The inspiration brain cells have started revving again!
I feel like I see a lot of stories where humans are integrated into giant schools, but imagine the reverse. As part of an integration program, a giant gets enrolled into a human school.
Just imagine it! He has to awkwardly sit outside the school building for most of his classes, listening in through the windows. From the inside, the human students just see a single eye peering through the glass.
He can't enjoy lunch in peace because his fellow classmates are terrified to see him eat. He's ridiculously smart but gets called "brute" all the time because of the stereotypes associated with giants. There are constantly helicopters and news reporters taking photos of him.
And maybe he can't even go home. Maybe it's a boarding school so he has to stay on campus in specially built accommodations. Of course he doesn't have a roommate or anyone to keep him company so the experience is super lonely.
Plus throughout all of this, he has to navigate the social expectations of being an adolescent. God forbid he gets moody at all, or else he'll be deemed a monster. How is he supposed to make friends when everyone runs away from him in fear?
The angst!! The potential for fluff and hurt/comfort!! I can't wait to write this
trope i'd like to see more? mmmmm being stuck with a giant while they're still in feral mode. the most pressing danger is over, but the larger doesn't recognize that. in fact, they're solely focused on you. being cradled to a chest with a clawed hand. held precariously between two fingers and inspected for injuries, pinned under the gaze of two massive, clouded eyes. trying to sneak away only to be met with a sharp, booming growl. all that stuff.
maybe some progress is made, and you're able to walk away long enough to retrieve some supplies, pretending like you don't hear a whine echoing behind you. coming back, and whatever new materials you have being sniffed curiously, cautiously. eventually, you settle down. neither of you are sleeping tonight. not the giant, clutching you to their chest or neck, ready to pounce at anything that so much as twitches towards you. certainly not you, flight-or-fight still roaring, both from the altercation and the presence of this behemoth. you can only pray the lucid, reasonable person you knew soon returns. but...
in the meantime, it is kind of nice to be cradled to a massive, warm chest. to know, like your own name, that anything that tries to harm you wouldn't be around to do so much longer.
Just in time for February! Let's show the writers in the community some extra attention and engagement and let them feel our appreciation 💕
This challenge involves interacting with others, so please remember to be respectful and have fun! This is a great opportunity to interact with new creators or a wonderful excuse to leave some extra love on a fic that's near and dear to your heart!
In this chapter, Helena begins to accept receiving help, and Ursula worries about managing the mental and physical health of someone twenty times her size.
(a/n: Hihi! I'm back again! This has been eating at me for a bit and it's so nice to have it be totally done. Also, a token aplogy for not uploading in forever, but In my defense final year of college was tough as fuck. Anyways I hope you enjoy!)
((This is a wlw g/t story about a grievously injured paladin being nursed to health by a medic that's part spider))
The first chapter is linked here, and the next one is on my writing blog over here!
Cleaning the wound was easier than Ursula had expected. It seemed humans weren’t that different from elves structurally, so her spell needed only minor adjustments. Likewise, sewing the wound shut went well. After the stitches had been finished and the wound bandaged, all that was left was to wait.
The human—Helena, she reminded herself—had been unresponsive since the morning, but she was still breathing evenly, presumably asleep. So Ursula slung herself in a makeshift hammock, hanging in the space between the knight’s massive torso and arm. Finding a comfortable position, she lay down to rest.
When Helena woke up, she tensed immediately.
It was subtle. If Ursula were bigger, she never would have noticed. But as it was, the slight jerk sent her makeshift bed rocking back and forth.
Slowly and carefully, Ursula swung out of her hammock, using the hooked claw on one of her foremost arms to lower herself to the ground.
Climbing to the top of the knight’s chest, Ursula came to a stop at the top of the breastplate. The human’s head was laying flat on the ground, face-up, giving the smaller woman a view of the skin under her ching. She called out to her patient.
“I’m glad you’re awake! How are you feeling?”
Helena sighed deeply, assaulting Ursula with a massive gust of wind. She leaned into the motion, keeping her balance as the plate she was standing on shifted. When the human spoke, she did it through her teeth. “’sgood as can be expected, I suppose.”
Ursula chittered ambivalently, reaching out to touch the human’s face, then deciding against it. Instead she spoke. “Is there any way I can make you more comfortable?”
Helena lifted her head to look at Ursula, crossing her eyes to try and focus on her, then sighed again and laid back down. “I’m fine.”
