Orlando used to live in the mountains. After so many centuries he had found that the only way to keep his anger away was just thinking on a day to day basis and keeping himself busy with the immediate things. Future wasn't even a concept to him since he was immortal and was totally unable to make plans as a part of an objective. He lived the day, even the hour, and tried to keep his mind from thinking about what would it be like living an eternal meaningless life because of the craziness and rage that it would bring. He was definitely the king of the The Bell Peak (called this for the bell form his peak had), and he liked to hunt in the woods or go to swim in the Mediterranean Sea on the hot summer nights with some jumps from his powerful legs. Still, he envied the humans. “Conviction is the most precious gift the gods gave to these baby-weak humans,” he used to think.
One day, when he was walking towards the sea to take a bath, he met a girl by the side of the river. As every time he met a human, he started feeling his anger growing up and the heat coming from his heart to his throat. “This stupid human, she's is for sure here thinking about her boyfriend, thinking about when she’s gonna meet him again, or when they will get married and how many stupid kids they'll have.” At this point, the human would try to escape from Orlando and they would make it out if they were lucky, since Orlando didn't really want to hurt them, as long as they keep him from thinking about his meaningless life. But this girl, she didn't run or hide. She felt the presence of the giant and turned her head towards him, looking at him with a slight curiosity, but without fear. Orlando got angrier, thinking of how happy she was thinking about having a stupid family or rising stupid children. “You'll be dead at some point, and so will your children, and the children of your children. And there will be the day when no one will remember you once existed, WHAT'S THE POINT THERE???” Orlando roared so loud he made the mountains shake and felt the burning of his heart coming to his eyes. But again, the girl didn't move, nor even turn her head this time. “I don't care” she said with a soft voice. In so many encounters with humans, this one was the first time something like that happened to Orlando. They used to run, to scream, scared of loosing what they had. “I could take your life right here, as I've done with so many others” said Orlando, but the girl was definitely not scared. “Actually, you would be doing me a favor. I don't care if I live or die. If I live I'll go on... but I don't really care, I'm just stopping by on this life” she said. “You're stopping by? YOU'RE STOPPING BY?” asked the giant, “I'm fighting against a meaningless immortal life here, fighting against the time, like one who ploughs the sea, with no effort, with no hope! And you sissy human, you're just stopping by?” “You don't understand it”, said the girl, “I was in love, that love was the most important thing in my life. If love was meant to be, it would have happened at that time. But it didn't happen, he left me. Now my life is meaningless, my heart is frozen.” Now the giant seemed stunned. “Her life is meaningless...” he repeated in his mind. And he kept repeating this line in his mind again and again when he realized he had been talking and standing by the girl for several minutes but the anger seemed to be gone. Maybe he could help her to find a meaning to her life. Maybe that could be his meaning in life. “Are you kidding? How can you mean that? Don't you realize every single second of your life is special because it will never come back? That's what we giants, most powerful beings on the earth would die for, and you got it! The sunshine on your skin, the music of the woods, it's the joy of life, that's the meaning of life!...” And the giant kept talking, saying a lot of things he had heard the humans say when he was hidden in the woods. Things he couldn't really understand, things he didn't really believe. “If you live you just go on? You always have to go on! Even if it's only because of curiosity! Who would have thought you would see a giant talking like a sissy best girlfriend here?” And at this point the girl smiled. And as the conversation went on for hours and hours, as what usually happens between humans, love appeared. This time between a human and a giant. The heat of his heart had unfrozen hers, and vice versa.
He took the girl to his place in the mountains and they started a happy life together on it. They slept under the stars every night, she cooked what he hunted and both liked to find magical herbs which made them laugh all night long. They managed to find the joy in the small things. She learned how relative and sometimes insignificant things were. From the perspective of immortality, she learned how brief love is and how long oblivion is. When she learned she was actually standing on a rock that travels trough space (something humans didn't know yet by then), she realized that a boyfriend who breaks up with you is not that important. He learned that even if he was immortal, every single second he spent with her wouldn't come back as well. Somehow he borrowed her mortality. “How much do you love me?” she used to ask, and he answered “I love you like the stars above, I'll love till you die,” and they both laughed, looking at each other as if they already knew they will miss each other. “Would you reach a star for me?” She asked once. “I can't do that, but I will make a whole world for only us so no one can bother us. I will build an island so we can stay together, alone, and happy forever. We will hide from time on that island.” “You can't do that, that's impossible,” she replied. “What?” he said, “Had you taken a look at us? Would you say this was possible? We make things happen. We will be together as long as we want.
They spent years together, years who comprised lives on them, but years who passed by like breathes. One day, when he was coming back from hunting in the woods he received a visit from a messenger of the Brotherhood of Giants. “You've been neglecting your duties as a giant. You weren't sent to this world just to have fun with the humans. You have no right to have a purpose in life. You have to go to the other side of the mountain, otherwise, you and your people will be punished.” He walked to his place where he knew the girl was waiting for him, thinking about how he would say he had to go. “But I'll die if you leave me,” was the first thing she said. “I haven't felt this before. Without the heat of your heart, mine will freeze again, I know it, and I'll die, or I'll be dead in life” The giant stood without knowing what to say. He knew their love will die but he thought she would get over it as she had before. It was better for her to live, even with a frozen heart, than die under the hands of the Brotherhood, and maybe there will be a chance for someone to unfreeze her heart again. “It is just the way it was meant to be, we knew this would happen, it's better for it to be us who make that decision,” was the only thing he said not finding anything better to say, and he just left to the other side of the mountain.
For a couple of weeks, nothing happened. He thought that maybe something had changed in both of their hearts, so they could maybe survive without each other. But after the second week, he started feeling that heat he knew and had felt before. His life was meaningless again, and that was the giants' anger again. The anger which made them be mean with the common of the mortals, the anger he had been hiding from for so many centuries until he found the girl, the anger that has made him unable of looking beyond day to day, to make plans, to hope, to wish, and there it was again. “It cannot be happening again, if I let myself go now it will be as if nothing of this had happened. I have no future, I'm immortal, and all I have are my memories.” But it was happening, he was loosing control of himself and he was again becoming that dangerous creature the humans had been scared of. “I knew this would happen eventually. Nothing lasts forever, what's the point then? What's the point of enjoying something you'll miss eventually?” Right before turning totally out of control, like flashes in his mind came to him all the images of what his life had been before, all the fear and pain he had caused, and how happy and peaceful his life with the girl had been. With the anger and rage almost taking control, he looked to the mountain, knowing that right on the other side was the only thing that had given peace to his heart and joy to his life, and with a last supreme effort to canalize his rage, he released a tremendous blow to the side of the mountain, which propelled a part of it and made it fall in the sea. Through the hole, he saw their house on the other side of the mountain, and beyond this he saw the piece of the mountain in the sea, half of it above the water level. “That's our island”, he thought, and realized his heart was cooling down. “We make things happen.”
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