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Sometimes she wishes that she could be more like The Duke. The way that he handles things with a jest and a hearty chuckle. He is hard to phase and words seem to roll right off of him. For it, he is a lucky man.
Perhaps it is that he is used to the remarks and the stares.
At best, Alcina finds them rude. At best she can offer them a scowl and comment on the impoliteness of their ogling. Mostly it makes her uncomfortable. Mostly she finds herself shifting and squirming in her chair. People never paid her much mind before, not after Miss D put down her microphone and retreated back into the shadows of her castle to endure her faulty genetics.
She is a quiet woman and was perfectly content to be an unremarkable one to boot. Sometimes she thinks that it was a mistake to trade disease for…
She stares down the extended length of her body…
For whatever this is.
She is a large woman and sometimes she still feels growing pains. Every now and then they shoot up and down her spine, along her arms and legs. Her chest and rear ache with it and on occasions, her belly. And on the worst of days she can feel the tingling sensation of the mutation in her face. On the most unbearable days it is an all over pain--on these days she grows most noticeably.
On these days she is on the floor screaming, tears streaming down her face as she begs her body to settle.
Sometimes she doesn’t think that she will stop growing. She doesn’t know what she will do when she is too tall to even duck under the doorways. She has to get new clothes, a new bed, new chairs…
And every time she does, she grows taller still. It isn’t becoming on her in the slightest. It is grotesque and sickening.
And to delicately salt a rapidly widening wound, stretchmarks have begun to decorate her chest, thighs, and tummy. Perhaps when she was some two decades younger, she thought herself attractive. She thinks that her beauty has waned since then, it was bound to…
But this? This is stealing from her the last fragments of her youth and an unhealthy portion of her confidence. And this time she is finding it difficult to put on a bolder facade. Truth be told she is terrified. She doesn’t know what she is becoming.
She is too big for her own skin. Her body is too big for the mind locked within it. And these days if feels like one very spacious prison.
She catches a glance of The Duke sitting on the other end of the ballroom. She wonders if the man had ever felt the same. She has known him for many years. She knew him when he was merely a boy. She knew him when he was much slimmer. Relatively speaking anyhow. She supposes that people always stared at him, have always had some comment to make about his size.
And maybe this is exactly why it bothers him none.
The village folk stare at him too. “How does that tiny cart hold up such a large man?” They ask.
“That’s no man, that’s a…” cow, hippo, elephant, bull--Alcina wonders which they will pick this time.
“I think even elephants ain’t that big.” Responds another man. “That thing could kill an elephant, I reckon.”
And somehow, Alcina finds herself furious on his behalf. Furious where he only chuckles and says, “Just give me a chance and good footwear and I can wrestle a rhino with my bare hands!”
Maybe this is why he is left well alone after the initial remark. Of she and her transformation they say more unpleasant things, crass and vile things. Things that she doesn’t like to repeat even privately to herself.
She no longer feels right in her body, if she had ever felt secure in it at all. And sometimes she feels like an object. They make her feel like an object between their open stares, their routy whistling, and their constant remarks.
Somewhere down the lines she stopped being Miss D. And then she stopped being Alcina Dimitrescu. She is now, ‘the big lady’, ‘the tall lady’.
Alcina burrows deeper into her coat, she tries to anyhow, only to find that she has grown even further. Alcina closes her eyes and very silently begs her coat to just fit, but she can’t seem to reach it across her bosom, much less get it to button up. Perhaps she is, in her dismay, only imagining it, but her shoes feel tighter and when she looks down she can swear that her legs are longer still. Hadn’t her coat reached past her knees only moments before?
She has gotten quite used to waking up to find herself less comfortable in her bed and night gown. But this? She hasn’t ever grown before her very eyes.
And she feels nothing at all.
She wishes that a soreness or a burning sensation would accompany her growth. At least then she would know for sure that her mind isn’t playing tricks on her. She hasn’t even that sort of reassurance.
She has reached eight feet now.
Eight dizzying, disorienting feet.
“Look at the big lady!” The girl can’t be older than twelve. “She’s even bigger now!” She doesn’t draw her brother’s attention but also the attention of nearly the entire market square. Everyone should like to take a gander at the strange, big lady.
At least now she knows that it isn’t her imagination.
Her clothes suddenly feel much too tight for her, much less breathable. She isn’t sure if it is a physical sensation or the product of anxiety that grows at a rate faster than her body. She hugs her arms around her chest. She was a fool to trust Mother Miranda.
Beautiful, youthful, and healthy Mother Miranda, who has swapped one of her torments for a new one.
At least a blood disease is rather common. At least it is expected of a Dimitrescu woman. This...she clutches herself tighter…is unnatural. This is...
“Good evening m’lady.” The Duke greets. She feels the bench dip under the weight of him and frets that it will splinter under their combined weight. “Having a dreary evening?”
