“So what would you like to do?” the giant girl asked.

He was still taken a little aback by this unexpected good fortune. Penny was right in front of him, like an enormous, living, breathing diorama. It still didn’t feel real, which could well be, in part, due to the vividness of his most recent night terrors.

She waited patiently, smiling a little at his momentarily lost, blank expression.

“…I could get you a cup of tea,” he suggested politely, snapping back to the now.

“We could watch something, or… ummmm…” he said, pressing his lips together nervously.

He drew the hum out a bit to buy time as he was a bit stuck for suggestions. Fundamentally, he just wanted to spend time with her. He hadn’t even considered what socially-acceptable activities that might ultimately incorporate. His fuzzy brain slowly gravitated towards the three banknotes he still clasped in his palm.

“…err… well, honestly, I probably need to go get new glasses ordered, at the supermarket out Brookfield way…” he explained hesitantly, conscious that this might not be exactly what she had had in mind, or what he actually *wanted* to do.

“The ALDA…? Oh yeah… I know where that is,” she said brightly, before furrowing her brow slightly.

“That’s a bit of walk though, isn’t it?”

“It’s maybe three miles,” he explained, “Not that far really.”

“Oh sorry, I didn’t mean…” she blurted out suddenly, a look of regret immediately flashing across her face.

“…didn’t mean what?” he asked, confused.

“I didn’t think it was too far for you to walk, I didn’t mean it like that,” she backpedalled hurriedly.

“No no, I didn’t think you meant that at all,” he said, still a little perplexed, trying to reassure the apologetic giantess in front of him.

She looked relieved, a little red, even.

“Are you ok to come with me, it’s just… important to try and get my glasses replaced ASAP. I know it’s not very exciting…” he said.

“Yes, yes, of course,” she replied, nodding and making her long sandy-brown hair ripple in waves.

“Thank you, I’ll be really quick,” he said appreciatively, “Just gotta get dressed in something… warmer.”

He scurried straight to his room, anxious not to delay things, closing the door behind him quickly.

Puffing his cheeks out, he let himself breathe, and leant back against the wooden door momentarily. His heart was fluttering because Penny was nearby; he could barely control his excitement at being on the cusp of serious time spent in her company.

Taking a moment to compose himself, he hurriedly adorned himself in some comfortable, fairly nondescript clothes. He didn’t want to draw too much attention to himself, though ordinarily a Beta kid was next-to invisible anyway, at least to Alpha eyes.

Pulling on a pair of old trainers, he grabbed his phone, wallet and watch, and after consulting the window to gauge the conditions outside, a woolly hat and a blue waterproof jacket.

Reappearing from his room, Penny was still sat laid out where he had left her, dwarfing the familiarity of his home in a way that continued to feel vaguely unreal.

She turned her head to look at him, “Ready to go?” she asked in that uplifting voice of hers.

It was grey and blustery outside, the kind of day where even the grandest or handsomest house, tree or vista seems bleak, cold and uninviting.

Having allowed Penny to extricate herself from the doorway, averting his gaze like a perfect gentleman, Jack locked the door and started walking beside the enormous girl.

Raindrops would fall onto his face and into his eyes each time he peered up at her, but he simply blinked them away; each one a tiny reminder that he was really walking with her. He wasn’t paying complete attention to where he was going, occasionally lowering his head down to double-check the route, before angling it skywards once more.

She was, again, very mindful of walking at the same pace as him. He was trying his best to keep things brisk, but her legs were so long that she seemed to be dawdling even as he tried to open up what to him felt like a decent stride and pace.

As they walked, Penny went into a bit more detail about why her parents had been difficult the day before. She explained she’d been trying to finalise her university choices, the ‘big plan’ for the future, with them. She said that it felt like they were trying to pressurise her towards somewhere close to home, and attempting to dissuade her from pursuing a career in drama or the arts, perhaps concerned about the way she might be treated, or judged, or her lack of potential earnings.

Jack lent a sympathetic ear, before he too talked about his choices with an added year’s worth of experience, which Penny seemed to take great interest in. He explained how he had applied to several universities in cities in the north-east, an area where he knew Alpha-Beta co-habitation was much more prevalent and accepted due to the large areas of historical i.e. Beta-scale buildings.

He was reluctant to emphasise how enamoured he was with the idea of ultimately finding a place where he could feel at home, perhaps for fear of going down a dark and depressing hole or in any way offending her. It was essentially a fundamental rejection of his current predicament; a pipe-dream of moving somewhere with far more Betas, other Beta students, Beta girls… He could envisage a brighter future somewhere like that, but the reality was that the requirements he had been set for acceptance were high; grades he was struggling to achieve. He didn’t want to admit it, but he could already feel it slipping away from his fingers, and with the latest developments closer to home, the prospect of not making it ‘out’ filled him with real terror…

The keen-witted Alpha girl was, as always, unbounded in her positivity, however - her eyes lighting up as he mentioned some cosmopolitan, openly liberal cities as potential destinations. She explained how there were many, many places – theatres, museums, old buildings, that she was desperate to visit, to experience some ‘proper’ culture that their nondescript provincial city was sorely lacking in.

