As we grow older, there are certain things that will always trigger a momentary flash of remembrance, bypassing the thinking mind and directly stimulating that happy place in your mind with the feelings you felt when you first experienced them. The way light falls on a certain patch of carpet on a winter's morning, the smell of something you used to enjoy in your youth... the sound you heard when your deepest, most hidden fantasies came to life.
For me, it was the hiss of a certain gas canister, one I had never heard before nor in the years after that one magical experience. I'm not sure how to describe it in a way that makes sense, but I can try to do it in ways that don't. While it sounded like any normal helium tank, this one had carried in it the sound of purpose, a promise of something great to come. It was like the way a roaring jet of flame inflating the limp shape of a hot air balloon on the ground foretells great round shapes drifting stately through the sky, but smaller, more intense, more personal. I had heard that imposing ethereal hiss occasionally in my dreams, and as time went by the more convinced I became that the very first time I had heard it had been in a dream as well; the events that had transpired that night were too impossible to be real.
So you can imagine my surprise when I heard it again, and the memories and sensations of what had happened came leaping to my mind and spun me around in my chair. It was her. The Muse.
She had come to me one night, an agent of creative forces, to crack my writer's block and allow me to write a piece of inflation fiction that I had been proud of. I'd dabbled in it once or twice afterward, but after that moment of catharsis I had known what I was capable of. While I hadn't done much writing like that since then, knowing that I could do it was more reassuring to me than actually doing it. There's probably something deeply egotistical about that, but there I go, psychoanalyzing myself again.
When I heard the hiss, I was sitting at my computer in much the same way I'd been the first time she appeared. I sat bolt upright and spun my chair around, cracking my knee against the side of my desk but too stunned to do anything but stare. She looked the same to me as I remembered her from years ago, with deep blue eyes set in a thin, smiling face, topped with a mass of thick black hair. The color of her eyes matched that of the stone set in the thin silver necklace around her throat. The Muse was wearing a toga-like wrap, full of intricate folds and dramatic draping swatches of linen. She sat at the foot of my bed, one leg stretched out to the floor and the other held up, knee bent, like a pin-up girl painted on the nose of some sort of ancient Greco-Roman fighter-bomber. One hand held her curled leg, and the other held the end of a hose leading to a silver canister. She squeezed and released the end of the hose quickly, releasing two quick bursts of gas, like a mocking salute.
“I knew that'd catch your attention,” she said, reaching over with her free hand to close the valve on the tank. “Remember me?”
I needed a moment to recover from this woman suddenly appearing in my room, but I had been dreaming of this moment (literally, sometimes) and was quick on the uptake. “I... Well, how could I not?”
“You never forget your first, right?” she asked with a wink. “By which, I mean your first story. I'm not insinuating anything otherwise.”
“Thanks for that.” I sat on the bed next to her and took the hose from her, examining it as I let the memories of this woman's last visit flow past my mind's eye. “Look, what are you doing here? I mean, I'm certainly not complaining, but I haven't been trying and failing to write any inflato-porn lately. I haven't seen you in forever, and I don't think I was sending any SOS signals your way.”
“Well,” she said, “You're wrong about that in three ways. First, you have seen me. You just don't remember.” She leaned in close to me, brushing her breast against my shoulder, and plucked the hose from my unresisting hand.
“Secondly, inspiration doesn't need your permission to strike. It just happens to the right mind at the right time, and Muses like me make sure it happens.” She placed the end of the hose in her mouth and gave he valve on the canister a quick one-two twist, letting a single puff of gas into her body. The sound of the tank and the way her robe shifted subtly around her as her body grew slightly larger somewhere deep within its folds sent lightning-hot bolts down my spine. I was suddenly erect and filled with a powerful desire to see more, remembering the way her body had swelled under my hand as that same gas had distended her form. She chuckled slightly and put one hand on my leg as she removed the hose from her mouth with the other. “See? It just happens. You can't stop it. You can ignore it and let it go to waste, but you can't fight creative inspiration when it comes.”
“Okay. So you're here because I'm destined to write another story?”
“Not quite. The third reason you're wrong is that I'm not here for you. I'm here for her.” She lifted her head to point behind me with her chin.
