Tim stepped down from the ledge with great ease, a fall that could have killed Candice. When Tim's bare feet were planted firmly in the grass which was a much more comfortable surface than the floor of his cave, he turned around to see Candice waiting for him at the edge of the entrance. Next to her was a giant leather satchel, a satchel that Candice noted could probably fit a school bus inside and could still have room. Tim planned to grab some fruit while finding bedding for Candice. They had enough food on the deer for dinner, but some fruit might make the meal better.

        Candice had been surprised by the satchel as well as the other things Tim owned in a pile just barely in the reach of the fire light. There were different objects needed to survive in the wilderness, but they were all made for a giant such as Tim. Judging from the fact that Tim only wore a loincloth, Candice didn't think he would have some of the stuff he had. "Tim did say that he lived in a village with other giants. Maybe he lived like humans and had tools made for their giant size. There are giant animals after all. A country made for giants next to a country for humans. This place it getting stranger by the moment." Candice thought.

        Soon, Candice was stepping on Tim's waiting hand with his other hand grabbing the satchel and strapping it over his opposite shoulder. Tim could have easily just put her in the satchel, but he wanted to carry her, as if carrying her personally would keep his friend safer. Candice found it odd, but she actually preferred him to carry her in his hand instead of the dark confines of the satchel. She didn't know why she felt safer in a giant's palm, but there was something about it that she started liking and getting used to. She was lifted up to chest level as she sat cross legged on the palm of the one-hundred and eighty foot tall giant teen.

        "Are you thirsty?" Tim asked.

        "Yes, I haven't had a drink all day."

        "Well, I'm thirsty too and there is a stream not too far from my cave. We can go there first before finding the fruit and the bedding."

        "That's fine by me."

        What Candice was really going to say was: "I don't have much of a choice in the matter, do I? You're the one carrying me." She would have said it jokingly of course, but she didn't know how Tim might take it. The medieval giant could take such a comment the wrong way and may even be hurt by the comment if she's not careful.

        Tim started walking towards the stream as Candice looked down at her legs. The lap area of her pink pajama bottoms were coated in grease. This of course was because of the fact that she didn't have a plate, or silverware for that matter, when it came to eating the meat. The end result left the only clothes she had in this world messy. "What am I going to do when my clothes get too dirty. Wash them of course, but what will I wear while they dry?" Candice looked down at her feet. She examined the bottoms which were bruised from the rocky surface of the cave. She could also see so me bleeding from small pokes from the pointy rocks. She had a bad feeling that blisters might form if she continued walking on such a rocky surface. "I'm also going to need shoes for that matter."

        "So, this stream isn't far?" Candice asked, breaking the silence.

        "Yes, it is not that far at all."

        "Maybe for your long tree legs."

        "Ha, maybe it is far for humans. Thankfully we can walk at my pace." Tim smiled a bit from what Candice said and she was glad that she could start being herself around her new giant friend.  
Candice stared at the leather strap of the satchel hugging diagonally across his chest. She was having troubles imagining all the material that would have been needed to create such a large object. "Where did you get the satchel?"

        "It was one of the things I took with me when I was forced to leave my village," Tim explained a bit solemnly.

        "Right, you said you lived in a village of other giants and that you live in a country where everything is giant. Does you village live like human villages do?"

        "What do you mean?"

        "You know. Do giants farm, herd animals, and all the other things humans do?"

        "I think I might understand what you're saying. Everything that makes up the human world: agriculture, economy, and other such things, are the same in my country. The only difference is that where I'm from, everything is bigger. We have a King, farms, jobs, animals, minerals, and everything else that's the right size for us."

        "If that's true, why are you only wearing a loincloth?"

        "Oh –well– I did have clothes when I left, but I've grown out of them. It was six years ago when I left my home. Plus, I didn't have the much time to get everything before I was banished," Tim stated the last sentence with increased solemnity.

        Candice had forgotten that Tim had been banished from his village because of his views on humanity. "I'm sorry for bringing that up."

        "It's alright. Oh, we're here."

        Candice looked away from the giant face above her and looked ahead. Before them was what Tim called a stream. Too Candice, the water flow was much more like a small river. From a distance, Candice believed that the river was decently shallow, but as Tim drew closer to the "stream", Candice realized that it the water was just very clear. It was at least ten to fifteen feet deep. Yet, Candice could see the bottom because the water was just that clear. "How could fresh water be that clear?"

