Before I'd even opened my eyes, I was overcome by an uncanny feeling that my body was different. Where this feeling came from I couldn't say. Maybe it was that primordial sixth sense of balance and body position, telling me that my limbs were longer or shorter than I was used to. Or maybe it was the subtle sensation of air flowing over an unfamiliar skin, mapping the contours of a strange body. It was like nothing I'd felt before. I trembled and broke out in a cold sweat. Even that felt subtly different.

I was lying face up, with my arms at my side. I wasn't lying in bed but on a hard surface with bumpy protuberances that dug into my back and the back of my head. It was quite uncomfortable, and that spurred me to open my eyes and get up sooner than I might have dared to otherwise.

I opened my eyes and saw nothing above but puffy clouds in a bright blue sky. I must have been sleeping outdoors, on the ground.

Then I sat up, surprisingly smoothly. My torso felt light and the muscles in my stomach were taut and responsive. I looked down and saw the body of a willowy young woman with long legs and slim arms. She — I — was wearing a black short-sleeved shirt and a brown calf-length skirt. I couldn't see my feet but I could feel the straps of sandals on them. I raised a hand. The hand was beautiful. Long slender fingers tipped with polished nails, and no protruding bones or veins. A young hand. I ran my fingers along my face, and felt contours utterly different from those I was used to. Prominent cheeks, a small nose and chin, and pert lips. I shook my head and felt long hair tossing behind me. I pulled some in front of my face to see it. It was like the hair of models in shampoo ads: rich, dense, and lustrous.

This was the body of a complete stranger. Was I dreaming? If I was, it was a new kind of dream. At least as far as I could remember, even in my dreams I was always me.

But questions about my changed appearance were swept away when I recognized what was beneath me. In all directions, the ground was covered with grey, brown, and black rectangles, varying in height and width but all very small and short. It took a moment to realize what they were. Buildings. Incredibly small buildings. Between them were streets teeming with cars and trucks the size of beetles.

So this stranger I'd become was no ordinary young woman but a giant woman. I'd never even seen one before, but now suddenly I was one.

I extended my index finger and lowered it to measure against the tallest building within reach. With the tip of my index finger touching the ground, the roof of the building was above my wrist but far below my elbow. It was quite a tall building; I tried counting the rows of windows and lost count near the top around thirty. So somewhere between thirty and forty floors. That would make it at least a hundred meters, probably well over. And with that reaching only partway past my wrist, my whole body must be several hundred meters tall at least; probably more like a kilometer. Unbelievable.

When I woke up, I'd been lying on the ground. Had I unknowingly crushed dozens of buildings beneath me as I slept? The thought made me shiver. I twisted around to look behind my back. The cityscape behind me was darkened by my shadow, but amazingly, it was perfectly intact. There wasn't even any sign of a panicked evacuation; little cars were crawling up and down the streets as if nothing was out of the ordinary. How could that be? Was I weightless and invisible, like a ghost? Then why was I casting a shadow? Or was this not a real city but a scale model, built sturdily enough to survive being sat on? I had no idea why someone would build such a vast, comprehensive scale model of a city in the outdoors. Or was it a dream? I'd never been this lucid in a dream before.

I jumped when someone tapped me on the shoulder. Who could tap the shoulder of a kilometer-tall giantess? I looked back and another giant young woman was smiling down at me, waving. She had short bobbed hair and was wearing a cream-colored v-neck dress, the hem flowing around her knees.

I froze. This must be some friend of the woman whose body I was inhabiting. What would she do if she found our her friend wasn't herself, that her body was possessed? I'd have to act as naturally as possible. But how could I impersonate someone I'd never even seen before? I didn't dare open my mouth; I didn't even know what language I would need to speak.

But then, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking, the other girl winked and raised a finger to her lips. She already knew I wasn't who I appeared to be, and had no problem with it.

I stared blankly at the girl, still having no idea what I should do. She grasped my arm and coaxed me up.