I turned, surprised, to see another woman lounging indifferently in the computer chair I had just vacated. While my Muse (as I suddenly thought of her) was somewhat dusky, this newcomer was fair, verging on pale. Her blond hair spilled down her back in a loose braid, and her toga was less ornamental and more provocative, with a higher hemline that was almost a skirt and a lower neckline which revealed the swell of her bosom. Where the woman I knew was stately and comforting, the new girl's attitude seemed dismissive, almost insulting, in how casual she appeared to be. She tossed me a brief wave and said “Hey,” with a lack of inflection calculated for maximum carelessness.
“Uh... Hi.” I turned back to the first woman. “You don't need me, but you're here for her? Care to give me any kind of clue what's going on?”
“Perhaps you may have noticed from your internet browsing, but there's more of a following for this particular brand of fantasy than there was a few years ago. With more demand for an idea comes more creation, which requires more inspiration.”
The blond woman got up from the chair and sat on my other side on the bed. “In a nutshell, there are more of you inflationist weirdos out there, and more of us have to start putting thoughts in mortals' heads because of it.”
“I didn't know being a Muse was like that,” I said. “I thought new ones would just appear or something.”
The dark-haired Muse shrugged. “That happens sometimes, but in this case we're shifting the workload around. I don't think we've had a special-purpose Muse of Inflation show up. I'd have heard of her, since she'd become my boss.”
The blonde shook her head. “In any case, now my duties entail getting blown up for the likes of you. Yay.” She spun a finger the air in mock celebration.
I was unconvinced. “You sound like you're not thrilled about the idea. Why not get someone who, I don't know... enjoys the job?” I let my hand sneak a few inches and briefly stroked the darker Muse's leg at that, and she chuckled.
The new Muse shrugged. “I'm not completely uninvolved. I've been an inspirational figure for big-tit fantasies, which would sometimes involve letting them get bigger in real time. So when it came time for someone to 'branch out,' so to speak, I got tapped for the task.”
I gave her a critical look. “You're not exactly huge in the BE area...”
“Well, I'm not going to walk around like that all the time, am I?” she sneered. “I do it because it's the job, and I can't argue with the forces above. Doesn't mean I have to cream myself whenever it happens.”
“It sounds like there's some humiliation fantasy involved in that, too.”
“Stop trying to figure me out, human. You think our minds work like yours?”
I looked over at the raven-haired Muse, who rolled her eyes and patted me on the knee. “Anyway, she is going to be taking on the duties of a full-body inflation Muse, and she needs to be shown the ropes.”
“Or the hoses.” I couldn't resist.
“'Or the hoses!'” the blonde muttered, turning away and crossing her arms. “Oh, for fuck's sake, if this is the caliber of wit we've got to work with--”
“That's enough!” the original Muse cut in sharply. “Let me finish explaining the situation.” She turned to me and took my hands in hers. “I chose you for this because I've been in your fantasies. Your visions are gentle and a good first run for a newcomer to the field.” She then leaned in close and her voice dropped to a confidential whisper. “...Also, I know the way your desires work. You like the girl to enjoy blowing up. If we let your dream be the one that guides us here, maybe she'll stop being such a bitch about this whole thing when she starts to like it.”
I had to smile at that. Certainly, the new Muse wasn't enthusiastic about her new duties. But the dark-haired woman was right; I did enjoy pictures and stories in which the inflatee took pleasure in the act. I could see why she'd turn to me for this.
I nodded. “Okay. So, she's just going to blow up, and I'm going to imagine her blowing up?”
“Pretty much. I'm here to coach her along. You get the idea. Any other questions?”
“Yeah, one more thing. Is there anything I can call you? I don't want to have to call you two 'the original dark-haired one' and 'the new blonde one' forever.”
“Interesting...” she said with a wry smile. “Why do you need a way to tell us apart aside from your eyes? Perhaps we're already having stimulating your creativity? Well, in any case, you can refer to me as Auria, and her as Omastia.”
“Don't look too much into it,” she added. “Surprising as it may sound, we're not all that creative when it comes to naming ourselves.”
