick Kendall up—gently—and set her down on the palm pad.

“I appreciate you being careful.”

“You don’t have a magic wristband this time, so no wild cacomistle tossing.” She curled her fingers up, as if to create guard rails, and started walking.

The interior looked nicer than the Student Center at the community college she’d gone to; actually, it looked nicer than what she remembered of the one at the private university she’d been accepted at but couldn’t afford to attend. Everything looked clean and bright, without veering into coldness.

After a couple minutes of walking, the white noise of a busy pub’s overlapping conversations drifted down the hall from ahead. Ray announced, “Here we are. Almost.”

They reached a big open doorway on the right, one with a distinctly different style: rough, rustic hardwood planks hewn from trees of unimaginable size. She walked through, and immediately stepped into a fairy tale.

Tables and benches, at first glance all on Ray’s scale (some half that, others half again as large, on second glance), appeared to grow directly out of vast redwood-like trees, nestled in groves and copses. “Vines” encircled the trees, sprouting normal-sized—er, little-sized—catwalks that in turn blossomed into smaller-sized tables. several of those floated all on their own, but most actually sat on, or slightly above, the giant tables.

“Holy shit, this is like Berryland level decoration.”

“Berryland?” Ray headed toward an open table.

“It’s a theme park, built by Berry Studios.”

“Right, the animation company.” The coyote took a seat and held her hand out by a platform, about fifteen feet over the tabletop, that held a matching four-seat table. “I didn’t grow up with theme parks. Or movies.”

Kendall hopped off. “Oh. Wow. I didn’t realize it was that much of a change between here and giant lands.”

“Yeah, in some ways they’re like a century or two behind little lands. But in other ways, it’s just that we did things with magic that you did with engineering. We don’t have movies, but we do have spells that capture and replay stage performances.”

“Oh, now, that’s cool.”

A maned wolf waitperson must have been watching them as they sat down; they walked over near-instantly, handing Ray a menu. “Welcome to the Beanstalk.” They looked down at Kendall. “I can have someone get you a menu, or you can use the QR code on your table.”

“Or she can just ask me,” Ray added.

“Or that.” They smiled. “Do you know what you want to drink, or should I give you a few minutes?”

Ray nodded. “I’ll have a Lit Kerosene IPA.”

“Make that two.”

“Okay. I’ll get those in, and come back in a few.” The wolf headed off.

Kendall turned to watch them go. Pretty cute, actually—

“Are you staring at that maned wolf’s butt?”

She looked up at Ray, her ears coloring. “I—uh—maybe a little?”

The coyote smirked. “You’re a macrophile.”

“A what?”

“A little who’s attracted to giants.”

“I’m—uh…” She rubbed the back of one of her long ears. “Maybe, but if I am, it’s mostly your fault.”

“No, I just woke something in you that was already there. You’re welcome.”

“I’d be watching your butt, but I can’t see it from here.”

“You know now that you’ve said that, I’m going to sit on you sometime.”

Kendall stared up. “I hope you’re joking.”

Ray leaned over and lowered her voice to a sultry whisper. “Do you really hope I’m joking, or do you secretly hope I’m not?”

Kendall’s mouth went dry. “I refuse to answer on the grounds that I might get flattened.”

Ray winked. “…again.” She straightened up.

“The maned wolf’s going to be back here to ask about our food order in a minute. What’s good here?”

“Pizza.”

Kendall gave Ray a look.

She laughed. “I like their hot honey combo. I also sometimes get pepperoni and pineapple.”

“That sounds terrible.”

“I know, but it isn’t. There’s a rabbit girl I met here who introduced me to it.”

“Giant rabbit girl, I’m guessing.”

“Taller than I am. You’d like her. She’s intimidating.”

Kendall crossed her arms, but couldn’t keep a smile off her face as she shook her head. “I’ll go with the hot honey.”

The maned wolf came back with Ray’s beer. Before the ringtail could ask about her own order, someone set her beer down beside her.

She jumped, turning to see a squirrel walking away from the table. She’s silent. Also, she has a cute butt, too, so it’s not just giants with you, still.

“What’ll it be?”

“Two personal size hot honeys.” Ray waved a finger between her and Kendall.

“Got it.” The wolf smiled and headed off.

“So.” Kendall leaned back, looking up at Ray. “Is the Dance Party of the Giants your only job, or just a side gig?”

