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The Bear family were a small family of giants living as game keepers and woodsmen in the King's forest, tending the tracks and paths, ensuring the fences were well maintained around the King's private hunting grounds, and ensuring no commoners dared poach on His Majesties private lands.

The mother and Lady of the house, Catalina Bear, stood at a height of around 25 feet tall. She had long cascades of auburn locks which she preferred to keep tied back in a thick rope of plaited hair and hung down her back to her hips. Her eyes were a sparkling almost crystal-like green, shocking and beautiful to look into. She wore a traditional style dress patterned with flowers and flared at the shoulders and hips so the bunches of her skirts flowed out to hang at the tops of her calves. Her long white leggings tied at her ankles with small red satin bows above the large brown mule style wedge shoes which had uniform splits up the sides of the toes to subtly expose her dexterous, long digits.

Her husband Bram was taller still than his giantess wife, he stood around 30 feet in height. His short shorn blonde hair was often dusty with the day's travels and contained much of the forest where he had to duck branches and haul logs, carts, rocks, animals and whatever else the day had in store for him in order to allow him to earn his living. His shirt was so massive it was clear it contained the hides of four or five different animals, deer, cow and even a collar of bear fur just to cover his enormous chest and back. The same was true of his deerskin trousers, mercifully hard wearing being made entirely of the hides of 5 or 6 deer though Bram preferred to travel barefoot having learnt that his particular lifestyle burnt through shoes far too quickly to be worth spending what meagre coin they had on new ones.

The Bear's also had a son, a young boy named Eric who was no more than 5 winters old but still he stood at around 10 feet in height and was growing fast. He had dirty blonde hair like his father and the same shocking ice-blue eyes.

Bram enjoyed spending as much time with his family, and especially his son, as he could. He would teach him the ways of the woods, what he could and couldn't touch, how to respect the forest and the creatures in it, and most important of all, to stay away from any human who appeared well dressed. He taught him of the punishments the humans enjoyed delivering to those who were not like them, and how easily offended the richer humans were of anything that didn't meet their ideals of 'the norm' or proved to be of use to them.

Owing to these harsh conditions Bram had always struggled to maintain his loving family and the last thing he wanted to do was risk losing whatever income he earned from keeping the King's land, by offending a Lord or Lady. With but a word to the King's advisors any noble could have them thrown from the land and into even further poverty, no doubt forcing Bram to take up dangerous quarry work like so many of his kin or having to try and live off the land, an act punishable by death for stealing the King's goods.

The cabin they lived in within the forest was large by any human standards, but to the Bears it was no luxury space. It lay spread across one almost open-plan floor, the living area flowed directly into the kitchen as one big open room with a stonework hearth surrounded by 3 or 4 large cowhide rugs to cover the otherwise barren floorboards, an old battered arm chair big enough for Bram was the only real luxury in the area. In the kitchen a huge stone built oven range stood with a heavy iron door on the front of it which, originally, had been designed to be a reinforced door to a bank and still carried the embossed seal of the King's treasury on its front.

Stood in the main space of the open area was a massive oak table, roughly hewn from hand cut planks and simply rounded tree stumps Bram had made the huge dining table himself and was proud of it but the chairs had set him back a pretty amount of coin from the local house frame carpenters. Though expensive Bram had also worked part of the debt off having come to an agreement with the good natured carpenters working as a heavy lifter and putting large timbers in place for the work crews. They had come to the same arrangement in exchange for the crews teaching Bram enough carpentry skills to make their beds as well.

It was during one of these exchanges of labour with a local farmer that he had decided to bring young Eric with him. Bram had been offered a couple of bails of hay to re-stuff their large canvas mattresses, the harvest was going to be late and if it wasn't taken in quickly it would be ruined by the coming rains. With Bram's huge strength both he and the farmer knew it would only be a matter of a days work for he and the human to clear the field of its bounty.

The villagers and local townsfolk were always a little wary of the Bear family. Humans and Giants hadn't always lived side by side and there wasn't a single member of either race's last four generations who hadn't been taught about the savage wars between the two that left the Giant race a mere shadow of its former glory. Bram was lucky however that the large majority of the local populace were usually either good to him, understanding that all families needed to work to live and seeing that Bram was as honest as they came, or they kept their distance leaving him well enough alone.

