The Giant's City.

Antecedent aTod

They knew its name, and its name was aTod.

A small boy, no more than five years old would be the first to be in touch with the aTod. It appeared seemingly from nowhere for the small boy, a surprise to him when he returned to his play place in the wooded area that lay alongside the highway only minutes outside of town. There in the ditch where he had made a crude table from fallen trees, near the sheltered area where he often parked his bicycle, he looked on from the path at the yellow glow that came from the ground. Today he would not park his bicycle in that usual place, he instead dropped it where he stood, a fine enough parking spot, and approached with caution towards the strange light.

As he made his way across the dirt and grassy floor he felt a calm and a warm from the light that came up mysteriously from the ground. As he got closer, he looked for the source of the light, but seemed to see nothing. A boy of five he was, no sharper in wit than any other, and perhaps even in some ways quite dull in the head compared to his peers. Dull, maybe, but not blind. He had two working eyes, yet for the life of him could not see where the yellow light was coming from even when he was standing right over top and looking down at the odd thing.

It's no mystery that something so small and inexplicable would sneak its way down from the universe under cover of one of the previous nights darks and hide so well in this clearing in the bush. The boy could have easily overlooked this curious glowing whatever it was had he just been passing by on his bicycle, just as the cars that came down the road by the dozens every day had been doing for hours now. He was not though, passing by, he was coming to play in his exciting place, and he still was unsure if he had found an exciting thing or not. When he became bored of it he packed himself onto his bicycle and rode away without a second thought of the purple turn in the grass that surrounded the area around the fallen aTod.

That night the boy went home to his regular routine of nighttime where he found his mother waiting on him as always, and while he was bathed and fed the excitement of his discovery in the woods could not be kept quiet. His mother's affectionate interest in the warm story was apparent, as she smiled at him with genuine love while he rambled on. And on. And on.

**************

A man of middle age was the second to who would come to meet the aTod. He had taken notice a few days later of an odd patch of purple in an otherwise green brush by the side of the highway one morning as he sped his way to work. His curiosity got the better of him that evening when he noticed it again on his way home, and he got out to take a look. He knew the road and the woods well, having played in them himself as a small boy many times, and driving them nearly every day of his life since then.

This was something he had never seen, he thought, as he thumbed at the strange texture of the leaf that he held in his hand. It was like an old rubber band or ball, one that no longer could bounce or stretch, and not like what a leaf should feel like at all. It was meatier to the touch than he had ever known a leaf to be, and as he turned it to get a good look he started to wonder if it was ever-so-slightly heavier than he expected it should be. He took note of the smell, that there seemed to be none. He brought to his nose a number of times to be sure, but every time he tried the expected earthy smell of tree leaf just didn't seem to be there.

By the look of the thing he thought it should smell something terrible, and was surprised that it didn't. The look of it had caught his attention from the highway at high speed, and now up close he could see that his eyes had certainly not done him wrong. The leaves seemed to look as if Fall had come, except that the natural orange and yellows of a normal dying leaf had been replaced with a sickly looking dark purple that had crawled through its veins. It was a color that didn't look right on a leaf, and certainly even less-right on some nearby pine trees that seemed to be afflicted by the same sickness. He shuffled his feet and kicked and moved grass by his feed to confirm that it seemed to be in many places that it did not look at all natural.