        Tim knelt down by the edge of the river and sat on the back of his ankles with his legs folded on top of themselves beneath him. Once he was comfortable, he lowered his hand down beside him at arm's length to give her some space.

        Candice scooted off the hand and hopped off on the prickly grass. She couldn't tell whether the grass was comfortable or irritating to her bare feet. Candice looked behind and saw the giant hand lifting away and landing on the giant's lap. She looked at the giant face that stared down her with a sweet smile high above. Even when he was stilling down, Tim towered over her greatly. Candice smiled politely back and approached the water.

        The ground near the edge of the water sloped down a bit, but it dropped down quickly later on. Candice judged that she would only make it to her shins before it dropped suddenly. Candice crouched down like Tim at the edge without touching any of the water and stared down at liquid that slide past her. Was the water safe to drink? It was natural after all and who knows what had been in it. This could have been an animal's bathroom for all she knew.

        Candice glanced back at Tim where was already bent over and dipping his cupped hands into the deeper water. His arms could easily achieve this task without much struggle. Hell, Tim probably could just step across the river in one long stride. Candice watched the pool of water in Tim's hands lift to his mouth quickly before it was slurped into his cavernous mouth and then sucked down into his throat. Tim had probably been drinking this water for a while now, maybe ever since he came to the forest. It had to be alright to drink.

        Candice dipped her hands into the refreshingly cool water. She cupped them and quickly pulled it up to drink. The water was fresher than any of those bottled waters she always had. And it was definitely better than the tap water that always, no matter how clean the pipes seem, had a little bit of a metal taste. She had no way of explaining the taste that slushed against her tongue. It was nothing she had ever tasted, and something she never thought she would ever do. In her world, natural water was not something to drink in fear of pollution.
She quenched her thirst in a few slurps and looked to Tim who was still drinking. Candice shifted and rotated her legs from under her to a cross legged position and then to a sitting position with her legs straight out. Dipping her feet in cool, healing waters made her sigh and relax her muscles.

        "Is something wrong?"

        Candice turned her head and looked up to see Tim still in the same sitting position but now looking at her with a bit of concern. "I'm fine. The water just feels good on my feet after walking a bit on that rocky floor," Candice said.

        "You're feet hurt from the floor of my cave?"

        "Yeah, doesn't your feet hurt from walking on it all the time?"

        "No, I've never had a problem. Maybe it's because a giant's skin is tougher than human's skin. I know it's thicker and I know giant slayers have to have a special blade to even cause damage. My kind's skin could be just all around tougher as well."

        That statement seemed strange to Candice; Tim's skin seemed very soft and comfortable to her when she had to sit on his hand. Yet, the bottoms of his feet seemed to be unaffected by the jagged surface of his home. How could skin that soft be so tough and think? "Unlike you, I may need shoes as soon as possible," Candice informed. Candice looked down at her greasy pajama bottoms. "And more clothes for that matter."

        "One pair is not enough?"

        "I could just have one pair and clean it, but what do I where when it's drying?"

        "Oh – right – I didn't think about that?"

        "What do you do when you have to wash that loincloth? Do you have extra clothes?" Candice glanced at the loincloth, but could barely see it since his legs were so large compared to her. The loincloth draped on the slope his lap created, covering whatever was between his legs.

        Tim blushed a bit as he recalled what he normally did. "Well, normally during the summer and spring times, I just wash it and walk around naked till it dries. I guess I should make another one when I can. Normally, it's all right to be naked this far in the forest. Humans don't travel this deep."

        "Do all giants where just loincloths and such?"

        "No, we have clothes. I used to have some that fit me, but I grew out of them. I've been in this forest since I was ten years old. When I finally grew out of all my clothes, I didn't know what I was going to do. I was lucky it wasn't winter, because I had to go around naked for a while. I'm glad I made the loincloth. I feeling a lot more comfortable not being completely nude, and I think having some clothes on scares the locals a little less. Though they'd be frightened no matter what I do."

      "What do you do for winter? Surely that's not warm enough for you during winter."

        "I have very thick fur coats for winter that I took from my parents while running out of the village. And I made some furred shoes so my feet don't freeze from the snow."