Ursula hummed doubtfully. “Well you’re certainly not fine.”
Another sigh from the knight. Ursula idly wondered whether that was Helena’s primary form of communication, but stopped when she saw a blush on the human’s cheeks. When she spoke again, she was quieter, almost muttering. “Well, I suppose not, but you’ve already done so much.”
That irked Ursula, in a way she wasn’t sure was entirely rational. She called out, being sure to keep her voice level. “Look at me again, please.”
Helena did so immediately. The human’s nose was at Ursula’s shoulder level, and she jabbed a finger into it, emphasizing her next point. “Listen. I understand you’re grieving, but as of right now I am a doctor, and you are my patient. If I leave you aching or wanting for comfort in any way that I could have prevented, I will have failed. Now, what is it that’s bothering you?”
The human’s gargantuan eyes met her gaze for a long moment, face impassive, then dropped her head back to the forest floor. Ursula saw a blush the size of the small tent spread across Helena’s face, but her tone remained neutral, carefully impassive. “Well, if you’re offering, I haven’t eaten in about a day.”
Ursula’s heart dropped. How could she have failed to account for something as basic as food? “Oh, goodness, I should have asked sooner. What do you typically eat?”
Helena lifted an arm to point, then grimaced and dropped it. “I carried some rations in my pack, but I dropped it when…”
When her companions were killed. Right. Ursula looked in the direction she had indicated, into a nearby clearing. “Very well then, I’ll go grab what I can carry, and be back soon.”
Helena hummed. “Are you sure? It must be easier for me to go…”
“Oh, you absolutely should not be walking for at least another day. I’ll grab enough for a meal, you sit down and rest.”
Helena grumbled something under her breath, but at Ursula’s size, she could make out that it was intentionally nonsense.
~~~
It took her nearly a quarter hour to get to the pack, and that was with Helena’s footprints providing a direct path. Ursula spent it mainly organizing her thoughts. She had dealt with larger creatures before, so why was it that Helena unnerved her so much? She supposed it was mainly that Helena was both massive, and a person. Her large-scale works had always been on beasts, unconscious and unaware.
Ursula rounded the trunk of a tree and found the leather pack lying on the ground, but her mind was focused on how the knight had looked at her. Helena had been calm, no outward signs of emotion other than vague tiredness, but being considered by a face the size of her entire body had stirred something in Ursula. Fear, nervousness, but also something else. Something she wasn’t sure what to do with.
Finally reaching the bag, Ursula walked around it in search of an opening. Luckily, it had fallen with the flap up, so all Ursula needed to do was unlatch the clasp at the top of the bag. As she climbed up to reach, she caught a view of the rest of the clearing around her.
It was big and empty, in a way that told Ursula this was one of the places the Elves had left their mark on. The trees shied away from this place, letting a golden pillar of sun reach the grass below.
Interrupting the view were the bodies of other humans strewn about the clearing, rising like distant mountains from the flat ground. Briefly, Ursula wondered what had driven them so far out into the forest, where Humanity was known only as a distant myth. She made a quick note to ask Helena about it later.
Unclasping the latch and letting the flap fall to the ground, Ursula climbed inside the bag to find several bundles of crackers, and what looked like some type of dried meat. The crackers were each as long as she was tall, and perhaps half as wide, bundled in stacks of four. Dragging one of these packages out and laying as much meat as she could fit on it, she strung a line of web across the cracker to use as a handle, and began hauling the setup back to Helena.
~~~
Perhaps half an hour after Ursula had left, the pain had begun to abate, and the feelings of guilt in Helena were reaching a boiling point, flowing over and becoming concern. Was the little woman okay? Had something happened to her? Had Helena really left her to what must have been a mile long walk at that size, simply to avoid walking the two minutes it would take to get her food?
At the hour mark, she resolved to go and check. Cognizant of how this had gone last time, she tried her best to keep pressure off the wound. She rolled carefully over to her good side, then on to her hands and knees. There she sat for a moment, before working herself up to kneeling, slowly and carefully.
“What the fuck are you doing?” The voice was loud, as though it were shouted by someone just a few feet away from her. Helena whipped her head around, squinting, until her eyes found Ursula a few yards away, standing near a pack of hardtack with some bacon laid over it.
After a stunned moment, she replied. “It had been so long since you left, I was worried something might have happened.”
