The city of New Damascus had long been seen the world over as the golden standard of a mixed-size society—a place where Lilliputians, Gulliverians, and Brobdingnagians alike lived together in peace and prosperity and the rights of all were equally respected. That was largely true, but the reality was a far cry from the romantic notions of people who had never visited the city.
It wasn't as if they were all living literally side-by side, the Lillis mingling with the Gs and both of them with the Brobs. Rather, people mostly kept to their own kind, in their own districts, and hardly interacted with or even acknowledged their differently-sized peers unless their job required it. To the larger folk, the smaller were cute little curiosities, and to the smaller, the larger were clumsy if well-meaning oafs. Most people felt there was little to be gained from interacting with anyone outside their own kind.
Was that really the ideal of a mixed-size society? Some integrationists thought so; others vehemently disagreed. Whatever the case, the New Damascenes themselves were perfectly content with the arrangement. And, while peaceful segregation was the norm in the city, plenty of its people held the ideal of a more closely integrated society, and strove to make that dream a reality through more integrationist programs and institutions than existed anywhere else on Earth.
The most famous of these institutions was Gulliver High, an iconic landmark to the city's Lilliputians and Gulliverians, and to a lesser extent its Brobdingnagians. The school building stood right at the meeting point between the B, G, and L districts, and was visible from almost everywhere in the latter two though it was only one story tall.
No other mixed-size school was as well appraised by integrationists world-wide. Where all other schools only mixed Lillis and Gs, or Gs and Brobs, Gulliver High had from the start been made to accommodate students and teachers of every size.
There were three “layers” to the school, one for each race, partly separate from each other but sharing many points of contact. The Brobdingnagian facilities were the most standard; aside from the scale, there would be nothing strange about them to students of any race. Outside of the hallways, though, almost every room in the building featured two indentations in the walls at about chest level, usually opposite the entrance, each one hosting a smaller version of that same room—one scaled for Lilliputians and one for Gulliverians—which were themselves connected in the same way.
With this arrangement, students of every size could all take part in the same classes from the comfort of a facility scaled to their respective needs. At the same time, L and G students could also choose to take their classes on the desk of some larger classmate.
This was all in accordance with the founders' philosophy of giving the students ample opportunities to interact with their differently-sized peers while also giving them the freedom to decide when and whether to do so. Any of them could choose to spend the entire year in the same willing segregation that characterized daily life in the city. Not that anyone did choose to—those who preferred living like that would simply go to some other school instead—but the option was there.
Nor did the implementation of that philosophy end there. Take the problem of transportation, for instance. With the school necessarily scaled to accommodate Brobdingnagians, it would have taken a long time for the smaller students to walk by themselves from room to room. Sure they could always be carried by their larger classmates, but the founders didn't want anyone to be forced into carrying or being carried by others, so two big subway-like networks had been built into the walls, one for each of the smaller races, so they could get around in full independence from their larger peers.
All this the young Lilliputians now visiting the school—prospective students of the famed institution—saw as they were led around their kind's facilities on this quiet Saturday morning. Most of them had learned all about it on the school's website, but the sophistication of the subway lines and the sheer scale of the Brobdingnagian facilities was so much more impressive in person than could be conveyed through words or pictures.
Just as impressive was the thought and effort that put into ensuring the safety and comfort of all the students in whatever situation may arise. Suppose, for instance, that a Lilliputian ended up on the floor of the Brob facilities. With the extreme size difference between the two races, the Lillis could easily pass unseen by the Brobs and be stepped on by accident. But to ensure their safety in the case of such an event, the floors here had all been built with channels big enough for a Lilliputian to stand inside and be safe from careless footfalls, and which also guided them towards panels from which they could call the school faculty for help.
Such safety measures were very reassuring to the young students. Though they were all interested in inter-size relations—everyone was who had any interest in attending the school—whenever they had thought about studying here there had always been that note of wariness, ever present in most Lillis whenever the larger races were involved, making them question if it was really a good idea.
Even now, when much of their fear had been addressed, a little bit of reservation remained. Of course, the school had understood this from the start, so all its tours were capped off with a pair of exercises—a way for everyone to find out whether they would be comfortable joining the school.
Firstly, at the tour's end, the kids were given the chance to meet a Gulliverian in person—one of the school's teachers. Of course they all accepted. Some of them had already met Gulliverians before, and those who hadn't had long been wanting to; there could hardly be a better opportunity for them than this.
