Turn 11 of 28

Sit down and tell Priya everything about the wish and the transformation

Lena lowers herself into the chair across from Priya and it groans under her weight. The crop top rides up another inch as she settles, her bare belly resting against the edge of the table, soft and warm. She can smell herself — the thick, layered musk of a week without showering, the sharp edge of old sweat, the faint sweetness of food residue — and she watches Priya's nostrils flare slightly as the scent reaches her. Priya doesn't lean away. She sits with her hands wrapped around a latte, dark eyes steady, waiting.

Lena orders a hot chocolate and a slice of cake from the waiter who appears and then disappears quickly, and then she starts talking. She tells Priya about the bathroom mirror, the wish whispered half as a joke, the warmth that spread through her stomach afterward. She tells her about the jeans that wouldn't button, the first soft curve of new weight, the voice in her head that said *this is better, let it keep going*. She tells her about the buttons popping at work, the eating, the growing, the way her body has expanded steadily and without pause for over a week. She speaks plainly, without shame, watching Priya's face as the details accumulate — the naked weekends, the food comas, the burping and farting, the deliberate lack of hygiene, the wet blanket on the couch.

Priya is quiet for a long time after Lena finishes. The coffee shop hums around them — the hiss of the espresso machine, a conversation at the counter, the scrape of a chair on tile. Priya's expression is unreadable. She looks at Lena's belly, bare and round beneath the crop top, then back up at her face. She takes a slow sip of her latte and sets it down.

"So the wish is still working," Priya says. It isn't a question.

"Every day," Lena says. "I can feel it. I'm bigger today than I was yesterday, and I'll be bigger tomorrow." She shifts in the chair and it creaks, and a belch rises out of her — low, short, unavoidable — and she doesn't cover her mouth. Priya's eyes widen slightly, then soften into something Lena can't quite name.

"And you're happy?" Priya asks. Her voice is careful, not judging, genuinely asking.

"This is what you actually want?"

Lena thinks about the warmth. The pulse beneath her skin that she has stopped questioning, the way her body feels right for the first time in her life, the way she stopped fighting the smell and the hair and the weight and found something on the other side of all that fighting that feels like peace. She looks at Priya and nods.

"I've never been happier."

Priya is quiet again, turning her latte cup in her hands. The cake arrives and Lena pulls it toward her and takes a bite before she's finished chewing the last one. Priya watches her eat, and something shifts in her expression — not discomfort, not pity, something closer to fascination.

"I want to understand this," Priya says slowly. "I want to see it. Can I come over?"