[pseudoclever]

Epilogue

After hours of meticulous work, he was finally done. The man leaned back in his wicker chair, appraising the paper in front of him critically. It was good. Very good, in fact ? one of the first times he had ever succeeded at drawing a landscape that was up to his impossibly high standards. A wide expanse of sandy beach stretched out on the page, dotted here and there by palm trees bending in the gentle evening's breeze. Waves were breaking along the shore, topped with frothy white crests, and the fiery ball of the setting sun hung just above the horizon off in the distance.

Zayne was especially proud of some of the minor details he had added. The sand was a darker, wet color along the shoreline, suggesting that the tide was going out. A number of tiny animal footprints could be seen by the careful eye. His favorite part of the drawing, however, was its subject. There was a girl, a beautiful girl, standing in the foreground. She wore a strange, enigmatic smile, and little else. From the staging, it was impossible to tell whether she was very close to the observer, or alternatively, very large. This was how he had been drawing her lately, and to those that knew him best the implication was clear: Bella's size, despite being her most striking feature, was unimportant.

As he studied his work, a strange feeling was growing in the back of his mind. Something wasn't quite right with the picture, and he couldn't figure out what it could be. He sensed that it had something to do with the depiction of his girlfriend, some minor inconsistency between the page and reality. But that had never happened to him before, not with her. By now, drawing Bella was second nature to him. It was how he had spent nearly all his leisure time since he had met her, and that was almost.... He thought for a moment, counting backward.

Six months. Six months since he had met the girl of his dreams, and almost that long since her name had been known in every corner of the civilized world. It hadn't taken the media long to pick up on the story, of course. And who could blame them? The headlines practically wrote themselves. ?New Drug Causes Massive Female Growth.? ?Twelve Foot Woman Tried for Grand Larceny.? ?Big Bella Begs for Benevolence.? That was the worst ? 'Big Bella.' Cable news especially seemed fond of that hackneyed bit of alliteration, and unfortunately the nickname had stuck.

On that night so long ago, the police had responded to an apparent domestic disturbance complaint. The officer, describing Bella's height as ?suspicious,? had made the decision to detain her while an investigation was performed. There was no specific law against being a giantess, but it hadn't taken the police long to connect the dots with Palladian. Initially the company hadn't wanted to press charges ? as Zayne and Bella suspected, they would rather have kept the whole sorry affair away from the public eye. Unfortunately for all involved, word got around about the giant woman living in the county jail. And since the events that had led to her being there were a matter of the utmost secrecy, virtually everyone knew about them almost immediately.

Palladian couldn't afford to have it be known that they had let theft of their flagship drug go unanswered. Reluctantly, they went to trial. For weeks the story had been all over the tabloids, and every day the court was packed with people wanting to catch a glimpse of Big Bella. The company brought in experts to testify about the astronomical cost of producing PT-2715, and the immeasurable damage their public image was suffering as a result of her overdose. Her lawyer countered with a Theoretical Psychologist, who discussed the effects a sudden influx of size and power would have on the human mind. There had been a tearfully confession of guilt from Bella herself, by reason of temporary insanity, from a specially built witness stand.

Then a funny thing happened. The trial had been going nowhere for quite some time, not because of any doubts about the inevitable verdict, but because no one was quite sure what they would DO with her once she was found guilty. In the meantime, Palladian had conducted a series of public opinion polls. People, it seemed, were sympathetic toward Bella and her unnamed lover, especially after it had been revealed that her first exposure to the drug was accidental, and that she had previously been well under five feet tall. The company, by and large, was seen as heartless and cruel for pressing this lawsuit against her. In addition, there was a tremendous amount of excitement about the idea that it was POSSIBLE for a human being to grow to be so tall. Thereafter, the opinion polling became market research.

After some amount of haggling, Palladian worked out a plea bargain with Bella and her lawyer. The company would drop all charges. Bella would be rehired, in a slightly altered capacity ? she was to be their new spokesmodel for PT-2715. It seemed on the surface to be quite a generous offer, until they got down to brass tacks. The first salary offer was exceptionally low, reflecting, they said, the fact that they were rescuing her from prison with this deal.

Much to their chagrin, Bella had an excellent grasp of the situation. Her face had been on every paper in the country for months ? ?...free advertising, and ready-made product identification,? she had explained smugly. She made a counter-offer that would have been enough to bankrupt a small country. Palladian had fought back indignantly, their representatives pounding fists on tables and asking how she was looking forward to twenty-five years of bread and water and cold showers. It was difficult to intimidate Bella. In the end, they had no choice but to give in to her demands.

And so her soap opera tale came to a close. Bella did her publicity shots, as well as a handful of appearances on the late night chat show circuit. Palladian had decided to rebrand the drug, selling a watered down version under the new moniker ?Expandzz: For Female Enhancement.?? By adding the phrase ?Not intended to treat, diagnose, or cure any illness? to the packaging, they were able to bypass the long, expensive FDA approval process. It was, to use an obvious pun, a big seller.