“Okay. Why don't you get started, then?”
The second Muse, Omastia, turned back to us and crossed her arms under her breasts. “I don't want to do this with you both just ogling me. How do I know it's safe?”
Auria stood up and picked up the gas canister. With some magic touch, she ran the hose through her hand, and suddenly instead of one hose, she was holding three, joined together at the base.
“I'll tell you what,” she said. “Since this is your first time, I'm not going to make you get really big. We'll put enough in you to get the idea of the experience, so you can feel yourself grow.” She took one of the three hoses she held and offered it to Omastia. “If it makes you feel any better, let's make a deal. I'll take these two hoses, and you take one. That way, I'll be taking in twice as much as you will, and prove to you that it's safe. We can trust this creator's vision; this is what we came to him for. You'll be okay.”
Omastia narrowed her eyes suspiciously at this offer, then took the hose from Auria. “You promise that you'll take in twice as much as I do this whole time?”
“I do.”
“Then let's do it.”
Auria's voice took on a lecturing tone that I'd heard before. “You'll want to hold the hose in your mouth, keeping it out of the way so you can speak. Pinch it up in the side of your cheek to keep it from falling out...”
Omastia was less impressed, and waved away the lesson. “I've done breast expansion before. I know how to use an air hose.”
Auria smiled, then put her two hoses in her own mouth. “All right. Let's loosen our clothing, then, and we can begin.” She disentangled herself from her toga's wrapping in an easy motion, standing before me in a lacy bra and panties that wouldn't look out of place in any shopping mall. Omastia, on the other hand, simply pulled her toga up over her head and tossed it in a heap on the floor before inserting her hose. She, too, was wearing panties, but her breasts were uncovered and swung freely from her chest.
The two Muses stood before me, then, several feet away from each other, with the canister between them. The hoses seemed to be exactly as long as they needed to be at any given moment, some kind of magic to keep them out of the way but not a hassle. Auria smiled and nodded to me. “Maybe you'll want to loosen your own, too. If you'll do the honors... Just a slight flow, to start off with.”
I undid my belt and kicked my pants off, then leaned forward from the bed and turned the wheel on the canister a bit until I heard the first hissings of the escaping gas. Auria closed her eyes and smiled, holding her hands over her midsection and caressing herself lightly. “I think a little more than that is in order.”
Auria sashayed over to me, her hips and thighs swinging hypnotically, already a little bit plumper than they had been mere seconds ago. She moved the canister closer to me, within easy reach, then sat down on my lap. “You're supposed to be looking at her, not me,” she said over her shoulder with a confident smile. She knew how excited this was making me, and though I couldn't see anything of Auria other than her back, she took my hands and guided them up and down her breasts and the beginnings of a belly while we watched Omastia.
The blonde Muse seemed to ignore this interplay between us, and was staring upwards at the ceiling, standing stock-still with her feet apart. At first, there was little change in her appearance, but soon her breasts began to puff up, slowly becoming more spherical.
“She's trained in the ways of Breast Expansion,” Auria said to me. “If you let her control her body's growth, she'll try to put it all in her chest. You're the creator of this vision; don't let it happen. Make her start inflating... somewhere else.” She moved my hands down her torso, to her still-widening hips and along her soft thighs and buttocks that were growing outwards and into me.
It was difficult to concentrate on Omastia, with Auria swelling with every second in my arms and her ass grinding softly yet steadily against my crotch, but I did try. The blonde woman's breasts actually shrank slightly as I mentally directed where the flow of gas was moving within her body. She grunted quietly as her abdomen began to distend with pressure.
It was like playing a movie in my head, or envisioning a story while I read it, with the exception that it was playing out in real time as I thought it. Omastia's stomach slowly pushed outwards, expanding forwards and out to her sides. Her hips thickened along with her buttocks as her waistline began to grow, for the first time making her appear bottom-heavy despite her large breasts. Her bosom hadn't stopped growing after that first brief reduction, however, and her breasts were soon nearly spherical, but still getting bigger. For her part, Omastia was focusing on her own sensations, breathing deeply with her arms held out to her sides, still looking away from me.
