[Contains growing and shrinking of a female character]

Hi. I’m Cheri, and I’d like to talk about something real quick. A certain... “quirk” that I have. It doesn’t feel right to call it a curse, but it’s definitely no superpower.

How do I say this... You know how every person has a specific height that stays mostly consistent, only changing somewhat over the course of their lives? Don’t worry, I wouldn’t blame you for taking that for granted, but while most people have a “normal height,” I can’t say the same.

So I’ll be going about my day when suddenly I get this feeling. This tingly feeling. Like when you get chills, but weirder. And then... my body changes size. Like, my proportions and everything stay the same, but my height and mass start to grow or shrink. How much? I never know. When it happens and what size I become is completely random. One moment I’ll be average height, then suddenly I’ll be eight feet tall. I’ll shrink a tiny bit over the next hour or so, then I’ll grow another ten feet. Twenty minutes later, I’m not even a foot tall. I’ll stay like that for the rest of the day until I grow to five feet, then shrink to four as I get ready for bed. I’ll wake up the next morning having grown another three feet... You get the picture.

All of this seems to happen whenever my body feels like it. I’ve tried looking for a pattern in these changes, but no, it’s just random. The only time I can predict it is the sudden tingles I get just seconds before a change, and that’s more of warning really. What I do have are some approximate records of my size changes that I’ve kept over the last year and a half, which I started a few weeks after this first started happening to me which, as far as I know, I got this “ability” for seemingly no reason. I didn’t eat an enchanted fruit or drink a magic potion or anything, I wasn’t injected with some scientifically engineered substance, my body just decided to start doing this.

As for those records, well, the smallest I’ve ever gotten was slightly larger than the diameter of a dime, and that was for about two hours. I’m lucky it wasn’t any longer, because I was stuck on the table with no food in reach. The biggest I’ve ever been was over three times the size of my own house, and I stayed that size for over 14 hours. I ended up having to sleep in a local park. Thankfully, it wasn’t too cold that night. My clothes somehow grow with me, so I didn’t have to worry about that either, but still.

Those sizes are extremes though. Usually I end up at sizes somewhere between that. As for times, the longest I’ve gone without a size change is 8 days, with the shortest being 5 minutes, though I usually change anywhere between 10 minutes and an hours, maybe 5 or more hours when it’s taking its time.

Now, despite the fact I’ve been making this out as a burden, I actually quite like changing size sometimes. When I become tiny, I appreciate seeing things from a unique angle, and same for when I’m giant too. Though if I had to choose between the two, I think I like being small better. My preferred size, however, is actually “normal” size, since I’m actually able to function like a normal person.

Of course, with a power so strange and variable, you’d assume I’d be bound to have some stories with it, and you’d be right. One time, I was at a regular size, at my house, checking my phone, when I start tingling. Immediately, I pay attention to changes in my surroundings to see wether I’d have to run for the table or the door. Everything seemed to be getting bigger, so I chose the table. My go-to spot whenever I shrink, as being on the floor makes me feel vulnerable. I’ve already shrunk to three feet by the time I get to the table. I stand on the chair and, while still shrinking, I hoist myself up onto the table. I’m 12 inches tall now. 6 inches, 3 inches, 2... 2 inches. I was now 2 inches tall. I hoped I’d grow back soon, but then an hour passed. Then two. I hadn’t had supper yet, so I was getting hungry. Luckily, I’d put my phone on the table, so I used that to text my friend, who’s consistently human sized, about my situation. She ended up coming to my house with some takeout and let me have her fries. Obviously, the fries were huge at my size, so I was only able to eat 3/4 of a particularly large fry before deciding I was satiated. A few more hours passed, and I was worrying about having to spend the night on the table, when I tingled again, and thankfully grew just barely big enough to get off the table using the chair as a stepping stool, and later grew to a still small but reasonable height.

On the other hand, I was at school once writing a test in math or something. I was a bit bigger than usual at this point, and my chair was feeling a bit small, so when I started tingling again, I hoped to get a little smaller. Of course not. I started growing slowly but surely. I didn’t want to cause a ruckus running for the door, besides, I already knew I wouldn’t make it outside. I grew until I fell out of my chair, then my head touched the ceiling, then my back as I crouched down, then I stopped. I was pretty much taking up the whole room at this point. My classmates obviously knew about my size changing problem, but it hadn’t been this much of a problem before. I ended up staying that size for half an hour, when I grew even slightly larger, then stayed at that size for the rest of the period. Understandably, our teacher let me rewrite the test the next day, where I then spent the entire time the size of my pencil.

Of course, not always are my size changes a bad thing. Sometimes when I walk to or from school, I’ll grow bigger and have less walking to do, and occasionally when I get some good food, I’ll shrink to a size where I’m still able to fit the food in my mouth, but I’m still small enough to technically be getting extra food. One time, I was even able to find an earring I thought I’d lost by shrinking under the couch. My friends seem to be enamoured by my size changes, though maybe they’d think differently if it happened to them.

So yeah, that’s the deal with my life right now. Sometimes it’s fun, but more often it’s not. I’d get rid of it if I could, but I don’t mind keeping it for now.