Lenny rubbed his hands together in excitement. “We will single-handedly feed the entire village through winter. They won’t stop talking about us, boys.”

“Forget that, we’ll take enough evernuts to sell them and make a fortune,” Red said. “We’ll get ourselves a bloody mansion.” Lenny and his three friends were marching up the small path in one column. They were all seventeen years of age, friends since childhood. For Lenny’s three friends the companionship came naturally, as Red, Green, and Blue were triplets. Their mother had accidentally ingested a magical mushroom during pregnancy, birthing the three of them with their stark colors. The skin, face, and general appearance were identical, as triplets should be, but their names were no accident, all according to the color of the hair they’d been born with. In a strangely perfect logic, which couldn’t possibly be mere circumstance but the powerful mushroom’s doing, Red was the spirited, hot-headed character of the three, Green the shy and amiable one, Blue the tempered and understanding. They kept their hair identical, bushy and rough. Lenny was taller than the triplets, his lengthy brown hair let out into a braid sitting between his shoulder blades.

“I don’t know,” Green said, last one in their line. “It seems too good to be true, you know? Just a big evernut plantation that’s sitting there, easy pickings. These are evernuts we’re talking about, some of the most valuable food there is.”

Red reared his head back with a roll of his eyes. “There goes the Doubting Dory again.”

“Think about it, though. If it’ll be this easy just to sneak in and pick the evernuts from the trees, why haven’t anyone else done it? They say a giant is guarding it.”

“Because people don’t know about it,” Red said. “We got a good tip from Benjamin. He even had a handful of evernuts, which will last his family an entire month through the winter.”

“Why isn’t Benjamin the one who’s rich, then?”

“Because he’s a bumpkin. He doesn’t even have much magic to his name, imagine how incompetent this giant is that bloody Benjamin got away with a handful.”

“From what I’ve heard,” Blue said, “a rich giant owns it, and her daughter is the one guarding the evernut plantation. It’s kept safe from giants through the rich giant’s connections, but from humans? They don’t care much about us. Honestly, the volume of evernuts a human can steal is so little it might not even matter to them.”

“This is us getting a little sip of their world,” Lenny said, gesturing vividly with his hands, inspiring confidence at the front of their one-filed march. “Imagine how many things there are over in their country we wouldn’t understand. There’s nothing strange going on here.” They crested the hillside, linden trees before them obstructing a nice view over the landscape. They could see the descent of the treetops, their scant path threading through a stretch of purple heather which blanketed the grove.

“How large do you think she is?” Green said.

Red shrugged. “Never seen a giant before. But I’d imagine she’s tall like the trees, thirty feet or something. But we’ll outrun that easily.” The four of them were fledgling mages, having reached their base magics. The triplets had already gained plenty of attention across the country for their eccentricity; fittingly, their magics also corresponded to their colors. All four had a large pouch slung over their backs, hopefully to be filled with evernuts on their way home.

By noon, after cresting another ridgeline, they saw a clearing amid the trees. The fence was rather standard for how valuable evernuts were, a set of wooden beams making a split rail fence. As the boys got closer, their heads tilted higher and higher to see the topmost beam, perhaps fifty feet high.

Green’s eyes lingered on them. “That’s pretty high.”

Red snorted. “Nothing strange about that. The barricade is always higher than who’s in it, you know, to keep them out. There’s that walnut plantation down at Jorven where the marble walls were like twenty feet high, for humans.”

“But those were stone walls, this is just a post fence.”

Red grumbled. “Green, I told you to sit at home. This is why. Back home with your soy milk is where you belong, not out with the men.”

Green stubbornly trailed after them. “I’m just being careful.”

“No more bickering,” Blue said as he and Lenny led them ahead. “Save it for later.”

They left the last trees, a broad expanse of grass before them, surrounding the fence. They were on the backside of the plantation, no house in sight. They could see the tall evernut trees beyond the fence. Evernuts were the ultimate superfood, a piece of the heavens which graced the earth. Despite being the size of peas, less than half a pound of evernuts was enough to satiate a giant for more than a day. For a human, one handful would have the month taken care of.

Without needing to duck, the young men slipped past the fence, Lenny first, then Blue, Red third, and finally Green. Lenny watched Green come in last, and he noticed the air behind him wobble, like the ripples a dropped stone made across water.

Blue noticed Lenny’s focus. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s nothing. Come on, let’s go.” They made it past a pretty row of flowery bushes, scaring away a few rabbits. The birds chippered at one another. The evernut trees were enormous, pillaring upwards a hundred feet. Their branches were plenty and came off along its entire length, even near the bottom, and they were rich with small, dark-green leaves. There were brown clusters among them, the veiny shell akin to a walnut, each containing several evernuts. As long as the shell was intact, the evernut could last for years without tarnishing, even after being picked.

The four boys gazed up in wonder at the brown clusters dotted upon the dark-green, so ample they outcompeted the leaves off the branches at certain portions. Towards the topmost branches, they began sagging from the weight of the evernuts, one heavy branch enough to feed an entire village of humans through winter.

