"Whoah! Whoah!"

The Giant was at the gate of a small settlement lying at the edge of the forested area he had been travelling through for the last day and a half. He was being threatened by several human males carrying thick, cruel-looking spears.

He backed away from the group keeping his hands up with palms facing towards the humans, urging them to lower their weapon. He had followed the path of the three humans who had accosted him at the river, and had finally stumbled across a their village. It was a small affair, surrounded entirely by a wooden palisade with only one entry-way that was guarded by the fierce warriors facing him now.

He had expected hostility when approaching the village and had decided not to back down this time around. Despite his mental commitment to the task, in the face of threatened violence he found himself wilting.

The impasse continued for some time until one of the humans who seemed to be some kind of a leader, judging by his demeanour, barked a staccato of words at the Giant. The Giant tried to explain that he didn't understand what was being said, knowing full well the futility of exchanging words. At one point during this unint­elligible exchange, the human leader ended his words with a slight uplifted tone indicating a question.

Heart still hammering, the Giant siezed the opportunity and carefully lowered his right hand to his stomach and rubbed it slowly in circular motions and then lifted the same hand to his mouth while making a flower shape of his hand. He hoped this universal signal of hunger and wanting food would translate into the humans’ language.

The Giant’s actions had an instant effect and seemed to knock the aggression out of the human warriors who all looked at each other incredulously. This icebreaker led to the humans relaxing their attitudes towards the Giant somewhat. They began to bring him food scraps from time to time, although never regularly. But they still stayed distant and he was never allowed to enter the village proper.

Over the next few weeks he came to accept their limited hospitality and tried to make the best of his situation. He made a ramshackle bed out of fallen leaves near the edge of the forest but within sight of the village walls. This bedding served its purpose until the first time it rained and he realised that he would be miserable without an actual roof over his head. Luckily he didn't fall sick from exposure. In fact ever since his mishap with the berries he had me felt more and more energetic.

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To construct a hut for himself, he realised he would need to cut down and shape some trees. As he possessed no tools, he scrounged around the land between the village and the forest and found a flattish piece of shale which he lifted with little effort. It had a squarish shape with a length approximately equal to his forearm. He was surprised when he realised he could lift the heavy looking slate with just one hand.

However the slate was awful in cutt­ing the hardwood trees leaving him sweat­ing, cursing and frustrated in the mid- day sun. Out of irritation, he wrapped his arms around the bulk of the rather young-looking tree he had been hacking at and pulled upwards with an almighty heave dislodging the offending tree from its allocated place in the earth. The roots of the dislodged tree floated above the ground as he stared about, wide-eyed in shock. His mind knew, just knew, that what had happ­ened was an impossibility. He had been getting more and more accustomed to his strange situation but this new development threw him into a tizzy.

He would have stood there in reverie if he hadn't heard the excited chattering behind him. Still clutching onto the tree, he turned around to find one of the humans looking excited and pointing at him while shouting loudly.

The Giant didn’t recall having seen this human before. It was another male, middle-aged and slightly portly. He seem­ed to be a wealthier man than others the Giant had seen as his clothes seemed to be made of finer material. The man also didn't seem to possess the same wariness of the Giant that his compatriots did.

The man, who the Giant came to find out was called Dhanjay, after an insuff­erably long attempt at conver­sation became the Giant's entry into the village. Dhanjay was some important personage within the village either a landlord or businessman, the Giant wasn’t sure what the human’s gestures meant exactly. The man certainly had the self-obsessed confidence of a monetarily successful individual. Dhanjay also deigned to give the Giant a name when the Giant failed to introduce himself in their false sign-language conversation.

Only later would the Giant under­stand how portentous his new name was. He would forever be remembered as Vaali.