Bigger Than Life

Chapter 4: Fur and Teeth

Your arm hurt even worse in the morning.
Not only that, but it was still raining. The fall was lighter than it was last night, thankfully, but no matter what, you'd be getting wet if you went back outside. You yawned widely, sat up, and fished one of your granola bars out of your pack for breakfast.

Cinnamon oatmeal raisin... it was no cookie, but it was close enough to sate your craving.
I was gone sooner than you realized. You bit down on the plastic wrapper by accident.

Yuck.
You tucked the empty wrapper into a side pocket on your bag, and achingly lurched to your feet.
As you slung the emergency kit over your good shoulder and stumbled out of your cave, it occurred to you then that at some point, you'd need to find another source of food. None of the trees or bushes seemed to bear any fruit, at least not this time of year. You weren't fond of the thought of hunting and butchering anything all by yourself. And with what tools? You didn't even have a knife on you!

Too much thinking. You'd been standing so long that your feet began to sink into the wet dirt below you.
You jerked each foot out of the soil, and began your plan for the day.

You knew following water would always take you to a town. But alas, there were no streams or creeks that you knew of nearby.
Another wise thought enters your mind.
Every cliff ends somewhere, right?
You look up, stepping back a few feet as you tried to estimate the height of the craggy wall before you.
Couldn't be any higher than that giant was tall. So... sixty feet or lower?

Now it was just a matter of which direction you wanted to follow the wall. Right, or left?
You looked right, and then you looked left.
As lazy as it was, you chose right, simply because the wall seemed to end sooner.

If you were a wild animal, you'd be long dead by now. It's never too late though.
Not trying to imply anything... it's just a little observation of your little mortal life.

That nagging voice from... somewhere... was really starting to get on your nerves. Best to ignore it.
Better get a move on, before you get too soggy from all this rain.

________________________________

You walked so long, you felt as if your legs were on autopilot. Left, and right. Left, and right, and then right once more, because you tripped over a stone. Your arm throbbed with every other step you took, like clockwork. The world around you lost meaning—trees might have well been drawn with a crayon on lined paper, with the ground colored in with coffee stains, and the sky a upside-down pool of water with milk mixed in.

But behold! Salvation!

In the near distance, you saw the very thing you'd been searching for: the end of the cliff! There was a clearing around it as it sloped gently down to ground level, which you believed meant there was a path, or house, or ANY sort of way out of this tiresome, uncharted wilderness. The amount of serotonin your brain rewarded you with was probably enough to tranquilize a wild hog in heat.
Your energy flooded back. Breaking into a sprint, you felt as if you were gliding over the land, with not an obstacle in sight. You overstepped and understepped MULTIPLE times, but miraculously recovered your footing just in time to stop your fall.

But winning streaks don't last forever.

With not a single ounce of grace, your left foot strikes the pit of your right knee.
You fly forward, and land face first in the damp sod.

Tch... hahaha! Oh my, how pathetic... Oh, do excuse me. You humans are just so... feeble. Delicate!

"Hrggh... shut up..." you said, to nobody in particular.
Someone growled back.

That's not right. You lift up your head and arched your back up so that you hunched over, sitting on your knees and elbows. Cautiously, but with a hint of I'm-So-Sick-Of-This-Shit, you jerked your head over your left shoulder.

Two sets of eyes stared back, glimmering with hunger, sat above teeth that were bared and dripping with drool.
No, four sets.
Five.
Five sets and a half!
You weren't sure what was scarier. All the wolves, or your inability to do simple math while you were stressed.

Slowly, slower than a tortoise on its way to the gym, you raised your arms off the ground. Then one knee. Then both knees—finally, you stood.
You knew you had to think fast, and you did.

You whipped your bag of supplies right at the hungry pack of gray-and-brown wolves, and took off running again.

They were interested in it long enough for you to get a head start, and book it all the way into the clearing. Behind you, the endless wood, and ahead of you... well.

The giant's cabin.
You stopped dead in your tracks to examine it.
The logs it was built with must have come from trees three times your age! And they were stacked, all very neatly, with the cracks sealed with a thick cement-like clay. The roof was mostly thatched branches, supported with a frame of even more tied logs. There was a gate just beside the house, which you assumed lead to another, higher pasture. The scale was impossible for you to rationalize—this single house was taller than three stories, but STILL only housed one individual!

Oh, how interesting for you. But you might want to turn around.

You complied, fearing the worst.
The wolves had you cornered. There was really only the choice of HOW you'd prefer to die—eaten alive by wolves, or eaten alive by a giant. You took on a cold sweat as you once again remembered your own mortality. There's no way out, is there? This is it!?

You let yourself fall back against the upward slope of the path, and looked down at yourself. You were a mess, covered head to toe in dirt, rain, and grime. Humans really were no match for wilderness like this. Sure, you could stop a fire from a helicopter, but without your machines, what are you?
A goner?

It felt like your head was pounding again. Much to your puzzlement, the wolves turned and ran as a particularly dark cloud passed over head.
Inhale, exhale. Silence.

That's no cloud.
You arched your head back, and from twenty yards away, your eyes met.
He looked much bigger up close. He was dressed like a proper lumberjack, too. His expression was unreadable. He was just... breathing, and staring. Like he didn't know what to do with you.

Maybe you could get away.
You shuffled to your feet, and tried to run off, but his fingers caught around your waist before you were out of reach. His index finger bumped your broken arm, causing you to cry out in pain, and try to struggle your way loose. You could do nothing as he turned you over in the palm of his hand, and raised you up to his face.

You clenched your fists and kicked your legs wildly to make yourself hard to swallow, but before long, you realized he didn't want to eat you. Not yet, anyways. Once his big, deep blue eyes had examined you as he saw fit, he lowered his hand again and let you lie against his open palm.

"Oh, gosh..." He said, his voice quite less manly than you were expecting as he gazed down with worry all over his face.

"Are you okay?"