Grimvald

Far from the silver river and its whispering reeds, another being moved through the ancient forest.

Grimvald the giant trudged between the towering trunks, and the earth trembled beneath each of his steps. His mood was darker than thunderclouds before a storm. Trees that dared to stand in his path he brushed aside as though they were brittle twigs. He was a creature shaped of sinew and stone, a living mountain wrapped in rough skin. About his hips hung a weathered loincloth of coarse hide. Standing higher than two grown men, he towered above the forest’s other dwellers like a walking cliff-face.

A raging bear or a wild boar might have suited him well that morning — some fierce beast against which he could test his strength and spend the fire that burned in his chest. For what could anger one such as Grimvald?

Almost anything beneath the sun.

Yet this time there was a reason. On the night before, beneath a sky strewn with cold stars, he had seen something — something so fleeting he might have taken it for a trick of moonlight. A shimmer in the dark. A faint, quick buzzing. A pair of shining green wings catching a wandering beam of light. A glint upon golden hair like sunlight trapped in silk. It had been there for no more than a heartbeat. And then it was gone.

Grimvald had searched until dawn, pushing through bramble and brush, peering behind stone and stump. But he found no footprint, no fallen feather, no sign that such a vision had ever touched the forest air.

Still, he knew — with a certainty deeper than reason — that it had been real.

And more than that: It was the most beautiful thing he had ever beheld.

Since that moment, he had not slept. The image burned behind his eyes like a brand.

He knew only this: He would find it again.