2007
The Sleeping Giant
The sleeping giant had been slumbering for such a time that when she awoke there was much to see and do. It had been so long since her senses were alive that everything seemed new and fresh and the flowers were so fragrant, that she inhaled greedily of this. She took great gulps of the air and blinked into the dawning new day. Slowly she arose, yawning and stretching.
The sleeping spell she had been under could still be felt deep in the muscle tissue that surrounded her strong frame. She clamored about the forest seeking a clearing and while she was looking around, she found a pool of water that shimmered in the new daylight and she gasped at its beauty. Never before had she seen such a sight.
As she drew nearer to it, she heard the gentle current breaking over the sharp rocks and could smell the way the earth was damper in this area. It was so beautiful to the giant that she wished not to destroy anything around it and she stepped carefully over the trees. She was thirsty from sleeping so long, but didn’t dare to drink the water just yet. The imprints she had left from before she had slept had grown over with new grass and other life. Moss abounded on almost every rock near the oasis and she felt it with her fingertips to make sure it was real, for it looked so picturesque that she dared not believe her senses. She knelt beside the water on the embankment and planted her hands in the water and dunked her head into the pool. While so positioned she glimpsed a fish slip by her gaze, then more and more until all she could see were fish everywhere. The giant eased herself into the pool and felt the fish tickle her legs and watched them jump over her legs. Still being careful not to disturb things too much she laid back in the water and regarded the sky and clouds as if she had never seen them before in her life. She stayed thusly for so long that the mist started to gather around the giant, shaping itself around her and coating her so that it would have been hard to see her.
She searched her mind to try to remember why she had this spell cast upon her, but could come up with no answers so she eventually removed herself from the water and stood on the shore once more. It was only then that she noticed the rags she had worn had been washed away and she stood naked in the forest. She felt cleaner than she had ever felt and her heart felt open and free. Surely this water was magical. Slowly she noticed that the trees were getting bigger, as was the pool of water, and then the giant noticed she was shrinking and her whole body became engulfed in the very strange sensations this brought on. She was unable to move from her spot for many hours until finally she fell forward into her own footprint. She was no longer a giant, but her heart remained twice the normal size of any human.
The noonday sun blazed at her face so that she could not see the beauty in front of her anymore. She crawled to a tree and rested her now smaller head on the roots of it. She slept more, but this was a sleep of renewal and the dampness of this day crawled into her and cleansed her while she slept.The following morning she was surprised to find a sprite combing the hair from her face and she put her head in her lap and looked into her face and cried. The sprite led her from the forest into a meadow where the smell of lavender encompassed them both and they walked together to face the world.