Ray had started to take a sip of her IPA; a laugh-cough at Kendall’s name interrupted it. “The what?”

The ringtail shrugged, grinning. “What’s the official name?”

“I…” Ray scratched her chin. “I think people just call it ‘that thing the giant coyote lady does in the woods every full moon.’”

“That’s both more suggestive, and much worse branding.”

“Probably true. Anyway, no, it’s not my only job, but I wouldn’t call it a side gig, either. Wednesdays and Thursdays I do a shift over at the Dirty Brass, most Sundays I’m at the Echo Lounge, and I do odd jobs that giants are good at other times.”

“I—wait. You tend bar at a little-sized place.”

“Two of them, even.”

“As a little.”

“It’d be kinda tough if I stayed this size, wouldn’t it.”

Kendall’s muzzle hung open. “I could have walked in there at any time and seen you.”

“Yep. I don’t know if you’d recognize me, but I’d be there.”

“Unless you’re saying you change more than your size, I am sure I’d recognize you.”

“You’d be surprised.” She took another swig of beer, this time without coughing. “There’s not a whole lot of crossover in clientele, but the other night I served a wolf guy two drinks and he didn’t recognize me, even though back at the dance I served him in a drink to a sheep.”

Kendall laughed. “Yikes. I’m still pretty sure I’d recognize you, though, Ray. If one of your side jobs isn’t modeling, it should be.”

She shook her head. “I don’t have the build for it—they want girls built like flagpoles, not girls with these.” She used her free hand to bounce her breasts.

Kendall made a soft glurk noise, staring. “Ah.”

“Now, if you know a place looking to hire giant strippers, maybe we’ll talk.”

The ringtail blinked rapidly, feeling her ears starting to burn. “You could shrink and find a club looking to hire strippers my size.”

“Come on, where’s the fun in that?”

“Mmf. So what do you mean by ‘odd jobs giants are good at?’”

“You know.” She shrugged. “Tree trimming, roof cleaning, anything that basically involves being a crane. Demolition when I luck into it.”

“Demolition. Meaning what, I might see you stomping a house flat? A car?”

Ray leaned over. “Would you like to see that? I can invite you next call I get.”

“No, I…just…” Kendall’s eyes unfocused as she envisioned the coyote’s paw resting on an expensive car, flexing, and compressing it down into sheet metal. Three Lords, why was that hot?

The coyote blew her a kiss. “You know you’re both really easy to fluster and really cute when you are flustered.”

“I am not easy to fluster. You’re just really damn good at flustering littles,” Kendall muttered.

The coyote nodded. “True. I am.”

Fortunately, the pizza arrived. The squirrel actually spoke this time, a cheerful “Here you go!” as she set the pizza and a napkin-wrapped bundle of flatware down in front of Kendall. The maned wolf set Ray’s pizza down in front of her at the same time.

“Thanks.” The pan-style pizza was a generous size for one person, and had a fancier presentation than she’d expected: cup pepperoni, fresh basil, and dots of whipped ricotta cheese, drizzled with a reddish-tinted honey. “This does look pretty good.”

“It is.”

And, it was. Kendall finished her first piece before looking up at Ray again.

“I’m starting to recognize that as your ‘I want to ask something personal’ look,” Ray said wryly, finishing her own first piece and licking honey off her fingers.

“It’s not…” She trailed off, watching the coyote’s tongue and feeling her ears flush again. “I mean, uh, maybe. I just…” She waved around. “Were you a student here?”

The coyote waggled her hand in a sort of motion. “I applied, got in provisionally, and…” She grunted. “It wouldn’t be entirely wrong to say that dropping out was a mutual decision, but it was more of a case of them saying ‘we don’t think this is working out’ and me saying ‘yeah, probably not.’”

“Is it prying to ask why?”

“Yeah, but I’ll still tell you.” She took another big sip of the beer and looked contemplative. “It’s not that I wasn’t interested in the academics. I really took to magic, too. I came in with as much talent as their professors. If you ask me, at least. If you ask them, I was kind of an arrogant prick about that, which is fair.”

She set down her glass and looked more directly at Kendall. “But, the truth is, I wasn’t as interested in the school as I was in just not being at home. My stepfather…was…” She trailed off, looking to the side.

Kendall’s ears folded down. “Oh.”