They arrived at the ALDA after about 45 minutes of fairly quick walking, Jack could feel a bit of lactic burn in his legs after keeping up a consistently rapid pace. Penny, of course, looked like she had barely walked anywhere at all, despite already getting to his house from school in addition to their own journey.

Making his way to the optical department of the supermarket, Jack spied the Beta counter, and walked over to it a little out of breath. He tried not to lean against it too obviously but he was internally quite taken aback at walking at such pace. Penny lingered nearby, inspecting the eyewear in the adjacent Alpha section, trying out a couple of frames and smiling over at him occasionally to make sure he was ok without resorting to looming over him like an overbearing protector.

After a short while, he was surprised to see a Beta lady emerge from the smaller of two doorways and spy him waiting patiently. Each time he’d been here in the past, it had been a male Beta optician who had been on duty.

“I’ll be right with you,” she said brightly, holding a couple of pairs of frames in her hand, and moved over to some mirrored cabinets to return them to their homes.

She looked like she might have Indian heritage, maybe mid-late 20s or early 30s, shorter than him, but not by a lot, maybe 5’5” or 5’6”. She was wearing fairly typical supermarket eye doctor attire, a look that was meant to come across as professional, but was undone by hard-to-miss swathes of ALDA-brand yellow. As she walked over to the counter, and more into focus, he could see her straight, black hair was fastened up out of her face, and she wore a pair of startlingly red rectangular glasses, which clashed quite noticeably with her uniform.

It was not a complete rarity to see a female Beta, of course. He had met Delon’s girlfriend on a couple of occasions, and growing up he had seen his fair share of other adults, his parents’ friends and relatives, but in recent years, apart from a few situations out shopping with his parents, almost all of these interactions involved women noticeably older. Precious few young women were destined to remain Beta, and even if they did, they tended not to stay in the area, so, all things considered, this woman was perhaps one of the youngest he had seen for a couple of years.

“So what can I do for you today, sir?” she asked, giving him a polite smile. He could detect the faintest trace of an accent, but struggled to place it.

“Hi… I’d like to order some replacement glasses, I think you… um… you should have my prescription?” he ventured falteringly. Acting like a grown-up was something he was never much good at.

“And what is your name, please?” she replied, hovering her hands over a computer terminal that had seen better days.

“Jack Crawford,” he stated, “Cee Arr…”

“…Crawford,” she dictated back, interrupting him but without intending to be rude, “No problem, sir. And this would be the prescription from last October?”

“Yes… please,” he hesitated, “I’m slightly short-sighted, in my prescription…” he added for confirmation.

 “Yep, that’s great, and do you want the same basic frames as last time?” she asked.

“If that’s possible, yes,” he replied.

“Ok, perfect, just give me a moment,” she said, raising her eyes to look at him briefly, before returning her attention to the keyboard.

He could see her name tag, which read ‘ANITA’ in all caps. Looking over at the other section, he could see Penny absent-mindedly trying on a pair of glasses in a mirror, but she was too far away from him to make out which style.

“Ok, that comes in at 25 dollars, please. I’ll try and get them made up as quickly as possible; they’ll definitely be ready on Thursday if you want to come by and pick them up - we’re open until 8pm,” she added warmly. That was roughly when he’d expected, though he’d hoped for Wednesday, he’d just have to make do until then.

He unzipped and reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the three notes, realising in the process how scruffy and ill-prepared this looked, but the lady didn’t seem to notice.

He reached out to put the money on the countertop, but as he was about to, she placed her hand out for him to deposit the notes in her grasp. A delicate band of silver around her ring finger signified that this young woman was married. He hesitated - the novelty of touching an unfamiliar Beta woman’s hand, which was noticeably smaller and frailer than his own, was strangely fascinating to him. She looked him in the eye as he hesitated, but her look was friendly and non-judgemental.

He watched her as she used the till, placing the cash into the correct compartment and then removing a 5 to return to him. It just felt odd, perhaps reassuring, to see a Beta not a million miles from his own age doing something mundane, everyday… normal, in this world of giants.

He took the note from her grasp and stuffed it in his pocket, almost zipping it up before he realised she was printing a receipt for him also.

“Bring your receipt with you when you collect,” she instructed him helpfully, making direct eye contact again, “Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

“Err… no, thank you,” he said politely, taking the receipt, conscious of how he was looking into the eyes of this smaller woman whilst still acutely, inescapably aware of the background context of Alphas pushing oversized shopping carts barely ten yards away.

“Well have a great day, sir,” she said, and smiled at him in a way that was a lot more genuine than he’d expected. Her attention turned immediately to an elderly Beta man who had approached the opposite end of the optical department, and she walked over to offer her assistance to him.