Eric had been left to amuse himself at the side of the farmer's field his father had come to work on, he was a well behaved boy and Bram was confident he would not have to worry about him causing any trouble. He had decided to bring him into the village today to allow his son to get used to being around humans but also to allow the locals to get used to seeing the young boy and hopefully grow to accept him as one of their own. It had only been a few hours, the sun was barely half the way up the sky and Eric had been entertaining himself stroking the cows in the field next to the one his father worked in.

There was a rattling and commotion and shouts and voices coming from the village square and Eric wondered what was happening. He climbed onto the fencing that penned in the cattle, the timbers creaking under his dense body and gazed down the lane to where he saw the shiny casings of two people he recognised from one of his story books. Knights. With the knights was a woman who looked around the age of 17 or 18, dressed in a lavish sky blue dress with white trim but most clearly of all Eric could make out the large golden swirls of hair cascading down from the woman's head right down to the middle of her back.

Eric was amazed by the pretty lady and her shiny, silver-clad Knights and stretched higher to see them over the heads of the people who had gathered to greet her. The people didn't seem all that keen to be around her but at the same time they seemed obligated to offer her things like food and drink which she was evidently disinterested in but took a few things here and there. The Knights simply stood slightly behind her and by her sides the whole time, not once lifting their conical visors and standing with an aire of confidence which alone seemed to keep the small cluster of villagers away from them.

The golden-haired woman seemed to grow quite bored of the crowd quite quickly and was about to turn to leave when her eye caught something and her head turned to look directly at Eric. The two stood with mouths slightly agape at the sight of one another until the woman began to push through the crowd ordering them aside and quickly made her way to the giant boy. Eric climbed down from the fencing and stood nervously clutching at his own hands wondering what he should do as the powerfully confident woman strode towards him.

As the woman got closer the look of confidence on her pretty face became somewhat less confident, she hadn't realised from afar just how large this child was and she had to take a deep breath to remind herself of her position over him. She strode up to him noting that he was still staring a little slack-jawed which made her feel better about herself knowing her obvious beauty was still enough to dominate this brute child. She stepped up to the boy, her small frame standing at only 5ft 6” meant that she looked slightly up to the 5year old boy's face.

“Hello there young man, who might you be?” She asked, using her sweetest voice

Eric wasn't sure he should be talking to this woman. He knew enough to know that she was clearly a high born Lady and his father had taught him time and time again how much of a problem they caused for people when they chose to. He stumbled over his words and fumbled with his hands nervously.

“Umm, Eric, my Dad's working in the field over there.” He said

“Oh. Well... Eric” The woman woman said with a slight twitch of irritation at his blunt response “Do you know who I am?”

“N-No.” he started, his mind racing to try not to cause a problem and therefore a problem for his father “N-No, madam... Lady.”

“Hmm, well you speak well enough” The woman commented, raising a hand to shield her mouth as she gave a slight chuckle, like she saw a joke in her own words “I am the King's Daughter, Princess Gwendoline, and it is customary for a commoner to bow to a Princess!”

Eric thought for a second while his young mind processed what he had been told and then his eyes widened and he began to fidget awkwardly before attempting a rigid, foolish looking bow. The Princess laughed and turned to look over one shoulder then the other to the 7 or 8 villagers who had drifted up to see what was going on, as though she was prompting them to laugh along with her at the child's awkward discomfort.

When Eric straightened again, red faced, his embarrassment was forgotten the moment his eyes caught sight of the emerald green jewel which hung around Gwendoline's neck. For a moment she assumed he was deliberately lowering his gaze to her as any proper commoner should, but then she noticed he was staring at something in particular. She was about to take offence at the mammoth child for staring at her breasts but then she realised that it was the glittering necklace he was looking at and she saw an opportunity to taunt the boy further.

“Oh, you like my little necklace here?” She said gesturing to the far-from-little gemstone.

“Its the same colour as my Mother's eyes.” He responded in awe.

Gwendoline paused for a moment, thrusting her chest out to give him a better look and then removed the necklace and held it aloft. Moving her arm side to side and giggling lightly, she found it amusing to watch Eric's eyes trace the jewel back and forth through the air.

“Here, have a closer look why don't you?” She asked, once again turning and chuckling at her audience as though making sure the villagers were still backing her little game.

Eric delicately took the jewel from her and held it up so the sun so that the light could sparkle cleanly through its deep grass-green structure.

