The Fight

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Now the giant was accostomed to chasing down his prey and stomping the ground so hard that as he got near, their running footsteps would be be stolen from beneath them. The earth would yield to his boot and his victims would stumble upon themselves in complete terror, trying to get away from him.

He was perpetually amused by the tactics those little humans would employ to escape their doom, which of course, never worked. He thought of those who’d hide in a ditch, betting that his vision was poor (which it was not), and how he’d pulverize the ground until he created new and deeper ditches.

The unfortunates would lose their lives in those shallow graves.

He recalled those who would run:
how futile and frantic
a run can be ran;
how a fight can be won
though it never began.

He prided himself on their 300 steps to his 15
before he’d catch them
and lift them up from the ground
and pull their limbs
like leaves from a stem.

but what this giant did not expect

was a girl,

smaller than his routine mark,
coming straight at him
with eyes so clear
and sharp.

His gait flustered and his vision perplexed.
He did not actually know how to capture something that was not moving

away from him.

 

It was a jarring thought:

“what do I do when something comes at me?”

So jarring, in fact, that he stopped, mid-trot.
His arms fell to his sides and he stood,
towering over the girl,
stupefied by her assault,
amused by her mettle,
entranced by the élan of pocket-sized pluck,
and he began to laugh.

he                       laughed

 and

he                         laughed

and

he                           laughed

 

The girl stopped.

With her heart in her throat and her knees in her toes, she looked straight at him;

there they were, in a ridiculous stand off of befuddled curiosity, when he spoke.

“Girl, where are you from?”

She replied,

“I am from a home

and a gravel road

and earthen trails

and a farther place too,

where all the sky

and all the stars

and all the moons

and suns converge.

I am from a place that is all places

and not one is better than the rest.

Where, Giant, are you from?”

He answered,

“I am from a place underneath all of this

and it is dark

and there is no sound

except the clicking of my eyelids

in search of light.

I think I should like to see

your home

and your gravel roads

and your sky and suns and moons and stars converging.”

said she,

“war no more with me

and I will take you there.”

 

And the world became a bigger place for both of them.

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The End