“I’m completely capable of running that errand myself. I told you not to walk.” Ursula’s tone seemed tense.
Helena shrank under Ursula’s ire, slouching slightly to make herself smaller, but not quite laying back down. “I didn’t mean to question your ability, I was just hoping to help somehow.”
Silent, Ursula started walking towards her, leaving the pack of meals behind. Arriving at Helena’s knee, she began climbing the armor, coming to a stop on her armor’s collar, just in front of her face. “I thought I had made this clear. I am helping you right now, because you are grievously wounded. That’s my task, and I will do it gladly. If you try and help me back, you’re only going to make more work for me later.”
Helena looked down at the spider before her, her shame and her desire to help clashing in her head.
Unsure what else to do, Helena closed her eyes and took several long breaths, trying to move as little as possible to not upset the passenger on her collar. “Yes, you’re right. I apologize, I shouldn’t have strained myself like this.”
Ursula made a slight hmph sound. Reaching a foot down and hooking onto her tabard, the spider began climbing off of Helena’s kneeling body. “Alright, thank you. Lay back down and tell me anything you might need. How are you for water?”
Helena began the careful process of lying back down, retracing her earlier steps. “I have a skin with me, but I emptied it while you were away. Is there a stream nearby?”
As soon as Ursula touched earth, she started walking back to the abandoned meal. “There’s no need, I can condense enough water to fill that in about an hour.”
Finally resting on her back again, Helena stared at the forest canopy again. The view was becoming familiar. “Do you use magic for that as well?”
Again, the response came as though it were spoken directly in her ear. “I do.”
Helena turned her head, catching a glimpse of Ursula walking through the grass several feet away.
“And that method of carrying your voice farther than natural… How is it you can use so many magical techniques in such quick succession?”
There was a pause before Ursula replied. When she did, there was strain in her voice. She was carrying the food again. “I’m not sure what you mean. In my experience it’s typical to know enough spells to cover a variety of tasks. Is it not so with your people?”
“No, for humans it takes decades to master even a single spell. Those that do are considered specialists.” She paused. “How… old are you?”
Ursula laughed lightly. It wasn’t a laugh, but a series of clear and simple clicks that sounded distinctly joyful. “I’m twenty-five, thank you very much. And when did you get so talkative, anyhow?” “The pain is significantly less now than it was before.” Helena paused. “So young to be so knowledgeable. If you were human, you would already be one of the greatest mages in the city.”
There was a heavy grunt from Ursula, and when she spoke next, she was near enough to no longer need the spell. “I had heard that humans had difficulty with magic, but I had no idea it was so pronounced. Wasn’t one of you casting spells in your battle?”
Helena turned her head to find Ursula perhaps a foot from her shoulder. “How did you know that?”
The spider looked at her feet, as if ashamed. “Oh, it made… quite a noise for anyone who might have been listening, but I’m fairly certain I’m the only one who was.”
“Ah, that probably would have been Maia and I. She’s the star apprentice of the city Warlock, on track to take their mantle within the year. Her specialty is making fire, so she’s really useful in combat.”
Helena caught herself in present tense. Stopped. Tried to feel something, then turned back on it. Took a deep breath. Grounded herself.
“The food is here, when you’re ready.” Ursula’s voice was soft again, and it only made Helena feel worse.
Still, she didn’t want to disregard the kindness. She removed a piece of hardtack from the wrapping and broke off a chunk in her mouth. Kept it in her cheek while it softened up. Then, Helena turned to her host, most of the piece still in her hand. “Would you like some?”
~~~
Ursula had never had food like this before. It was strange and hard, and spent too long in her mouth. Still, she found the novelty enjoyable.
Around the food, she and Helena had finally struck up a conversation.
“So I heard you say you know magic as well? What’s your area?”
Helena’s response was slow, as she finished the last cracker. “No particular area. I don’t know any specific spells, I just have a patron.”
Ursula pulled that thread a bit more. There were so many new topics, it felt as though she would never run out of questions to ask. “What do you mean by patron?
Helena sighed again, clearly grasping for an answer. “She’s… My patron is the Queen of Pure Tones. She is the manifestation of justice and righteousness. Those that follow her teachings can sometimes form a bond with her, giving them access to magical abilities beyond their own.”
“And what are her teachings?”
A wry smile broke through Helena’s next sigh. “Are you sure you want to ask that? They can be quite tedious to list.”