“Ha! Look, he's so easily amused!” Gwendoline addressed to no-one in particular, but no-one seemed overly interested in her cruel joke.

The smile faded from her face as Eric too ignored what she had said, instead being wrapped up in the pretty thing the likes of which he had never heard of or knew might exist, for him it was like something from one of his dreams had leapt from his mind and into reality. He had seen the shine of gold and silver before from the meagre amount of coins his Father had brought home over time, but those were simply dull in comparison to this jewel. His concentration on it however was interrupted by a shout.

“That's quite enough time to look you dull witted oaf!” Declared Gwendoline and moved forward.

She reached out and attempted to snatch the necklace from Eric's grasp, clasping the chain and tugging it but it didn't budge an inch and neither did Eric's large hand. It wasn't that Eric meant to keep the necklace, it was just that he had been taken by surprise at being brought out of his daydream by such an abrupt outburst and he turned to the lady without fully comprehending what was happening before the chain exploded into separate links of delicate goldwork.

“Give it back!” Gwendoline shouted as she tugged again and the necklace snapped violently.

The young woman staggered back with the remnants of her necklace in her hand and the green jewel hung like a ball at the end of a chord. She stood gaping at it for a second, her eyes wide with shock, but slowly turning to a look of frustration and rage. Her face began to turn red and her hands balled into shaking fists before she threw her free hand up, pointing at the young giant and screeched

“Guards! He attacked me! He tried to steal my necklace and he broke it! Kill him! Kill him now!”

The two Knights looked at each other for a moment, their body language was obvious. Although they stood with their hands on their swords neither had drawn the blades, this was after-all a young boy despite his appearance owing to his giant heritage. Gwendoline turned with a fury to one of the men and screamed again

“Kill him or I will tell my father it was YOU who left me to be assaulted by this brute!”

The two men once again exchanged glances and this time drew their weapons, both taking a couple of steps towards Eric. A few of the villagers made scared protests, not wishing the Princess' wrath to be drawn down on themselves, but they weren't willing to simply stand by and let Bram's son be killed for something that wasn't his doing. Eric was scared now, the Knights had drawn their wicked looking swords and were coming towards him, he began to whimper, panicked by their menacing approach, he threw his arms up around his head and crouched down as though he could hide himself when something akin to a feral roar spilt the air around them.

Bram had seen a commotion over by his son from the field he worked and the glint of armour was unmistakable, almost always signalling that some kind of Noble born trouble was about to erupt. He had arrived just in time to see the Princess' necklace snap and for the spoilt brat to fly into a vicious rage. Now he stood over his son, towering easily four or five times the height of the Knights which threatened Eric and still brandishing the make-shift scythe he had been using on the hay field. The thing was made of several old plough blades that had been bolted together along a steel rim and then crudely beaten around the trunk of a curvy tree.

Bram now looked every part the Bear his family was named after, his hairy arms bulged with strength and his chest heaved and flexed as he wielded the dangerous looking serrated scythe half at the ready, his eyes flickered between the two heavily armoured Knights as if daring them to take another step forward but neither man wanted to die this day and both lowered their swords and stepped away. The Princess, seeing that she was not going to get any further with her claims for “justice” pointed up at Bram with a trembling finger, tears of anger in her eyes.

“My Father will hear of this, Giant, and when he finds out how your son attacked me, he will order the brute be sent away!” She said, turning and pushing her way through the crowd that had begun to gather, her Knights following her back towards the horses they had come with.

Bram's voice was cold as ice and hard as steel as he gave his even-tempered response, he knew better than to openly challenge a Noble, let alone a Royal in public.

“If that is the judgement your Father, my King decides, then it will be so.” He said, half-knowing that no such judgement would follow today's incident.

Eric burst into tears and clung to his Father's leg, Bram stood stock still until the riders had all mounted and turned to leave the village and then he propped his scythe against a tree, the leaves and branches shaking under the weighty impact before bending and scooping up his boy, hugging him to his chest. He turned to the farmer who's lands he had been working on.

“I must take Eric home, I will be back after noon to finish the work I promised you.” He said down to the man who simply waved a hand showing that Bram may take as long as he needed.

“You get your laddie home Bram, don't you worry about the field for today, it will still be here tomorrow.” He shouted up to the Giant.

Bram simply nodded his thanks, gave a short apology for any trouble caused to the villagers then left to take his boy home.


End of Chapter 1

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