Sylph in “Brand New Day” by: stmercy2020 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. “Ohhh… “ow.” Sylph opened her eyes and immediately squeezed them shut again. The light creeping in through the barely opened blinds seemed staggeringly bright. “Told ya it wouldn’t hold,” came Kalida’s voice, thunderously loud despite the distance. “Are you okay, Sylph?” Bekka’s whisper was slightly more tolerable, but was still painful to Sylph’s hypersensitized hearing. Sylph moaned slightly, feeling the pressure in her temples and her gut. This was not going to be a good morning, she decided. She debated not getting up until it had passed… “She’s fine,” Jen’s voice declared, triggering another wince from the hypermuscular teenager. “Here, Sylph, we brought you a tent- excuse me- t-shirt for you to wear, since you destroyed your sleeping top.” The shirt landed on Sylph’s head with a soft fwap and Sylph reached up to pull it on. It felt like sandpaper but, opening her eyes more cautiously this time, she saw that it was one of her blue silk tees. Looking around, she realized that she was not, in fact, in her dorm room, nor was she in the girls’ suite located across the hall. She was in the lounge on the main floor of the dorm- or what was left of it- and attracting rather a lot of attention. The heavy oaken door leading into the building had been forced inward with ruinous force, splitting it both vertically with the grain and horizontally against it. The hinges, heavy iron mechanisms more than sufficient to stop a runaway truck, had evidently been twisted, snapped, and torn free of the wall as a force much greater than they had been designed to withstand shoved them in a direction they hadn’t been intended to go. Cracks in the cement tiles gave mute testimony to the path Sylph had staggered along in her dazed stupor the previous night. The back of an enormous lounge chair was bent double where Sylph had gripped it for support on her way to the sofa where she had finally collapsed for the night. The sofa itself was, of course, ruined. Amazingly, it had apparently survived Sylph sleeping on it all night. Instead, it was destroyed when Sylph stretched and sat up, concentrating her prodigious weight on the already overburdened frame and snapping it like dry kindling, depositing the massive maiden on her fundament on the floor. “At least I didn’t wreck the piano,” Sylph muttered under her breath, noting that the expensive parlor grand was miraculously untouched. “We should have been so lucky,” Kalida teased. Sylph looked at her quizzically. “We finally discovered something that you just can’t carry,” Jen put in maliciously, “a tune…” Sylph’s eyes grew wide with horror. “You can’t be serious. I can’t sing- I never sing!” “We noticed,” Bekka laughed quietly. Realizing she was hungry, Sylph attempted to stand up. Managing the feat with only a little difficulty, she made sure that her head was still firmly attached to her shoulders. It was, despite the sensation she had that it might roll off if she were to twist her neck too suddenly. “You probably shouldn’t move too quickly,” Kalida advised, “at least not until you’ve done something for that tender skull. Come on downstairs and I’ll get you some Tylenol and some sugarcane.” Sylph gingerly followed the ladies down the stairs into their suite. Kalida went into the kitchenette and came out with a long stalk of raw sugar which she handed to the suffering girl along with a glass of water and a couple of pills. Sylph gulped the pills and sipped the water, then nibbled on the fibrous rod. While she chewed, Kalida set about making coffee, a ritual she had learned from her grandmother. Sylph didn’t know how she did it, but Kalida’s coffee was the epitome of the ancient Turkish proverb- black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as a stolen kiss. As she watched, Kalida placed cold water in a pot, then measured in dark coffee powder, flakes of sugar cane, and just a bit of cardamom. She stirred it for a while, then placed it on the stove and turned on the heat. While they waited for the coffee to boil, someone knocked on the door. Kalida rose and answered. “Hey, Kali,” Wade greeted her from the door, “how’s my favorite Hindu goddess?” “She’s Greek, you dork,” Kalida teased him. “And I’m the Pope,” Wade retorted. “Oh, I see. What can we humble peasants do for you, your holiness?” “Well, you could give Sylph back to me- we’ve got a bit of work to do today…” Kalida grimaced. “Can it wait? She’s a bit delicate, just now.” “Oh, I heard. Last night, actually. I now understand what the word ‘caterwauling’ means at a visceral level. “No, it really can’t wait,” he sighed, “Campus security will be out before too long, and they’re bound to give her some sort of ticket for where she parked her truck. She’s gonna have to move it before they get to it.” Kalida looked baffled for a moment, then enlightened. “Oh yeah…” “What?” Sylph demanded. “Well, the lot was kind of full last night, so you parked a bit, um, unconventionally.” Sylph rolled her eyes. “Everyone’s being so cryptic,” she muttered. “Come on, sweetheart,” Wade grinned, “pull on some working clothes and grab your easel. We’ll move your car and then you can get started on your project for Monday.” Sylph struggled to her feet and followed Wade back over to her room to gather her supplies. “So,” Wade asked conversationally, “have you given any thought to your project, yet?” Sylph chewed her lip before answering. “Yeah. I kind of need some help for it, though.” Wade raised his eyebrow inquiringly. “Well, I already talked to Kalida, and she said she’d be glad to help. I need your help, too, though.” Wade nodded. “Sure,” he agreed easily, “whatever you