© Bryan Beal

For millennia, the slumber had continued since the first seed had been planted there among the other giants. Giants whose boughs reached to the clouds that scudded on the winds of ancient breath, standing watch over a vast land denuded of civilisation or those who would come to establish it on these shores.

The slumber was deep and comatose until those first bipeds arrived and began to make noises around him. The whispers were no more than a brushing graze against the very limits of his consciousness, a ripple on the surface of the calm unconsciousness that had been his for aeons past. As more came, more whispered and the whispers became sounds. Sounds added to sounds and became voices. More voices added to voices and they became words and then strings of words. Words imploring and need. Words of reverence and awe.