Seven feet above the floor, Theo was looking at the area between a girl’s belly button and her rib cage. Toned abs, basically.

“Hey!” he heard her say. He wasn’t ready to look up. This was wild. Something deep and animalistic in his brain was getting nervous.

The toned abs started moving toward him, and Theo’s hind brain started trying to get his attention. It didn’t like him standing there as this huge creature approached him so quickly.

He found himself taking a step back, then a second one, trying to adjust his perspective. Until she had moved toward him, Theo had for a moment started to wonder if maybe this was some elaborate practical joke.

He thought it was a college humor thing, he was being punked. Maybe he didn’t even have female roommates.

Maybe he didn’t even have real housing.

Wow, man. That wasn’t funny, that was fucked up. You can’t do that to a man’s life just for a joke.

Then her bare feet moved across the floor, carrying the towering figure quickly and fluidly toward him. Animatronics didn’t do that.

Her shadow surrounded him, engulfed him. Holograms didn’t cast solid shadows.

Theo was considering the possibility that the most advanced robot in the galaxy stood in front of him. A billion dollar automaton that smelled faintly of cherries and coconut soap. For the sake of a childish prank?

Okay. His theory was not holding up. But what was the option? That there were eleven foot females walking around in the wild here? Wasn’t that even a crazier alternative on Occam’s razor?

She was observing him. She seemed to be intrigued by him, looking at him like he was an interesting animal she saw sitting on a flower.

He dropped his eyes to her bare feet on the floor. He slid his eyes up the sweatpants to the tied string pink string riding low across her hip. That was a few inches above his eye level, a few inches below her belly button.

Then he looked quickly up to the pretty, pleasant face that seemed to hover between him and the ceiling. There had to be well over ten feet of her. She was lean, with light curves to her figure. She had long light brown hair, straight and flat. She looked Asian, or perhaps Pacific Islander equivalent back on Earth.

“Are you Theodore?” Her voice was incongruously high and delicate.

He tried not to stare, but he was flustered and disoriented. He was confused by what he was seeing. The energy in her face, the imperfection and uncertainty in her body language. This was an actual girl.

This was actually… really happening.

Luc had seemed crazy tall to Theo. All the Atlasian guys looked super tall, like the biggest basketball players and tight ends he’d ever seen, machines of power and efficiency. This girl was something slightly different, something beyond “tall.” Something else altogether.

He found himself staring at the belly button half a foot above his head. It was moving in and out as she breathed. He heard a distant voice above him say, “Are you okay?”

Theo shook himself out of it. “Yeah,” he said but the word fell out hard. “I'm Theo. You're Camille?”

She tipped her head back and laughed from way, way above him. And Theo heard something awkward and innocent about her voice. She said, “Cami’s my big sister. I'm just sixteen!” she was blushing. “I'm just visiting is all. Before classes start, because I'm thinking of going here?”

“Oh.” Her voice went up at the end, like it had been a question. He saw it now, that slightly unsure posture. She was extremely pretty, and she suspected she was extremely pretty. But her body language, the way she moved, said she wasn't sure yet.

“Cami is at the concert so she’ll be home later? Roxanne just left Atlasia this morning so it’ll be a couple of days.”

“Sure,” he said, wanting to make small talk, so he wouldn't seem like an idiot. His brain was not cooperating.

“Oh,” she straightened suddenly, and took a quick step toward him. Theo might have jumped when she did. It was a quick, minor adjustment in stance from a human so tall it was to his understanding, not close to possible. She extended her hand. “If you need anything, I'm Gen.” She leaned down.

“Theo,” he smiled up at her, extended his hand in response as she leaned down just a bit more. His hind brain resisted, tried to make Theo move. It had clearly marked this pretty girl as some kind of superior predator.

He felt absolutely tiny, standing there in her long, dark shadow. Tiny like a lost child, unsure of a stranger. Her hand was long, slender, and his fingers only went just over halfway across her palm. She curled just two of her fingers to enclose his.

She didn't quite close it, though. Theo could feel it, this high school age girl being overly gentle. In her mind, it was possible that her passive muscle tension could hurt him.

He smiled up at her, from the darkness she was casting in front of her. He said, “It’s okay, I won't break.”

