The heat was beyond reasonable, Valentina thought as she reclined on the sun bed. Summer had come early, and while she welcomed the beach season, she resented the lethargy that always overtook her around this time. Productivity in this heat would be at an all-time low. Her mind raced with various deadlines and chores that needed doing while her body weighed her down, refusing to move. Then her friend’s voice came yelling across the sand.

“Val! Val! Wake up, you lazy moo!” Clara’s voice chirped as her blonde head appeared, looking down at her. “Your phone is off again. Did you forget to turn it on?”Her friend squinted before squatting down on the sand next to her. 

Valentina rolled over and pretended to ignore Clara, and her phone was off so she wouldn't be disturbed, exactly like this. Reaching for her water bottle, she worked her tongue across her lips before she replied. “My bad, Clar. I didn't think we were meeting until later for the fundraiser?” 

“Oh, we were, but you missed the big news that Solasta is coming! Not only is she coming to Lisan, but she is also coming to Verda! Here!!” Clara finished with an excited buzz; She was a bit of a disciple where the gods were concerned. Valentina did not share her emotional state.

“Oh fuck…how long do we have? We should head out of town in case she ‘accidentally’ slips on it.” Val replied with a resigned sigh. Solasta was their Goddess, although she was rather part-time, dropping in once every few years to remind the people she existed and should be worshipped. Valentina hated her, casually turning up to oppress people for a bit before leaving without ever doing anything other than take from them. On the other hand, Clara thought her very existence made her worth worshipping daily. It was a bizarre state of affairs. 

“She’s on her way now. That's why I ran over to get you. Solasta is demanding the presence of all Verda Seniors at the campus! She wants to talk to us all personally!” Clara continued before grabbing her friend's hand to pull her off the sun bed. Valentina flinched before reluctantly letting herself be pulled up.  

“Solasta’s is like two miles tall. How did I miss her arriving….” Valentina said out loud while sitting up and brushing the sand from her warm feet before sliding her sandals on and wrapping a thin summer skirt around her waist. “Should I be worried? Is she looking for a young tray of students to munch on? Remember three years back when she rolled that crowd up like candy floss? The screams still haunt my nightmares.” Valentina uttered her sentence with a chomp of her teeth towards her friend, who recoiled back.

“Surely not, and even if so, She is our Goddess; we cannot and will not defy her. Or do you need to be reminded of the Lombardi incident?” Clara rebutted, raising a single finger as if to finalise the argument. Val shook her head. There was not a soul on Lisan who needed to be reminded of that, it was before Valentina had been born, but the loss of an entire continent is something that can never be forgotten in the collective memory. Finally standing, she grabbed her bag and threw on her loose crop top.

“You make a valid argument. Let’s pray to our goddess and hope she’s not hungry.” Val sighed as the two young women wandered back towards their campus from the beach. 

---

The crowd bustled as students, all between nineteen and twenty-one, filed in. The room had been gender segregated, with all the men sitting at the back and all the women sitting in the front. There had been a lot of confusion and several disputes during the seating process; however, the faculty just kept saying it was by “Solasta’s Command” and there would be no argument. 

Valentina sat in the second row from the front and could feel Clara vibrating with anticipation next to her. The girl was destined to work in the church when she graduated. They did not have to wait long before the oppressive power washed over them – the room was dead silent as all in it found themselves unable to talk. Val felt pressure on the back of her neck, pressing her to stare at her toes. All desire to speak fled as the invisible pressure intensified.

“Greetings, Mortals”, a sweet light voice spoke from the front of the room. Valentina wished she could look up and view the source, but her eyes were fixed on her feet. “You have been assembled here to witness a change in ownership. Blessed are you all.” the voice continued, an almost mocking tone to her words. “The truth is, I have grown bored of you, and while I would normally simply snuff your world, I cannot. So I am giving you away.” The sentence hung in the air momentarily as the pressure on their necks eased up.

Valentina felt her head rise again, and for the first time, she saw the woman on the stage, Solasta. She looked almost normal, besides her waist-length golden hair, flowing white robes and impossibly radiant glow. On further revision, she was the furthest thing from normal. Val shifted in her seat as she heard murmuring begin to fill the room. Clara nudged her. 