        There was a long silence for a moment before Tim continued by saying, "I think we should get some clothes for you tomorrow and maybe even some winter coats. I know it's summer now, but we should get them now so we don't have to worry about that down the road."

        "It's summer here?"

        "Yes, why do you ask?"

        "It was spring where I come from."

        "Oh."

        "Tim, how do you plan on getting clothes for me?"

        "I have one idea, but you might not like it."

        "And what idea would that be?"

        "We could get clothes from the nearest human settlement."

        "The town that thought I was a witch?"

        "So, you want to go to a human village?" Candice asked as the giant whose palm she was sitting on now as he walked through the forest.

        "We are going to need clothes for you. Where else are we going to get human clothes?" Tim stated as his eyes scanned the forest.

        "But, are there other villages that are close to the forest other than that one that believed I was a witch?"

        "It is the closest human village."

        "And do you have some sort of plan?"

        "What do you mean?"

        "I mean how are you going to approach the village? What's your plan on getting the clothes from them? Have you ever approached a human village before?"

        "Well. No, I have not. I've encountered humans when they entered the forest and when they tried to give me human sacrifices, but I have never gotten close to their actual village."

        "And how do you think the village will act as soon as you get there?"

        "They would, they would probably act the same way they do when I encounter them individually."

        "That's right, they'd panic," Candice informed him. Suddenly, Candice pictured all those giant monster movies her brother and her would watch every so often. The Godzilla movies, Cloverfield, King Kong, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, and other less popular giant monster movies reeled behind her eyes. She imagined Tim, who was probably a little over half the size of Godzilla, arriving into the human village she had seen earlier that day. In that village, Tim would even look more frighteningly intimidating since this village didn't have sky scrapers. It consisted of mostly huts, and the biggest building would probably be two floors, and those would be the businesses such as the taverns. Those buildings might just barely reach over his ankle, if Candice was calculating it correctly in her head.

        "The villagers will flip out!" Candice continued as the images kept playing in her mind, "They're going to think you're coming to attack them and they will panic. Not only will it be frightening for them because you're a giant, but they believe I'm a witch. They might think I've put you under my spell or something, and that I'm forcing you to attack them. Who knows what accusations they will come up with in their panicked state."

        "Maybe I can convince them that I'm not going to hurt them and that I'm not a monster."

        "You think you can calm down and convince an entire village?"

        "I—I convinced you that I'm not a monster."

        "But I'm one person, and my case was different."

        "How so?"

        "For one, I'm from a place where giants and monsters don't exist. They're in stories that we create, but not real. In this place, giants do exist and humans know it. Humans also probably have a strong believe that monsters and giants, can't be trusted because they're evil. They have most likely been taught at a young age to fear giants and it is programed in their brains that giants are evil and could never be good. They will be much harder to convince differently. Just think about all those other humans you've met individually."

        "Yes, most of those humans ran away as soon as they saw me. And even when they didn't run away at the sight of me, they were too frightened to move. Nothing I said or did could convince them."    

        "Now, imagine a whole village filled with those people."

        Tim stopped in his tracks and thought about what Candice was saying. A trip to the village seemed a lot more impossible than it had when he had first thought of the idea. How was this going to work at all? How could he convince an entire village that he, a one hundred and eighty foot tall giant, wasn't going to harm them and wasn't a monster at all.

        Candice could see that this was upsetting her giant friend. Tim was looking down to her level, but his head was turned away and looking at the grass instead of the hand near his chest. "I'm sorry if I'm upsetting you, but I was just trying to explain to you how hard this will really be."

        "Why were you different from the other humans?" Tim asked, looking over to her again.

        "I'm—I'm not really sure. When I first saw you come out of the woods, I was positive that you were going to eat me or do some terrible things to me."

        "What kind of terrible things?"

        Candice paused for a moment. "Should I tell him the truth? Will it upset him even more to know what people believe he would do to them?" "Just very terrible things," Candice decided to speak up, "Things like you torturing me by tearing off my limbs one at a time before finally killing me, or swallowing my alive so that I'm alive when I enter your stomach and feel the acids dissolve me, or use me for your sexual pleasures, and-" Candice saw the horrified, shocked, and sad expression on Tim's face. There were more fears she had when she had first seen Tim, but she knew that it would hurt Tim too much to go over every one of those fears. "Terrible things like that," Candice finished.