And she laughed. Her hand relaxed, closed on his just a bit more securely.

It was a bluff, though. Theo kind of understood that he might very well break if pressed. He was acutely aware that he would only be able to remove his hand if she allowed it.

She did. She straightened way up and asked, “Are you hungry or thirsty maybe? It’s a long trip from the spaceport to here.”

Theo shook his head, his mouth and brain still not quite cooperating.

She waited a few moments, and asked “Can I help with your bag?”

“I got it,” he finally said, looking back over his shoulder. He pointed down the hall at a door. “This one isn't that heavy. Is that my room?”

“Yeah, I think so,” she said. She was so tall it was like he was standing in a well. But her voice, as delicate as it was, carried quite nicely. What did the giant surfer boy say? Over nine feet? Gen was much more than a hair over that.

He was walking down the hallway, the ten foot wide hallway, and looked back at her. She was watching him, but turned to go when he looked back at her.

Now Theo wondered about these high, high ceilings and tall, tall doors.

His door was like the front door. A smaller door for the teensy little earth guy who wasn't even a full six feet.

He closed his door and sat there with his back to it. He exhaled loud and long. He hadn’t even ealize he’d been holding his breath.

Holy shit.

The eight footers walking around had been jarring, but he'd met seven footers. Eight footers were known to exist on earth.

Ten plus footers? And female? When did that happen? Where did that even come from in the human genome?

This was going to be distinctly weird. He was already through the looking glass. He just went from a college student of average size and strength to a guy sweet, shy sixteen year old girls are afraid they might break.

He really was wondering about this planet, Atlasia. He'd heard of it only vaguely, through his studies as an engineering student. Their big thing was a manufacturing industry for the larger space vessels. He was on their turf now, and he knew nothing.

It was definitely his own fault.

He went over to his bed, which was about a foot too high, and near ten feet in length. He flopped onto it, and rolled onto his back. The mattress was strange. It was too thick, and too soft, and the most wonderfully luxurious surface he’d ever laid his body on. He stared at the ceiling some twenty feet away, thinking he should call his mother. Then Renny. No, actually, forget Renny. Renny would ask about his roommates.

“They hot? They like that latin heat?” and it would only get more infantile from there. Theo was sober and serious today, he didn’t really want that conversation yet. Even if he didn’t have to explain, Well, Renny, I think they could rip my arms out of the sockets like a wookiee.

That wouldn’t stop Renny anyway. He’d insinuate that just meant wilder sex.

No, Renny, I’m serious. Like twelve feet tall and solid. She’d literally crush me.

And Renny would start singing “My Pony” off key.

Theo felt the bed pulling him into dreamland, and he forced himself up and out of it.

He pulled himself together and walked out into the apartment. The floor was so spacious, it almost felt like a shopping mall.

He looked over to the door Gen was behind. It was mostly closed, but he could see her feet again from his vantage point. They were bopping along with a cormy pop song, the kind sixteen year old girls of all sizes were always into.

He had to go get his bag now, and he wasn’t sure how he’d do it. It was a two hundred pound plus bag with two bad wheels. It felt a little odd to ask a high school girl to help him with it. Would that make a good impression? No, he'd find a way. He'd ask for a hand truck.

Then again, how big would that be?

Theo opened the small inner door of the apartment, and stepped out into the empty hallway. There were faint whispers of increasing activity. Sounds of movement were echoing around, and he saw shadows being cast on frosted windows toward the lobby. Huge, huge shadows, even for these people. The light sources must be really low.

Theo approached the end of his hallway, and turned toward the bigger hallway. He heard two voices, a male and a female.

The cart was still there. Luc was standing a few yards behind it, looking at the ceiling. Luc didn't seem quite as mind-bogglingly huge to him now.

Theo had caught his attention, and the giant turned from the ceiling to him. “Oh. There he is. Is there a problem with your cart?”

“Yeah, two of the wheels locked up. I was coming to figure it out. I might just take a few things at a time-“

Theo felt a slight sense of disorientation for a moment. He thought the room was spinning, then saw no, it was just one wall. The wall was moving behind Luc, up over his shoulder. Then, he realized it was a curtain. No... It was cloth, a huge blanket. shifting past a woman’s thighs.