“Gods be praised,” Blue said airily. The hot and blaring sun couldn’t make its way down to them, the plantation a kingdom of its own. “Let’s begin then.” They had two hemp pouches with them, one of them inside the other. They brought the first one out, thrashing them straight, and snuck in under the lowest branches. However, the first couple of minutes were spent looking and appraising the evernuts rather than filling the pouch up.

“No, don’t pick those,” Red said, going over to Green and showing him a nice, rich brown shell of an evernut he’d picked himself. “If there’s any green on them, it means they’re immature, like yourself.”

“Shut up.”

“Actually,” Lenny called with a raised voice to get their attention, “it seems most of them are immature around here.”

Blue nodded, stepping out of the tree’s cover and surveying the surroundings. “Agreed. Maybe they pick the outermost trees first? Or others like us have come by and rinsed the bottom branches. I feel like I can see more brown shells at the bottom in there.”

“Let’s go then,” Red said.

“Not too far in, however.” Although the evernut trees were arranged in columns, the spread of their lush branches was asymmetrical, some with a heavy bottom richness, others towards the top, leaning towards different sides. This made it so that despite the orderly arrangement of the trees, the corridors between them would vary. Where the trees of opposing sides sagged towards one another, they effectively shrouded the passage. One could rarely espy the entire distance down one corridor.

“Now this is what we’re bloody talking about,” Red said, the bottom branches drooping down to their level from the bountiful evernuts.

“I believe this is what they mean when they talk about picking the low-hanging fruit.” They had a hearty chuckle, their first pouch rounding out as the next minutes were spent plucking and tossing the evernuts inside.

Green moved to the nearby tree, neck still craned up as if stargazing. “I wondered, if the giant is twenty-something feet like you said, and these trees are three or four times that, where are the ladders?” Green tripped and fell, and his heart fluttered a little when he tumbled onwards rather than meet the ground.

Lenny barely noticed his slip, glancing back before returning to picking. “You alright back there?”

There was no response.

“Green?”

“G—Guys, get over here,” Green said, a trembling voice.

Red snorted. “What’s the matter?” The three went over, their first pouch around half-full. Green had fallen into a peculiar ditch. It had a drawn-out, crescent-like shape, though at its two ends were deeper, rounded furrows. They weren’t identical, however, one of them more circular, the other a thicker and shorter stretch. Just ahead of the thick and short stretch, five distinct balls of depressed ground could be seen, traveling in an arch which traced the deeper furrow, each ball from left to right progressively getting smaller.

Lenny thought those five balls looked like toes. And when he entertained that idea, like the pieces of a puzzle coming together, it naturally followed that the short and thick furrow behind it was indeed the ball of the foot. The crescent-like stretch down from it was the outer side, the arch high and kind on the inner portion, leaving the ground there fairly untouched. And the lowest, deep circular point was the heel.

Lenny voiced his observation. “Doesn’t it look like a footprint?”

They spent several seconds completing the picture Lenny had, eyes scanning the length of the foot. From heel to toe, it was almost three times their length.

Red broke the silence. “Well, shit.” They were agape, trying to make the implication work in their mind. Lenny envisioned the foot of the giant who’d walked here, covering the entire print before them. His eyes went up, following the stout phantom leg. He tried to get an appreciation of his own shoe compared to his height, applying that ratio to her. Of course, his estimations would come nowhere near reality, but one thing was certain, she was no meager twenty-five feet.”

“Didn’t you say she twenty-something feet tall?” Green said, an uncertain frown on him.

“I said I don’t know.” Red was defensive, a concern acknowledging the problem.

“Look here.” Blue kneeled by the ball of the foot, calling them over. The outline a of human torso was printed within the ball of the foot, pointing inwards, arms helplessly sprawled out. Towards the front, the print of his arm only reached to the elbow, as the forearm had freely poked out into the gap between her toes. That detail gave the footprint meaning, gave character to the giant who’d tread her. The giant had not idly walked by, she’d been chasing and, successfully, caught a human. The human also gained character upon a second thought, surely to have been someone who entered to pick evernuts.

Just like the four of them.

“Guys, nothing’s changed,” Blue said, an assertive tone. “We knew the plantation owner’s daughter was here, and I hope no one here expected she’d take kindly to us snatching some evernuts. We’re still hiding, still grabbing our evernuts, and will be on our way. Nothing’s changed, really.”

“We didn’t know she’d be this big!” Green said.

“Our magic keeps us safe, right?” Red, who hadn’t hesitated to make fun of Green, needed some comfort of his own.

“It does,” Lenny said. “It’s fine. Blue’s right, nothing’s changed. Fill up our bags and leave, and return as heroes back home. We’ll have all of winter taken care of. Now come—” He paused.

“What is it?”

Lenny didn’t need to share his observation, for the faint sound he picked up became more distinct, growing. More than just hearing, they could feel it.

The ground was shaking.