“Solasta is giving us to another god? Do you think it’s a man? Someone as hot as she is but with a, you know….” Clara winked as Valetina felt a sense of revulsion.  

“I hope not, but hopefully, someone who will actually do something for us instead of absently crushing a large population centre every few years,” Val replied before turning back to the stage and locking eyes with the Goddess who had been staring at her. The Goddess lifted a hand, and the pressure returned, forcing silence across the crowd. 

“You are all wondering why here, why now. Why this insignificant corner of nowhere on your tiny toe-ring stone of a planet? Well, I am a fucking Goddess, and I do not need to explain myself to any of you. I have more important places to be. Enjoy your new Goddess, Valentina Alston, and maybe she won't accidentally slip on your wasteland of a town.” Solasta smirked at Val before vanishing in a bright stunning flash. 

Val's stomach knotted as Solasta quoted the concern she voiced on the beach over an hour ago, Fearing the ramifications of everything she had ever said about the Goddess before processing the whole extent of the statement. New Goddess? Clara’s screech shook her from her stun.

“WHAAAAT! VAL? YOU? YOU’RE A GODDESS?” Clara squealed in a bizarre mix of confusion, anger and joy. The girl was a bubble of all kinds of passion. Valentina had no idea what to make of the situation as the crowd began to stand and circle her as she sat meekly lost in her mind. 

“I’m not! I’m not a goddess. I want nothing to do with Solasta and her twisted abuse of our world! I don’t know why she would say something so crazy!” Val began to monologue as the crowd got louder around her, questions flying at her from all angles, questions she couldn’t answer. Valentina sat in her bubble, ignoring the world until silence finally fell. When she finally remembered to pay attention to the world around her, only a few people were in the room. An older woman in a finely tailored suit began speaking. 

“Miss Alston, I am High Priestess Doubenior. I have served as head of the Solastian Church for the last twenty-five years and as a disciple for many years. In all of my time, I have never seen two things: Solasta at our scale and her addressing any of us by name.” The woman spoke in a soft but stern accent. “Have you encountered the Goddess before?” she finished before kneeling to lock eyes with Valentina. 

Val shook her head as she glanced around the room. People in suits, no students, no Clara, and they were all looking at her as if she had just killed their god. Looking back at the High Priestess, Val asked the looming question, her voice shaking, “What are you going to do to me?” The older woman shook her head in frustration as she stepped back.

“Solasta declared you our new Goddess. We will have to pray to her and see if she can clarify that. Until then you will have to come with us. We can’t have our new ‘messiah’ wandering around where someone could kidnap you.” Her words were laced with annoyance, and as Val glanced up at her, she felt something else: jealousy. 

Valentina just sat, not sure what to do. Her mind was a mess. Could she be a goddess just because Solasta said so? Was that enough to manipulate these zealots of her church? She threw herself back and closed her eyes, the flimsy auditorium chair she was in gave way under the motion, and she sighed in frustration. “I just need a few minutes,” she exclaimed as she tried to block out the world around her and consolidate her emotions. The Priestess sounded frustrated as she began to ramble at the others in her group.

“Oh, for Solasta’s sake…what has she done? This is a joke….Simon, Frederick, can we contain her before anyone sees her?”  The agitation in her voice caused Val to crack her eyes open. Noticing something was wrong, Val sat up, glancing around as her ass covered several rows of seats, the High Priestess looking like a small child next to her. Her cheeks flushed bright red as she saw her broken crop top, skirt and bikini dangling from her. 

“Oh fuck, What the fuck, I didn't even feel the change, fuck fuck fuck, help me!” Val curled up to conceal her nudity as the toddler-sized men and women began to encircle her. She turned to the High Priestess, “Help me! I don’t know what the fuck is happening!” she screamed as the whole building shook. The smaller woman became smaller still as Val’s outburst blew her back. A wave of panic hit as Val felt the auditorium ceiling begin to break and press against her shoulders. A small voice caught her attention as she glanced down, watching her expanding ass roll over the now doll-sized priests. 