Ursula looked up from her meal, into an eye the size of her head. This being, many times her size and experiencing several levels of intense pain, was worrying if she was bored. She giggled. “Really, I’ll tell you if I find it too dry.”
Helena turned her head back to the comforting view of the canopy. The sun was just beginning to set. “Very well then. The first rule is to always be sure of yourself. Whether the action you take is right or wrong in hindsight is irrelevant, you must only be certain that it is yours…”
~~~
The lecture continued for perhaps half an hour. Helena found peace in the old words, and lost herself in the rhythm. By the time she had finished, the two women were ready for a sound night of sleep.
I love all the writers appreciation posts from last month ❤️ my humble offering for you writers is a silly roll for blank game using all the tropes. Feel free to use/edit as you please. If you write something from this please lemme know!!
your Main Character is a
Giant
human
tiny
sizeshifter
Flip a coin: do they get shrinkrayed/growthrayed? Heads for yes tails for no
your second MC is a:
Giant
human
tiny
sizeshifter
setting:
Home
Outdoors
different dimension
silly place (carnival, dmv, etc)
how do they meet?
Caught in a trap
being hunted
online (uh oh are they dating?)
found while stealing food or supplies
magically transported to each other
vortex of mystery
person b is noisy. Person a finds and tells them to knock it off
alien invasion
cursed by a witch
meet cute in a public park
Someone’s injured
Mutual friend
Coworkers
new neighbors
Taking a class
Person a hired person b (hit man, task rabbit, dog sitter, etc)
Both are being sent on an epic quest by a wise old wizard
Childhood besties
Oops we swapped bodies and need to figure out who this new body is and how to get back
Amnesia and both wake up in a lab
Ope! One of your characters is secretly a….
Vampire
werewolf
demon
really boring normal dude
fairy
big ol fuckin nerd
wizard
really nice guy under all the snark
Your characters don’t want to be in this forced proximity because…
One of them needs to go home
a deadline for xyz is coming up and they do not have the time for this
they are mortal enemies since childhood
the big is keeping the tiny captive
the tiny is keeping the big captive
the other person annoys the hell out of them
person a has goals and the situation with b is hindering that
prejudice that shall be overcome
Ope looks like plot needs to happen
The tiny or giant is seen by a nefarious character
the out of size character gets caught in a life threatening situation
the gov wants info and is hunting down our differently sized friend
an ex is jealous of this new relationship and will do anything to break them up
roll for a new character. This one is just an asshole and so selfish that it negates the main character’s goals.
our main characters have a fight that results in someone walking out
the bigger character accidentally destroys the smaller ones things/home/city
a couple people mentioned dolls/figures for the uncommon prompt and I also saw horror
so now I keep getting an almost idea for a living doll who belongs to a collector/customizer. She’s generally passive and not over eager to reveal that she’s alive to the collector, instead taking in the idea that she’s most beautiful when she’s dressed and well posed. She has no nerve endings and learns that the frequent adjustments to her limbs or face are an expression of love. She feels close to the collector, like she’s bonding when she’s being held and prodded and posed and photographed.
It’s a very warped view of love, but she’s not really supposed to be alive in the first place. Maintenance and customization and display are signs that you care for a decorative object, so it mostly works out for her. (But it does feel incomplete, somehow?)
It does not, however, work out great when she comes across a tiny half her size and tries to show she cares with the same methods
I’m not sure who I’d want as the tinier tiny though—another doll who’s just a litttttle more alive? Borrower who was pumped to get some scaled tools? Doll customizer who’s been shrunk somehow?
For day 2, a scenario I wish I saw more often is tinies as dolls, figurines, or miniatures come to life! I rarely see it in the g/t community, but it has so much potential
Newly-turned dolls re-learning how to move with limited joints.
Miniatures coming to life in front of their maker, the confused human now mistaken for some sort of god.
A porcelain figure who broke a limb accidentally, constantly carrying it around until a kind person finds them and super-glues it back on, the feeling finally returning to their lost limb as they test it for movement again.
I’ve seen some fluffy comics from @thelilfae of their porcelain doll oc, and I have an older story about someone who accidentally cursed themselves into becoming a doll, but other than that.. I don’t think I’ve seen anything with it.
(actually, I DO have a short story I never posted that I wrote in a moment of inspiration which also uses it…)