“Yeah. I fantasized about using magic to do very, very vile things to him. Which is part of what the professors at the school didn’t approve of. I mean, they didn’t like the attitude they thought I had, which was kind of ‘some people deserve to get stomped to paste and you should use magic to get them underpaw if you need to.’” She picked up another piece of pizza.

“That wasn’t really your attitude, was it?”

Ray laughed. “Yes, it definitely was, and still is. That doesn’t mean I’d go around doing it, any more than a little who says something like ‘I oughta punch you to the moon’ does. It’s just scarier when I say something like that, and, well.” She waved the pizza slice. “Now we’re back to the arrogant prick thing. I think I’m saying that, with a decade and change to look back, I was a fucking terrible student.”

Kendall laughed, but still had to suppress a shiver. She would not want to see Ray genuinely angry. Well, maybe she would, but only from a safe distance. “But they still let you stay on campus, huh?”

“It was either that or help me build a house off campus somewhere, since I’d made it clear I wasn’t going back home. Anyway, they have non-student giant housing on campus, both for staff and for graduates who don’t have anywhere else to go yet.”

“And they’re okay with the dance party, and the…you know.” She touched her wrist.

“Let’s say it’s…controversial. They don’t want me to publicize it, on or off campus, and I keep expecting them to forbid students from attending or find a way to shut me down completely. But it’s been two years and they haven’t yet.” The coyote shrugged. “I’ve heard through the grapevine that I have a few advocates on staff to counterbalance the haters.”

Kendall munched on her own pizza as she listened. “So I guess the argument is that if something goes wrong it’s, like, an accidental murderfest that sends all the survivors to therapy for the rest of their lives?”

Ray choked on her IPA, and shot Kendall a wry grin, wiping her muzzle with the back of a paw. “Well, that’s one concern, yeah. But the one that keeps coming up is more like a version of the arguments about violent video games—that it’s going to desensitize people to violence.”

“Oh. Yeah, I got into arguments with my mom over that one, and I don’t even play those kinds of games. It’s the sort of argument that makes people say ‘oh, yeah, that makes sense, that’s totally believable,’ but when they actually study it, the data doesn’t support it. But you tell people—by which I mean my mom—that, and they’re like, ‘but it still makes sense to me.’”

“Exactly. I mean, I don’t have studies proving that giants who go to the dances don’t become more likely to go on rampages, but as far as I know the number of real rampages students have gone on is zero.”

“Real rampages as opposed to what, fake ones?”

Ray snorted. “Kind of, yeah. That’s how we got the DMZ.”

“Point.” The “DMZ” was the part of Mensura closest to the campus, neighborhoods that had been in decline before the college opened and became all but abandoned afterward. Students weren’t supposed to tromp around flattening buildings there, but it very clearly happened—and both the city and the college very clearly looked the other way when it did.

“Hmm.” Kendall finished a pizza slice. “I guess the argument for giving giants and littles a safe space to…uh…explore rougher size-related fantasies is that, well, it is safe. It’s sort of a relief valve?”

“I’ve thought about that—surprise, right?—but I think that might actually be a version of the same fallacy in disguise. If you look back at the video game analogy, it’s like saying that playing violent games reduces the chance players are going to run around shooting everyone with automatic rifles in real life. The real argument is that a lot of us—giants and littles alike—are curious enough about, mmm, let’s say close contact that it’s nice to have somewhere you’re protected against accidents. From there, though, it’s a pretty quick step to…” She waved a hand.

“Chomp and stomp.” Kendall gave the coyote a finger gun. “If you ever get a permanent location that’d be a great name.”

Ray laughed. “That would be an awful name.”

The ringtail grinned back. “Okay, maybe we need to workshop it. Anyway, I get what you mean about the fallacy. Just because you’d think about swallowing me with that magic protection doesn’t mean you’d think about putting me on your pizza right now.”

“Yeah.” Ray finished off her beer. “Also, they’d get really pissed off with me if I did that in here, even if you were wearing a bracelet.”

“So you’d have to take me somewhere else to eat me.”

Ray leaned forward. “Is that an invitation?” She licked her lips slowly.

Kendall’s eyes tracked the coyote’s tongue, and she squirmed in her seat. “It’s…um…not not one.”

The coyote chewed on her lip a moment. “Finish up,” she murmured. “I want to take you home for dessert.”

