Bian High and Low 02

Think Big

Bian pulled her delivery van into the kerb and parked up. According to her satnav, her next parcel was meant for an address just round the corner from here. Thank goodness she was ahead of schedule. The headache that had been her companion all morning was wearing her down and she could do with a couple of minutes just to relax. She undid her seatbelt and attempted to unknit her brow, giving the bridge of her nose a gentle rub. At the same time, she let out an enormous sigh. And began to shrink.

If Bian was aware of this, she didn’t seem alarmed. She was more concerned with neck rolls, even though that neck was rapidly disappearing inside the collar of her uniform polo shirt.

Her legs similarly dwindled away, lifting her battered boots out of the van’s footwell before they fell off the shrinking feet that they had contained. Left first, then right, each dragging a loose sock with it as it clattered to the floor. There was only the vaguest notion of a shape within the deflated clothing, but Bian’s tiny arms were still just about free, poking out of the polo shirt’s short sleeves. She reached up and pulled her collar down, allowing her doll-size head to pop through. She rolled her neck once more, and rubbed her temples, easing out the last stubborn traces of tension. Now a quarter of her original size, her reduction halted and

Bian was left pouting with self-pity. Why had she let herself do this?

Again.

She’d gotten so sloppy with her powers since she’d given up superheroing and the regular training that came with those duties. She’d forget she no longer had a costume that grew and shrank with her and would regularly ruin clothes, bursting buttons and ripping seams by growing to reach something rather than getting up. Last night, after falling asleep on the sofa from a long day of deliveries, she’d half-awoken and headed up to bed and, too tired to get undressed, flopped on her bed, shrunk down to six inches and crawled out of her clothes. She had neglected to return to her normal size and when she woke up in the morning, she had found eight hours of being compressed to tiny proportions had taken its toll.

At the height of her fitness - bowling over ne’er-do-wells while the size of a cricket ball, or smashing a building with a six-storey high shoulder-charge – Bian’s body would snap back to its original size the moment she relaxed her muscles. Now, out-of-condition and out-of-practice, it required a bit more effort to return things to normal. And if she made the mistake of staying one size for too long, her body would start to treat those proportions as the default.

The first thing tiny Bian did upon waking was unclench, hoping – but not entirely expecting - that she would spring back to normal size. When that didn’t happen, she tensed ever-so-slightly and gave a practiced push from her diaphragm, stretching her arms as she felt the familiar sensation of growth. After a minute, guessing she was at her usual length, she stopped and swung her legs off her bed, reassured when they reached the ground neatly. She stood up, stretching again and gave a yawn. Without thinking, she relaxed the rest of her body as she stretched her jaw wide.

Whoosh!

In stark contrast to her gentle growth, Bian shrank in the space of a second, losing her balance and tumbling on to her back. Returned to her miniature size, the carpet was now thick enough to cushion her fall, although her head still received a nasty thwack. She lay there, looking up at her mountainous bed and the unfathomable expanse of the room beyond it.

‘I think I’ll just stay here for today, thank you very much,’ she announced to no-one in particular.

But she didn’t stay there. There were bills to pay and money to be earned to pay those bills.

She rolled over on to her hands and knees and triggered three short, sharp growth spurts:

‘Wake!’

‘Up!’

‘Bian!’

She got to her feet and steadied herself. She still wasn’t her usual size – maybe a foot or so shorter than normal – but this was big enough for her to get ready without having to put in too much effort to maintain her size. Bian headed toward the bathroom.

After breakfast, Bian got dressed. She held up the cargo shorts that were too baggy for her at the moment. She adjusted her underwear for comfort before making the final adjustments to her height. Slowly, carefully, wary of busting another uniform with overeager growth, Bian gave a gentle inward push and felt herself expand. She vowed to visit the gym with every twinge and ache that wracked her growing body. Unable to remember her exact height, she tested the tightness of her uniform for comfort, bending over and stretching, growing and shrinking slightly to fine tune the fit. When she was finally satisfied, she gave a shrug, picked up her keys and headed out the door.

Back in the middle of her delivery rounds, Bian’s short break was over. She groaned at the prospect of the hours to come fighting to keep her body the right size. Grumbling all the while, she adjusted her oversized clothing for the best fit as she prepared to grow into them again. She focussed her attention on the steering wheel of the van and reached out toward it. In response, her arms lengthened, emerging from her polo shirt’s short sleeves, steadily getting closer and closer to the wheel. Trunk, thighs and neck all followed suit, growing under the gentle tension of Bian’s efforts. Soon her hands were on the wheel and her feet on the floor. Another few inches and Bian would be comfortably back in control.

Only those inches refused to come.

‘Oh, come on!’ yelled Bian, banging the steering wheel. She grunted and strained, trying to summon some vestige of her exhausted size-shifting power to add that little bit of height that would make a tough shift go that little bit more easily.

‘I do not need this today!’

But it was no use. Every flex and stretch yielded no result. Bian gave the steering wheel another volley of bangs to vent her frustration before she accepted her fate. She adjusted her seat, tightened her belt and hunched forward into the uncomfortable posture that would be necessary to drive the van at this size.

That did it! It might not be for the most noble of reasons, but from next week she was going back to being a superhero.