When I was standing, she was noticeably shorter than me. She looked up and locked her eyes on mine, her gaze serious and probing as if she'd just asked me an important question and was waiting for my answer. I was at a loss, but after just a moment she broke her gaze, smiled, and nodded to herself as if she'd gotten the answer she wanted. She reached out, took my hand, and led me away.

From my full height, the surrounding buildings looked even smaller, but the city itself looked wider. Buildings strewn about like stones, stretching all the way to the horizon, with occasional patches of greenery. There was also a river off in the distance, with a few bridges crossing it. I couldn't see any landmarks that I recognized. Unless I was being fooled by the change in perspective, this was a place I didn't know. Even clues about what part of the world this was proved elusive. I was too high up to read — or even see — any street signs, and the only large designs I saw on the sides of buildings were the logos of worldwide corporations and hotel chains. This could be anywhere.

My skirt extended to my lower calves, but only occasionally did it brush against buildings. Most were not much higher than my ankles. Even the widest streets were narrower than our feet; we had no choice but to step on the roofs of shorter buildings. But they felt solid; somehow they were able to support our weight. And as I'd noticed when I'd examined the area I'd been lying on, there was no mass panic. There was not even any sign that anyone noticed us at all.

After walking only a few seconds we were in front of the river. Running along the bank was a strip of greenery, crisscrossed by winding brown lines with tiny human figures moving along them. Paved running or biking trails. The riverbank was narrow enough that our feet filled it from end to end. Looking directly down, I saw that my flat sandals completely blocked the trails, and the tiny joggers and cyclists were stopping and turning around well before reaching my feet. But the arch of my companion's heels left a gap to pass through, and there was a stream of figures passing underneath her shoes without any apparent hesitation. It seemed as though the people beneath us could were aware of our presence but completely unperturbed. As if we were familiar, harmless landmarks just like the buildings and bridges.

The river was too wide to simply step across. It looked like it might be around as wide as I was tall, give or take a couple hundred meters. A bridge was crossing the river a ways off to the right. What would it be like to try to cross that bridge? Ordinarily I would have thought a bridge couldn't withstand the weight of a kilometer-tall giantess, but somehow our weight wasn't impacting the world around us. The bridge would be much too narrow to walk across normally; it might be narrower than even one of our feet, let alone two feet side by side. We'd have to creep across, setting one foot directly in front of the other, like walking a tightrope. I imagined teetering on the middle of the bridge, stretching my arms out to either side for balance. The image made me giggle. That was the first time I heard my voice. It was on the low side; an alto, maybe.

My companion tapped me on the arm and pointed to the left. In the center of the river was a small island with no visible structures, just foliage. We could cross using that island as a stepping stone.

We were across from the island after just a few steps along the bank. My companion went first. I was gradually getting used to the scale of our bodies, but the sight of this pretty young woman playfully hopping across an entire river was still breathtaking. When her foot fell toward the island, flocks of white birds took off all at once, flying up and away from the island. It looked like countless grains of white powder rising up into the air around the girl's calf. Like snow falling in reverse. When she hopped over to the opposite bank, her hair and dress swirled around her as she turned back to wave at me, beckoning.

I gingerly extended my leg out to the island. If I stretched both legs, I could stand astride the river with one foot on the bank and the other touching the island. I shifted my weight onto my forward foot, preparing to step entirely over to the island, but my foot slipped and dipped into the water. It made a splash that looked small to me, but had probably soaked trees and bushes all around where I'd been resting my foot. Good thing I was wearing sandals. I gave up and just hopped across like my companion had. She laughed and teasingly patted me on the shoulder when I reached the opposite bank, then took my hand and led me onward.

She must have been taking me to some specific destination, and I was curious where. For a moment I considered trying to ask, but quickly concluded I shouldn't. From the moment she had first seen me and raised her finger to her lips, we seemed to have a mutual understanding that we shouldn't speak. Right now, we were friends. She was probably a friend of the woman whose body I had somehow entered, and she was treating me as a friend even though it seemed she knew I was a stranger in a strange body. If I spoke, the illusion would be broken. My words would be the wrong words, spoken with the wrong accent and intonation, and maybe in the wrong language. Even if we overcame that, I wouldn't know any of these friends' shared experiences, their worries, their in-jokes. I didn't even know their names. It was best to just keep sharing our stroll in silence, communicating simply with touch and gestures. As if she'd guessed what I was thinking about, my friend reassuringly squeezed my hand. I squeezed hers back.

