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Professor Lorelai Larkin had been a graduate teaching assistant when her magic came in and upended her life–twenty-three years old and thus older than most, and right in the middle of her English class, which seemed rude. One instance of shorting out every computer in a lab with mystical energy was enough to convince her that she was going to study magecraft, not merely learn to cast spells.
Twenty years later, when the Worldwide Council of Mages decided to pilot a college program for novice mages–a new paradigm to replace the outdated master-apprentice program born of a need for secrecy–Professor Larkin had two more degrees (doctorates in English composition & rhetoric and arcane history), decades of study, seventeen years as a Council-certified mage, and twenty years teaching both burgeoning mages and college freshmen who all complained that they "were math people, not English people," as if a brain couldn't contain two types of skill. She was, in short, qualified.
The State University of Ohio's new Sheena Starr Institute for Mageglorious Studies (named by its top donor) required relocation to cooler climes (Why did the national locus for magecraft have to be in Ohio of all places?), but she had the ear of administration. She had an office. She had access to the university's new magical laboratory spaces. And, most importantly, she had tenure.
The only problem, of course, was the freshmen.
Professor Larkin taught MAG 1200–20th and 21st Century Magecraft History–because no one else in the country was as qualified, and until a curriculum could be ironed out, the work couldn't be handed over to an adjunct or, Goddess forfend, a graduate student. It was a requirement for mages and a popular elective for non-mages, small enough that she could learn every student's name but large enough that she didn't lament a few dropouts changing the tone of the class.
By week three, the class had largely settled down–two essays and two tests completed, a whole host of students who didn't know a comma from a coma (their state during lectures), and a perpetual demand for extra credit from students who didn't want to complete work for actual credit. She'd read essays suggesting theories on the origins of mage spells and the history of their secretive distribution, bullshit that technically met the requirements for this rudimentary of a class but would fall apart under actual academic scrutiny. Pacing to her class in Starr Hall in her sensible loafers and comfortable cardigan and skirt, she was tired, which was of course part of her own assignment.
As usual, Professor Larkin was careful to arrive fifteen minutes early for class. The students had their own folklore about a late instructor, rules that existed only in their heads for how late an instructor could be before they were allowed to leave with no consequences. She almost wanted to test their mettle, to see them argue these "rules" before actual administration, but she relished a little time to herself in the empty lab to take a few long breaths and ready herself for–
"Heeeeeeey, Professor! ¡Buenas tardes!"
"...good afternoon, Miss Jessica," she sighed–surprised but not enough to break her stride. She ran her thumb over her necklace with the charm of the twin boots of the Goddess of All Things, looking up just enough to smile at the eight-foot-plus mountain of curves in her reinforced chair near the front. "Let's not break that chair today, please?"
"No worries about me, then?" said a tall, lanky shadow just under Jessie Drakenberg's huge body, leaning too far forward and smiling coolly. Wherever Jessie went, Neela followed–but at least they weren't a registered mage.
"I would appreciate it if no one broke anything in the room," Professor Larkin answered, dropping her bag on the desk near the front of the room. "Let's call it a rule. Miss Meti, I'm assuming you're here, too? Something to add?"
"Professor, please understand that I hold you in the highest esteem."
Meti Mengasha was somewhere–or at least her voice was. On the other side of the room, the door slammed shut, and the lock turned into place on its own.
"Cute," Professor Larkin sighed. "Yes, seventy-five percent of us in the room know magic, Meti. Very impressive. Manipulation of fine objects from across the room is a challenge."
"Thank you, Professor," Meti said, and Professor Larkin jumped–she was, somehow, behind her.
"Shit's sake!" Professor Larkin shouted, and she whipped around to glare down at barely five feet of Meti, grinning proudly in her little dark blue suit embroidered with gold planets and comets, like a wizard with a business degree. Behind her tinted glasses, her blue eyes sparkled in two slightly different shades, barely noticeable until she made eye contact. "I shouldn't need to report you of all people to the disciplinary office, Miss Meti!"