“There's more to body inflation than breasts, belly, and butt.” Auria sounded slightly winded, as if she was exerting herself. “But you know that. They're all individual parts, yes, but a full-body balloon woman grows more than in those three areas.”
I could feel Auria shudder slightly in my arms. It was getting more and more of a trial to hold her close as she continued to inflate, and I had to loop one arm around her midsection to keep her from sliding off my lap. Her back was pressing into me as her entire body swelled, and I saw the straps of her bra and the waistband of her panties beginning to dig into her. I let my free hand, the one not holding her to me, slip between her underwear and hip, but she swatted it away. “If you're going to start groping me, at least take my brassiere off. Honestly.”
With it right in front of me, it wasn't as difficult as it could have been, but still, removing a bra with one hand can be a little tricky. The moment I undid the final hook, her bra shot away from me as her breasts were finally unconstrained. Auria leaned back against me and sighed. I looked to the side, into the mirror on my dresser, and saw her rounded body, a seamless curve from crotch to neck with massive breasts. She, too, had her eyes closed, but she was biting her lip and rested one hand on the front of her belly. Her necklace stood out against the skin of her neck. She was even getting slightly taller in my lap as her rear expanded, lifting her up on a inflating cushion of smooth flesh. Her widening body became too much for me to hang onto with my arm, so I hooked one of my legs around hers, drawing her to me with the semi-accidental benefit of squeezing her incredibly pneumatic posterior into my lap. Her soft but resilient backside was driving into me through her clothing, and as tantalizing as the feeling of her skin slowly spreading and stretching against mine was, I knew she was feeling something even stronger.
Obviously, I didn't have to worry about Auria not enjoying the experience, but Omastia's lack of response was something strange. “Shouldn't she be getting something out of this?” I whispered into Auria's ear.
“Gods, yes,” Auria sighed. “I can feel how good you want this to be for us. If she's even half as aroused as I am...” Her eyes fluttered open, then suddenly her gaze hardened.
“Hey!” Auria snapped. “You're not letting yourself learn!” She reached out to the canister and set the flow of gas to the barest trickle. With a slight grunt of effort, she levered her bulk off of me and waddled over to the other Muse. I took a moment to admire the differences between them.
Omastia had grown larger all over, from her swollen breasts with tiny-in-comparison nipples emerging from the center of distended aureola, to the bulging belly, and the new roundness of her hips, thighs, and rear. Still, she had curves that indicated where a waist would go, and she still had a generally feminine shape... even if that female was something from a prehistoric Venus figurine. Aside from the light way she stood, you could have mistaken Omastia for an extremely heavyset woman. Auria, on the other hand, was something that could only come from fantasy. She was far rounder, nearly the same width front-to-back as she was side-to-side. Her breasts were larger, yes, but had moved apart as the flesh between them expanded and were now far less spherical as they merged with her body. Omastia's panties were tight and clung to her curves, but Auria's seemed painted on, with a waistband that still held on gamely against all odds, forming a lace-and-elastic circumference around her. There must have been some enchantment in Auria's underwear, since it seemed that there must have been more fabric to it now than there had been to start off with. Her ass and groin had expanded downwards and outwards as she filled, and while her thighs had at first swelled together, they were pushed apart to make way for the rest of her body. This forced her to stand like some kind of sumo wrestler; feet spread, body lowered.
Auria snapped her fingers in Omastia's face to get her attention. “I know for a fact that you have to be feeling physically stimulated by this,” she began. “And I'm not talking about a brain-chemistry fetish-tweak that assigns pleasure to being blown up. Part of this gas, and part of why we chose this creator for your lesson, was because he makes inflating feel good. Why aren't you letting that experience into your mind?”
Omastia's eyes finally opened, and I suddenly saw the hatred she had for the older Muse. “You can make me feel good, but you can't make me enjoy it,” she nearly spat. “Big boobs, yeah, evolutionary stimulation, blah blah blah. You can't tell me that this sideshow makes a lick of sense, and the guy doing it to you isn't half as creepy as the fact that you're getting off on it!”
Auria shook her head. “You're obviously not accepting the reality of this, but it's our assigned duty. If you're not going to get used to it, you'd better get ready for a long career of forced inflation fantasy. Because I've seen some of them, and they can get nasty.”
