I brought her coconut water, fished as much as I could, and lit large bonfires to scare away nocturnal animals. Each day she seemed to regain a little more strength. Her eyes were no longer clouded by pain, and sometimes she even gave me a gentle smile that made the fear I had felt at first disappear completely.
On the fifth day we started to talk for real.
“What’s your name, little human?” he asked in a voice that made the sand vibrate beneath my feet.
—Matthew —I replied.
She closed her eyes for a moment, as if she were storing that name somewhere very deep inside.
—I am Aelira.
The name seemed ancient, almost as if it had been born before the mountains.
He told me that his people lived far from the paths of men, in places where the ocean was so deep it seemed to touch the sky upside down. Giants, he said, were not many. And with each generation, fewer were born.