Luc looked away from Theo back toward the ceiling, and Theo followed his gaze up, past the thighs.

His hind brain out and out panicked this time. This time, seven feet wasn’t even quite as high as her hip. Ten feet was still below her breasts, which were significantly fuller than her high school age sister.

Theo heard his hindbrain pipe up more aggresively, saying, “you gotta be fucking kidding me.” Theo was already taking a step back, still disoriented, and the floor came up and slammed up under his ass.

“Whoa, hey,” Luc shouted, quickly moving to check on him. He dropped to a knee.

“No, I’m okay, just… slipped,” Theo said, waving him away. Luc shrugged and stood back up.

Theo's eyes kept moving higher until he found Camille’s face and shoulder length blonde hair. She smiled, and put her huge hand over her mouth to cover her amusement. Or rather, to pretend to cover her amusement. Theo wasn’t sure she cared if he saw her laughing.

Theo noticed in the distance, people starting to show up. Men and women, returning apparently from the concert.

Camille tossed the blanket over her shoulder and took a step closer. That one step was enough to swallow Theo in her shadow.

Theo jumped to get to his feet. People were coming in, and Theo had a horrible image in his head of Camille picking him up off the ground, then holding him in the air like he was a puppy. No question she could do it.

Holy hell, that’s how massive she was.

“Hey, I'm Theo,” he said quickly, still trying to get to his feet and realizing he was going to have to take another step back to see her face. Looking straight ahead, his eye level was her thighs. Low on her thighs.

Her smooth and curvy, well muscled thighs. Her knee was chest high to him.

“Camille,” she said with a mirthful head nod. “Enchantee, man.”

She reached out two fingers instead of her whole hand, and Theo realized he was supposed to shake it.

This was a different half handshake. She didn’t move to grasp his hand, she just let him grasp hers. Thing is, when he tried to shake the two fingers, they didn’t really budge. Like, at all.

“How was the concert?” he asked.

She smiled. “Pretty, pretty, pretty good.”He was placing the accent they had for the first time. It was definitely a French variant, somewhere between the original accent and the Haitian version.

Theo nodded up at her, trying to ignore the fact that her knees were level with his chest, and her chest would have been level with the roof of the house he grew up in.

“Very good. I was just saying hi to your little sister.”

“You know, you don't have to yell at all, I can hear you.”

“Am I yelling?”

She nodded, still smiling.

He couldn't help it. It was like speaking to someone on a balcony. Except her balcony was made by God. He had been generous.

Camille gestured to his baggage cart. “This is yours?”

“Yeah. Wheel had an issue, I can handle it.”

She said, “Let me get this.”

He reacted sharply, “No! I can get it.” She looked at him suspiciously. He tried to sound more mellow. “I’m just gonna unhook the straps and...”

Camille bent at the knees, dropped down, down, until she was sitting on her heels. She was still taller than Luc, who was in fact a giant anywhere but here, standing to her right. Theo couldn't stop himself from reflexively taking another step backward.

In a way, it as even more intimidating than standing to full height. Now all of that mass was compacted. This massive being was looking into his eyes from only a few feet away.

“I understand. Guys are like that all over. You don’t want to look weak or feel helpless, especially in front of girls,” she laughed. “I get that.”

It was disarming and frightening all at once. This massive, beautiful creature cut past everything to get his thoughts into the open. She’d given him the power. He chuckled. It was so cool of her. It relaxed him.

“Yeah,” he confirmed, looking at the ground, embarrassed. He shook it head. “That’s way more accurate than I’m comfortable admitting.”

She smiled, saying “Yeah, I get it, Theo, I do.” She stood up, still looking down at him.

Camille took a step to the other side of Theo to his cart. She slipped one big hand underneath it, and lifted. She stood up, balancing the overloaded motorized cart with one hand, supporting it in the middle, like a server might hold a tray with a couple of glasses of water.

Camille said to Theo, “You’re gonna have to get over that particular hangup pretty quick.” Then she turned to Luc and continued talking casually. “You want me to ask about that class for you?”

Somehow, after that friendly exchange, Theo couldn't help but feel a bit betrayed. She stood there, making small talk with a guy two feet taller than Theo and still didn't reach her waist, while holding his cart like it was nothing.