As we walked, I saw a metallic glint in my peripheral vision and turned to look at it. A commercial jet plane was droning along at head height a short ways away. It was a fascinating sight. I'd never seen a flying aircraft straight-on like this. From the ground, airplanes always seemed to move deceptively slowly, but from up here it looked slower still. It was moving even more slowly than we were walking, looking almost as if it was defying gravity and simply hanging in midair. I stopped and gaped at it.

My friend noticed I'd stopped, looked back, and saw what I was staring at. She smirked and then stepped over, reached up, and casually plucked the airplane between two fingers. I shivered. The inhabitants of the city beneath us were either unaware or incredibly blasé about us stepping all over their buildings and blocking their roads, but wasn't this too thoughtless? Wouldn't the people inside be traumatized if a giant young woman suddenly snatched the plane they were riding from the sky because her friend was curious and wanted to look at it?

Carrying the plane delicately in one hand, she stepped back over to me and tugged my hand upward, pulling my fingers open and turning my palm upward. I acquiesced, still shocked at what she'd done and guilty that she'd done it because of me. She gently set the plane down on my upturned palm. The fuselage was shorter and thinner than my middle finger, and it felt incredibly light; even lighter than I'd expected an object of its size to feel. I knew that aircraft were built as lightly as possible, but only after feeling a plane resting on my palm weighing less than a similarly-sized pencil did that truly sink in. I lifted it to my face and tried to peer into the windows, but they were too small to make out anything inside. Another pang of guilt made me stop and lower my hand. I couldn't see anything looking in from outside, but surely anyone inside looking out would see a giant eye staring in at them. I didn't want to think about that.

I didn't know what to do with the airplane now that I was done with it. Holding it overwhelmed me with responsibility; it was like cradling an injured baby bird in my hands. I couldn't just drop it. Should I try to set it down on the ground, or on a long stretch of road? I looked up at my friend. She smiled and nodded, then retrieved the plane from my palm, grasping it delicately from above with her thumb and forefinger. Holding it in front of her, she carefully changed grips so that she was holding the fuselage from below. Then she held it up to eye level, closing one eye and looking down the fuselage, and suddenly flung it into the air with a simple flick of her wrist. Exactly like throwing a dart. I was shocked, but amazingly the plane didn't plummet to the ground but flew off, banking away to continue on its original course as if nothing had happened. My friend turned back to me with a smirk. Clearly she knew exactly what she was doing and was careful not to cause harm. My worries had been unfounded. She took me by the arm and strolled onward.

We passed into an area with wide expanses of pavement and greenery, where buildings were sparse. A park, or something like that. It was amazing that I couldn't notice much difference between this and a dense city center without looking down. If I looked straight ahead, I saw all the way to the horizon no matter what was around me.

My friend stopped and pointed down. At our feet was a stadium, about the size and shape of a large serving platter. A game was going on inside. Soccer, by the arrangement of the field. We both leaned down to watch. From this height, it was impossible to follow. I could see the players, brightly colored specks running across the green pitch, but I couldn't see the ball. I could only infer where it was based on where the players were running. What caught my attention was when a large section of the audience seats changed color. An indistinct mass of tiny figures was suddenly transformed into a white and gold flag a little smaller than my hand, with a cartoon animal face in the center: the pennant of some football club I was unfamiliar with. The spectators must have been holding up placards in a synchronized display. I was fascinated by how people who were individually so small could collectively form an image that I could clearly make out from hundreds of meters above. It looked almost like a real flag that I could have reached down and picked up.