need.” “Really?” Sylph asked, blushing. “Sure. Anyway I can help, so long as it isn’t illegal or unethical. Ah- it’s not illegal or unethical, is it?” “Of course not!” Sylph exclaimed, blushing furiously, “I just need you two to pose nude for me!” Wade gaped at her for a moment, eyes bulging out of his face, then doubled over with laughter. After he caught his breath, he finally managed to straighten up. “That’s the help you need? “Sure, Sylph, I’d be glad to. I can’t believe it took you this long to ask.” “Um, thanks,” Sylph mumbled. Wade led them both outdoors into the back parking lot and turned around, looking up. “Okay,” he said, “What I want to know is just this: “How the heck did you manage to get it up there?” Sylph’s truck was perched on the roof of the four story building. Wade was impressed that she’d somehow found a place on the roof sturdy enough to hold the weight without collapsing, but he seriously doubted that campus security would have any sense of humor about the situation at all. “You really want to know?” Sylph’s voice snapped him back out of his contemplation. She was looking at him with a calculating air of speculation in her eyes, a half smile playing at the corners of her lips. Reaching over, she scooped Wade into her arms, holding him snugly against her breasts. Shocked, Wade tried to reach around her shoulder only to discover that her body was simply too wide and thick for him to find purchase on. Reaching higher, he managed to get an arm around the back of her bull neck and leaned into her soft bosom. She giggled lightly, then crouched down slightly. Her quads went from freakishly huge to staggeringly immense in an instant, hardening from the consistency of galvanized rubber to something far stronger than steel. Her calves underwent a similar transformation, jutting out on either side of her shin like rocky half-moons stuffed under her skin, only far denser. “Try to swallow,” she instructed, “it’ll help with your ears popping.” With that, the ground fell away. That was his first sensation- not that she’d leapt into the air, but rather that the ground had simply dropped into a deep abyss. The windows of the dorm rushed by almost too quickly for him too follow. He gulped and, as she had told him, his ears popped as the pressure changed. He felt their assent slowing and he saw the peak of the roof maybe ten feet beneath her feet as they reached the apex of their arc. Wade almost closed his eyes in fear, but somehow managed to reassure himself. As much damage as Sylph had accomplished- as much as he’d actually seen her do- she had never hurt another person or allowed another person to be hurt when she had the power to stop it. She dropped onto the roof and landed in a half crouch, her knees and legs absorbing the impact expertly and gently. Walking over to the truck, she inspected her parking job while Wade tried to come to grips with what had just happened. “You mean to tell me you jumped up to the roof of the building carrying your truck?” “Sure,” Sylph agreed absently, as if it weren’t anything terribly impressive. “Of course,” she went on, “I have no idea how I’m going to get her back down.” Wade looked at her for a moment. “Couldn’t you just jump back down?” “Oh, yeah- only the truck would get all busted up. It’d be like dropping it out of a plane from fifty feet. I could take it, no problem, but the truck’s shocks just aren’t made for that kind of stress.” Wade looked at the truck. “What about the winch?” “Well, it would be strong enough, certainly, but someone has to be inside the truck to operate it.” “I’m right here, Sylph,” Wade remarked wryly, “you just have to put me down.” Sylph reddened nervously as she set Wade down on the roof. “Sorry-” she began, but Wade brushed it aside with a gentle smile, then climbed into the cab of the truck. The placement of the pedals was a bit uncomfortable, and the fact that the wheel was dead center on the dash seemed odd, but Wade managed to find and work the controls without too much difficulty. Sylph wrapped the cable around her right hand and pulled enough out so she could get a good grip on the frame of the truck. Placing her hands on either side of the truck’s front end, Sylph slowly stood. Her triceps swelled, huge veins pumping them full with blood as they absorbed the weight of the truck. Using just her forearms and wrists, then, she levered the huge four ton truck up until she had the entire vehicle held level in front of her. The immense pressures against her back and forearms sent tingling messages of pain and pleasure up and down her spine. Sylph gasped, sucking in air as she braced her feet against the roof’s edge and swung the big Ford out over open space, then gently lowered the back end until Wade was facing straight up. Slowly, Wade let out the cable and the truck descended. Finally, after what seemed an age- and what had actually been nearly five minutes- the rear bumper touched the earth with a gentle ‘thump,’ and the truck slowly, majestically rolled down onto its top. Looking down, Sylph selected a clear spot and hopped down. Despite a graceful three-point landing, the force of the impact was enough to crater the asphalt under her feet and knock over trashcans and student bicycles as close as five feet away. Walking over to her truck, she saw that Wade was still buckled in, although the blood was rushing to his head making him turn red-faced in a hurry. Sylph quickly flipped the truck right-side up and Wade unbuckled himself and climbed out. “Thanks for your help,” Sylph said. “No problem,” Wade assured her, “Anytime.” “So…,” Sylph began, finally feeling more like herself than she had all morning, “how about we get Kalida and start on that project?”