The Heartwood Call me Mr. Rattlebone

'Can you stand?'

The titan huffed, lip curling. The cold glance of his eyes toward her was like a flicker of lightning against a dark backdrop. In that breath, his spine had cracked and seemed to settle. The burning in the back of his skull had not subsided since he had woken up on the shore. He did not know why he had been there; it was not the Warsaw that he remembered. The scents had been different. The further inland he had gone, the more he had started to realize that he was not in his birth home. The terrain had changed far too drastically to belong to the seaside islands of his birth.

“If I could, I would not be lying in the dirt,” the skeletal figure spat. His tone was no longer distant, but very much in the conversation that was taking place. Ford did not stir from his position. He did not believe that he had the strength to lift himself back to his legs and move on. This left him with a creeping sense of hopelessness and shame – feelings that he never had felt before. It was curdling like sour milk in his mind.