"Apologies, Professor," Meti said, bowing her head low and taking a step back, pushing her glasses back against her round face. "We have, collectively, decided an academic intervention is necessary."
"Intervention," Professor Larkin scoffed. "You have an A in the class. Miss Jessica also has an A." She turned to look over her purse at Neela, smiling politely. "And… and Neela is doing fine."
"C's get degrees, baby!" Neela laughed
"Nevertheless," Meti continued, "the work has been strenuous, and the syllabus indicates no sign of slowing down, with four more essays due in a course that is not even labeled as writing-intensive."
"It's a lot," Jessie sighed. "And we figured you might appreciate hearing it from students who are doing well, you know?"
"And me," Neela chimed in.
"You're doing amazing, sweetie, I'm so proud of you," Jessie said, planting a massive kiss right on top of Neela's head. "It's hard, okay? All three of us are freshmen, we're all adjusting, we're all trying to figure out how this works–"
"--and I am the veteran instructor," Professor Larkin interrupted.
"Of a course curriculum that is, by your own admission and those of the department, a work in progress," Meti said, raising her eyebrows.
"And since you have no experience in curriculum development–correct me if I'm mistaken and Dr. Drakenberg has been piloting new Spanish language courses–I won't need to hear your feedback until course evaluations," Professor Larkin said. "So no, I will reevaluate the course when it is finished and I have a more complete perspective."
"Knew it," Neela sighed, flopping their head against the back of their chair.
"Aye-yi-yi," Jessie chuckled. "Figures. We thought you'd listen if we brought the best student in class, you know? Miss Overachiever back there?"
"It did help that I agree with their assessment," Meti added.
"But!" Jessie said, and she slowly stood up, stretching her back and thrusting out her frankly ludicrous chest. It was a shelf larger than her head, wider than her already wide hips, and in a low-cut sun dress with a neckline so low that it was practically underground. "That's fine! We're gonna get a break anyway."
Professor Larkin tilted her head back, craning her neck until she could meet her face high in the air. Jessie Drakenberg was, like her mother, immense, larger than every other student at the school by a comfortable margin, but she was also prone to bouts of growth and had poor control over her own magic. "Right," Professor Larkin said. "You're trying intimidation then. That's why you locked the door–so a couple of novices could out-magic a woman who has been involved in the practice since you were in diapers? Kid, I've forgotten more spells than you've ever cast."
"Yeah, that sounds right," Jessie said, stretching her shoulders, arms barely curling against the front of her chest.
"But of course, a mage duel?" she said, and from her bag she drew a long, simply wooden wand. "That can happen within reasonable ethical boundaries. I've had occasion to teach a cocky newcomer another type of lesson. Just one of you, though–I suspect the other will reconsider after seeing the result."
"Yeah, Jessie's gonna do it," Meti said. She folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the wall. "She's the nepo baby, after all."
"We're all nepo babies here!" Jessie snapped back. "But yeah, Meti and Neela are here for emotional support."
"Naturally," Professor Larkin said, stretching her wand arm. "Let's move this along then–I would like to settle this before anyone else arrives to see you humiliated–"
"That's not happening," Jessie said.
"No, it certainly is not," Meti said. "Check the clock, Professor."
Professor Larkin lowered her wand with a sigh. "Stalling is unbecoming when we're on a timetable," she said, turning around to face the clock. "Nevertheless–"
The clock hadn't moved. Class was starting in fifteen minutes.
She whipped around, scanning the computer login screens across the room. 12:45 am. Class was starting in fifteen minutes.
"Cute trick!" Professor Larkin shouted, her steady voice squeaking a little. "Y-You stopped all the clocks in the room! That's… an impressive little bit of… hacking?"
"Nope."
Professor Larkin stumbled, nearly falling to the floor. Jessie Drakenberg's voice had not just come from her mouth but from every computer in the room. And the speakers on the ceiling. And the PA near the entrance. And from deep within Professor Larkin's own mind.
