It was a cold wet evening in the city. The clouds hung low in the sky in a grey uniform stratus that absorbed the dull orange glow of the urban lights and held them at bay above the sharp peaks of the skyscrapers. A steady light mist had been falling since about 8:00 pm, and now, hours later, the whole concrete landscape was slick and reflective. Far, far down below the top floors of the dark office buildings, the streetlights illuminated the deserted avenues, the sole luminosity on the ground in a world of shades and shadows.
Past one particular streetlamp and down one particularly dark industrial alley, in the remote and run-down western part of the city, there was an abandoned warehouse with a serrated rusted aluminum exterior. Everything around was silent except for the slow and persistent echo of the drip, drip, drip of water onto metal and concrete.
Suddenly, a dull creak reverberated through the ground and air. Somewhere within the abandoned warehouse, Claraføster was waking up. Outside the building everything looked normal, derelict and desolate in the night. But through the dilapidated door, the reality was immediately obvious. The giantess sat there alone, her huge long legs splayed and fully extended before her. The warehouse ceiling rose ten feet, but even from her sitting position Claraføster’s dark auburn hair grazed the top. She held out her arms and stretched her sleep away as she opened her shapely mouth and gave a great yawn. She was completely nude, and by any real human standards she would have been absolutely chilled to the bone, but Claraføster was not a human. Not really. She was something more, and that was why she had been sleeping in this warehouse for several days, waiting until she got hungry.
Yes, it was definitely time. She’d gone about a week without eating, and from the dull steady rumble in her stomach (which vibrated the aluminum walls around her), she knew that she was due for a nice tasty meal. What was it going to be tonight? She yawned and stretched again, still chasing away the sleep with each extension of her long arms and elegant hands. Then she got down on her hands, and in two quick motions she crawled to the great hole in the roof that she had used to enter the warehouse several nights ago. Claraføster knew all the common-sense knowledge that her kind lived by when it came to their food:
Never chew your food. It takes away the skin’s flavor and wastes the flesh’s nutrients.
You will never starve — there are plenty of country folk to eat. But the ones in the cities taste the best. They work sitting down and they eat rich food. Their bodies are soft and plump and full of nutrients.
If you’re going to treat yourself to the city folk, you must sneak in by night and find a good hiding place, a few days before your next meal. Otherwise they will see you and you will have to move on.
Don’t get too greedy. Any more than five city dwellers in one night might be long enough to last you for two weeks, but you’ll probably have a bellyache.
Male humans can secrete a milky white sauce, or landäshmend, from their penis. The amount they secrete is very small, but very potent, and when eaten immediately before they are, it gives their skin and flesh a particular salty zest, with a hint of earthy spice. Many of the Hyrrokkin find this human relish extremely tasty. However, it can be difficult to extract, and some significant skill may be required.
Don’t linger too long in one place. Humans can be perceptive and catch on very quickly. You must not betray our habits.
Claraføster knew all these things…every Hyrrokkin did once they came of age. She had been alive now for over 234 lunar cycles, which equalled about 19 years in human terms, and had been on her own for several human years, going from city to city, feeding and enjoying the freedom of being alive. Some Hyrrokkin her age didn’t wish to go into the cities; they were afraid that they would be seen, that they would endanger the customs of their kin. Others went to the cities, but only sometimes, to experience a delicious treat every once in a while. She, however, lived in the cities almost continuously. She was very good at slinking about at night and snaking her enormous body into abandoned, forgotten, desolate hiding places, to curl up and sleep until her belly woke her up.
Claraføster was a special kind of Hyrrokkin. She was significantly bigger and taller than most of the other ones her age. She stood over 26 feet, even though the average Hyrrokkin only stood 20. She was stronger too, and smarter. Throughout her education she had excelled in everything she tried. This was one reason why, years before, she had been allowed to go out into the world alone to do whatever she wanted.
She poked her head slowly out of the hole in the warehouse ceiling and carefully did a 360 degrees panorama scan. She hadn’t smelled any of them nearby yet, but she always scanned just in case. Sometimes they were wearing unexpected things that masked their scent. Satisfied that the alleyway was deserted, she slowly rose majestically through the roof to her full height. She reached her arms fully over her head and stretched one final time. Pleasure rippled through her body with the stretch, and the pleasure continued as she looked around at the quiet, lonely surroundings. She loved living in the human cities, and in the past few years, this love of the cities had translated into something more: a love for the humans themselves. They made so many adorable little buildings, so many cute little trinkets that lit up in the night, so many odd and wonderful things that she did not understand. And they wore their little button-up coats, and their little white socks, and their precious little hats. Of course, she always took those things off their bodies before she ate them, but that didn’t make them any less cute.
She had gotten used to the ritual of eating them, even though at first she hated it. Their tiny screams and cries had bothered her when she was much younger, but now, Claraføster had grown to enjoy their final moments. To her, even though her sweet little food resisted (of course it did!), it didn’t know what she did: that it was destined to become a part of her, and that any worry or fear it had would soon be over in her belly. Hyrrokkin had powerful stomach acid that worked quickly on any food — a human was dead within seconds after they entered a Hyrrokkin stomach.
As she stood there in the dead of night, enjoying the damp air, Claraføster thought back to the thousands and thousands of full humans she had eaten, ever since she grew big enough to eat them whole. ‘So many!’ she sighed to herself pleasantly, looking off at the skyscrapers in the near-distance as she rubbed her belly with a lazy hand. ‘And now they’re all a part of me,’ she continued to think. ‘Actually, I’m nothing but them — I’ve only eaten them my whole life.’ She chuckled softly to herself, happy to have arrived at the same mental note she so often revisited.
But tonight was a little bit different from other nights…well, not the recent nights so much…but her city nights in general. For the past few weeks, Claraføster had made it a priority to work on her landäshmend extraction. She had tried it a few times, and once it had worked, but she wanted to be able to do it all the time, routinely, without even trying. It really did make the difference between a good meal and an absolutely stellar meal. Plus she enjoyed the reaction of the human male — it twisted around and emitted high-pitched squeals that she thought were just precious.
And suddenly there it was — Claraføster’s head perked up as her nostrils flared, sniffing the air. Yes, it was there all right. A human coming her way. With the quietness and agility of a cat, she stepped out of the warehouse and hid her body behind a dilapidated brick building in the heart of the alley. She smiled to herself as the scent grew stronger. It was a male.