//------------------------------//
// Book III.5 "A N T E A N" 
// Story: Slowly Drifting, or The Lost Verses of Perique Blend 
// by Cynewulf 
//------------------------------//

A N T E A N




Sixteen hands high he is, three of me or more
This giant like a tree is planted, solitary in the grass,
Does his size command--it must mean
Something, it must be some sign.
Sixteen hands high he is
His head must hold up the skies.
What could I say him that will explain him?
Shall I tell you that the earth beneath this giant quakes? Or
That he pulls a plow taller than Celestia and twice as powerful, shall I
Tell you this stallion who holds up the sky with his gentle head is beyond me in scope
Or that in his eyes the universe is tilted by perspective, that he sees from above what
Cannot be seen from below that he stands between myself on the wing and my sister
Upon the ground?
I can't tell you that.
Sixteen hands high he is, three of me or more and his gaze unsettles me.
You'll think of that height and think of Celestia shining like the dawn over the mountain
And I'll think of the moonlight spilling over the tip of Ghastly Gorge outside my door on the rocky floor
But the Antean is neither of these things.
He stands colossal and singular but his singularity is
Simple and simplistic, it does not draw the eye or the mind or the heart through
Granduer or glory or song or laughter but
In that it is so utterly starkly
Blank.
Not mindless but blank, as he grazes eyes large and seeing all they see still nothing they are blank
As a parchment untouched is blank before me deep in the Colony in the Gorge in my cavern on my desk
In the darkness in the city where no wax candle lives where no day pony sees but feels and whispers--
That is what I saw in the giant's eyes. And then
I shrank, terrified. Is this what
I am, mindless and grazing, seeing all yet seeing nothing, knowing nothing, being
Nothing, am I beneath a thin veneer like this giant of Earth this Antean
So like the stories and songs of the West yet so horribly alien?
Is this the promised end is this is this
And yet.
Gently lives the Antean in the sunny vale, trotting to the crude fence of wood
And thrusting his great nose down at me in greeting wordless yet obvious
And in my horror I did not know what to do so I returned that greeting
And found
That he was kind yet blank yet kind.
And then, when he had satisfied his curiosity, he left. The Antean was the sea and the sea
Is not troubled.
But I have never been much of a sailor. I think perhaps
Sometimes, when I worry, that the worry is the difference.
Sixteen hands high he is and holding up the sky,
There are worse things beneath heaven's vault than giants.