Their guide, a Lilliputian teacher by the name of Mr. Baker, led them all into one of the classrooms, where the Gulliverian teacher—his wife, Mrs. Baker—was already waiting for them in the G-section of the room. Standing in the L-section, the young students were roughly level with her chest, which made their first impressions of her rather less intimidating than if they been on the same floor as her. Of course, she was still very impressive—how could it be otherwise? At 30 times their kind's scale, she stood some 170 L-feet tall, head and shoulders above any of the buildings the kids lived in. But while they felt a bit wary around her at first, she proved so gentle and affable that, when she asked if any of them would like to be carried, something none of them had ever experienced before, no one refused.
She offered them her hand, laying it flat on the floor of their section. While there was enough room on it for six or more of the Lilliputians to sit, she instructed them to only come three at a time. Then she lifted her hand, put the other one beneath to steady it, and pulled them closer before making a lap around the room.
Her hands were so steady and she had such a confident demeanor that, once the kids got over their initial nerves, none of them ever felt in danger of falling.
Completing the lap, Mrs. Baker returned her passengers to the Lilliputian section and continued with the next few students, until all of them had had the chance to ride her hands. After that experience, the kids were all a bit more confident about joining Gulliver High, but there was still one big concern left, one which the final part of the tour would give them the chance to address.
Finally, to close things off, the kids were all given the chance to meet a Brobdingnagian.
Here even those who had met Gulliverians before froze up a little at the offer. Gs were one thing—though still giants compared to the Lilliputians, they were close enough in size that communication and safe interaction wasn't too difficult. But Brobs were something else entirely. Where Gs were thirty times a Lilliputian's size, Brobs were a whopping nine hundred times their scale. Even the youngest Brobdingnagians were over a thousand L-feet tall, and here at this school they weren't likely to meet one that was any less than four thousand L-feet.
Brobs and Lillis really did live in two different worlds. Unaided communication was near impossible—Lillis were too small for a Brob to hear unless they were practically in their ears. Worse, it was easy enough for a Brob to not see a Lilliputian even when their eyes passed right over one. They weren't mean to Lilliputians, or at least the ones here at New Damascus weren't, but even well-intentioned ones could all too easily hurt a Lilli.
Sure, all the young students had seen Brobs at a distance before—there was a mile-long stretch of land separating their two districts, but even from that distance it wasn't exactly easy, or even possible, for anyone who wasn't blind to ignore all those mile-tall giants right on the other side of it. Yet seeing one and being seen by one were two very different things, and they didn't relish the thought of finding themselves the any Brob's attention.
Of course, the teachers assured them that everything would be fine. Alice, they said, was one of the institution's oldest students, a twelfth grader with a passion for integrationism and a long-time ambassador to the school's G and L students. She had taken part in many a meeting like this before, and received extensive training on how to handle Lillis.
It all sounded well and good, but even so the young students couldn't help being nervous about the whole thing. Many of them would have refused the meeting had any of the others been the first to do so, but none of them wanted to be the odd one out, so they all resigned themselves to it. At least it wasn't like they had to let her hold them or anything.
Pressing a button on his earpiece microphone—standard issue for all the school's Lilliputian students and faculty—Mr. Baker called Alice inside. The kids' eyes were all drawn across the vast Brobdingnagian section of the room and over to the gigantic door by the turning of its doorknob. The door was pushed open a crack, and a red-headed young woman with an earpiece of her own poked her head inside. The young Lilliputians' breath caught in their throats.
Alice waved to everyone. “Hi there!”
“Hello, Alice! Come in, the kids are all waiting for you!” Mr. Baker said cheerfully.
Alice slipped inside and closed the door behind her. From the first measured step she took, the kids were stunned by her size, which seemed to grow bigger the closer she got to them.
Even if they had each been carried by Gulliverians a hundred times over, it could never have prepared them for the sheer, overwhelming presence that a Brobdingnagian projected simply by existing in the same room as them. For all that their people prided themselves—rightly or not—on being the smartest of the races, standing there at Alice's approach they were no more thoughtful than a deer in headlights; all they could do was stare dumbfounded at her titanic form and shuffle back as if that would help them avoid notice. By the time she stopped a single stride away, their backs were nearly to the wall.
Alice leaned forward, beaming at students and teachers alike. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Baker! Is this everyone?” she asked.
“Yep, everyone! Not a single student refused to meet you today!”
“Really? There are more and more of them each year!” Alice's eyes turned almost imperceptibly from the teacher to take in the group. The students shifted uneasily. “Hi, everyone! I'm Alice; pleased to meet you! I'm so glad all of you decided to stay and see me. I know how scary it can be for Lillis to meet a Brob for the first time. I hope I can make a good impression on behalf of all Brob students at Gulliver High!” Despite the intensity of her voice, there was a soft and gentle quality to it that helped ease the young Lilliputians' fear. “Would you mind telling me your names?”