After watching for a short time, we stepped over the stadium and continued on our way. As I stepped over the stadium, I was suddenly self-conscious that thousands of spectators might see all the way up my skirt if any of them looked up while I was mid-stride. But it was silly to worry about that only now, having already stepped over countless buildings and streets. And I still wasn't sure whether the people below could see me at all. All I knew was that were aware of my presence enough to avoid running into my feet. I myself never seen a giantess before I somehow woke up as one, after all. Maybe my whole life I'd lived under their feet and never realized it.

At the edge of the park, we came upon an elevated highway and turned to follow it. My friend stepped over it to the other side, so that were walking along with the highway at our feet between us and our joined hands directly over it.

We walked that way for a little while. Ahead I could see a row of buildings much taller than those around them, and behind that a large body of water stretching out to the horizon. The ocean.

As we walked closer I could see it all laid out. A semicircular beach, ringed by high-rise hotels and luxury condos. Across from the beach, a sandy barrier island and beyond it ocean all the way to the horizon.

My friend stopped and let go of my hand, pointing at her feet. She grasped my upper arm for stability, and lifted up one foot, unbuckling her shoe and setting it down lengthwise on the highway below. By the time she removed her other shoe and bent down to retrieve the one she'd set down, a minor traffic jam had developed on the highway. Vehicles were lined up on either side of her shoe. I followed her lead and slipped out of my sandals, bending down to pick them both up in one hand. Standing on the low rooftops barefoot felt different. I could feel every little roof underneath my toes, and the gaps between them: narrow cracks between adjacent buildings, and wider crevices where there were alleys. I could have made a map of each block just by touch.

We stepped over and around the high-rises ringing the beach. They looked new and were especially tall: most were high enough to graze against the hem of my skirt, and some were even as high as my knees. Then we stopped and stood on the beach. I realized why we'd had to take off our shoes: the beach was too narrow to stand on comfortably. With my heels touching the sides of buildings, my toes were in the water.

I relaxed, letting the sea breeze flow over me, and stretching my arms out and then upward. When I stretched my arms up over my head, I felt something cold and clammy. I looked up and saw that I'd stuck my hands into a cumulus cloud. That made me laugh. I'd been in this incredible kilometer-tall body for what felt like a long time now, and yet still it hadn't occurred to me that I was tall enough to reach up and touch clouds until I did it accidentally. I'd always thought of clouds more or less like stars: so distant that they might as well be a painted backdrop.

My friend tapped me on the arm and pointed off to the left. Three more women our size were walking up to us. One of them waved, and my friend enthusiastically jumped up and down, waving with both hands. They must have arranged to meet us here. I diffidently raised one hand and waved. I was uneasy, not knowing whether these newcomers would already know about my… situation. That I wasn't the person they knew.

The three women drew closer, casually walking over rooftops just as we had. They were young women about our age, dressed casually in shorts or jeans with t-shirts or tank tops. One had bobbed hair like my companion's but bleached white, contrasting with her black top. Another had her hair tied back in a ponytail, and the third had a close-cropped pixie cut. They were all carrying bags over their shoulders.

The came up to the opposite side of the high-rises and stopped. There wasn't enough room for us all to stand together on the beach. For an awkward few seconds, all of them looked at me nervously, occasionally glancing at each other. They must have had some idea what was going on with me, and were unsure what to do. The girl with the close-cropped hair leaned across the buildings between us and whispered something in my friend's ear. My friend didn't whisper anything back, just looked the girl in the eyes and gave a simple nod. At that, all three of the newcomers relaxed at once, and looked at me much more warmly. One by one, they each looked me in the eyes and reached a hand across to lay on my shoulder. I wasn't sure how to respond, but I guessed I didn't need to. It was a simple, wordless gesture of welcome and acceptance.

The newcomers started taking off their shoes. My friend nudged me and pointed towards the island. We were going there, apparently. I nodded, and extended my bare foot to test the water. It was cold and no deeper than a large puddle. We both waded about three or four steps to the island. It was a long, narrow strip of land protruding from the ocean like the crest of a wave. The side nearer the shore was green with vegetation and encrusted with clusters of small white buildings. The top and far side were bare and sandy, rippling with dunes.

