Under the table
The Munich Bierfest had been running for three days straight, and by the final evening, most of the regulars had settled into a comfortable fog of hops and oom-pah music. The tent was packed — broad-shouldered men in lederhosen crowded the long wooden tables, slamming steins together and singing off-key.
Nobody noticed Berta.
That was usually how it went. At just under four feet tall, the green-skinned goblin girl barely cleared the underside of the benches. She moved through the forest of boots and woolen knee-socks like she belonged there, her bare green feet padding silently across the sticky wooden floorboards. Her dirndl was immaculate — pink and white gingham with lace trim along the hem of the apron, the bodice laced tight with little brass buttons running down the front. Teal curls tumbled past her pointed ears and down her back, bouncing with every confident step.
She'd sewn the dress herself. Finding a dirndl in goblin sizes wasn't exactly easy in the human territories.
"Oi — who took my beer?"
The voice came from above. A thick-necked farmer named Gerd was staring at the empty space on the table where his stein had been moments ago. His companion, equally confused, leaned over to look.
Beneath them, Berta stood with the massive glass stein balanced on her upturned palm, her left arm fully extended overhead. The mug was nearly as tall as she was, a dimpled one-liter monster filled to the brim with golden lager, a crown of white foam threatening to spill over the edge. She held it aloft like it was a trophy — and it barely trembled.
Her right arm was curled into a flex, and even in the low lantern-light beneath the table, the peak of her bicep was unmistakable. The muscle balled up tight and round, pushing against the puffy white sleeve of her blouse until the fabric creased around it. The green skin stretched smooth over the hard swell, every fiber packed dense beneath the surface. Her deltoid capped her shoulder like a cannonball stuffed into lace, the front head striated where it tied into the bicep. Her forearm on the overhead arm was just as absurd — thick as a human man's wrist, cords of muscle running from elbow to hand, tendons standing out like bridge cables as her fingers splayed under the stein's heavy glass base.
She looked up at the bottom of the table and smiled to herself. Her traps bunched up against her neck, two slabs of green muscle that made her look like she didn't have a neck at all when she shrugged. The bodice of her dirndl strained across her upper body — her pecs filled it out from beneath, pressing against the laced front, and the seams along her back had been re-stitched twice already this week to accommodate the width of her lats, which flared out and gave her compact torso a dramatic V-taper that no amount of gingham could hide.
"Excuse me," she said softly, weaving between two pairs of boots. She ducked under a bench crossbar, still holding the stein perfectly level, and emerged on the other side of the table.
A man in a Tyrolean hat nearly choked on a pretzel when he looked down and saw her standing between his feet, holding a full liter overhead with one arm and not even breathing hard.
"That's… that's Gerd's beer," he managed.
"He wasn't drinking it," Berta said. Her cheeks flushed a slightly darker shade of olive. "I just wanted to see if I could carry it across the whole tent."
"With one hand?"
"The other one's busy." She gave her flexed right arm a little glance, almost shy about it, like she'd been caught doing something embarrassing. The bicep peaked again as she tightened the pose — a hard, round ball of green muscle that looked carved from stone. A vein traced over the top of it and disappeared into the crook of her elbow.
The man stared. Then he started laughing. Then the man next to him looked down, and he started laughing. Within thirty seconds, half the table was leaning over to peer underneath at the tiny goblin girl in the pink dirndl pressing a full stein overhead like a waitress from some fever dream.
"Bring it here, little one!" someone shouted from three seats down.
Berta's ears twitched. She didn't love being called little one, but the tone was friendly enough. She walked — carefully, steadily — along the length of the table's underside. Her thick legs carried her with a low, grounded stride. Even her calves were dense, diamond-shaped muscles that flexed with every barefoot step on the old wood. Her quads pressed against the fabric of the dirndl with each stride, hinting at the same ridiculous density that her upper body displayed so openly.
She arrived at the end of the table, ducked out from underneath, and with a small grunt, pressed the stein up and over the edge, sliding it onto the tabletop with a gentle thunk. Not a drop spilled.
The tent erupted. Men slammed their fists on the table, cheering. Someone started a chant she didn't recognize.
Berta stood there in the aisle, her arms at her sides now, the lace trim of her apron fluttering in the warm tent breeze. Her shoulders were wide for her frame — absurdly wide — and without the stein to focus on, people were starting to really look at her. The way her delts rounded out from her neck. The way the short puffed sleeves couldn't fully contain the thickness of her upper arms even at rest. The way her forearms looked like they belonged to a blacksmith twice her height.
"How much do you weigh?" asked an old man with an enormous white mustache, genuinely curious.
"That's rude," Berta said quietly, but she was smiling. "Buy me a beer and maybe I'll tell you."
"A full liter?"
"A small one. I still have to walk home."
The old man laughed and waved to the barmaid. Berta climbed up onto the bench — which required a small hop that made her lats flare involuntarily, the back of her blouse pulling tight for a moment — and sat with her green feet dangling a full foot above the floor.
Someone slid a half-liter toward her. She wrapped one thick hand around it, her forearm tensing just slightly, and took a long drink.
"You should enter the keg carry," the old man said, pointing toward a roped-off area near the tent's entrance where a competition was being set up. "Fifty meters with a full keg. Fastest time wins."
Berta wiped foam from her upper lip with the back of her hand. "What's the prize?"
"Free beer for a year."
Her ears perked up — literally, the pointed tips rising half an inch. She looked at the competition area, then down at her own arm resting on the table. She gave it an absent squeeze with her other hand, feeling the bicep firm up under her fingers. The muscle was warm and unyielding, like squeezing a river stone wrapped in silk.
"I'd need someone to reach the tap for me, though," she murmured, mostly to herself.
The old man grinned. "I volunteer."
Berta took another sip, swung her feet beneath the bench, and quietly started rolling up her sleeves.