The stone giant was looking from me to my warriors. And then suddenly with a humph, he turned around like he didn’t want to have any business with us. He began stomping away, crushing colonies of small plants and bushes with every step.

“No, wait!” I shouted after him. “We came all the way just to meet you.”

The stone giant stopped.

“You came to meet me?” he asked, without facing us.

“Yes,” I said.

“Why?” he said. “Nobody has ever come to meet me. I don't even know anybody, and nobody knows me either.”

“We… We came seeking the stone giants. You are one of them, aren’t you?”

“I am,” he replied. “Why did you come seeking the stone giants?”

I dwelt on how it would be best to state our motif.

“We need your help,” I said.

The stone giant made a booming laugh.

“The only one who needs help right now is me.”

“Yes, I will be very glad to help you,” I said. “You have fallen in love, haven’t you?”

The stone giant did not say anything for a few seconds. I guessed he liked long pauses in between conversations.

“Yes, I have,” he said. From his tone I could make out he was shy at admitting that, even though his face was concealed by the shadows.

“So what problem are you facing with your girl exactly?” I asked. “Did you have a quarrel? Has she left you? Did she say ‘no’ to you?”

“Um, actually I have never spoken to her till now,” the stone giant explained.

I gathered from this new piece of information that he was just having confidence issues approaching the girl. Was that even a reason to weep? If she had cheated him or something that was understandable.

“Like never in your life?” I asked. “Or have you had normal conversations with her?”

“No, I have never spoken to her in my entire life,” the stone giant replied. “Actually she is asleep and she has never seen me.”

“Asleep?”

“We stone giants sometimes go and sleep for decades,” the stone giant replied. “I found her slumbering and I fell in love with her, but I do not have the courage to wake her up.”

“So you are afraid that she will be angry if you wake her?” I asked. The stone giant nodded, as he finally turned towards us. His stone face was stained with tears, which I found absurd since his eyes were made of stone.

“Maybe you can just wait for her to wake up?” I said.

“But what if she goes into a coma and never wakes up?” the stone giant said. “Sleeping for so long, sometimes we stone giants get so lost in our dreams that we never wake again.”

The lover boy was screwed on both sides. I could see only one solution.

“Then just try waking her,” I said. “Maybe she will accept you after all.”

“What if she doesn’t?” the stone giant said, fearfully.

“Well, in that case you can just move on, I guess,” I told him. “But I have a feeling that she would not be angry.”

“You do?”

“Yup,” I said. I suspected that if the stone giants so rarely met each other, then it was quite likely that the female wanted to meet a male as much as he wanted to meet her. “Would you like to take us where she is?”

A pause. The giant made up his mind.

“Fine, come with me.”

***

The stone giant guided us through the dark forest. As we moved, our torches cast light on the plants so that the shadows shifted, and every once in a while I would wonder if players lurked behind the trees, observing us, waiting for the opportune moment.

It was an hour long trek. The stone giant told me his name was Bono and that he had dug himself a hole a week ago so that he could ponder over what he should do. The last time Bono had seen the girl was at least a month ago.

We finally reached the spot where the female was sleeping. It was overgrown with plants, and Bono struggled to point where the head of the girl was and where her feet were.

“I cleared this place the last time I came here,” Bono said as he uprooted plants with his fists. “But look how fast these bloody weeds have covered everything!”

“Was this place filled with plants the last time you came here?” I asked.

“It was,” Bono said. A large boulder with a nose-like structure came into view. I reckoned it was the head of the girl. “So I am reassured that no other males have seen her, and she doesn’t have any other lovers.”

Finally the plants were all gone. It was amazing how Bono had cleaned the spot in just a few minutes’ time. His long and strong fingers were very advantageous indeed.

“There she is,” Bono said tenderly. I took a step closer to the boulder that I knew was the head of the girl.

The light from the torches was falling on her face. She had extended eyelashes and there was a femininity in the structure of her head. If the girl had long hair then it was beneath the soil, as was the rest of her body.

“So how will you wake her up?” I asked Bono. He nervously rubbed the back of his head.

“Um, I will have to dig her out,” he said. “Well, that would be the first step at least. Er, what will I say to her once she is awake?”

“Let’s get done with step number one first,” I said.

As Bono began to remove earth by the fistfuls, I compared stone giants with humans, and for once I was grateful for being human. At least our females lived in homes, and did not hibernate under the soil.