The other girls caught up with us. They set their shoes down on the near side. The six discarded shoes towered over the little white cottages scattered around them. The rooftops didn't even reach the top of the rubber soles.

Two of the girls stepped up to the top of the island and then got down on their knees and lowered their heads, scanning the ground intently. I was curious about what they were doing and stepped closer to look. There were clusters of people moving about on the dunes. I was taken aback by how small the human figures were compared to the dunes they were climbing. The dunes looked like gentle ripples in the sand to me, but they must actually be tall, steep hills.

When either of the girls spotted a cluster of human figures, she lowered a cupped hand and scooped up the handful of sand they were standing on, then reached back and gently deposited it at her feet. Working together they methodically cleared the central sand dunes, leaving at their feet crowds of dozens of people milling about. Then they turned around and herded the people at their feet towards the cottages at the near side of the island, sweeping them along with their hands like dust with a broom.

The third new girl, the one with bleached hair, had been standing back watching with my companion and me. When the two others finished, she clapped. I joined in. The two girls stood up and gave playfully theatrical bows. Then the girl with bleached hair pulled a folded blanket from her bag and unfurled it over the area her friends had cleared.

We all sat down on the blanket. Comparing its sides against our heights, it looked like it covered an area of about a square kilometer. For the five of us, it was a little small. We sat as close together as we could fit, our legs touching.

The three young women with bags pulled out transparent containers full of brightly-colored fruit along with five stem glasses and two wine bottles. My friend opened one of the fruit containers, picked up what looked like a grape, and offered it me. The others all looked at me expectantly.

From up close, the fruit I was being offered looked subtly different from the varieties of grape that I was familiar with. It was fat at one end and tapered at the other, giving it an outline more like a miniature pear than a grape. Its skin looked purple from a distance, but from up close it had a kind of iridescent sheen like an oil slick, or the inside of a clam's shell. I hesitated a moment, but feeling pressured by the others' attention I took the grape-like fruit and popped it into my mouth.

It tasted sweet and tart like a grape, but it also had a kind of minty aftertaste, like wintergreen. Where this huge, exotic fruit came from I had no idea. Even the seed I spat out into my hand must have been the size of a four-door sedan.

Seeing me accept the first piece of fruit, the others clapped and set about opening the other containers and digging in. Besides the grape-like fruit, there were also vivid red and yellow slices of what looked like melon but turned out to strongly taste like cinnamon and ginger. They also opened the wine bottles and poured out five glasses of a drink that was clear as water but foamed up like beer. We clinked our glasses together and drank in unison. After the fruit I'd tried I was expecting another surprise, but the drink turned out to taste like an average white wine.

The girl with the ponytail pulled a camera out of her bag and stood up. She easily stepped off of the island and took two steps back towards the shore, then leaned over and set the camera down on top of the roof of the tallest high-rise hotel. The fifty-story tower looked like the slender pole of a tripod supporting the wider, thicker camera. The girl set a timer and then jumped back onto the island. We lined up to sit in a line facing the camera on the shore. I dithered, unsure of where to sit, but the others prodded me into the center. My friend sat to my left and put her arm around my shoulder. The others leaned in from my right, stretching their legs out over the side of the island.

We held our poses for a second or two, waiting for the timer to go off. During that brief, still moment the surreality of the scene sank in. Here I was posing for my picture to be taken by a handheld point-and-shoot camera resting on top of the highest rooftop in a line of high-rises. On my right a pair of bare legs were arched high over a greenish slope encrusted with white cottages that looked like they might not be much larger than our teeth. And I wasn't watching this scene enviously from outside, or from below; I was at the very center. I belonged.

The camera clicked.

After taking the picture, we all sat quietly for a while, leisurely eating and drinking while watching the world move around us. Sailboats drifted about further out to sea, and once or twice a little white ferry boat came up to the island and disgorged a load of passengers who dispersed and disappeared among the cottages beneath us. The sun was getting lower; the sky had a pinkish cast and everything was suffused with warm tones. The glass towers along the shore glittered, golden.

