Laeknir sang a song for the first time in over a hundred years. It was a gentle song as far as giant songs went, a soft, rumbling lullaby his mother had sung to him during his early years.

“One day the mountains will fall,

And all will be snowfields,

For us to build our endless halls,

Where the Sculptor will walk with us.”

For the first time in over a hundred years, he felt a sense of calm. The stub where his toe had been was hurt, yes, but it had been a small price to pay for the deal he’d struck.

The deal he’d made with the short-one had changed things. For years he’d been listless, broken. His existence had felt pointless, but now he had something to look forward to. It was a simple deal, but one that had made much sense for both of them. Of course, Laeknir had had to think about it for a day or two; which seemed to enrage the boy. But he’d mulled it over long and hard and couldn’t see any real downside.

The deal had been a toe for the boy’s company. Or rather, a toe for a yearly visit. The boy was to keep quiet about his den, he was to tell them that there were no giants left in the mountains, and he was to come back once a year to stay with Laeknir for a span of days.

“You want to teach me?” the boy had asked him, his brow a chasm of ridges.

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“Teach,” said Laeknir, the word strange on his tongue. “Yes, to teach. To help you to understand the blessing the Sculptor has laid upon your skin. It will be hard to teach a short-one such things, yes it will. But it is my duty to him. Such blessings cannot be taken lightly.”

“And what will you be able to teach me?”

“Those runes on your skin,” Laeknir had said, jabbing the fire with the branch. “They hold magic from the elder days. You will be able to use them, should you want to learn.”

“A giant teacher,” the short-one boy said. “I suppose that’s better than being eaten.”

For some reason the words made Laeknir laugh, they made him roll his head back and chuckle so deeply that the very mountains around them rumbled. The short-one boy had laughed too, and the deal had been struck.

Now Laeknir sat with his toe cut off and his hand buried in the snow. The second snowstorm was truly a memory now, and although the stump of his toe throbbed; cauterized and wrapped up as it was, he could feel everything again; he could feel things he hadn’t allowed himself to in years. It all came from this word—foreign to him, but now so important—and that word was teacher.

Teacher, yes, teacher! It was a word that held much purpose, a word that gave him something to live for. He would have to think long and hard over the course of that next year on what exactly he would teach the boy, and for a giant a year was not so much time at all. But he would teach the boy no matter how hard the thinking was, for the Sculptor had brought them together for a reason.

When night came Laeknir looked back up to the cosmos and asked them if he had done the right thing. He hadn’t been expecting a reply, but he asked it all the same. Much to his surprise, a whisper came in on a gentle blanket of wind from the north.

The saga of giants is not yet over. And you will be the teacher to usher in a new age.

Laeknir slept soundly for the first time in over a hundred years that night, and there were no nightmares waiting for him; only dreams of a boy with runes on his body, shedding his skin to become a giant.