Jack made sure the receipt was stowed away safely, and walked back over to where Penny was browsing, traversing the threshold between the dilapidated, old-fashioned retail units they maintained for people his size, to the towering, metallic racks that contained the Alpha eyewear.

“What do you think?” she asked, noticing him as he approached and stooping to afford him a good view of a pair of gaudy, jewel encrusted sunglasses she was sporting. He couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not, but the delicate smile that formed rapidly convinced him it was the latter.

“Very fetching,” he complimented, “A really… err… strong look,” he added.

“I know, right?” she agreed, smirking, bringing her long fingers up to the side of one ear and unhooking the shades from her head.

“Did you manage to get your glasses sorted?” she asked.

“Yeah, I did. I’ll have to come back on Thursday to pick them up, but I’ll figure that out closer to the time,” he replied.

“Oh right, I guess it takes time to fit the lenses,” she noted, replacing the sunglasses back on the rack a few feet above his head.

As she did so, he heard her stomach rumble quite loudly, which took him a bit by surprise.

She looked down at him sheepishly, appearing above-averagely embarrassed that he had noticed.

“Woah, are you hungry?” he asked, perhaps a little rudely.

“Yes, a bit. I haven’t eaten a lot today,” she explained, “I’m a bit of a fussy eater, I don’t really eat. I mean, I don’t really like eating in front of people.”

“I won’t look if you don’t want me to,” he offered semi-seriously, the willowy girl suppressed a nervous smile.

“I bet you think that’s a bit weird, I just… I don’t know…” she said dejectedly, “I’ve never liked eating much.”

Jack didn’t really know what to say, he reached over and gingerly touched the sleeve of her coat to show that he was supportive, but then felt self-conscious about it and retracted his hand.

“I don’t mean to blurt these things out to make it awkward either, I’m sorry, I just feel like I can talk to you,” she said, trying to compose herself better. “It’s better to be honest, at least, I’m being honest with you anyway.”

“You can talk to me about anything,” Jack said quietly, “I don’t think you’re weird at all.”

He wasn’t sure if he heard her, he’d practically whispered it, but the way she looked down at him made it seem like she had. Her eyes were so incredibly intense at times, even from so far above him.

“I’ve still got five bucks, I can buy you something,” he offered, going for his pocket.

“Oh no, I’ve got some money, don’t be silly,” she reassured him, her face brightening up.

She accompanied him to the aisle for ready-to-go food, sandwiches, salads, which was near the tills quite close to the exit.

The Beta-sized products were, as you might expect, located in the lowermost shelving close to the ground. The range of the fare on offer was very limited in comparison to the Alpha food above, each year it felt like the options shrank as demand dwindled. He could remember when the pasta bowls and wraps would each fill a row but nowadays it was all condensed down to a single lowly shelf.

Penny checked out the top few rows of sandwiches far above his field of view as he looked around at his own potential options. He felt a little bit hungry, the walk had given him an appetite, but the strange butterfly sensation of being around her made his stomach feel light and unnatural and it was hard to gauge.

“I might get this, but I won’t manage it all,” Penny said, leaning down to show him a large cheese and salad subway roll she had selected. “If I tear a chunk off, will you eat it?” she asked.

“I can give it a go,” he said graciously, noting that even a quarter of the giant sub was comparatively as large as a couple of Beta ones.

She stood to her full height and headed to the check-out, always mindful of where he was in relation to her, and paid for the sub. She returned the purse and her sandwich to her bag, and explained she’d rather find somewhere to sit and eat nearby, not in the supermarket itself, just to get away from everyone.

Penny said she knew of somewhere nearby that wasn’t far, and they set off immediately, she seemed to be quite motivated to leave and he wasn’t really sure why. He had no love for the supermarket, and being amongst Alphas was dispiriting at the best of times, but he’d assumed if she was hungry she’d just want to eat then and there.

They crossed over the main road, and skirted around the perimeter of a nearby park for a short distance before she veered off towards a thick patch of woodland that wasn’t particularly well-maintained, encouraging him to follow. Weeds and long grass obscured an area that might once have been a small pathway or trail, and as they passed through between the trees it became more difficult for Penny as the thick canopy of branches closed around her tall frame more and more.

“Where are we going, exactly?” Jack asked cautiously. He wasn’t too apprehensive, Penny had never been anything other than kind and gentle towards him, but this was a bit strange; leading him away from civilisation wasn’t a move that put his mind at ease.

“You’ll see - we’re nearly there,” she said encouragingly, crouching down a bit and protecting her face from the spindly, scratchy branches with her long arms as she pushed through. Jack was small and agile enough to avoid most of the foliage, not to mention that Penny was acting a bit like a bulldozer, flattening or snapping a lot of the more prominent obstacles as she kept moving forwards. Not a flattering comparison, he thought, but quite an accurate one.

Very shortly, she emerged into a clear patch where the trees suddenly stopped, and Jack followed her through. Looking around, he was confused, as much as anything, to see what looked like an abandoned Beta school, overgrown and forgotten, seemingly surrounded on all sides by the trees…