As the sun was setting over the ocean, I started to feel very drowsy. Maybe it was the wine we drank. Or maybe the nervous energy that had sustained me through this strange and wonderful experience was fading. I yawned. My friend glanced over and smirked, patting me on the head like a child. She cleared away the containers and bottles from the center of the blanket to give me space to lie down.

I lay down on my side, with my head next to where my friend was sitting cross-legged at the edge of the blanket. With my eyes at ground level, I could see a cottage just beyond the blanket's edge, overshadowed by her thigh. I watched as a tiny car drove up and parked outside the house. After a few moments, the cottage's lights turned on. Cute. And wondrous. So many lives beneath us, each with its own story, unnoticed unless our eyes happened to fall on them. Had giant eyes ever watched me come home at night?

I closed my eyes. I felt my friend stroking my hair as I started to doze off.

And then I was jolted awake by the incongruous feeling that I was suddenly someplace else.

Not just someplace else, but someone else. Once again, I felt that my body had changed. This time, the change I felt was the return of the familiar shape of my own body. But something else was different: my limbs were spread out and I felt buoyant, as if I was underwater. When I opened my eyes I saw I was floating in midair, slowly drifting backward.

Before me was a sheer wall, inky black at the center and fading to dark brown at its periphery. Sleek and glistening, almost liquid. I was drifting backwards, away from the wall. After a moment I had a better view and realized what it was. A pupil and iris. I was hanging in midair in front of a giant eye. It looked like the pupil might be as wide as I was tall.

Drifting still further away, I was able to make out giant eyelashes, the bridge of a nose, and the edge of a vast forehead. I began to get a sense of the features of this face. While I had never seen this face, I was certain that I had felt it. This was the face of the giant young woman whose body I had inhabited. That meant that the eyes through which I had been examining the tiny world around me were the same giant eyes which were now scrutinizing me.

I was buffeted by a sudden gust of wind; a tremendous thumb and index finger rose up from either side and closed around me. The fingertips extended several times the length of my body in all directions; I was pinned between them like a climber shimmying up a tall, narrow crevice. I was being squeezed firmly enough to hold me steady between the two fingertips, yet softly enough that I felt no pain. Given all that I'd seen so far, I at least had reason to hope that I wouldn't be crushed.

I felt the hand holding me move and reorient itself, so that the index finger was facing down; a floor instead of a wall. Then the thumb withdrew, leaving me lying prone on the tip of the index finger. From there I had my first good look at her face. I had traced "my" — her — fingers over this face, so I was familiar with the tactile contours of those cheeks, that nose and chin. But seeing it all at once was entirely different from feeling it, one small part at a time. She was beaming, her perfect teeth and prominent dimples making her smile dazzling, but her eyes were studying me coolly. An observant, penetrating, piercingly intelligent gaze. I wondered if I'd looked that way when I'd worn that face. I'd probably just gaped vacantly the entire time, overwhelmed. She didn't look surprised at all, but amused. To her this must have been a game.

Where had she been up until now? Had her consciousness been submerged, passively observing me move about in her skin until the time came to re-emerge and toss me aside? Or had we traded places, with her taking a joyride in my body and discovering what it was like to walk down streets that were too narrow for her real body's feet, feeling the ground tremble when an ordinarily beetle-sized truck rumbled past, and looking up at ordinarily ankle-high buildings towering overhead?

She cocked her head to the side in an theatrical show of curiosity and twirled her finger around to examine my tiny body from all angles. As I spun around I saw the titanic forms of her four friends looming in the distance. They were all staring at me. After one turn of her finger she brought me down in front of her mouth, puckered her lips, and blew.

I was thrown off the tip of her finger by a warm blast of wind that slammed into me with the force of a gale or a hurricane. Flung through the air, I didn't fall but continued flying directly forward over the picnic blanket toward the pixie cut girl at the opposite end. The other girl was clapping her hands and shaking with laughter. As I approached, she reached out with one hand and held her palm vertically in my path: a vast, sheer wall that I was helplessly hurtling toward. Given all of the feats I'd seen so far, I had to hope that this titanic being was in control and had something in mind other than wiping my splattered remains off of her palm. That provided little comfort as the implacable wall of flesh rushed ever closer, filling my entire field of vision. There was nothing I could but watch and wince.

