A Giant's Hands [ON HOLD]

Chapter 6 [THE SURVIVOR] - The Price of Freedom, part 2

The first time it happened, Mr. Jenner had been in his study, busy trying to decipher, correct and grade his student's latest homework assignment.

It was already late, and Mr. Jenner was tired from a long and stressful day of teaching.

One of his colleagues had taken ill, so instead of having some free-time after lunch, Mr. Jenner had been obliged to take over a class of loud and overly excited juniors, who acted like they had never seen snow before when the first flakes had started falling during the period.

He hadn't managed to get through even a quater of the revision work he was meant to do with the kids, which was frustrating, since, as tests were due the following week, he had specifically been asked to help prepare the kids.

Mr. Jenner was the last person to begrudge those kids a bit of an unlooked-for break in their usual schedule, but he hadn't wanted to dissapoint his colleague either.

The whole thing had been draining, and left him unusally tired.

On top of that, now he had to do the work he would normally have done during his free hour in the evening, when he'd much rather spent the time relaxing on the sofa with Claire and the kids.

Needing a break - he was currently confronted with an especially unintelligable case of handwriting - Mr. Jenners looked up from his work, intending to clean his reading glasses, but stopped mid-motion, and instead watched open-mouthed as a small young man - no bigger than his hand - appeared from somewhere behind one of the old wooden supports, crossed over to the left hand bookshelf, and made his way to another of the supports, that the studie's inside wall had been build around during later rennovations.

The tiny creature was dressed in a mix of ordinary fabric, a strange sort of leather, twine, as well as all manner of curious nic-nacs.
Mr. Jenner thought he recognized the shells of several kinds of local beetle, some of those weird plastic strings, that used to be all the rage a few years back, and that kids had made friendship-bracelets out of or some such thing, and, strapped to the persons back - next to a large leather backpack - something that looked like a sewing-needle inserted into the empty cartridge of a ball-point pen, and secured into place with duct tape.

The tiny creature was excerting what looked to be a lot of effort into hauling two of those little fish-shaped plastic bottles that came with your sushi (and usually held the soy-sauce, but in this case seemed to be filled with water instead) towards the support beam, and presumably towards the little opening that was left between the beam and the wall by careless rennovaters.

The tiny young man looked to Mr. Jenners like he had come straight from a children's-book.

He even wore some sort of fur over his shoulders.

When the tiny apparition turned slightly, and Mr. Jenners was greeted by the head of the fur's former owner, a tiny sound of delight escaped him.

A mouse!

Of course a tiny person would wear the fur of a mouse! And styled just like a great nomadic hunter would wear the fur of a wolf!

Delightful!

Mary Norton would probably have killed for a hallucination like that!

Startled by the sound, the tiny creature spun around to peer down at Mr Jenners, sitting at his desk below.

Realizing, that he had been spotted, he quickly turned back and swiftly disappread into the small space at the support beam - gone in the blink of an eye.

Mr. Jenner looked at the now empty spot for a while longer, thorougly delighted and amused.

He supposed having such vivid hallucinations should worry him, but then a tired, over-taxed brain was known to play the occasional trick on its owner.

He simply took it as the cue that he was most definitely done for the day, and more than ready for bed.

Still quietly chuckling to himself, he gathered his student's papers- they would survive having to wait an extra day for the return of their homework - but stopped dead in his tracks when among the clutter on his work desk he spotted something that had not been there before, and really, had no right to be there at all.

Gingerly, his eyes widening, he picked up the little plastic-fish filled with water, that, in his haste to get away, the tiny person had accidentally dropped.

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