Chapter 1: Grocery Shopping with a Slime-Filled Mime
The air in the Xylos Bazaar didn’t so much hum as it clattered. Crystalline utensils chimed from floating stalls, and the scent of fried gristle-beetles mixed with the ozone tang of overworked anti-grav units. Stalls wobbled on personal gravity fields, stacked haphazardly like a drunkard’s idea of architecture. Melas stood at the edge of it all, a still point in the swirling chaos.
Her problem, as always, was geometry.
The two pale, spherical volumes attached to her chest were, technically, breasts. They were also each the size of a weather balloon, ludicrously disproportionate to her otherwise slender frame. They did not obey standard physics. They were lighter than air, perpetually buoyant, and had a tendency to drift on the slightest current. Today, a vendor’s fan was pushing a steady stream of cooked meat smells toward the thoroughfare, and her left breast was gently tugging her toward a stall selling what looked like pulsating purple sausages.
A rainbow-flecked tendril, glistening with internal light, slithered out from between her lips. It formed a crude hand and pointed firmly away from the sausages.
“Focus, Melas. Groceries. Sustenance. The boring stuff that keeps this beautiful symbiosis operational.” The voice was a wet, resonant baritone that emerged from her own throat but belonged entirely to Prism. “The spiced protein rods are aisle three. Let’s move. And for the love of the great cosmic stain, try to counterbalance.”
Melas gave a slight, nearly imperceptible nod. Her face, as usual, was a placid moon. The Prism in her throat did the feeling for both of them. She leaned right, attempting to will the drifting orb back in line. It bobbed cheerfully, indifferent.
She took a step forward. Then another. Navigating was a series of careful negotiations. The crowded aisle was a gauntlet of dangling crystal charms, bubbling soup kettles, and towers of bioluminescent fruit. She shifted her hips, trying to lead with her shoulders. It was a failed strategy.
Her right breast, swinging with the momentum, kissed the edge of a tower of Vagrian moon-peaches. It was the softest of touches.
It was enough.
The tower teetered. A peach detached, falling in a slow, graceful arc. Then another. The vendor, a four-armed Grul with eyes on stalks, watched in horror as his carefully stacked pyramid dissolved into a bouncing, rolling avalanche of fuzzy orange spheres. Plop. Plop-plop-plop.
“Hey!” the Grul screeched, two of his arms flailing at the escaping produce, the other two pointing accusingly at the offending breast. “You! Control your… your ecosystems!”
Another slimy hand emerged from Melas’s mouth, this one in a gesture of placation. “A minor gravitational miscalculation!” Prism announced, his voice booming with theatrical apology. “Our deepest regrets. A thousand apologies. We’ll just be—”
Melas was already backing up, her face heating with a flush she prayed wasn’t visible. In her retreat, her left breast swung backward. It connected with a display of floating mineral-water globules. The clear spheres wobbled in their suspension field like startled jellyfish.
“Oh, come on!” Prism muttered from within her.
They pivoted, a clumsy two-bodied organism, and aimed for a wider aisle. Melas kept her arms slightly raised, not to draw attention, but to physically guide her personal airships. It made her look like a sleepwalking ballerina.
“Spiced protein rods,” Prism reminded her, a tendril extruding to map a path in the air. “Then the dehydrated leafy clusters. Simple in-and-out operation.”
They approached a stall manned by a patient-looking Tessellated being whose skin shifted through calm patterns of blue and green. The protein rods were within reach. Melas leaned forward, her hand extending. The shelf was at perfect breast-height.
As she focused on selecting a packet, her forward momentum caused both orbs to press gently against the stall’s counter. The entire structure, a lightweight alloy frame, squeaked and slid backward six inches on its grav-plate.
The Tessellated vendor looked down at the displaced stall, then up at Melas’s utterly blank expression. Its skin flickered to a puzzled yellow.
“Sorry about that,” Prism’s voice boomed, cheerful. “She’s… enthusiastic about your product line. We’ll take two packets of the Class-C rods. The mild ones. Her digestive system is a wimp.”
Melas, internally, winced. She handed over the credit chip from her belt pouch, her movements precise and careful. The vendor processed the transaction, its eyes occasionally darting to her chest, which now hovered threateningly close to its stack of novelty snack crackers. A successful exchange. Hope flickered.
Prism retracted his tendrils, savoring the victory. “See? Teamwork. Now, leafy clusters. They’re usually near the back.”
The path to the back was a congested river of shoppers. A Bargian lumbered past, its thick hide brushing against Melas. The contact was slight, but it sent a ripple through her body. The ripple translated into a pronounced bounce.