Kendall’s eyes grew wide. Are you going to go home with a woman who is literally telling you she wants to eat you? Oh Three Lords why are you pretending this is actually even a question of course you are. She cleared her throat and downed her last slice of pizza in record time, washing it down with the rest of her beer.

When the maned wolf server came back, Ray already had a credit card in hand. “Okay, I guess you’re ready for the check,” they laughed. They pulled a portable card reader—not much smaller than a compact car, Kendall noted with amusement—off their belt and tapped the card, then handed the device to the coyote to choose a tip.

In short order, the ringtail was back on the coyote’s shoulder, walking through the Union building and back outside. “Uh, I guess it’s safe to leave my car in the garage?”

“Well, if you want, I can try to reach in and grab it for you. I might be able to shove it in my pocket without damaging it. Much.”

“You’re just trying to tease me with images of you doing that.”

“I love how fast you’re getting to know me.”

The sun was minutes away from setting, sinking below the mountain horizon. Even though she’d lived here a few years now, Kendall hadn’t grasped how close the campus was to the western hills that separated Mensura Valley from the coast. “This really is a beautiful area.”

“It is.” Ray nodded. “My hometown’s nice enough in its own way, but it’s colder and just…not as varied, I guess. Here, I’m in walking distance—I mean, for me, not for you—of forests with trees bigger than I am one way, and wildflower meadows in a different direction.”

“Have you walked to the ocean?”

“Yeah, although that’s more than a day trip even at this size. Honestly, if I want to get up to the mountains, let alone down to the desert, I’m gonna shift to your size and take a bus or a train, even if I might fantasize about getting big enough to make those walking distance, too.”

“Uh…you can get bigger than this, then.”

The coyote nodded again. “Yep.”

“How big can you get?”

“Good question. I’m using spells I came up with that work better than the standard ones the school teaches; they use—well, I’ll skip all the arcane shit, but I’m applying different ways to scale based on modern physics.”

“Modern physics.” Kendall blinked. “On your own, you re-engineered ancient magic spells to incorporate quantum mechanics or whatever.”

“Yeah.”

“Why are you tending bar instead of heading up the college’s magic department?”

Ray laughed. “Because this is what’s fun for now. Besides, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t teach this spell. They’d probably try to erase any record of it.”

Kendall combed her hand through her tail fur absently. “You didn’t answer the question about how big you can get.”

“Oh, right. Practically, I have limits like, you know, having enough atmosphere to breathe, being able to move without doing permanent damage to the environment, not attracting so much attention I’m a threat to national security, all that. So the biggest I’ve ever been is, I think it was…how tall is Mount Harrison over in the Spinas?”

“I don’t know. I think around twelve thousand feet—holy shit, are you fucking with me?”

“I wasn’t that big.” Ray held out her hands in front of her in that kind of easy, relax motion. “Just, like, two-thirds that.”

“Two-thirds. You were eight thousand feet tall.”

“I think so. It’s not like I had a tape measure.”

“That’s a mile and a half.”

“I guess.”

“And you think you can get bigger than that, if you wanted to.”

She shrugged, carefully, although Kendall tightened her grip on the side of the T-shirt as the coyote moved. “I don’t think I would because that was kind of petrifying, honestly. Already hard to breathe at. But, yeah.”

“Why’d, uh…why’d you even try?”

“Because I wanted to test the spell, and because it was an incredible rush. You get up to a point where redwood trees are knee-high to you and you’re still growing, and you think ‘I am a living goddess. The entire planet should worship me.’ And you keep going. Then you think ‘if I so much as fucking sneeze I’m an existential threat, I should never do this again.’” She laughed. “But now you know you could, and there’s a secret part of you that’s always going to carry that feeling with you.”

“Wow.” Kendall found herself breathing faster, unable to shake the image of a distant mountain with a nude Ray wrapped around it, her beautiful paws resting on tourist towns at the mountain’s base. “If you were my goddess, I’d probably still be going to church,” she muttered.

“Hmm?”

The ringtail shook herself violently. “Uh,” she raised her voice, “so I’m almost afraid to ask, but what’s the theoretical limit of that spell, if you didn’t have to worry about breathing and countries emptying a nuclear arsenal on you?”

“I don’t know. I mean, mathematically, the size of the universe, but I’d probably get pulled apart by fundamental forces way before that. I bet I could be big enough to reach from here to the moon at its apogee without any issue, though. Well. No issues for me.” She flashed a fang-filled grin.