"Listen, I respect what you're doing here. Really! It seems like I don't, but I do! This program is new, and you're right in the thick of it! I just think you've forgotten what it's like to be a student!"
She steadied herself against the desk; somehow, her knees were growing weak in the face of the wall of sound. Sitting at the table, Neela's head was bowed and their eyes closed; they were whispering something that couldn't possibly be heard against the brutal cacophony of Jessie. Behind her, Meti was also bowing her head slightly, smiling weakly.
And then there was Jessie Drakenberg, still standing, still looming above the entire room. Her body was surrounded by specks of light that circled her in swooping orbits. She was glowing, illuminating the room in a way that seemed to somehow cause the fluorescent lights to flicker.
And, of course, She was growing bigger.
"It'll be okay, I promise!" Jessie intoned from dozens of places across the room and within Professor Larkin's mind. "We're giving you a day off! It won't be so bad! You won't even remember that you're pretty much just a GERM compared to My power, so it won't be embarrassing or anything! In the long run!"
The desk was getting higher; the room was getting wider. It wasn't enough that Jessie was growing closer to the ceiling; Professor Larkin was dwindling closer and closer to the floor.
"Pretty embarrassing now, though," Neela chuckled. "We won't tell anybody you got bodied by a freshman in a duel you wanted to start."
"Y-You'll be expelled for this!" Professor Larkin shrieked as the desk passed her head. She was dropping faster and faster. "Not just from this school–the Council will strip You of Your magic!" She covered her little mouth; something was… off about the way she was addressing Jessie. "Don't think You'll… You'll…"
She zipped down one final time, her voice fading to silence as she became a dot.
At least this was the perspective of the world of people. From Professor Larkin's perspective, Jessie Drakenberg's leather wedge-heeled boots (why did a woman over eight feet tall need wedges?) were cliff faces, Her bare legs towers into the sky. The cheap, rough classroom carpet was a hilly landscape; she had been fortunate enough to shrink onto the top of one of the centimeter-tall fibers, or else she would have been lost among the tree-sized mounds. The only reason she could see Jessie's face (miles away? dozens? hundreds?) was because She was gracious enough to bend over slightly, staring over Her city-sized chest into the carpet.
"Okay!" Jessie boomed, chipper and upbeat as always but now absolutely immense, somehow more immense in her tone than when every sound in the room had been Her. "Nice worship, girlies, we got it done."
"Uhhh… I don't see her anymore." Neela–pathetic slacker, not even a mage–was only slightly less thunderous in their tone. "Some of us aren't God but with a fat ass, Jess, help me out here." Neela leaned over the edge of the table, squinting down at the spot where Professor Larkin had disappeared–gazing just slightly off by a few miles from the dot of a professor's perspective.
"Calling Me fat?" Jessie boomed, glaring down over Her chest at Her friend. "Some might call that disrespectful, you weak little normie."
"Not You, though," Neela said.
"Obviously not Me," Jessie chuckled back, bumping Neela in the head with Her ass.
Professor Larkin was so distracted by the conversation happening in the sky that she only noticed the tiny quakes when it was too late, when the dark fingertips closed around her and lifted her. They were so vast that she tumbled into the grooves of her fingerprints, her stomach twisting while she was lifted with the speed of a rocket the whole five feet into the air.
"As usual, Jess, quite impressive,," Meti said. As Meti's finger shifted, Neela's vast eye replaced it in the sky, their pupil narrowing to focus downward. "Neel, you probably won't be able to see her without magic help? I used the magic lens spell and she's still barely even a dot."
"Ooooh, I can fix that!" Jessie roared. "Mom gave Me this idea because sometimes Mamita can get, uhhhh, pretty tiny! Pretty easy to learn when I can just do, like, whatever the fuck I want.r"
In the sky, just over the hills of Meti's fingerprint, popped a massive rectangle. While Professor Larkin watched, the bottom edge sprouted a long triangle that zipped downward, pointing directly at her with an arrow hundreds of times her height. Inside the rectangle in the sky, an image of herself appeared–like a zoomed in picture inset in a comic book.
