Giants. Everyone’s aware of them. Everyone knows their features: the towering, terrors, whose skins crumble and crack like the very mountains that they make their dominions. No matter where you go, be it the shrouded woods of Hallenhal or the smoky block that is Oranos City, you’ll come across a weary traveller, telling tales of the giants’ wars that echo through the peaks, or the somewhat less awe-inspiring drunk fool, claiming to have single-handedly brought one down, before unceremoniously passing out. Of course, the tales varied in almost every aspect but one constant remained: giants were brutal beasts of slate that rarely ventured out of the mountain ranges they so mimicked. 

Adewale often looked forward to those tales as a boy, even the stupid drunken ones. In fact, sometimes he preferred those as it meant he could join the roaring dismissals of the crowd that derided the teller as an ignorant fool. However, as he had left the confines of his dusty hometown, and begun to travel the wide landscape of Taremil, he had grown bored of them, bored of the repetition.
So, when the wheezing old man had offered him a giant story for only a copper, he had rejected him coldly but the man didn’t care. The old wreck tracked him through the streets, pestering and yammering, mumbling of legend and mystery. Finally, Adewale had had enough. He turned sharply, blowing the man back with the billows of his cloak. ‘Listen, I appreciate your tale may contain many wonders – your withering, grey hair clearly shows you’ve seen enough winters to have experienced a couple – but I heard enough stories of the stone giants when I was –‘
‘Stone giants! Who said anything about stone giants?’ the man suddenly exclaimed with a power and conviction that did not fit his figure. Adewale was taken aback for a moment but soon recovered. ‘Your age has evidently taken your memory as well as your hair. You did, when you first began to stumble after me,’ He sighed.
‘I spoke of giants but never stone.’
‘All giants are stone giants. They are one and the same.’
‘Are you sure of that, laddy? Would you perhaps be willing to bet on it? Say, a copper?’ retorted the man, with a wry smile. Adewale rolled his eyes, turned away and resumed his trek to the docks.
‘Forest Giants!’
‘What?’ Adewale span round. This was a new one. He’d heard tale after tale but the giants were always stone. Always. 'What did you say?’
‘Ah you weren’t expecting that now, were you?’
Forest giants? It sounded incredible but ‘Impossible. No trees could ever conceal a giant.’
‘Well, if you say so. But I’ve seen things boy. Things you wouldn’t believe.’ Said the man with that wry smile making another appearance. Adewale was beginning to hate that smile. It was true though: Adewale had barely covered a sixth of Taremil in the four years, since he’d left home. Maybe there was a place where these could exist. Adwale’s childish wonder was beginning to emerge; seeping through the keyhole of the reason and logic that he had crafted in order to face the world. Maybe there was more. He began to sink down onto a set of cracked steps. Even if they didn’t exist, what harm could it do to listen to this old man’s tale?