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The world seemed so big to me, when I was a kid. Everyone was taller, bigger, broader and the countertops were always too high without a footstool or someone lifting me up. The giant wouldn’t listen to my cries of denial, despite my wiggling, and squirming, and trying to get out of their grip.
“I’m a big kid, I can do it by myself!” I’d always shout. Nevertheless, the same giant would scoop me up, arms securing themselves around my body like a lifeline before lifting and bringing me up to the world only they saw. Tables would be stretched out like vast canvases across a lake, and the chairs which had always towered high, arched with broad-backed wood designs and stone-cold bottoms would seem to shrink. Even then, I didn’t like those chairs. They were always big, scary, with monstrous teeth and glowering eyes that followed me no matter where I was. It always, always seemed like they wanted to eat me up, gobble me down, turn me into nothing but a void and make me disappear.
“No one would notice.” I’d whisper under my breath. None of those other big giants heard, they were too absorbed in their own conversations. Their foreign sounds filtering in one ear then out the other for me. Giants didn’t like to deal with little ones like me, always thinking I was a hassle. Still a hassle, even to him, the only giant—somewhat giant—who heard.
“It’d be best to be on my own.” I’d always say. And so I was, often, in my own world of towering heights and scary monsters. When, in a strange occurrence, a looming hand would come reaching down from the skies and scoop me up, settling me on those monstrous chairs, I’d never sit still. Wiggling back and forth, making sure the large sharp teeth wouldn’t be able to reach me no matter how hard they’d try; despite everything, I would remain sitting even then, because the giants would be mad if I didn’t. Then again, when did they ever care for me? Only the somewhat giant did, but not always. Sometimes, I could feel the cold, grueling resentment bubble, gurgling in the pit of my stomach, gnawing at my feet and screaming from my bones. Most of the time, I’d sit there, and wait. And wait. And wait. Until someone said the only foreign sound I could understand.
“You can leave.”
And I would, back to my world, alone.
I remember only this from my time before becoming a giant myself—that, and the legs, the ever-giant legs. Legs were everywhere the eye could see. I’d blink and suddenly they would come out of nowhere, spilling from the ground like a never-ending flow of water gushing from an eternal fountain. Big, bold, loud, and always moving legs.
Once, on a fall evening with bright orange leaves and large reddish hues splattering against the brilliant blue skyline, I sat patiently staring at the many legs in front of me. The festival air was ripe with apple-crisp honey, and twilight hanging sun was dripping with golden rays splashing the ocean of legs in front of me. They moved and danced in coming and going waves with the chatter ebbing and flowing too. Sometimes there would be more people on this side than that side. Sometimes they would part, flowing against another pack of legs coming from the opposite direction. It was fun, swinging my own small, stubby legs back and forth to the momentum of the waves, coming and going, coming and going. The ebb and flow of the leg tide soothed my mind and kept me anchored despite my wandering thoughts.
The scent of something delicious, nostalgic now but new then, filled my nose and I leaped off the wooden bench. Into the colorful sea of legs I went, rushing off to join the swarm of a passing school of legs, a faint, faint call from behind me falling on deaf ears. The roar of feet and hips and hands overcame everything else as I tried to push my way through, following the scent that rumbled my stomach and piqued my curiosity. The overflowing ocean of stampeding movement parted for me. It was a rush, the most fun I ever had in a very long time, dashing through the small openings that would appear as if showing me the path I needed to take. I moved without a care, too lost in the fun, an endless cycle of dipping and weaving here and there, wherever I could. In the next instant though, I stopped. Something was off, something was wrong. Too late. Too lost in the fun, now truly lost.
Standing still, the world wavering, flickering. The legs didn’t stop, they moved on. Without me. I was left behind.
Nothing but an obstacle, I was an empty liminal space too few dared to enter. No one looked down as I looked up at them with a wide-eyed stare and glistening starlight lantern eyes. They didn’t want me, didn’t need me, didn’t want anything to do with me. They were large, overbearing giants with gaping mouths moving soundlessly with unseeing eyes. I blinked once. The glowing eyes would sweep, seemed to stop for a moment and pierce into me. Then they would move away, my existence not worthy of their attention. Time flowed without constraint, but yet haltingly, it stopped and started with every blink, every stilted breath. Every scene would change and each time, I was still the center of the universe in a sea of legs. Alone.
The sounds were muted, a filter over them, covering everything up in a blanket of fuzz mush and white noise static. The lights twinkled and winked, dappled everything in its path into sun-dripped beams and warm color rim lights. It was beautiful, it was dizzying. It was terrifying, so, so terrifying. It was so much and too much and really, really too much that I didn’t know, I didn’t think, couldn’t think—I wilted under the overbearing lights.
Squatting down, hands over my ears, head tucked between my legs, I stared down at the ground, unmoving; it was solid, and it was safe. I let the hum of movement and chatter wash over me, part around me. I was a rock in the ocean—sinking deeper and deeper into its depths, legs swarming and trapping—until a voice, sharp, loud, home, tumbled into me like a boat scraping the distant horizon, and I, the great lighthouse just on the cliffside. I blinked, darkness that had eaten at my vision sweeping up towards the light, before finally receding. I blinked again, and in the light, the blurry figure of someone taller, bigger, broader came into view. He said something, tone angry. He rushed over, sweeping me up in his arms becoming my lifeline, still speaking. I didn’t hear anything he said, the only thing audible was the solid, rhythmic thumping of his heart against my ear as I was cradled against his chest.
I blinked again and suddenly, the sound haze mush lifts, just as I too am lifted above the sea, no longer drowning in legs. I breathe. I float. I look up at the giant, I see now, the somewhat giant. It was my brother, the only, only giant looking out for me—that ever looked out for me—I realize. He was the one who would lift me up to reach something high in the world of giants. He was the one who always came calling for me, after the other giants said I should leave. My breath hitches, I clutch at his shirt, tight in my little hands.
He squeezes back tight, so obviously angry, so obviously not. He makes a frustrated noise, because the giants bigger than I, still bigger than him, would not part for us. We were stuck, swimming up a river that pushed back, unrelenting and decidedly against us. The grip around me tightens and suddenly I realize I’m crying, wet droplets stuck on my lashes like the glitter of starlight in the night sky. He finally pushes through, past the legs and giants and ocean and fear. We stop at the side as the current moves on. He wipes my tears and I hold on tight to his shirt, even tighter than before. He clutches me back with the same ferocity, shaking just a bit. Something wet hits my shoulder, I didn’t know what at the time, but I knew it meant something important.
Looking back now, I realize he was just as scared as me.