“Help! HELP! I CAN'T BRE--” was the final words of a priest before his head was replaced by a burst of blood. Val felt her stomach twist into her throat as she realised what just happened. Then she felt another and another as expanding body caught and crunched priests against the floors and walls. She quickly reached out and grabbed the High Priestess before her knee could smash her into the wall as the building crumbled around her. Valentina’s mind broke into a sob as she began to mumble a prayer to Solasta.

“I-I, I didn't mean to, I’m sorry, please stop, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you, Goddess! Please, I don’t want to kill anyone, please stop this, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Valentina’s eyes teared up, and she unwittingly used the small priestess in her hand as a cloth to wipe her eyes, barely registering her screams of protest as her scale expanded out into the campus around the theatre they had been in. Solasta’s voice rang in her ears, notes of joy as the distant-sounding Goddess giggled.

“We’re equal now, Val. You can call me Sol, but just don’t call me, I’m busy. Enjoy your new world.” Solasta’s voice faded, and Valentina was left with a mental image of finger hearts which felt in poor taste. Taking a deep breath, Val tried to calm herself as she soaked in her surroundings.

“Okay, I’m naked and bigger than most buildings…” She spoke slowly as she moved the small priestess around to her face, the woman now being held in two fingers. “And people are about an inch tall. This is a lot.” She thought as she turned the small woman about in her fingers, a tingle of enjoyment at the thought of the woman now serving her.

“Okay, listen High Priestess, whatever. If I;m going to do this, I am going to do it without your group of militant dickbags.” she said with a smirk. It had always been her stance on the church. Suddenly, the thought of the woman burning up in her fingers as some kind of symbolic gesture crossed her mind. The thought was fleeting, almost subconscious, yet the tiny priestess immediately burst into flames and began screaming. “Oh shit, oops, uh... go out…stop…stop uh, burning?” Val panicked and, in a moment of desperation, plunged the flaming priestess to the ground and suffocated the flames under her palm, obliterating her. “Oh fuck, uh, okay, this isn't what it looks like!” Valentina declared aloud, realising she had a crowd of onlookers. 

“I mean, I know it looks like I was just declared Goddess and my first act was to grow, burn and crush the old church leader, but none of this was intentional! I promise…” She spoke quickly with wild hand gestures as the crowd nervously backed away from her. 

Floods of emotions and thoughts began to rake across Val’s mind, and she felt her mind awaken to theirs, to their every thought, feeling, and emotion. It was overwhelming to put it mildly. Without realising it, Valentina passed out, her body collapsing across a large portion of the university. 

---

Val opened her eyes to a starlit sky, peaceful and tranquil, as she slowly sat up. Clara sat at the end of her sun bed, smiling at her.

“Good evening, sleepyhead. You’ve been asleep for a week, how do you feel?” her best friend offered slowly. Val looked around the beach. Everything felt normal. Much clearer and sharper, her brain felt unimpeded by any sense of tiredness that plagued it before, but normal. Looking down at Clara, everything came flooding back. She pulled it straight from her friend's mind. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head as if to stretch. 

“I’m fine. You can tell them they don’t have to be afraid of me. I feel good, normal, in control.” She offered with a kind smile to her friend. Clara looked back, stunned but offered no counter and nodded and lifted her phone to her ear.

“Valentina is awake and feeling fine,” she said before lowering the phone and looking back at her friend. “So, do I have to call you Goddess now?” she said with a twisted smile. Val smirked and shrugged, looking out across the stars; she could now see them, other worlds, other realities, other Gods. The universe opened up to her, and she was still enjoying the ride. She laid back and gestured for Clara to come closer.

“I am a Goddess now. I can see it, feel it….Although I don’t want to be, I know I cannot go back. I know they tried to kill me while I was asleep. I can sense it. They tried everything to stop me from waking up.” She reached her arm out and brought Clara into a close hug, pressing her friend's face into her chest. “You tried to stop them. You were looking out for me, now I will look out for you, and we will fix our world.”