“That’s terrifying.”

“Yeah, in practice you don’t have to worry about me being any bigger than Godzilla.”

They’d reached a set of single-story condos, arranged in a way that made Kendall think of beach motels: single long rows of numbered doors set in stucco walls, with a red tiled roof. “Hasn’t Godzilla been, like, different sizes in different movies?” Maybe condo was a touch too grand; these probably were closer to motel rooms in scale, in fact.

“Whatever the biggest one is. Plus ten percent. I’d have to be able to beat him in a wrestling match.” Ray walked down the sidewalk that rang alongside the condos, stopping about twelve units down and unlocking the front door.

“Dunno if that’s enough. The radioactive breath still gives him an advantage.”

“You think, but I have magic, and I can and will cheat. Besides, who’d you rather have your city destroyed by? Me, no contest, right?” She stepped inside.

“Yes, please.”

“That’s disturbingly enthusiastic of you. I’m making a note.”

It was like a hotel room, but a good, big one—not that it evoked a thousand-dollar-a-night kind of penthouse suite, but it still had a separate bedroom and living room, the former with carpet and the latter with nice hardwood floors, and a full kitchen. Had most of the furniture come with the place? Hell, how did they even make the furniture? And the appliances? And the—the everything?

“They give you basic furniture with the apartment,” Ray said, picking up on Kendall’s studying gaze. “So, like, the coffee table, the sofa, the bed and bureau in the bedroom. Everything else is mine.”

“I could guess.” And she could. Even though she still barely knew Ray, the rooms had a distinctly Ray style. Framed art covered most of the walls: a few vintage art deco liquor ads, a few colorful abstract somethings, a few artistic but racy nudes of all genders. The bookshelves looked well-stocked, with not just books but CDs and knickknacks—the top shelf was all tiki mugs and souvenir bar glasses. No television, but a stereo system with nice stand-mounted speakers sat against one wall. “How do you get all of this in your size? Magic?”

“Yep, pretty much.” She gently set the ringtail down on the bar counter between the kitchen and the living area. From here, she could see the coyote’s pantry, which held more bottles of liquor than cans and boxes of food. “So, I’m a better mixologist than chef, but I made cinnamon ice cream last week that’s fantastic with a rum caramel sauce I’ve been working on.” The coyote walked out of the kitchen to the living room as she was speaking.

“Oh. That sounds…” Kendall blinked as Ray slid off her jeans. “…uh…delicious.”

“Excellent.” The coyote kicked the jeans away from her digitigrade paws, then pulled her tight T-shirt off. Both her panties and her bra were black, the latter a sheer mesh.

Kendall swallowed, curling her tail around herself, eyes glued to Ray as she pulled a small box out of a drawer in an end table and walked back to the kitchen. She opened the box, setting it down in front of the ringtail, then got down a ceramic bowl and pulled the ice cream and sauce out of the refrigerator, respectively, sticking the sauce in the microwave and running it for a few seconds to warm it up.

Okay, what was in the box? It resembled a jewelry box on Ray’s scale, maybe what you’d put a wedding ring in, but there was no giant ring there. Oh. It was full of the magic bracelets.

She reached in and took one, then looked up with a half-smile. “You’re about to put me in that bowl, aren’t you?”

“No. But I do want you to take off your clothes.” The coyote scooped out a big sphere of the pale tan ice cream, which smelled strongly of cinnamon, cream and vanilla. “In part because we wouldn’t want them to get messy, but mostly because you’ve got a knockout little body.” She added another scoop.

Kendall flushed. She did think she looked nice, but staring up at the coyote, she felt awkward and frumpy. “Th-thank you.” She slipped on the bracelet, watching it brighten into a soft glow, and pulled off her own jeans and T-shirt. She hadn’t chosen her bra and panties to look especially sexy. Did she actually have a pair that looked especially sexy?

“All off.” Ray was resting her elbows on the counter, propping her head up to watch.

“Well, how’s that fair? You get to keep some of your clothes on.”

“Maybe when you’re the giant, you’ll get to set the rules. Under my rules, my ringtail takes all her clothes off when I tell her to.”

Her ringtail? That was—was—

Dammit to hell, it was a turn-on, that’s what it was. She unclasped her bra, letting it fall to the floor—counter-top—and slid off her panties. Then she put her hands on her hips, looking up.

