Perspectives

Chapter 4

Piper flinched as one of the giant's massive hands reached out to take hold of a silver fork that was probably longer than she was tall. He then grabbed the matching knife with his other hand. Piper couldn't help but gape at the long sharp blade, unable to prevent her mind from imagining it cutting into her body as if she were a hunk of steak. Why did her mind always have to conjure up unwanted images? It didn't help when the giant began to cut into the enormous slab of dressed up meat on his plate. 

"Some of the best meat you can get on all of Amasis." Piper jumped at the giant's sudden words. She glanced up at his face to see that he wasn't looking at her, his attention remained focused on the meat he was cutting.

Piper watched anxiously as the giant set down his fork and knife with a loud clink on the metal tray. He then used his left hand to pick up a small piece of meat he had cut off. She had to suppress a yelp when the giant hand came towards her. Thankfully, this time the hand stopped before it reached her and instead deposited the head sized chunk of meat down on the table in front of her.

Piper eyed the piece of meat warily as the the giant retracted his hand swiftly and went back to cutting up his meat casually. 

"You do eat meat in the Earth realm, don't you?" He asked, glancing at Piper from the corner of his eye before taking a bite of meat as big as half of Piper's body. The sight caused shivers to run across her skin.

"I'm certainly not an expert on Earth, but I think I read somewhere that you have the same kinds of animals there." The giant commented. 

Piper glanced back at the oversized hunk of meat sitting in front of her. She had zero intention of touching it. For one, she didn't know where it came from or what it was made of, for all she knew it could be poisonous to her or something. Other than that, she was not about to sit down and eat with a giant, not while everything was so uncertain and dangerous. Besides, she didn't have anything to eat the meat with, she wasn't going to just gnaw pieces off with her teeth like an animal.

The giant took another large bite of meat before taking a small sip from the crystal goblet. "Do you have a name?" He asked casually, not glancing up from his meat cutting.

Caught off guard by the question, Piper glanced up at the giant's face as he took another bit of meat into his mouth. She felt unwilling to reveal her name to this giant, as though in doing so she would be giving up one of the few things she had control of in this situation. Though it may have been irrational, she felt like telling the giant her name would be losing a kind of battle, and Piper hated to lose. So, instead of responding, Piper opted to just cross her arms over her chest and glare up at the looming giant. 

When he received no response, the giant turned his gaze to Piper, wearing an expression that Piper was not fond of. 

"I knew humans were relatively primitive, but I did expect you to possess some manners." He drawled, the corner of his mouth slightly quirked.

Piper's hands formed into fists as fury quickly came over her. Did he just call her primitive? Who did he think he was? "I don't owe you anything." She spat fiercely, her angry retort only succeeding in eliciting an amused chuckle from the giant, which caused Piper to get only more furious.

"My, you've got quite the attitude for such a little thing." The giant said as he placed down his fork and knife to finally give Piper his full attention.

Piper had to swallow down the fear that rose up in her when the entirety of the giant's attention fell on her. She really hated being the center of attention of something so massive. 

"Well," The giant said smoothly, his large gray eyes watching her critically, "my name is Kalen." He told her. Piper found the name unusual, but she decided not to provide any response and only stared back at the giant.