Mr. Baker handed his earpiece to one of the students, telling her to speak into it. She gave her name so Alice could greet her personally, then handed the earpiece over to her companion, each of them introducing themselves to her and being greeted in return. By the time they finished, they felt she wasn't nearly as intimidating as before. “That's everyone,” Mr. Baker confirmed once he had his earpiece back.
“Thank you, kids. I really am so happy I could meet you all! Now, you already had Mrs. Baker carry some of you, right? Oh, she carried all of you? That's wonderful! Anyway, if you're okay with it, I'd like to carry you too. You don't have to agree to it, of course—I know it's a big step to take when you've barely met me. It's all so you can get comfortable with our kind for if and when you come to study here, but Lilliputian students who don't take the ride end up adjusting to us within the first semester, so don't think refusing means you can't ever come here or anything like that; it's totally up to you!”
Alice wanted the kids to feel free to refuse the offer, and she succeeded in it. But her kind tone so comforted them, and her passion was so infectious, that they were all willing to go along with her. Oh, they were still a bit nervous, but no more so than they'd been with Mrs. Baker a little while ago. So when Alice placed her finger right outside their section of the room, they came forward one by one and jumped onto the light pink surface.
Whereas Mrs. Baker's hands put together could have only safely held half their group or so, and even then only if they huddled together, Alice's fingertip alone was more than big enough to comfortably hold them all at once at more than forty feet wide and at least sixty long. The kids crawled along its surface, over the grooves and ridges that made up her fingerprint, until they were all sitting near the middle. Then, once they had motioned, at Alice's inquiry, that they were ready to go, she pulled her finger back from the wall and lowered it on her palm, telling them to climb off. They did and, once she moved her finger away, looked around at the awesome scale of the Brobdingnagian hand. Alice's palm alone stretched two hundred feet wide and as many long; together with her fingers, her hand was big enough to hold an entire Lilliputian block. To their eyes it seemed more land than hand—and how uneven it was! Here in the middle of her palm they were at the bottom of a pronounced depression, the borders of which were all at least the same height as any of the kids. In parts they even looked like miniature hills. They could see nothing at all beyond the Brob girl's hand—nothing save her face.
“Are you okay down there? If you like you can climb up here so you can look around the room while I'm carrying you,” Alice said, motioning to the most elevated part of her palm near the base of her thumb. The kids did as she suggested, striding across the ridges and grooves and other wrinkles of her palm skin, taking them one or two at a time depending on how daring they were, their hearts beating rapidly in their chests the whole time. It wasn't really fear they felt, though none could say what it was exactly. There was a strange sense of wariness and protection all mixed up with each other that they couldn't put a name to. If pressed, the most they could say was that they felt that completely at the Brobdingnagian's mercy and yet perfectly safe in her care. That feeling remained even after they had sat down on the gentle slopes of her palmscape and were being carried around the room.
Despite Alice's size, the ride was only a little less smooth than the one Mrs. Baker had given them; her hand was so steady even without the other one lending its support, and she walked so calmly, that they could barely even feel the impact of her feet far below.
At the end of their ride, and as they climbed back on her fingertip and then hopped back to the Lilliputian section, the young students felt nothing but awe at the experience. “Well, there you go. I hope the ride wasn't too scary for you,” Alice smiled. “I don't know if Mr. Baker told you all, but I'll be graduating soon so this is probably one of the last times I'll get to meet Lilliputians here. I won't be around next year to greet you if you choose to study here, but still, I hope this meeting encouraged some of you to join. Even if you don't, I hope you'll help keep the dream of integration alive. The world could use more people of every size who are willing to understand each other. Oh, but don't let me keep you all too long! Have a good trip back home, kids! I wish all of you the best, no matter what you choose to do with your lives!”
Giantess World
Story Notes:
Some of you might remember, a while ago I wrote a little story by the name of Gulliver High. A very short story and, looking back on it, not a very good one. I wrote it at a time when I was trying to force myself to write more so I pounced on any bit of inspiration I got. It was supposed to be a series at first but I wasn't too happy with the single chapter I wrote for it, which kinda put me off from writing any more. An anonymous commissioner felt there was potential in the concept, though, and commissioned this as what they intend to be the first in a series of stories set in this mixed-size school setting. Comparing it to that older chapter, I'm immensely pleased with how much better it turned out. Hope you all enjoy it as much as I did, and hope you can look forward to seeing more of this setting in the future.