“Very nice.” The coyote straightened up. “Now, where is it…” She opened a drawer under the counter, closed it, opened another one. “Ah, there it is.” She pulled out another, positively tiny box, holding it between her thumb and forefinger. Setting it down in front of Kendall, she said, “Get out your spoon.”

She leaned over and opened it. Oh, a silverware chest. Stainless steel flatware, in this case, and not much of it—but enough for the coyote to have a few small guests over. A few small garnishes, ha ha. Clearing her throat, she picked out a spoon and looked up again.

“Great.” The coyote picked up her own spoon. “Now dig in. I think there’s enough to share.”

“Ha ha.” Dig in? How? The bowl’s sides were almost as tall as she was. She couldn’t reach the ice cream without ohhhhh. She’s not going to drop me in the bowl, she’s trying to get me to climb into the bowl on my own.

And dammit, it’s totally going to work.

Taking a deep breath, Kendall put her hands on the rim of the bowl, then kicked off and pulled herself up in the same motion, vaulting over with the grace of a gymnast. The dignity she managed to bring to the moment lasted for exactly as long as it took her paws to hit the curved inside of the bowl, throwing her off balance. All at once she slid headfirst right into the ice cream.

Yelping, she pulled back, shaking off, but she found herself slipping back against the frozen cream no matter what position she took. Painstakingly carefully, she managed to stand, pressing her free hand against—and quickly into—the dessert for balance. It had taken her all of five seconds to get about two-thirds of her body covered with melting cinnamon ice cream. It was at least as cold as the drink Ray had dropped her in that first night they’d met. Just as that night, the temperature had instantly made all her nerves—and both nipples—come to attention.

“If I’d known you were going to use your hands, I wouldn’t have bothered to give you the spoon.” Ray sounded gleeful.

“I held onto it!” Kendall said triumphantly, holding the spoon over her head. “But at this point, it does seem a little superfluous, doesn’t it?”

“Toss it out if you want.” The coyote took a spoonful of ice cream from the other side, lifting it up to her muzzle and making a clearly deliberate show of eating it. “Mmm.”

Kendall watched, just like she knew Ray knew she would, then tossed the spoon out of the bowl. She heard it clatter onto the counter.

Then she turned back to the wall of ice cream in front of her, and scooped out a cone’s worth with one hand, taking a lick, followed by a bite. “Oh. This is really good.”

“Thank you.” Ray took another spoonful herself.

After a moment’s hesitation, Kendall took another bite, this one directly from the mountain of ice cream in front of her. Doing that felt intensely decadent, somehow. “Mmm.” She licked her lips, looking up at the coyote. “Didn’t you say you’d made a caramel sauce?”

“Why, yes. Yes, I did.”

Kendall’s ears skewed at Ray’s tone. She didn’t get a chance to say anything else before a dark tan river of warm caramel poured down over the ice cream, starting with her. She shrieked reflexively.

“Ray!” she spluttered. The caramel sauce streamed into her mouth, making her splutter more, then her eyes went wide. She’d had caramel before, had some that made her think oh, that’s good, but this was another level entirely. Boozy, rich, creamy, sweet but not too sweet. And boozy. She’d thought that already, right? But this wasn’t hint of rum, it was hide this from the children.

The coyote’s muzzle lowered. “That was a very intriguing moan for someone who’s just had dessert sauce poured over them,” she murmured.

Kendall wiped sauce away from her eyes, licking her hands…well, not clean, but maybe slightly less messy. “I finally understand what people mean when they say food can be better than sex.”

“Wow.” Ray laughed, sounding a little embarrassed. “So you don’t think it’s too much rum?”

“No. I mean, I’m probably going to be surprisingly drunk for someone who’s only having ice cream, but it’s fucking amazing.”

“It’s an excellent rum, aged in sherry and bourbon barrels. The rest of it’s just caramel, but with high-quality butter and a touch of turbinado sugar.” The coyote took one more big spoonful of the ice cream, this time getting the sauce, too. “Oh, shit, that is good.” She took another big bite, this time wincing. “Oh, ow. Brain freeze. Ow.”

Kendall giggled, licking sauce and ice cream together from the dessert still towering over her. “Yeah, well, I’m having an everything freeze, so you get limited sympathy.”

