Soyla and others on the lakeshore

There is a longer creature-based work, which can only come out if people read it as it is forming itself. In that way it's like an alien caterpillar] The excerpts do not necessarily come in order. Comments welcome

Soyla liked how the old man from the tree family explained things to her: we are not really that small Solya, just far away. She didn’t know if it made her ashamed, worried, or if it made it all a bit easier. Aside from supplying them with fresh scraps of Ool’s letters there was little she could do, and meanwhile, for the time being, things seemed fine. She wished they weren’t so small, but then again if the giants were passing this way, they would find her very small, and she was all right. The giants were not seen in this part of the Thicket for quite some time. There were a lot of things that were not seen. And maybe it was the opposite from the tree family. If they weren’t small but far away, maybe the giants, and the rhinos, and the magnificent star-toads were not gone or far, but have just become very small. Soyla smelled the earth around her. A worm came out, and she murmured an embarrassed hello.
“Nice day,” said the worm, and hurried off politely.

The log was asleep, the tree family were probably washing the breakfast dishes, or doing schoolwork, and Yulanda was busy with the paperwork.

Soyla was free.

Soyla had work to do.

Soyla felt like a bubble and too late for everything.

She’d slept in because the sand had become so warm and because the sunlight was gentle. And now she was like a bubble. She pulled out a few socks from her backpack  and decided to make a few traps for the sunlight. Her granny taught her how to do it, and that was  a prudent thing to do if they wanted a bit of comfort and ease this winter.  

Carefully she stretched the sock over a twig frame and hung it on a tree at just the right angle. She curled below to count the rays. Wasn’t seventeen the right number for catching? Or was it seven. There was cold fresh air coming from the lake, enough to keep her awake, she thought, and she wrapped her tail around herself. Soon she was asleep again, and her dream was more sea-like than lake, with the waves rocking below her, and big ships passing by.

She woke up because the ground rocked below her.

Particles of sand jumped in the air.

She ran towards the tree family’s shelter, grabbing a few tiny kids along the way, just as big feet and legs appeared on the lakeshore. She didn’t dare to look up.

The tiny kids cried and spilled out of Soyla’s arms ran to their parents, and out of the woods, she saw Yolanda leaping, rattling all the cans that trailed her skirt, bouncing towards the shelters. How small she looked. Everything looked small because the giants were so close. The air was thick with their breath. All she could see was the feet, the big feet, and the bigger legs above them, and further she couldn’t look. They walked slow, but the sand moved, and the lake rippled. Soyla sat down beside the tiny village. She was afraid to stand in case she fell down and crushed them. She was not able to move. In the scared time, things went backwards and forwards, and once again she felt the tiny prickles of the tree-family children, jumping out of her arms, because was not able to hold onto them and protect them. Yulanda was beside her, and seemed to be all movement, all wildness, and the giants didn’t move at all – just the sand, and the water in the lake, and Yulanda’s arms and skirt. And her big moving words.

Then she saw out of the corner of the eye, the older folk from the tree-family, moving ladders and ropes and shouting orders. These were people who knew how to act. Some of Ool’s letters were now pulled off and stretched as sails. Tiny air ships decked the sand, about to set sail at the approach of the giants. The old man who had spoken to Soyla was already air-borne testing the currents beside Yulanda’s ear.

The giants came into view. They wore wide brimmed hats, so their faces were in the shadow. And they walked slowly and carefully. But they were too big, Soyla thought, it’s not that they are not careful, it’s not that they have an evil intent, but they are too big, and the Thicket was full of small people and animals. 

Two, no three of them came out of the forest and went towards the lakeshore, their feet making giant craters in the sand. The ships rose into the air, the letters swelling in the new wind. Some struggled in the sand, some whipped out more ladders, but they all seemed to make it, and once in the air they didn’t stop.  They headed for the giants’ large hats and landed on them. More ladders came out, more pulleys, the ones with wheels, and the ones with wings, three-legged ones and five-armed ones, the old and the young, all settled on the hats.

The giants walked on. The sand rippled all around them, and the water was grainy like sand, but Soyla watched them calmly now, and noticed how minutes and seconds that had become all jumbled up as she panicked settled down. She noticed she was talking to Yulanda, that Yulanda and she were in fact talking to the old man, whose ship was still in the air, and who was saying goodbye.

“Apparently,” Yulanda said, “they have been using giants as a means of transport for as long as they have been settling in the trees. Who would have thought.”

“Are they really all OK?”

“Yes, for now. They will hopefully find another oak away from the loggers. You OK?”

“We didn’t really help them, did we?”

Yulanda yawned: “You never, ‘really help’ anyone, you were here for them when it all ended well, that’s good enough”.

It sounded mechanical, like something she had learned to say many times, but Soyla was still confused because time had just scrambled and unscrambled itself, and within this scrambling she saw other ends, that were less happy, and her skin still tingled with the footsteps of the children she had tried to save.