The mountain beneath his feet shudders with each stroke of his pickaxe. He glances up at the dull gray of the coming storm and redoubles his efforts. His limbs tremble from the cold and his teeth chatter.
He hears a clattering and a rumbling and turns quickly about. A rockslide on a nearby slope sends up dust and makes the ground beneath him quake.
He wears two cloaks about him against the cold. The one on top is a woman's cut. Both of them are ragged and dirty from many nights spent sleeping in the streets.
He chips away splinters from the hip bone of a giant skeleton. It lays with its back to the mountain like a man in a chair. The notched sword of a giant is impaled through its chest and into the mountain.
The monstrous form of ribs rises far above the man. A hundred years stale stench wafts on the winds as the youngest generation of vultures circle the rotting corpse.
His donkey shows as many ribs as the giant.
Your bones will be broken,
The shingles of your homes shall clatter to the boulevard.
The sound of the pickaxe pings against the sides of the mountains. It is answered by the rumble of thunder. The clouds churn and glow like a fire has been lit within them by the setting sun.
Lone clouds slowly move by, low in the sky.
The rockslide continues, throwing dust into the air.
The sword trembles with the mountain and vibrates in the wind. It tones a low thrum he can feel through the wraps he calls shoes.
The weapons you forged will become your tombstone
And your grave will be defiled by insects.
Finally, he breaks into the marrow of the bone and reveals the gold blood that once flowed through the giant's veins. He widens the hole greedily as the rockslide calms down and the storm nears.
The blood is cool now, but he easily scrapes it out into a sack. In his head, he is already figuring the portions between them when he gets back. His portion is the largest.
The mountain groans and the bones moan and creak, shifting their enormous weight. The donkey brays.
The flame you took down from the sky to warm your hearths
Will eternally burn your foundations.
He's gathered up as much as he can hold and he strains against the glittering metal's weight. He straps the gold on the donkey's bare back and unties the animal from the bush; the rope chafes against the chapped skin of his hands. The donkey resists.
He huffs from the exertion and tugs on the rope, trying to force the donkey to move.
Other holes have been chipped in the bones. Other men's skeletons lie by the giant's. Some of them are broken from falls, cracked from the cold or by men's forged steel.
Suddenly, the wind blows harder and the storm looms higher than the bones of the giant. Lightning flashes across the sky and cracks the air with its shout.
The dust from the rockslide flees before the storm.
The rains your children played in will turn to ice.
Your crops will never grow again.
The donkey lurches forward and jogs over the stones past him. He struggles and stumbles over the rocks to keep up as they head back down the path. Part of it is covered over now with the stones of the rockslide.
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Millenium Myths
लघु कहानीThis is an ongoing collection of short story writing exercises in the genres of sci-fi and fantasy. They are written with the intention to help explore parts of my creative universe. Feel free to give feedback and share! The stories aren't in any or...
