We lived far north, in a white blur. We had large houses made of bricks of ice. We feasted on whales. We ate nearly all of the parts of the whales. What we couldn’t eat we used for fuel. Some of the sinews we used as thread for our clothes. Our clothes were made of polar bear fur. For snacks, we ate seals.
There aren’t many of us. Only twenty. One of the elders said we were dying. He spoke of a time when there were thousands of us and we lived further south. South. Every giant spoke of the south with awe and envy. There were more animals there. My mother would smack her lips in hunger and talk of caribou and moose. The temperature wasn’t as brutal further south. There was something called grass. Miles and miles and miles of it.
“Why can’t we go south?” I asked my mother.
“Humans don’t want us there. We signed a Proclamation with them. We had to stay on the ice.”
Mother shrugged and braided my long hair. Before the solstice holiday, I journeyed south until I reached the grass. I saw little humans swaddled in fur running around. They were cute. I scooped up two of them. I started feeling the pain of little blades jabbing into me. There were so many humans swarming around me. A big net was cast over me. I fell to the ground with a loud thud.
A human with dark eyes approached. “You giants are still alive?”
“Twenty of us,” I said.
He jabbed me in the throat and my blood gushed. “Nineteen,” he said.
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