I reached out to the canister, still on the bed by me, and turned off the gas. I was uncomfortable with the dark turn this had suddenly taken. “Maybe you should just send her back,” I suggested. “We've inflated her, she knows what it's like. Clearly she can handle it.”
“I suppose so,” Auria agreed. “Well, Omastia? You want to go?”
The blonde Muse almost snarled at this. “I'm not going to be sent home by you. I'll go when we're done, but I do not need your pity for not being as turned on by turning into a parade float as you are.”
Auria thought about this for a moment, then turned back to me. “Maybe we have fulfilled the requirements of the job,” she purred as she approached. It's difficult to imagine that such a waddling gait could be sensual, but the way her thighs and hips worked, sliding against each other and the flesh between, brought back any of my excitement that had been lost during this argument. “But I recall saying before that I appreciate putting in extra effort.”
“Oh, you bitch,” Omastia growled. “You're actually going to screw him right here and make me watch. I can't believe you.”
Auria reached out to me, and I took her hands. I leaned back onto the bed, pulling her up on top of me, her body swollen almost to my chin even though she was sitting on my stomach. She turned to look over her shoulder and smiled cattily. “You can go. But if you do, it won't be with my permission, and you'll hear about that breach of protocol. As for you,” she said to me, “You can start helping me undress the rest of the way. I can't quite reach, myself.” She ran an arm down her belly and hip to show that her waistband was more than an arm's length away.
I hooked my fingers up into her panties and drew them down. “I'd love to get these off you in another way... but I'd feel better if we didn't have to blow you two up any more. Knowing that she hates it kind of kills the mood.”
She laughed and bounced lightly on me. “She doesn't hate the inflation, she hates me for making her do it. This feels so incredible... she's just determined to not give me the satisfaction of admitting it. But, that's okay. I wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable with this, either.”
I was able to pull her panties down to her hips, and with some tight squeezing and slipping I was able to get them around her thighs and off her. All that sliding and shimmying against her swollen form, raising her up and down against me and slipping my hands all over her body, had the both of us nearly frantic. “Do it,” she whispered breathlessly. “Gods, do it.”
Rushing my hands over her, searching for a handhold, I held her with one colossal thigh in each hand and slid her down until she was where she needed to be. I looked up at her body, curving up in a near ball, breasts swaying, with the top of her flushed face looking down at me. I steadied myself, lifted her slightly... then thrust into her.
The instant I did, she moaned loudly and clenched down on me, quivering with ecstasy. I gasped and held her to me, feeling her tighten, then slack, then tighten again as she gave in to the feelings that had been pumping into her all this time and only now given release. When she finally paused for breath, I heard... a hiss, and felt her growing even firmer against me.
“I thought you didn't want me any bigger,” Auria sighed.
“I... That's not me.” I held up both hands where she could see them.
Her eyes snapped open and she turned her head as far back as she could. “Omastia...?”
I peered around the swollen woman and saw Omastia holding the canister under one arm, with her other hand on the valve wheel. “Having fun?” she asked.
“Omastia! What are you doing!?” shouted Auria.
“You're so into this, Auria? Why don't we see how much is too much?” Omastia's voice shook with rage... or some other repressed emotion. She gave the wheel another tweak, causing the hiss to intensify.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
She replied smoothly, even as her own body was beginning to fill out more and more. “She promised that no matter how much I took, she'd take twice as much, so she can't take those hoses out of her mouth until I say we're done. And I can take much more than this, even for a first time. I know I can.”
I looked up at Auria. “Is that true?”
“Yes. A Muse's promise is a magical bond. I can't remove the hoses. Even if you pulled on them, they wouldn't come out unless her tube was out of her mouth. And did say I'd always take in twice as much as she did...”
Auria's distended form began to inflate even faster. Her thighs and upper arms, already swollen into taut cones, began to widen even further as her entire body grew outwards. Her breasts were losing definition; instead of separate half-domes on her chest, they became rounded protrusions from the globe of her torso. “Nnn... You've got to turn off the gas. I can't make her stop...” She didn't sound in pain, but spoke with great concentration. Suddenly there was a thump from high above me, and she Auria cried out.