Her right nipple, large and reactive, decided at that moment to stiffen against the thin fabric of her tunic. It was, as Prism often lamented, an independent actor with terrible timing. It poked distinctly against the material, tracing an impossible-to-miss path as she moved.
A group of chittering adolescents nearby exploded into giggles, pointing not with fingers but with their antennae.
“Don’t look at them,” Prism hissed internally, his voice a vibration against her vocal cords. “They’re amoebas. Less than amoebas. Their lineage is devoid of interest.” Yet, she felt him recoil slightly in shared humiliation.
She pushed through, her eyes fixed on a sign that pulsed with the symbol for organic matter. The leafy clusters were there, in a low bin. Thank the void. A simple crouch, a grab, and they could leave.
Melas bent at the knees, back straight. It was a practiced maneuver. As she descended, her breasts descended first, preceding her like exploratory probes. They reached the bin’s edge.
And then they kept going.
Their buoyancy, combined with her angle, pushed them forward into the bin. They settled atop the bundles of dehydrated green clusters like two pale planets landing on a forest. There was a soft crunching sound.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Prism groaned, his voice muffled slightly by her current posture.
A new vendor, a sharp-faced woman with vibro-scales, rushed over. “Your… appendages are crushing my premium clusters!”
“They’re not appendages, they’re a liability!” Prism snapped, a full arm emerging to make a frustrated chopping motion. Melas tried to rise, but the act of lifting her torso required her to push against the bin, which only pressed her breasts deeper into the foliage. A faint, herbal dust rose around them.
It was a stalemate. Melas, pinned by her own anatomy, stared blankly at the outraged vendor. Prism’s colorful limb gesticulated wildly, offering explanations and credit chip increases. The market’s chaos seemed to recede, narrowing to this one, absurd, crushing defeat.
Then, she felt it. A shift inside her. A familiar, cool slithering sensation moving down, away from her throat, through the channels of her body.
Prism was relocating.
The vendor was mid-rant when Melas’s left breast twitched. Then, the fabric of her tunic bulged oddly, and a single, rainbow-hued eye, fluid and liquid, formed just above the prominent nipple. It blinked slowly at the vendor.
The woman’s tirade cut off with a choke.
The eye dissolved. A moment later, Prism’s voice, now slightly echoey as if spoken from a deep well, emanated from the center of her chest. “Madam,” it said, reasonable and calm. “We are currently compressing your inventory. This is unfortunate. Alternatively, we could become a permanent installation. A living art piece. ‘Woman and Her Salad.’ The choice is yours, but we require a compromise to disengage.”
The vendor blinked, her vibro-scales clicking in confused agitation. “Just… just take them! Take the crushed ones and go!”
“A wise and profitable choice,” the chest-voice replied.
With a deep, internal suction, Prism retracted back through her body, coalescing in her throat. The pressure released. Melas, her face still a mask of serene emptiness, slowly straightened. She pulled two thoroughly flattened bundles of leafy clusters from the bin, placed a generous stack of credits on the counter, and turned to leave.
The walk out of the bazaar was silent but for the clattering market sounds. They passed the Grul, still collecting moon-peaches, and the Tessellated vendor, now showing amused pink swirls.
Only when they were in the quieter transport corridor, the recycled air cool on her skin, did Prism speak again, his voice back in its usual place.
“Well,” he said. “That was a disaster of epic, borderline poetic proportions.”
Melas touched a hand to her sternum, then to her throat. A slight, almost invisible smile touched the very corners of her mouth. She nodded.
“Don’t you nod at me. We’re out of credits and we have two packets of protein rods and lawn clippings for dinner.” He paused. “On the upside, my foray into mammarian reconnaissance was groundbreaking. The structural integrity is worse than we thought. We need a new strategy.”
She waited, her head tilted.
A slimy tendril peeked out from her lips and formed a thumbs-up. “Tomorrow, we try the helmet. And maybe online delivery.”
Melas’s smile deepened by a millimeter. She adjusted the bag in her arms, careful to not let her elbows brush against the volatile spheres leading her way home. The walk was long, but at least here, in the quieter passages, the only gravity they had to fight was their own.
The walk was long, but at least here, in the quieter passages, the only gravity they had to fight was their own. The residential spire loomed ahead, its obsidian surface swallowing the system’s weak sunlight. Their apartment was on the seventy-third floor, a compromise between affordability and the structural stability required to house a tenant with a unique center of gravity.