When I hit the vast palm, I ricocheted off of it and flew off in a different direction. The girl had subtly angled her hand to bounce me in the direction of another of her friends, and gave a slight push when I hit.

I was batted around like this several times, helplessly tumbling back and forth between the hands of the giant, laughing young women who just minutes ago had welcomed me as a friend. My fleeting experience as their equal was over; I had fallen back to my true place as their plaything. After nearly a complete circuit around the picnic blanket, I found myself flung towards the short-haired girl who'd been seated to "my" left; the first "friend" who'd met me and guided me here. She was distracted, talking to her, and raised her hand only after another girl called out.

She missed. The side of her pinkie finger whipped past just a meter or two away. That was the smallest finger of a hand that I had held as we walked. It had felt small and warm. Now it was passing over me like the mighty tower of a suspension bridge.

I was able to look over my shoulder and catch a momentary glimpse behind me. The girl who'd carelessly failed to catch me threw up her hands in an exaggerated shrug as the friend to her right — the same one who'd been me a minute ago — playfully punched her on the shoulder. They both doubled over in laughter. They didn't look back in my direction. Even if they had, I would be too small and distant for them to see.

As I tumbled through the air I gradually fell, as if the force that held me aloft was waning as I drew further away from the giant women. I had been discarded. There would probably be no intervention to prevent me from falling to my death. I should have been afraid as I fell. I should have felt betrayed and humiliated from having been toyed with and then tossed aside to die. But I was simply numb, resigned. I kept recalling the experiences I'd just had in a giant body: walking hand in hand through a field of ankle-high buildings, hopping across a river, holding an airplane in my hand. A gigantic young woman I'd never even seen before had lent me her very self: her titanic stature, her power, her youth and beauty, the companionship of her friends. Having seen and felt her godlike perspective firsthand, I knew how insignificant I was and couldn't blame her for discarding me. Such a natural act was vastly outbalanced by the extraordinary favor she'd shown by granting me this temporary gift at all. That it ended this way didn't feel like a betrayal but a natural, bittersweet inevitability.

The winds buffeting my body intensified as I accelerated. The distant shore was coming ever closer; the lofty perspective I had almost gotten used to was narrowing, like zooming in on an aerial photograph. I outstretched my arms and closed my eyes.

And for a third time, I found myself someplace else. I lying on my side on a soft surface. A bed. Almost certainly my bed. Had all of this been a dream after all? If so, it had been by far the longest, most vivid, and most coherent dream I'd ever had. That by itself was extraordinary. Even as I felt the solid bed underneath me I also still felt a visceral sense of motion. Residual echoes of my helpless fall reverberating through me.

I opened my eyes and saw the familiar room where I'd gone to sleep what seemed like so long ago. It was broad daylight. I reached over to pick up my phone from the bedside table and check the time. But what I felt was a piece of paper. I sat up and looked over at the table. A piece of paper lay on top of my phone, as if I'd laid it there before going to sleep to make sure I remembered something I had to do, but I didn't remember doing anything like that.

I leaned over to look at the paper more closely. On it was drawn a simple pencil sketch showing five seated figures. Five women sitting side-by-side on an island. Four of them were beaming, their mouths upturned and eyes closed in stylized grins. The face of the fifth woman, in the center, was more ambivalent and drawn in greater detail. She was gazing somewhere off to the side. Her lips were slightly parted, and turned gently upward only at the very edges. She was contemplating something and the bud of a beautiful smile was shyly, tentatively opening to bloom.

The sketch was drawn on what was clearly a sheet torn from one of my notebooks, but there was no way that I could have drawn it. It was far too skillful. The lines were free, expressive, and confident. Precise shading gave depth and volume to features like hair and clothing. All I'd ever been able to draw was clumsy doodles and crude stick figures; this sketch was far beyond me.

At the bottom of the sketch was a note in trim, flowing letters: See you next time. XOXO