“Are you okay!?” I called up to her. I couldn't her head at all now, with the huge swell of her body rising up to block my view.
“I'm... I'm up against the ceiling!” she shouted. “You've got to stop her!” I tried shoving upwards in an attempt to push myself down into the bed and away from her, but was unable to extricate myself from Auria's body.
Omastia laughed nastily. “Got you pinned, huh? Does that turn you on?” Her own shape was bulging mightily, as well, but while Auria was becoming spherical, Omastia was taking more and more of the gas into her belly. Her stomach jutted out from her body to form a ball of its own, reaching from her breasts to her knees. Impossibly wide hips and buttocks still gave her thick thighs, but she was still capable of walking, and her arms weren't being absorbed into her body. “Oh, shit. It does, doesn't it? Gods, I can't do anything to you sickos that you aren't going to enjoy!” She gave the wheel another malicious twist then, blowing them both up even more rapidly.
Auria was pressing down on me harder and harder as she swelled against the ceiling. Her body was an immense sphere, with only the hints of arms and legs and breasts bulging from a ball of taut bronze flesh. Her hands and feet were uninflated and waggled frantically. “Don't worry.” I called up. “You're not going to pop. It's my fantasy, and I won't let you.”
I heard her grunt. “Even the strongest imagination has its limits...” She made some noise in her throat, then continued in a voice that was almost a whisper, “And I'm sorry... but even now this just feels so amazing... Part of me doesn't want to end. If this is how I'm going to go... don't stop touching me.” There was a sudden tinkling snap, and I saw her necklace, now broken by her swollen neck, slide down the slope of her belly to land beside my head.
I thought hard, even as Auria continued to put more and more pressure on my stomach, my legs, my chest. Maybe Omastia would get disgusted with this show and shut it off. Maybe some higher-up Muse would put an end to it. Maybe I'd be killed by a pair of imaginary women in my bedroom in a baffling locked-room crushing death mystery. With no way out, and with, I'll admit, a powerful lust, I resumed stroking her wherever I could. I caressed her inner thighs, the swell of her waist, I even leaned up to lick the underside of her belly, which was received with a shudder and a moan of delight.
I heard distressing creak, but it didn't sound organic or pneumatic. It was almost... metallic? “Oh, gods...” Auria gasped. “Just finish me. Finish me one last time before I go.”
I was nearly enveloped by her growing body, and could barely move myself. I tried rocking up and down, and even the tiny range of motion I was able to make in my position sent thrills of pleasure through her. Her gasping became more rhythmic, more erotic, and the sound of her excited me even more. As much as I could feel the pressure bearing down on me, it was within her body as well, and my every movement was touching nerves that were nearly at their breaking point with the exhilarating effect of the gas. After only a few moments of this, she screamed and wobbled against me in ecstasy, and that thrill and motion of her against me brought me to climax as well. I heard that creaking once again, longer, louder... and the bed collapsed beneath us as the legs snapped under the strain of Auria pressing against the mattress.
I gasped, stunned and surprised from the sudden fall, but saw my chance to move. Auria was still a sphere, expanded beyond all hope of even basic mobility, but with the extra few inches of space I was able to slip out from under her and reach for the canister.
“No!” wailed Omastia as I wrenched the canister out from under her arm. Her belly and groin had merged, bulging away and down from her body. She lay on the floor with her legs wide, as if straddling an overinflated balloon, with her toes barely trailing to the carpet and a large rear rising above her. I turned off the flow of gas, and detached the hose for good measure. The two Muses were still connected by three hoses that merged into one, but now there was nothing connected to the singleton end. I pulled on the hose and one tail emerged from Omastia's mouth, followed shortly by a plop as hoses in Auria's mouth fell to the floor.
“Fuck you, and fuck that bitch, and fuck your cheap Swedish furniture!” Omastia shouted, rocking angrily on her belly. Her face was flushed with anger and with what I knew to be the lust caused by my vision's gas. Even as attractively inflated as she was, nothing could have made me aroused by her once I saw the naked hatred on her face.