The transit tube was mercifully empty. Melas leaned against the clear wall, watching the flickering levels streak past. Her breasts, contained within a specially-engineered bra of tensile lunar mesh, bobbed gently with the tube’s deceleration. The bra was massive by any standard, a complex harness of straps and cups. It was also, fundamentally, insufficient. The pale, buoyant spheres strained against the material, creating deep furrows at her shoulders and across her back. The silhouette was of containment, not support.
The door to their unit hissed open to a wave of dry, recycled air. The main room was spartan: a sunken sitting area, a nutrient synthesizer that rarely worked, and a large, padded clearing in the center where Melas could recline without fear of floating into furniture. A single window looked out onto a cascade of floating transport lanes, painting the room in streaks of intermittent crimson and amber light.
Melas placed the bag of crushed leafy clusters and protein rods on the synthesizer’s bench. She stood still for a moment, in the middle of the padded clearing, and let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. The market’ chaos faded, replaced by the low hum of the environmental systems.
Prism coalesced fully in her throat, his voice a soft rumble. “Home sweet marginally-habitable cube. The one place in the galaxy where you’re not a public menace.”
A faint ripple moved across her cheek, the ghost of a smile. She reached behind her back, her fingers finding the primary clasp of the bra. It released with a heavy, mechanical sigh.
The relief was instantaneous and profound. The pressure across her ribs and spine vanished. The lunar mesh, now slack, hung from her shoulders like a deflated tent. She pulled the straps down her arms, extracting herself from the architecture of it. She let the massive garment fall to the floor with a soft thud.
For a moment, she simply stood, eyes closed, feeling the air on her skin through her thin shirt. The shift was dramatic. Unrestrained, her breasts settled into their natural state, which was not restful. They seemed to expand, their full, ponderous weight becoming apparent not as a downward pull, but as a radical, upward buoyancy. The soft cotton of her shirt strained against a new, vastly more generous curve. The fabric, which had been loosely draped, was now taut, highlighting the dramatic slope from her collarbone. The difference was startling, a secret volume revealed only in privacy.
Prism whistled, a wet sound from the back of her throat. “Every time. It’s like a reveal. The grand unveiling. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but the engineering is just… spectacularly bad. You okay?”
Melas nodded, bringing a hand up to gently knead the deep red lines the bra had left on her shoulders. She walked, with a new, careful gait, to a low couch and let herself sink into it. The freed orbs lifted gently, coming to rest against her upper arms and chest with a soft, sighing pressure. She leaned her head back against the cushion, her blank expression finally melting into one of pure, exhausted relief.
A single, rainbow-hued tendril extended from her lips, forming into a small, sympathetic hand. It patted her cheek softly. “Rough day. Tomorrow, we plot. We scheme. We maybe even order groceries. But for now,” the hand dissolved back into her mouth, and his voice softened, “just breathe.”
Outside, the traffic lights streaked silently across the window, painting fleeting stripes of color over the two of them, sitting in the quiet, weighted dark.
Outside, the traffic lights streped silently across the window, painting fleeting stripes of color over the two of them, sitting in the quiet, weighted dark. The relief of being harness-free was always short-lived. The demands of her body were a constant.
With a sigh that Prim felt more than heard, Melas pushed herself up from the couch. The movement caused a slow, oceanic shift in her chest. She padded across the room, her steps careful on the cool floor.
“Big plans for the evening?” Prism asked, his voice a drowsy rumble. “Or are we just going to stare at the wall and contemplate the structural flaws of polyester?”
She ignored him, entering the small sleeping alcove. The drawer sighed open under her touch. From within, she pulled her nightly uniform: a pair of soft, checked pajama bottoms, and the top.
The top was a problem.
It was an old thing, once belonging to a set. The bottoms still fit, if you considered ‘fit’ to mean they stretched over her hips. The top, however, was a relic from a different body, a different life. She pulled it over her head, the familiar struggle beginning immediately.
The fabric, a thin cotton, strained across her back. The sleeves were tight around her upper arms. But the front was an act of pure, defiant optimism. The pale blue material stretched taut over the massive, pale curves of her breasts, the hem riding up a good four inches above her navel. It was comically, painfully small. The buttons down the front were under terminal stress, the threads holding them screaming a silent protest. They remained fastened only through mutual agreement not to move.
She looked at herself in the faint reflection of the dark window. The image was absurd. A woman swallowed by her own topography.
“The classic ‘bottoms-up’ look,” Prism commented dryly. “Very avant-garde. Exposes the midriff while simultaneously threatening a catastrophic fabric failure. A statement piece.”
A cool draft from the environmental system whispered through the room. It brushed across the exposed strip of her stomach, then crept upward over the strained cotton.
The sensation was immediate.
