A swelling rage - any

[Hoarfrost]

A WHITE BLANK PAGE AND A SWELLING RAGE, RAGE
YOU DID NOT THINK WHEN YOU SENT ME TO THE BRINK, TO THE BRINK

Each breath he takes sounds labored—his lungs are true and hardy, but still they seems to be made of stone, so his breath is like the whistle of air over rocky peaks. Not laboured, but reminiscent. Reminiscent of eons; a life that had no definitive beginning, but perhaps for the moment when the earth cracked two of its plates together, sending him and his brother forth in the fault. Millions of years of growing from that tremendous force; millions more spent eroding in the wind that battered his side and rain that drew shapes and fissures in his skin.

So to them, it might sound labored. 
To him, it is what he has always sounded like.

It would be easy not to notice the boy when he comes, swift and nimble, like that things that dug burrows in the soil that sat at his lower altitudes. He is just getting used to his sight, limited as it is; the nuance of sound; and the way smells receive in his nostrils—pleasant, like the smell of water from icy heights, and odious, like the first time he encountered flesh left too long in the sun. (He thought, of course, of the animals. And it made him sad—that uncomfortable and clinging embrace.) 

Besides, he is so small and the giant is obstinate about shaking loose the numbness he is so used to. But as his heart beats, slow and steady—pumping warm blood to his cold skin—so does he begin to know the creature callings of contact—he begins to understand the herd nature of his new, brute impulses. His ears flick and swerve on his head, capturing bits of conversations—there are words he does not yet understand. Language was not given to him freely by the Great God, but it builds as he wanders.

It would also have been easy to ignore the boy, as many might have anyway. But Hoarfrost is not accustomed to the unkind way old ones might treat their young, as if they haven’t much to say. He shifts, carefully, mindful of the way his hooves move like an uprooted boulder by the boy’s slight outline. He groans as he does, his company would test the patience of any youngster. Unhurried and deliberate, he drops his great head and turns to look at him with his working eye.

“Hmmmmmmmm,” it seems to hang on his tongue forever, contemplative and rumbling from deep in his core, “hello, small one. Fox.” Each word draws out and in between his lung heave like great bellows; his voice is old and complicated. He considers his words—knows he was once something much mightier; something much less feeling. “I am, just an animal. Like you. Small one. I am Hoarfrost.” This, strangely enough, has always been his name, for mountains have names, too.

THE FROST GIANT

PHOTOGRAPHY © STEINAR ENGELAND