“Auria, are you okay?” I asked.
There was a brief pause. “I... Yes. You stopped her?”
“Yeah.” I looked at the two women; one incredibly bloated, and other a massive sphere, both gone to immobility. “How do we fix you two?”
“Nothing a good knife to the heart won't fix,” muttered Omastia, but I was listening for Auria. “I-I don't have the charm to revert to my original form. I always have it with me, but it's not here...!”
“Did you bring it here?” I looked around in Auria's robe on the floor, then in Omastia's robe in case she had taken it. Auria began to panic, saying that she always had it, it had been there, now it was gone...
I pushed her gently aside and found the remains of her necklace on the mattress. I tenderly rolled her forward until her face was level with mine and showed it to her. “Is this it?”
Auria's head had almost sunken to the sphere of her body, and even her cheeks were slightly puffy, but she smiled broadly at the sight of her lost necklace. “Oh, yes, thank you! If I didn't have that, I'd have been stuck like this until somebody noticed us missing!” There were tears of relief in her eyes. “If it's broken, just hold it around my neck and I can do the reversion enchantment.”
I lifted her hair from the back of Auria's neck to hold the necklace in one hand, then leaned in close to kiss her while I caressed her body with my free fingers. After long seconds, I let her go, and when she smiled, I think the tears were somewhat different.
She said a quick incantation in a language I didn't understand, too fast and low to catch even if I had. Her body began to deflate smoothly, her massive curves shrinking down to the way they had been when she appeared. As she did, she had to step forward and lean into me as she went from “lying” on her belly to standing on her own feet again.
“Hello, legs,” she said, wiggling her toes. She turned and glared down at Omastia, who was still inflated on the floor.
“Well?” Omastia asked bitterly. “I guess it's me next, huh?”
“No,” Auria replied. “We've got to take you back to prove how well you passed this first inflation. Clearly you can take it.” She reached out and gave Omastia's swollen bottom a firm smack, which made the blonde Muse squawk indignantly. “What with paperwork and all, it might be a few days before you get out of this shape. Now say thank you to the nice man for this opportunity and you can go.”
“Fffffuuuuuuuu------” Omastia's curse trailed out as she vanished into thin air with a faint bluish glow.
“Well...” I said. “That was interesting.”
“That's certainly one word for it.”
“What's going to happen to her?”
Auria shrugged. “I can see she's got the physical resilience, but she's not cut out for body inflation, that's obvious. I'm sure we can find her a better niche in the inspiration-providing department.”
“Maybe there's a run on self-hating masochists seeking to be belittled by inflating dominatrices?”
“Now there's an idea...” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “That's not big enough for a whole patron spirit, but maybe that can get worked into something else she likes. I know she was horrible here, to us, but you can't be a Muse without having the ability and the drive to see people succeed in some fashion.”
There was something that had been bothering me, and now was as good enough a time as any to ask about it. “So... She was taking in half as much gas as you, right? But if her volume is half of yours, you still wouldn't have been that much bigger than she was by the end, given that volume was increasing linearly, so diameter would increase logarithmically...”
Auria punched my lightly in the shoulder and grinned. “You're thinking about it too much. Twice as much air, twice as big. Fantasy means not having to be right all the time about everything.” She lazily draped her robe over her shoulder as she spoke, and went to pick up Omastia's fallen robe and the gas canister. “Oh... I just had another couple of thoughts.”
“What's that?”
“Well, first, we're going to have to revisit what we've learned here in a more controlled environment.”
“Something with higher ceilings, maybe.”
“Right.”
“And the second?”
She smiled shyly. “Well, there aren't any male Muses, and there are a number of female writers who need inspiration... to have themselves inflated. Instead of dressing ourselves in drag, maybe we could consider doing a little mental outsourcing?”
I thought about that, then smiled. “Are you thinking of putting some pen to papyrus anytime soon?”
She laughed. “Maybe, but some gifts deserve to be shared.” She gave me a quick hug and looked into my eyes. “Until next time.”
“Make it a promise.”
She chuckled, then leaned forward to put her mouth to my ear. As she faded from view, I heard her whisper softly, “Sssssss...”