The cold air touched her skin, and her nipples, fiercely sensitive, responded. They hardened instantly, pebbling against the thin fabric. But with her anatomy, it wasn’t a subtle change. The movement was a distinct, almost separate shift. The feeling wasn't just one of texture; it was a weird, internal migration, a tiny tectonic plate adjustment deep within the soft, buoyant tissue.
A sharp, startled breath hissed through her teeth. It was a tickle, an intense, alien tickle that radiated outwards from the epicenter. Her shoulders jerked slightly, a full-body flinch she couldn’t suppress.
“Whoa,” Prism said, feeling the spasm in her throat. “What was that? Internal earthquake? Did we finally achieve lift-off?”
She shook her head, pressing a hand flat against her chest as if to settle the rebellion. But the touch of her own palm through the fabric was a mistake. The pressure, gentle as it was, triggered another minute, involuntary shift. Another wave of that deep, internal tickling sensation cascaded through her nerves.
A sound escaped her, a faint, choked puff of air. Her eyes watered.
Prism was silent for a moment, processing. “Ah,” he said, his tone shifting to one of clinical understanding. “The nipple thing. Right. Sorry. Sensory fireworks display. Try not to breathe. Or exist. Might help.”
She glared at the ceiling, willing her body to still. The cold air kept circulating. Each slight draft was a new gamble, a potential trigger for another internal tremor. She stood frozen in the middle of the room, a prisoner in her own pajamas, hostage to her own hypersensitive nerves.
Finally, the cycle passed. The hard peaks softened, the internal quivering settled. She let out a long, controlled exhale.
“Okay,” Prism said softly. “I’m setting the internal thermostat to ‘tropical lagoon.’ No more surprises. You should probably... not move. Forever.”
But she had to move. She walked back to the couch, her every step now a conscious negotiation with potential perturbation. She gathered the monstrous bra from the floor, its wires and mesh looking like discarded armor after a lost war. She folded it, a pointless gesture given its shape, and placed it on a shelf.
Then, she turned off the main light, plunging the room into the rhythmic color of the passing traffic. She lay down on the wide, padded mat that served as her bed, her body sinking into the supportive foam. The too-small pajama top rode up further, exposing more of her stomach to the now-warmer air.
She stared at the streaks of red and amber painting the ceiling.
Prism retreated into a quiet hum within her, a sign of him settling into his own version of rest. The market’s humiliation, the ache in her shoulders, the constant vigilance against her own physical reality—it all condensed into a heavy fatigue behind her eyes.
Tomorrow was the helmet. Tomorrow was online delivery. Tomorrow was another negotiation with gravity and geometry and a world not built for her.
But for now, there was only the quiet, the artificial warmth, and the careful, still hope that her body would let her sleep.
But for now, there was only the quiet, the artificial warmth, and the careful, still hope that her body would let her sleep.
Morning arrived not with light, but with a soft, insistent chime from the apartment’s scheduler. The traffic-streaked dark beyond the window faded to a dull, metallic gray. Melas opened her eyes. The ceiling stared back, indifferent.
Moving was the first challenge. She pushed herself up onto her elbows, a slow and deliberate heave that sent a wave of motion through her chest. The too-small pajama top had twisted in the night, the strained fabric now digging painfully under her arms. She sat fully upright, and the full, ponderous weight of her breasts settled into their daytime equilibrium, pulling at her shoulders with a familiar, deep ache.
She stood, bare feet on the cool floor, and caught her reflection in the dark window. The outline was a cartoonish silhouette: a petite, plump body, soft curves leading to a narrow waist and gentle hips, all of it utterly dwarfed by the two massive, pale spheres that dominated her torso. They seemed borrowed, glued onto her frame as a cruel joke. Her face, softened by sleep, held a perpetual, gentle sorrow. Her eyes were large, a deep, liquid brown, with dark circles beneath them that spoke of chronic fatigue rather than a single bad night. They were sad, adorable eyes, the kind that made strangers want to offer help and then immediately recoil when they noticed the rest of her.
A rainbow pseudopod snaked out from her lips, forming a blurry eye that blinked at the reflection. “Another day in paradise,” Prism’s voice grumbled from within her throat, thick with sleep. “Let’s survey the damage.”
She shuffled to the small sanitizer stall. The confined space was a battlefield. Turning around required planning. Leaning over to wash her face was an exercise in counter-balancing, her breasts pressing against the cool synth-stone rim of the basin. The water was a shock. She splashed it over her face, the droplets catching on her long, dark lashes.
“Right,” Prism said, his energy returning. “Game plan. We’re not repeating yesterday’s produce-based fiasco. We’re evolving. We’re adapting. We’re wearing a helmet.”