        "People. People believe I would do such things to them?"

        "Yes."

        "I would never."

        "I know that now, but others wouldn't understand."

        "What made you change your mind about me?"

        "I'm not really sure. There were a few reasons, most likely. One reason was because I couldn't go back to the village. They thought I was a witch and the only reason they didn't burn me, was because they thought that it would be more useful for them to sacrifice me to you. With that in mind, I had nowhere I could run to. I have no idea how I got here, and I have no idea how to get back home, since there is no such thing as a giant country in my world. I also couldn't fend for myself in the wild and-"

        "It seems as though you were forced to trust me, as if I might the better of two bad options." Tim sighed upon hearing this."

        "I believed that at first because I still was afraid of what you might do to me, but that's changed now." Candice placed her hand down on Tim's palm and patted it. "So far, you're the only person that's been kind enough to help me, and you haven't done a single thing that could harm me. You've been nothing but gentle and caring. You've been a good friend, Tim, and I trust you completely now. Sure, I'm still going to have to get used to being around a giant, but I know that I am safe around you. I'm glad I met you."

        Tim looked down at Candice with a big smile and watery eyes. "Thank you, Candice. That really means a lot to me. I'm glad I've met you too. It's just too bad it had to be in this situation, with you somehow being far away from home, having nowhere to go, being accused of witchery, and then being offered up as me sacrifice."

        "Come to think of it, that is a very odd way two people to meet, even if it were in a movie or a book. Then again, a giant and a human alone are strange enough of a meeting. But, nothing about this day has been normal."

        There was a stretch of silence as Tim continued his walk, a pace that Candice would never keep up with, even though it was one of Tim's slowest paces. Tim suddenly brought up the subject once again, "Since we have ruled out the option of me just being able to walk up to the human village, how else can we get close for you? How else can we approach the village?"

        Candice didn't like the subject. She didn't want to go back to the place that called her a witch so soon. No, she didn't want to go back to the village period. That village had tried to kill her! Then again, if it hadn't have been for their actions, she would have never met Tim, but that was no excuse to forgive them. Candice was only lucky that she was taken to a gentle giant like Tim. If it would have been a different kind of giant, she would have probably been dead by now. "Are there any other towns close?" Candice hoped there was, but she felt that she would be disappointed with the answer.

        "No, it's the closest human settlement to this forest. Others are a day or more travel, even for me."

        "Oh, of course," Candice muttered as she looked down at her greasy, pink pajama bottoms hating her bad luck.

        "Is something troubling you, Candice?"

        "I'm not looking forward to going to the village again. They tried to kill me, and what if they-"

        "They wouldn't dare try to harm you while I'm around. I won't let anyone harm my only friend. I will protect you, Candice."

        Candice sighed. "That promise makes me feel better with this. Thanks."

        "But we still haven't solved are problem. How are we going to get you some clothes without scarring the whole town to death?"

        "Maybe there's a way to prove to them that you're not a monster by doing something," Candice suggested as she thought deeply on their predicament. There was a spark in her mind. "How often do they offer a sacrifice to you?"

        "Maybe once every—once every month, maybe. Sometimes it's as soon as once every week. Because of their randomness, I tend to just go to the edge of the forest every morning in case there is someone there. Why do you ask?"

        "It's a longshot, but maybe that could be our solution."

        "How so?"

        "Maybe we could wait till they use another person as a sacrifice. What you could do is go over to the sacrifice area like and free the person like usual, but instead of just leaving the person and letting him run home or where ever the people run to when you free them, you could try you best to convince him or her you're not monster and then bring the person back to the village yourself. Maybe once you bring a person back as proof that you don't kill those people they sacrifice, it will be possible to convince them."

        "I've never thought about it like that. Maybe it will work."

        "But we just can't take their clothes. Sure you have the strength and the intimidation to just be able to take whatever you want from them, but I'm guessing that you don't want to be viewed as a big bully or an outlaw to them."

        "Don't worry. I have a way to pay them. You're right, I don't want them to perceive my as anything bad, because I'm not really a bad guy."

        "I know. You're just a big softy aren't you?"

        Tim blushed and looked away from Candice for a while. It was at that moment that he found a tree full of fruit. It was time to pick the fruit and then they would have to find some soft material for Candice to make a bed out of.