"Oh, there she is," Neela said. "Yeah, I didn't tell You this, but I paid a friend of mine online to draw us like this."
"Oh My Mom, Neela, you got a commission of us and didn't tell Me?" Jessie shouted. "You've gotta show Me when we're done here!"
"Yeah!" Neela yelled back, a little pink in their cheeks. "Yeah yeah! There were a few more of the little inset thingies though, like. Had to zoom in a lot to make me visible."
"Ah," Jessie said. "Like this."
With a loud POP, the rectangle in the sky sprouted a second inset above–and Professor Larkin was, somehow, even tinier, a dot to a dot.
Then a second POP. A third inset. A dot to a dot to a dot.
Then a third.
A fourth.
A fifth.
"OKAY, THAT'S LAYING IT ON A LITTLE HEAVY, GIRL. SHE GETS THE POINT."
Professor Larkin could only comprehend Meti's voice as a cacophonous roar, indistinct in the syllables, a sound bigger than life itself. The fact that she could understand it must have been a consequence of magic, because Neela's response was just as indistinct but impossible to understand.
Her fingerprint seemed endless. What she had perceived as Jessie's old height would not simply fit in here; it would vanish in here. A merest fragment of Neela's iris was now all that she could see. She began walking to try to see more, to see something else, but nothing in the sky shifted.
"OH, LOOOOK! SHE'S TRYING TO WALK! THAT'S SO CUTE!" Jessie squealed. "SHE'S NOT GONNA GET FAR, THOUGH!"
"MAYBE IF WE GIVE HER A FEW YEARS," Meti chuckled. "AND A CAR."
"A FEW CENTURIES IF I FEEL LIKE IT," Jessie chuckled back–and Neela replied with something that sounded like the movement of the planets, the shifting of the cosmic sea. "ANYWAY, WHAT ARE WE THINKING, GIRLIES–BOOBS?"
"NOT THE BOOB UNIVERSE, THOUGH," Meti said. "THOUGH SHE'S STILL FAR TOO LARGE FOR THAT ANYWAY. WILL SHE ENJOY THAT, THE LITTLE PROFESSOR?"
"ONLY ONE WAY TO FIND OUT!" Jessie said–and the sky was moving once again. Professor Larkin was so unbelievably, comically tiny that the motion of Meti's fingertip was enough to press her flat to the ground, forcing her to watch as Neela's face swept away, as Jessie's absolute universes of pale skin drifted into view. Neela's incomprehensible voice slammed into the fingerprint again, except this time, the rhythm was clear. They were chanting. They were cheering.
The sky was dark, and then the entire world shifted, and Professor Larkin's insignificant nothing of a body fell.
Time seemed to mean very, very little at this size; she wasn't sure how long she fell. She probably shouldn't have fallen; as insignificant as she was, static forces or gravity should have kept her clinging to Meti's finger. But she did fall. She fell forever, for what seemed like centuries but could not have been more than a second or two, across the incomprehensibly vast tenth of a millimeter of Meti's fingerprint until she landed, face-first, onto the cloud-soft tits of God Herself.
And then Her bra snapped down, and somehow, Professor Lorelai Larkin managed to be pinned by a single fragment of an angstrom of an atom of a fiber of a thread on Jessie Drakenberg's straining, undersized-by-default bra–merely pinned rather than splattered into the finest paste possible.
There was, of course, still movement in the distant universe of normal sized people. Neela and Meti would be struggling to return the room to normal, to open the door and hide her purse and wand. Time was ticking back to its normal pace. Despite how ridiculously puny she was, Professor Larkin could still feel Jessie's breasts quake as She sat back down in Her chair–which had grown with Her. As if Jessie was feeding the information straight into her mind, she knew that the worship She had received had made Her thirteen feet tall.
