But this time, we had to be apart. Adam was planning a once-every-fifty-years gathering of all of our kind and he was off making plans with Jake. Jake actually asked me to contact one of us who lived in Norway, saying that the experience would do me some good–that I could learn from him.

All they told me was that his name was Erik and I’d know him when I met him. That didn’t quite prepare me for what I encountered. I was walking along a fjord, when a tree reached out and grabbed me. Instinctively, I tried to teleport myself away, but to no avail. It had me and wasn’t letting go. It picked me up off the ground and held me in its branches.

It then started laughing.

The gales of laughter soon began to sound less like a tree (whatever a laughing tree sounds like) and before I knew it, I was being held high in the air, as one would hold a small child, by a huge man. He was nearly seven feet tall, wearing a skin-tight T-shirt and bicycle shorts. He was not excessively muscular, but had a decent amount of muscle on his arms and torso; however, his legs were quite another matter. He had thighs and calves bigger than mine, even bigger than Adam’s. They were perfectly proportioned and defined.

“Sure it’s cold,” he smiled up at me, knowing my thoughts, “but with this body, why would I wear anything else?”

“I’m guessing you’re Erik. Could you put me down, please?”

“And you’re Peter. How is ol’ Adam?” His upper body suddenly inflated to the point that he resembled Adam’s shape. He and Jacobus told me a lot about you.”

“I’m afraid I know very little about you.”

“Boy are you going to have fun finding out” he said, smiling a smile that caused enormous dimples to form in his face. He had dark blond hair, chiselled features and the most incredible eyes. His eyes were the same shade of blue as the sky on a dry, frigid day in the late winter.

“Should I be frightened?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t hurt you,” he chuckled, “but we are going to have some fun!” “Fun? What do you do for fun?”

“Well, there was the time I made Oslo disappear...”

“What?”

“I brought it back two days later. No one knew they were gone.”

“I thought we were supposed to inspire or protect humans or some such.”

“I never hurt them–permanently. I just like to have fun.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I like to have fun, but not at someone else’s expense. Erik seemed amoral. He reminded me of the bullies who tormented me in elementary school.

“Bullies from elementary school, eh?” He winked and in the next instant was an overweight man with a horrible comb-over hovering just in front of us. “This is Fred Waters. You remember him from the fourth grade, don’t you?”

“Well, yes. He made that year a nightmare.”

“What shall we do with him?” Erik snapped his fingers and Fred was turned upside-down. “Think he might enjoy a year as a salmon?”

“Just let him go. That was a long time ago. I really hadn’t thought much about him for years.”

“You heard the man, Freddie. Blow.” Erik puffed a breath at Fred who promptly vanished.

“What did you do to him?”

“I sent him home to his miserable existence. You really are a killjoy!”

“Erik, I didn’t mean to get you upset. In all honesty, it was kind of funny.”

“Now you’re getting it. Fred’s back home. The only thing is he now has a twinge of regret for the nasty things he did when he was a kid.”

“You’re something else, Erik.”

“You could say that. The Norsemen thought so too.” “Really?”

“Yes. They called me ‘Loki’.”

I shook my head. “You’re Loki? The Trickster? And why do I believe this?”

“Oh, they embellished my story a bit. Gave me a wife and such. But the core of it was right. But did you know that I’d be this hot?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Still can’t get past the human ideas, eh? It’s all right. Adam and Jacobus sent you here. You remember how our kind greet each other, don’t you?”

I was still getting used to this. “Well, yes...”

“After me, all greetings in future will be just a bit disappointing!”

He certainly was confident. I suppose being omnipotent and immortal will do that for you. And I did find him sexy in the extreme.

“I’m glad you like what you see, kid. You’re not half-bad yourself.”

“Well, Adam helped...”

“Don’t be modest. Adam’s wonderful, but, really, he didn’t put anything in you that wasn’t already there. He just brought it out to the surface a bit more.”

I still wasn’t used to that, but it was good to hear.

“Now, check out these legs,” Erik began to flex his calves. A diamond-shape bulged from one leg and then the other. “And I always love this!” He shook his thigh and did that shape-shifting thing that even mortal muscular men can do when they flex it–though it’s far more impressive when done by an actual shape-shifter! “Don’t get me wrong. I love this whole body of mine, but these legs are my glory. They’re the most magnificent legs you’ve ever seen!”

I couldn’t argue that. They really were.

“There’s only one way they’d be better,” he smiled so hard it looked like his dimples were going to go through his cheeks. “And that’s if they were a little bigger.” And before my eyes, not only Erik’s legs, but his entire body began to grow. Inside a minute his head was a hundred feet above me. “This is nothing! You’d better come along for the ride!” He pointed at me and I rose up in the air to the middle of his thigh. He shook it again, now making an almost deafening noise as he did. As the muscle flexed, he shouted “Hop in!” Next thing I knew, I was inside his colossal quadriceps. I don’t know whether it was with my eyes or not, but I could see the outside perfectly from within. In my head I heard Erik’s voice say “Going up!”

He continued to expand. The ground below became increasingly remote. Before long I could see the coast of Norway and then all of Scandinavia. All of Europe soon came into sight. From inside Erik’s thigh I had an incredible view. He grew bigger still and in a very short time I could see the entire Earth. Erik was as big as the whole planet.

“I wouldn’t be too impressed yet, Little Fellow,” came his voice.

And, true to his word, the Earth gradually seemed to shrink below us as Norway had before. I laughed as I thought that the Earth was now about the size of one of Erik’s balls.

I could see the Sun. It was far more glorious than it appeared on Earth, yet its glory was slowly but surely being dwarfed. Erik went on growing till he was bigger than the Sun itself and kept going. Soon, the Solar System could not contain him. Distant stars and star systems would come into view and vanish into insignificance next to Erik. Finally, I heard his voice “I think this is enough!”

Erik was bigger than the entire Milky Way Galaxy.

I was inside the thigh muscle of a man who could make himself bigger than the galaxy and had.

It was at this point that I realised I was losing my own form. I had not grown at all during this entire expansion. I was less significant to Erik’s body now than an atom would be to a normal human’s. The muscle that surrounded me now seemed to be consuming me, but it was not in the least a painful process. It was an ecstasy greater than human words can convey. And then there was no Peter. I was part of Erik.

But then I was again.

We were back on the Norwegian shore. Erik was his normal size. He had me cradled in his arms and we were kissing. When I became aware of my surroundings, I went limp, nearly passing out.

“Not bad, eh?”

I was overwhelmed and could not speak. “Don’t worry, kiddo. You should have seen Jacobus the first time I took him for that ride!” Erik again smiled his impossibly deep smile. “Now, what else can I do for you?”

I thought for a minute and thought better of something I had said earlier.

“Not a problem,” Erik grinned, his incredibly blue eyes twinkling. “Freddie’s already in orbit!” •