Melas tilted her head, water dripping from her chin. A single, skeptical eyebrow raised.
“Don’t give me that look. I’ve been running simulations all night. The problem is lateral drift and public perception. The helmet solves both. It’s a visual cue. It says, ‘This person has a medical condition involving buoyancy, please maintain a three-foot clearance.’ Also, it’s aerodynamic. In theory.”
She dried her face with a towel, her movements slow and meticulous. Padding back into the main room, she approached the storage closet. From a high shelf, she pulled down the box. It was dusty.
Inside, nestled in foam, was the helmet.
It wasn’t designed for her. It was a standard-issue environmental helmet, meant for brief forays into non-toxic but particulate-heavy atmospheres. It was a large, clear bulb of plastiglass with a sealing neck ring and a simple air filtration unit on the back. It looked like a fishbowl meant for a head significantly larger than her own.
She lifted it out. It was lighter than it looked.
“See? Perfect,” Prism chimed, as she turned it over in her hands. “Plenty of room. Might even dampen some of the market noise. My vocals will sound more authoritative filtered through this thing. Commanding.”
Melas carried the helmet to the padded mat and sat down with a soft sigh. She pulled the cursed pajama top over her head, wincing as it caught on her ears. The morning air was cool on her skin. She dressed in her usual outfit: soft, durable leggings and a long, dark tunic made from a stretchy, forgiving fabric. It was the largest size she could find, and it still strained across her chest, the hem landing mid-thigh.
Then, she picked up the helmet. Taking a deep breath, she guided it over her head.
The world muffled. The constant hum of the environmental systems became a distant throb. Her own breathing sounded loud and close in the confined space. The neck seal was loose, gaping; it was designed for someone with a neck the size of her thigh. The clear plastiglass obscured nothing, magnifying the slight distortion of her sad, wide eyes looking out from within.
She stood up. The helmet shifted, tilting slightly to the left from the unbalanced weight of the filtration unit. She straightened it.
“How’s the fit?” Prism’s voice echoed inside the helmet, now resonant and oddly hollow.
She gave a small thumbs-up. The gesture looked absurd, her hand emerging from the tunic to wave inside the giant clear bubble.
“Excellent. Now, the true test. The Gait Trial.”
She took a tentative step. Then another. The helmet wobbled. Each footstep sent a slight jolt through her body, which translated into a minor bounce in her chest, which in turn caused the helmet to sway on her shoulders. It was like walking with a bowl of water balanced on her head, if the bowl was giant and sealed and her head was a buoy.
“Okay, a little inertia issue,” Prism admitted. “We’ll work on that. The important thing is, you’re now a designated safety hazard. People will give you space. They have to.”
Melas walked slowly to the front door of the apartment. She paused, her reflection in the dark metal a bizarre portrait: a petite woman swallowed by a clear bulb, her adorable, weary face floating above a landscape of impossible curves. She looked like a child who had raided a deep-space exploration closet.
She reached for the door control.
“Wait,” Prism said. “Do we need a mantra? A battle cry? Something to mark this new era of contained, helmeted grocery procurement?”
Melas paused, her hand hovering. She took another deep breath, the sound echoing in her plastic shell. The air inside was already getting warm.
She pressed the button. The door hissed open.
The corridor outside was empty, lit by sterile white panels. The first step out of her apartment was always the hardest. It was the transition from a world built around her limitations to one utterly indifferent to them.
She took that step. The helmet wobbled. She adjusted her posture, trying to stabilize it. Her breasts shifted under the fabric of her tunic, a slow, independent motion that disrupted her center of gravity all over again.
“Okay,” Prism whispered, his voice filled with a new, tentative determination. “Let’s go buy some damn protein rods.”
She walked down the corridor, a slow, careful procession. Each footfall was measured. The neck seal of the helmet rubbed against her collarbones. Her own warm breath began to fog a small patch of the clear plastiglass in front of her mouth.
She reached the transit tube lobby. The doors slid open. A single, tall Seledian was waiting, its feathery antennae twitching. It turned, took in the sight of a small woman in a massive environmental helmet standing with tragic resolve before it, and took two very deliberate steps back, giving her a wide berth.
Prism let out a low, victorious hum that vibrated in her throat. “See? It’s working already.”
Melas stepped into the tube, the doors closing behind her. She stared at her fogging reflection as the transport began to descend. The helmet felt heavy, awkward, ridiculous.
But for the first time in a long time, nobody had bumped into her. Nobody’s stare had lingered too long on her chest. They’d stared at the helmet instead.
It was a start.