Alcina nods, “I can’t leave my castle without getting stared at.”
“Aye...of course they are staring, you are a beautiful lady, Miss D.”
She clears her throat. “You are a charming man.” She notes. “But I don’t think that, that is why they’re staring at me.”
He offers a sympathetic chuckle. “Yes, perhaps not.” He shifts from side to side, it takes her a moment to realize that he is feeling for a lighter in his side pockets. Upon finding it, he plucks a cigar from his chest pocket. “Fancy a smoke?”
“A drink would be more helpful.” She confesses.
“You’ll make me waddle all the way back to my stall?”
“If you’ll be so kind, Duke.”
For only a moment, the time that it takes him to walk to his stall and back, attention is taken from her. Her heart aches for the man; he’s a strange one but a good natured one. Perhaps the only gentleman left in this damnable town. And they treat him with such disrespect and mockery. It isn’t enough to rudely gawk. No, they also have to mimic his wide gait and make attempts to shove him over.
By God, were she him she would shove them down and crush them. He could be quite a punishing force were he a cureler man. She wonders how long it will take before the villagers make a game of trying to topple her. She wonders how long it will take before she grows sick of them and tests her own strength. She can’t imagine that this body is just for show. It isn’t as frail an delicate as the one she’d had before.
“You gonna share with the lady or is that all for you?” She hears someone quip.
“If it was for me there’d be a lot more food than this!” He declares proudly. He comes back with a bottle of wine and a raspberry spongecake.
“You spoil me, Duke.” She takes the treat.
“You have been having a troubling week, Lady Dimitrescu. I thought that I would bake something special for you.” He takes a drag from his cigar.
She could very much use special. It is nice to feel special and sometimes the Duke makes her feel just that. “How do you do it?” She inquiries.
“Hmm?”
“How do you put up with all of the leering and commentary.”
“Truth be told, m’lady, I’ve been hearing it my entire life. Remarks lose their impact when you’ve heard the worst of them incessantly.”
Incessant. That is a good word for what the remarks are. “At least they aren’t constantly salivating over your chest, Duke.”
“You would be surprised, m’lady. They might fancy my chest more than yours.” He wiggles his brows.
“You disgusting oaf.” She grumbles.
He only laughs louder, it is the deep and booming sort. “I jest.” He says, wiping a tear from his eye. “Honest, I just.”
Alcina sighs, “you jest too much for you own good, I think.”
“Perhaps so.” He replies. His expression growing suddenly and uncharacteristically dim. “But if I didn’t jest, I don’t know that I’d be able to smile at all.”
“That’s how you do it.” She nods. “You make jokes so that they cannot.”
“It’s a learned skill.” He confirms. “You won’t need comedy, Miss D. You have sophistication and a pretty face.”
She thinks that her pretty face may be part of the problem. A double edged sword that brings her a last scrap of confidence at the same time as it seems to attract the most dull of men. “My face isn’t what troubles me, Duke.”
The man nods. “I can imagine. You have changed. And not slowly either. It must be difficult to adjust.”
“Yes.” She takes another dainty nibble of her cake and a less than refined swig of wine.
“Well those simpletons would do well to respect you. I mean look at you…” she tries not to do that. “You can break any one of them.”
“Why haven’t you? Crushed one of them I mean.”
“I could but then I’d be down a customer. They have a lot to say until I tell them that the shop’s closed and they’ll have to get their wears elsewhere. They’re all gentlefolk then. Hell, they’re even willing to pay double.”
“At least someone in this town has intellect.”
“And it’s all right here.” He chuckles with a sturdy pat to her knee.
Her face flushes lightly, “it isn’t quite as lonely when you make your rounds, Duke.” She doesn’t feel quite so freakish when he is around. And maybe it is that they are very like each other. They are both big people. Perhaps the both of them have outgrown this loathsome village. If only fleetingly, she wonders what it would be like to escape it with him. To find a new place and live out the rest of her days in the man’s company. But then she comes back to herself and she knows that she cannot. She is an oddity in this village, a thing to marvel at in a place teeming with bizarre things and curiosities. To stray to another? Impossible.
A silence falls between them. He watches smoke lazily drift up to the sky and she, for what must be the hundredth time, studies and scrutinizes her body. Tries to make herself comfortable in a chair that is meant for people several feet shorter. Tries to make herself comfortable in skin and bones that have stretched well beyond what they were supposed to. At curves that are too new and too pronounced for her comfort.
She steals a glance at the Duke. He leans back, one hand holds the cigar in place and the other rests upon his stomach. He looks quite relaxed. He looks cozy and self-assured.
Perhaps in due time she will learn to appreciate her supple curves and accept what she has become.
Perhaps in due time she, like the Duke, will have a confidence to match with her size.