The coyote swallowed, taking a deep breath, and nudged the ringtail with the spoon. “I’m trying to eat ice cream sexily here. Don’t make it difficult.”

“Eat ice cream sexily, huh? Like this?” She put her hands against the ice cream and ran her tongue over the sauce and cream, pulling it down her throat with a slow lick. What has gotten into you, self, you are usually way too shy. You are not usually standing nude covered in caramel and ice cream, either, though, so, there’s that.

Ray watched her with gratifyingly rapt attention. “Yes. Like that.” The coyote gathered another spoonful, lifting it up to her muzzle. This time she licked it between her lips slowly, turning the spoon upside-down, somehow managing not to lose a drop except for a few bits of caramel along her lip. She tilted her head back, eyes closed, and swallowed visibly and audibly, letting out a soft moan. “Or like that.”

I am now weirdly jealous of that ice cream. “Okay, you made that sexy,” she said, voice hoarse. “You have a little…caramel…” She pointed at her muzzle, at the spot where the drip was on Ray.

“Why don’t you get it.” The coyote slid her spoon under the ringtail, knocking her legs out from beneath her.

“Heyyiiii—” Before she could react, the spoon lifted into the air. She shifted, awkwardly, managing to sit up and grip the sides of the spoon. As small as she was relative to the coyote, she was still considerably bigger than the utensil’s “seat.”

Ray held the spoon right below her muzzle. Kendall braced her hands against the coyote’s lips, kneeling in the spoon, and hungrily licked away the caramel, her breathing getting faster. “That is…really good…”

“Only the best ingredients in my desserts,” the coyote whispered. Oh, the giantess’s breathing was getting faster, too. Oh.

Kendall licked along Ray’s lower lip now, tasting rum and caramel and cinnamon and coyote. “Free-range and organic?”

Ray lifted the spoon and the ringtail up, and opened her mouth wide, wide, wide in the way only wild, beautiful canines can.

Kendall’s breath caught, and she clung to the spoon, staring ahead at the gleaming fangs and dark throat.

The coyote’s jaws closed quickly, hungrily, her lips hitting the handle of the spoon behind the ringtail. Kendall squeaked, all at once plunged into blackness, surrounded by the sauna heat of Ray’s mouth, her head against the coyote’s palate, ears brushing the back of her upper teeth.

Slowly, the spoon slid backward, out between the coyote’s teeth and lips, leaving the ringtail sprawled on her back on the canine’s tongue. She didn’t have enough time to catch her breath before everything shifted, sliding around her wetly, tongue under her then over her then in front of her, between her legs, pressing her against the back of Ray’s teeth, a massive, strong muscle holding her in place by pressing right…against…her…

Kendall whined. Oh wow.

Everything shifted again, lurching side to side—the coyote’s quick pawsteps came not as sounds but as vibrations. “Down” was below her, then more in front of her, gravity pulling her against Ray’s tongue.

Wham! Her world jolted violently, knocking the breath out of her. A reflexive squeak came out as a voiceless gasp. What the hell? The coyote had moved, she guessed, hurried out of the kitchen, and…and what? Stretched out on her couch to enjoy her ringtail? (Thinking her ringtail made her squirm again, and squirming right here, right now made her moan.) “Down” had definitely shifted, though: she could tell the coyote’s muzzle had moved perpendicular to the floor. She was lying on the sofa, wasn’t she? If Ray stopped putting pressure on Kendall with her tongue, she’d slide right toward the coyote’s throat.

Right then, though, that wasn’t the ringtail’s concern. The pressure from the tongue was far from letting up, instead increasing in the most—inventive ways. A curl and a pull between her legs. A lick that dragged her along the roof of the coyote’s mouth. A strong, slurping suck pulling the flavors of ice cream, caramel, and arousal out of her. She whined, sliding helplessly back and forth, now soaked with both the dessert and the coyote’s saliva. She clenched with arms and legs, breath coming in quicker gasps. Her vision had adjusted as well as it could to the near-complete darkness, but now everything had become a dim blur of tongue and teeth and liquid.

Ray let out her own whine, a sound that might have been soft from outside, but trapped in her mouth, against her tongue, Kendall felt it, a deafening rush all around her. Ray’s turned on, too, I’m making her whine, too. She giggled madly, and tried to kiss—well, whatever was in front of her. Tongue. Palate. Fang (Three Lords those teeth are so big).