But still Professor Larkin squirmed, racing in her mind through her complement of spells, through twenty years of study and seventeen years associated with the Council itself, through powerful spells that she never thought she'd need to cast.
Boobs.
Maybe a mind control spell? She wasn't even sure of the range of such a spell, because she never pondered that she would need to cast it on someone not in the room–never mind someone whose mind must have been millions of miles away. The ethics of it scarcely seemed to matter, because none of this fit into the usual ethical framework! None of it fit! Jessie… Jessie didn't fit… in Her shirt…
Boobs.
"LET ME OUT OF HERE, YOU MENACE!" the esteemed Professor Lorelai Larkin screamed into the vast, endless world of Jessie Drakenberg's breast, far too tiny to even make a sound. "LET ME OUT! Y-YOU'RE GETTING AN F IF YOU–"
"HEY, GUYS, NEWS YOU CAN USE!"
Jessie's voice filled existence again. The fifteen minutes must have passed; class must have begun to trickle in. Professor Larkin stopped screaming, even if it was merely symbolic–there was no chance her screams would be louder than the shifting of Jessie's fabric, never mind the sound of Her voice.
"PROFESSOR LARKIN'S RUNNING LATE TODAY, AND SHE TOLD ME THAT WE CAN LEAVE IF SHE'S NOT HERE IN FIFTEEN MINUTES!"
The thunder, the roar from the classroom, was overwhelming. She heard the non-magical students rumble indistinctly; she heard the mages shout "THAT SOUNDS GOOD TO ME!" Or "IF YOU SAY SO, JESSIE!"
Or "YEAH, THAT'S THE RULE FOR ALL CLASSES ANYWAY!"
Professor Larkin flailed desperately–or tried to. She was pinned. She was helpless.
Boobs.
She was trying her best to keep her mind focused except that was impossible.
So Professor Lorelai Larkin sighed and collapsed, groaning, trying not to notice how her fingers were squeezing into Jessie's soft, infinite flesh.
Hours passed. A week. A month. A thousand years. Professor Larkin lay on Jessie Drakenberg's boobs for the life of a universe, for the space between the Big Bang and the end of time, resting, squeezing, silently worshiping if she could be forced to admit it, never sleeping, never moving, but never bored.
Later that same evening, she was back in her office. She was sure something had happened, except all she knew was that she had missed class. A note on her desk from her department chair told her it was fine, that the department had accepted her request for time off that she'd never filed.
Something had happened. She must have been sick? She certainly hadn't slept in, as it would be the first time in two decades as an educator for such an event to happen. She thought she remembered going to her room, walking into her room, preparing to teach class, seeing Meti Mengasha and Neela Pandit and…
Jessica Drakenberg. Daughter of Stacy Drakenberg, the stupidly tall local mage who ran the flower shop on the other side of town. Jessica Drakenberg, eight and a half feet tall and probably over five hundred pounds.
On her screen were her lesson plans for the rest of the month. Another essay was supposed to begin today, along with preparations for the quarter-term exam–midterms were usually not enough for her.
Her fingers, dancing across her chest, paused at the double-boot charm of the Goddess of All Things. Professor Larkin wasn't just tired of the complaints; she was tired of the grading.
Sighing, she opened her email and shook her head. Her class was a work in progress. It'd be fine.
Everyone,
I am making some small adjustments to the syllabus for the
rest of the semester. There is no need to begin the third
essay or submit your topic proposals; we will be completing
this work in class. Quarter-term exams will instead be a
class discussion. More changes will be to come, but nothing
will need to be completed before a given due date, and no
new assignments will be added.
Have a restful day, and I will see you on Wednesday.
Regards,
Professor Larkin
P.S. Please stop spreading the rumor that classes will be
dismissed if the instructor doesn't arrive in fifteen minutes.
I don't know where you all are getting this idea, but your
instructors are all sick of hearing it.
Dr. Lorelai Larkin PhD, Associate Professor
Department of Mageglorious Studies
471 Starr Hall
614-666-7777
She/Her/Hers