Ficlets

Climbing the giant

We entered the eye late the third day, after spending a night camped in the forest of his beard. In those days I was the newest, greenest soldat in the army entire, and so I was on point as we crossed the cornea. I was fearful with every step that he would wake, would blink us like dust from his great eye, but the Kapitän reminded me without words that the giant was, and would remain, comatose. (Our gods had rendered him thus, after much praying and fasting and burning of goats.)

The cornea was a queer, yielding surface, like old gelatin. At last we came to the pupil, and the Kapitän called a halt. Smoke’m if you got em, he said over the mindlink.

Sitting on that great curve, I had the same thought I’d had in the whisker-forest: Is he the giant, or are we but fleas?

Keep your Zen to yourself, the sergeant sent to me.

Being new, my nascent mindlink discipline needed work. Sorry, I sent.

That’s ok, sent the sergeant. He blew out smoke. You’ll go down first, once we’ve drilled the cornea.

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