The whine became a moan, the enveloping breath of the giantess speeding up, and Ray swallowed hard, pulling Kendall toward her throat as sugary slick wetness rushed past her down the throat ahead. Shoving Kendall against the back of her front teeth again, she thrust her tongue tip between the ringtail’s legs.

That earned another wheezing gasp from Kendall. But the sensations were—mmff—

Kendall twisted around, still held in place, trying to hold the tongue in return, nuzzle it. Thrust against it. Fuck it.

Both of them started panting. Both thrusts, of massive tongue and tiny ringtail, grew more frenzied.

Oh, Three Lords, am I going to be able to make a giantess come from inside her mouth before she—before she—ohhhh—

Kendall gasp-squealed, spasming. She spluttered, heaving for breath as she climaxed, still pumping her hips as the pressure all around her increased, everything became wetter, tighter, blacker, her ears popped—

Holy shit she just swallowed me

The realization sent her into a surge of panic—and another spasm. Erotic overload fought with the sensation of being crushed from all sides as she slid down the coyote’s gullet.

With a final, uncomfortably tight shove she popped free for a split second, then splashed into thick muck. No light at all. The scent was mostly the cinnamon and caramel of dessert, but an acrid undertone was rising, and the muck stung.

The sounds of ominous gurgling didn’t quite drown out a series of quick, breathy coyote yelps.

I got her too!

Yes, go you, you…about-to-be-digested dessert topping. Um. Was there a way to make this painless, while she still rode on adrenaline?

She splashed around, then plunged herself into the muck.

All her nerves lit up. Oh that may have been a bad idea—

Everything cut off. Kendall had the indescribable sensation of having no sensation at all for—how could she even tell how long it was? Was there even a here to be in?

Light returned, near all at once, and she squeezed her eyes shut reflexively. Gaah. What now? She was somewhere soft and warm. And somewhere…gently moving up and down? Breathing hard. She was still wet, sticky with coyote spit and maybe traces of residual ice cream and dessert. Nothing hurt now, though.

It wasn’t just her breathing hard. She opened her eyes, first to a squint, then fully, blinking. And the scent was…

She lay across Ray’s stomach—the furry outside of it—staring up past those annoyingly perfect breasts toward her muzzle. The coyote remained stretched out on her back, head lolled, panting. One arm lay up against the sofa’s back; the other arm rested by the ringtail. Kendall turned her head to follow it down to the hand shoved into those sexy black panties.

Yes, the scent was that. Kendall grinned stupidly.

“Wow.” Ray pet Kendall with two fingers of her other hand.

“I think I have to take back the part about the dessert being better than sex now.”

“Not as good as being dessert, huh?”

“Depending on whose dessert I’m being.” She propped her head up on her arms, smiling up toward the giantess’s muzzle.

Ray smiled down, taking a deep breath. “You’re a great dessert.”

“Thanks, as crazy a compliment as that is. So…does eating people usually, uh.” She looked behind her pointedly, then back up at Ray’s face. “Have that effect on you?”

“No. Neither does stepping on people. I mean, they both can be, and I hope I’ve gotten good at making it sexy for my ‘victims,’ too.” She made air quotes as she said victims. Then she closed her fingers around Kendall and lifted her into the air, holding the soggy ringtail over her head and gazing up. “But doing… things… to you does things to me. Why is that?”

“Look, I’m still trying to figure out my reactions to you.” She smiled weakly. “But I’m absolutely thrilled I turn you on, too.”

The coyote moved to sit up. “Not worried I’m just going to keep you as my sex toy, huh?” She set the ringtail down on her thigh.

“Give me a few minutes to recover before more teasing like that.”

Ray smiled down, petting her with a finger again. “Are you sure I’m teasing?”

“Mmm.” She nuzzled the finger. “I’m sure you wouldn’t do it without my permission.”

“Oh, are you.”

“I am.” She rested her still-wet arms against the finger and looked up. “Now, you might be able to talk me into giving you permission to do things to me without permission.”

“You’d need a more permanent version of that bracelet if I had that permission, little ringtail.” She touched Kendall’s throat with the tip of a huge claw, and Kendall’s breath caught. “Maybe a collar.”

Kendall swallowed, but smiled impishly. “No collar talk before the third date.”

Ray raised her brows, then slowly returned the smile. She lifted Kendall back up to her muzzle for a kiss.