The Great Awakening (Chapter 22)

“Hey, I’m getting pretty good at that!” the giantess enthused. She couldn’t hold back a mighty grin, displaying her lovely pearly whites to whatever people below weren’t caught under rubble, and especially the occupants of the Empire State Building, whom she wanted to believe were probably a bit jostled after the force required to rip the huge building out of its foundations and spring it into the sky like a makeshift rocket astride the fingers of a traveling goddess, but still capable of seeing her. Lilly hoped they could, anyway. She waggled the fingers of her opposite hand in between her smiling lips and the building, as a greeting to any inside who’d made the effort to get to a window and see her.

Then, while holding the building so close to her face that she nearly went cross-eyed just trying to bring it into sharper focus, Lilly became aware of something else peculiar. Blue beams the same hue as the gemstone twinkles atop the skyscrapers were alighting on her skin as well, deep in the ravines formed by her fingerprints, as well as on her knuckles and the creases of her palm. Frowning, her interest desperately piqued now, the girl studied her own skin cells from as close as she could, while trying to track the shooting blue streaks originating from the tip of the skyscraper and firing helter-skelter at whatever parts of her hand it could reach.

So that’s what the light show was all about, Lilly understood with a knowing smirk. This wasn’t an impromptu fireworks spectacular, but precious little weapons, like plastic laser tag guns, though frankly, such harmless childhood trinkets probably would’ve been more capable of inflicting damage on her, since at least those could burn the retina when pointed incorrectly. The people manning these devices were just like her new friends lined up on the beaches and coming out in welcome wagons by sea and air. It was only right, then, that she tried to greet them too, Lilly decided. Stooping low to the ground again, the giantess realized the tinier buildings still rooted to the earth were launching similar assaults at her bare feet, from her heels to her toes and everywhere in between, where her soles stretched atop whatever shorter less-important city blocks used to reside there and had since been flattened to literal two-inch-high ashen debris by her arches.

She waved to these creatures as well, amused at the realization that the up-close motion of her welcoming fingertips generated enough wind to knock many more buildings, including rail gun-mounted skyscrapers, clean over like toothpicks, especially when her approaching footsteps thudding the very earth and bouncing cars skyward earlier had already loosened the city foundations so severely. The rate of fire seemed to increase exponentially now with her face bowed to the ground for inspection, with more rooftops glowing blue and those in Midtown kicking into higher gear, so that the central skyscrapers especially all continuously shone like a single sapphire, and by all their forces combined, they practically formed a jewel large enough for Lilly to wear as a ring, if only it wasn’t a mirage.

In her peripherals, the girl also noticed the almost-inconsequential combined ordinance of each tank and helicopter in the surrounding city blocks unloading every bullet and missile from the chambers at once, which contributed a charming pixie-dust effect from Lilly’s perspective, like tiny sparkles, surrounding the blue haze of the Midtown rail gun brigade. Everything in a mile-wide radius around the heart of the metropolis was blasting her feet, fingers, and face with everything they had at once, fire and brimstone and fury, but all the dark-haired archangel saw was a city transforming itself into a hypnotic display of diamond-like twinkle lights for her entertainment.

“Bravo! Bravo!” Lilly cheered. Her laughter rumbled in musical echo through the streets beneath her, the raucous sound on its own causing the remaining skyscrapers to wobble. Unsteadied, several more buildings were knocked over, if not flipped entirely on their towering heads, when the girl further showed her appreciation with a round of applause that quaked the streets themselves, permanently deafened any still-living civilians directly below, and blew such colossal gales from the impact of her palms that every glass window of the prestigious structures from ground to sky practically turned back to sand. Only when the military forces ran temporarily dry of ammunition, and Lilly calmed herself enough to stop snickering and golf-clapping, did she realize she’d completely lost track of the Empire State Building, and in her haste to immediately show her appreciation for the light show, had either smashed the historic high-rise to a fine stone-based mist by clapping it between her fingers, or simply flung it over the horizon, out of sight and out of mind.

“Oh. Whoops…” Lilly uttered, pensively thumbing the corner of her lip, then shrugged, forgiving herself just as quickly. “Well, it’s not like there’s much to do with them after you’ve pulled them up and admired them for a second, anyway. Like… flowers, really. That one wasn’t anywhere near as tricky as the last time I tried, either. If I get any better at that, I’m going to have to make it more of a challenge. Maybe… doing it with my eyes closed? Or using my toes instead of my fingers? That could be fun. If anyone down there has a suggestion, please, feel free to fly it up to me. I’m all ears.”

Unfortunately, nobody took her up on the offer, or at least they weren’t speaking up loudly enough for Lilly to perceive. She soon grew bored of hunching motionless over Midtown, especially since the light show of the skyscrapers had mostly lost its luster after her delighted laughter and hand-clapping had flipped every tank, toppled half the district’s buildings, and knocked the choppers out of the sky. Lilly rose back to full height, but acted with grace and precision, so as to avoid demolishing precious real estate when she wasn’t even looking closely enough to get the full entertainment value from seeing her feet pass through rock and steel beams of Manhattan’s architecture easily as daisy-chained tulips. It would’ve been such a waste to crush a whole borough or two underfoot on accident, and the girl was determined that every site in the big city she “visited” today would receive her undivided attention, at least until their infrastructure proved too weak to host her by falling apart at the slightest touch, and therefore too dull to be worth her time any further.

Standing tall, with all ten miles of her majestic self raised above the half-ravaged city again, Lilly searched the living map of NYC for any patches of ground that hadn’t yet served as a stepping stone for her. Luckily, these locations were easy to divine by the presence of actual still-standing buildings in certain sections, squat though these tight-knit structures were were, when compared to the leveled-off smoking rubble everywhere else carved conspicuously in the shape of Lilly’s naked soles and boulder toes. Without this point of reference, the giantess might’ve found it difficult to tell the difference between ten-story buildings and flat ground, but thanks to her own footprints, the distinction was made simple, and her attention was next caught by a wide rounded shape with a hole through the center, like a stray bead lost off a bracelet. In fact, for an instant Lilly had to check her own stylish accessories to make sure there wasn’t a spill, before recalling she wasn’t wearing anything like this curious thing, and it was in fact something the precious little people had built.