Meanwhile Zayne, who had largely been a spectator to these proceedings, had been busy himself. He had been fired from Palladian almost as an afterthought, and with his girlfriend behind bars he found himself with quite a lot of spare time. The first thing he did was update his portfolio, which had lain neglected since he had graduated college. Next, he mailed out a handful of his drawings to various art publications. To no one's surprise, the local magazine Full Circle picked up his work immediately. It came as a bit of a shock when Smithsonian and Art in America did the same. The pictures were all of Bella, and so thanks to some lucky timing with her court appearance, she was somewhat in vogue at the moment. He was only glad he had used a pseudonym and a post office box return address, allowing his identity to remain a secret.

With Palladian ramping up their ad campaign for Expandzz, they had an opening for a Graphic Designer. Zayne applied and, despite his dubious history with the company, was hired. Bella assured him that she hadn't pulled any strings here ? he'd won the job because his work was head and shoulders above the other applicants. The position mostly involved doing concepts and print ad layouts ? boring stuff. The pay was reasonable however, and he could do it from anywhere in the world.

?Hey, handsome.?

Zayne looked up, jolted from his daydream by the lilting female voice. The sound had come from the window, but when he turned no one was there. He smirked, and continued to watch. A moment later Bella's rose into view. ?There she is!? he called. She laughed, and dropped down again. ?There she goes!?

Once more she lifted herself up to his second story window. It had taken the valiant efforts of three architects to support this habit of hers. When she had first done her pull-ups in this manner, she'd ripped the entire western wall off his study. Money wasn't really an object for them anymore, and Zayne was amused when she came to visit him this way. And so they had paid to reinforce the house to take her weight.

?It's almost time,? she told him, only the faintest hint of exertion in her voice. ?Are you ready??

?Yeah,? he answered. ?I'll be down in a minute. But first, check this out.? Zayne carried his sketchbook over to the window, and held it up for her to see.

Bella looked at it for a long time, frowning. ?It's nice, hunnie. I mean seriously...wow. But you forgot something.?

?I KNOW!? he sighed, exasperated. ?I've been sitting here for fifteen minutes trying to figure out what it could be.?

She shot him a feline grin. ?Want a hint??

?Please.?

Shifting her grip on the windowsill, Bella released one of her hands until she was holding herself up with one arm. She raised the other, and wagged her fingers at him. Zayne slapped himself on the forehead. ?Of course! Well, it was such a recent addition.?

?It's not like it's easy to miss or anything,? she replied.

?You're not mad are you?? he asked, hunched over his desk as he added in the missing detail.

?Of course not. Now come on, if you don't hurry we're going to miss it.?

Zayne tossed his pencil away, the drawing now complete, and jogged down the stairs. He opened the door, and walked out onto their beach. It was a beautiful evening on the island. The sea was smooth like a pane of glass, and it carried a cool breeze that helped to alleviate some of the day's humidity. High above, the night's first stars were beginning to show themselves, dim pinpricks of light against the purple-blue sky. He wondered if she would be interested in watching for satellites with him once it became fully dark. Unless, of course, she had other plans for their night together.

Bella was waiting for him at the water's edge. He found it so easy to forget her immensity when she wasn't around. In his mind's eye she would often shrink to more reasonable proportions, but each time he saw her, the memories would come flooding back. He sauntered over to stand beside her. She was almost exactly twice as tall as him, putting the top of his head just beneath the flair of her waist. At this height a certain part of her body was perfectly level with his face ? a fact they had taken advantage of on a number of occasions.

She crouched down, smiling at him with the soft adoring expression he had come to know so well. There could be no doubt, when he looked into those eyes, that she loved him. There was a bond between them that could never be broken ? no experiment required to verify it.

?Any second now. You better get up here.?

Bella lowered her right hand, offering it to him. He stared at it for a moment, amazed that he could ever have forgotten the engagement ring that she wore there. It had taken him weeks to find a jeweler who was willing to try and make one large enough to fit her, and weeks more for the perfect moment to arrive to pop the question. The gem was enormous, the size of a monkey's fist. It was also a fake. Zayne had told her as much, reminding her of her fondness for synthetics. But she had only laughed, and replied, in a sickeningly sweet tone: ?You are the only treasure I need.?

Zayne took her hand, and she lifted him into her arms. She kissed him tenderly. And then Bella raised him high onto her shoulders, and together they watched the sun as it sank slowly into the ocean.

------------------------------------------All Reactions Complete--------------------------------








Thank you for reading. This was the largest writing project I have ever undertaken, and I only hope that I've managed to bring something memorable to the community.

That being said, let me ask for something from you guys. With every story I've written, with each chapter I post, I'm trying to learn something. And so, as much as I love all the positive feedback (seriously, it makes all the effort to write this stuff worthwhile,) I would like to ask - what DIDN'T you like about this story?

I mean, really. Imagine you had just paid $25 for a hardcover copy of this as a book. What would you say about it? Where did it succeed, where did it fail?

Examples:
- The chapters were too long.
- Not enough growth description.
- Would rather have seen (insert genre type here.)

Anything - and everything - you say here will help make the next story that much better. Thank you again. Until next time.

~pseudoclever