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 tremble.
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.
Bone chips away in splinters from the hip bone. The monstrous form of ribs rises far above him. A hundred years stale stench wafts on the winds as the youngest generation of vultures circles 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 pointed sides of the mountains. It is answered by the rumble of thunder. The clouds broil and glow like a fire has been lit within them by the setting sun.
Lone clouds slowly move by, low in the sky.
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 has cooled now but he easily scraps 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.
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He’s gathered up as much as he can hold and he strains against the glittering metal’s weight. He puts it on the bare donkey’s back and he unties it from the bush, the rope chafes against his chapped skin. The donkey brays and resists.
He huffs from the exertion and tugs on the rope.
Other holes have been chipped in the bones. Other men’s bones lie by the giant’s bones. Some of their bones 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 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.
His mind turns to the sheltered alleys of his home. Small walkways between buildings where the wind could not come through one’s already thin clothes.
Your blood shall flow through the ruins of your homes,
The streams will carry it down your rubble-strewn streets
He rushes from before the storm into the valley. It is almost upon him now and the first few flakes of a blizzard fall.
He spurns himself on with the thought of what he can buy. He could afford a fireplace, food every day, clothes to warm him…and a bed! A bed!
He passes a small cluster of violet flowers in the cleft between two boulders and he remembers his promise. The gold was for himself and the others, but for the owner of the top cloak, the only request was a flower that only grew on that mountain.
The forest isn’t far away now. The trees mean wood for fire and shelter from the wind quickly numbing his limbs. He is counting seconds now till he freezes. He would have frozen a lot sooner with only one cloak.
Your wealth and power shall disappear
Like the glory of summer with the coming of winter.
He scrambles over the rocks with numbing limbs and reaches the flowers. He scraps his arm, drawing blood as he reaches for them. He has to watch his numb hand to see it grasp the flowers. Petals bruise beneath his grip as he tears them from the dirt.
He hurries back to the donkey and they huddle against each other as they stiffly walk down the slope and into the trees.
He gathers wood as he walks, gripping the sticks in the arm opposite the flowers. He pushes through a thicket, barely feeling the branches brush against him. In the midst of the bushes, with snow gently falling, he attempts to make a fire.
Instead of leisurely thinking of life
You shall try to grasp it by force at the heel.
He warms himself against the donkey, then tries again.
Finally, smoke lifts from the sticks and a flame lights. He greedily stokes the fire with larger and larger sticks until he can feel the heat, then, he warms himself before gathering more wood.
After he has enough stocked beside him, he picks up the flowers where he dropped them. Their color is richer than even the gold in his bag. He gently takes those bruised ones and tosses them to the side. He holds up the only two that remain and keeps them near the fire.
Night falls. Snow gathers over the land. He takes some of the snow and melts it in his hands to fill his water skin. He puts the flowers in the neck of the skin so they can drink, then falls asleep after stoking the fire.
He dreams not of warm halls or choice foods, but of a smile that could only come from the giving of a flower.
You shall fall and rot, never to rise again,
But with the coming of every spring,
Something far cheaper than your grand halls
And more easily lost,
Will carry words worth more than your king’s summons,
Be dressed more elegantly than your wives,
Be worth more than all your riches,
And outlast you more than all your years.