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“See, Twig? I told you I could do it,” Hilda called from the top of a very large tree. The largest she had ever found, in fact, and she had made it her mission that day to finally climb it. And climb it she had. With the help of the longest length of rope she could get her hands on, and her trusty deer-fox Twig “spotting” her from below, the adventurous girl now stood atop the piney tower.
Taking in the view, she quickly reached for her sketchbook and pencil, eager to commit the vista to paper. Looking around, she quickly confirmed that this indeed was the tallest tree in the area- in fact there was hardly any contest. None of the others even came close! It was actually kind of strange, as if something was preventing them from reaching such a height. She started sketching, doing her best to get the perspective right.
“Huh, that’s peculiar…” Hilda noted, her attention drawn to a nearby patch of woodland. There was a noticeable gap in the trees there. Drawing in that detail, she quickly noticed another similar bit of emptiness.
That’s when Twig started to bark.
“Twig? What’s wrong, boy?” Hilda asked, doing her best to peer down through the trees. She couldn’t really see him, and her only answer was more barking. That was, until she felt everything shake. It was just a tiny tremor at first, but then it came again, and again, getting stronger each time.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” she thought aloud nervously. She could hear them now as well as feel them, and began looking around for the source. It wasn’t long before she caught sight of a large, vaguely humanoid figure walking out from behind a nearby hill.
“Wow, a forest giant!” she exclaimed. Quickly flipping to a new page in her sketchbook as she feverously outlined what she had seen. When she finally took her eyes off the page for another look, she realized with a start that the giant was quickly approaching her perch and was even reaching out its arm!
“Oh no! Time to go!” She quickly threw the rope over the sturdiest branch she could find, grabbed the far end of the loop and attempted a hasty rappel down the tree. But a few seconds later she felt a sudden, violent shake accompanied by the sound of hundreds of branches snapping as an enormous hand wrapped around the trunk.
“Wooooaaaah!” she cried, letting go of the rope and dropping the rest of the way down. She landed skillfully, if a bit heavy, along with a storm of sticks and pine needles. And looking back, all she could do was gape as she saw the tree, now torn completely from the ground- roots and all- held up in one of the giant’s massive hands.
Catching her breath, Hilda couldn’t help but marvel at the great beast. She had never seen one up close like this and it was quite the sight. Though it didn’t seem to be interested in- or even notice- her, but instead seemed much more focused on the tree itself.
“Wow, it’s really huge, isn’t it, Twig?” she remarked, dusting herself off. The deer-fox was practically cowering but remained loyally at the girl’s side. Instinctively, she reached down for her sketchbook again, feeling the urge to capture the amazing image in front of her. But what she didn’t feel, was her sketchbook. She looked herself over, patting down her outfit.
“No… no, no, no!” she exclaimed. “My sketchbook! I must have dropped it in the-” Hilda looked back up to see that the tree she had been in a few moments ago was now stuck halfway into the giant’s mouth, and a moment later a loud crunch filled the air as the beast bit down.
“Hey! Stop that!” she demanded, shouting up at the giant. But honestly, she could hardly even hear herself over the crunching of the tree. Nevertheless, she continued to shout until the pine was totally gone, needles and all. As the giant stood there in the following moment of silence, Hilda yelled as loud as she could. “HEY!!”
Slowly, the creature turned towards her and bent down, its huge eyes squinting down at her from behind enormous tufts of hair. And then it spoke, its voice also slow, as well as deep and with a somewhat dry tone.
“Why, hello there,” it said.
“I was climbing that tree! You nearly killed me!” Hilda scolded rather forwardly.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. You’re so small I must not have noticed you. I suppose I’ll have to take a closer look next time,” it replied, sounding genuinely guilty as far as Hilda could tell.
“Well, that’s all fine and good, but my sketchbook was in there! It had all my good drawings inside! And now you’ve munched it up along with your lunch!” she complained.
“That’s quite a shame,” the giant replied in its slow, monotonous voice.
Hilda took a deep breath to calm herself. “Well, I suppose there isn’t much to be done about it now.”
“On the contrary,” the giant replied after a short pause, “you could go to retrieve it.”
“Retrieve it?” Hilda questioned, “from… inside your belly?” The girl cringed a bit at the thought, but the giant nodded its great, shaggy head affirmatively.
“You might be able to reach it, with that climbing rope of yours,” it explained.
Hilda glanced over the generous length of rope, the end of which was still firmly tied around her waist. It did seem plenty long. Twig pulled at her clothes discouragingly, still trembling a bit from fear. Do I really need that sketchbook? She asked herself. What am I saying? I’m an adventurer! I’ve risked my life for some of those drawings! Besides, without it how am I going to show mum all the cool things I’ve seen?
“Alright,” she said with a hint of reluctance, “let’s give it a shot.”
The giant lowered one of his fuzzy hands down to the ground and Hilda leapt up onto it. As it began to raise her into the air she heard a sharp bark and Twig suddenly landed next to her, having jumped on himself. “Are you coming with me?” she asked. The poor thing looked honestly terrified, but his eyes showed he was determined not to let his friend do this on her own. “That’s very brave of you,” she commended. “Though now, I suppose if we don’t make it out no one will be left to tell mum what happened…” she remarked.
Their ride came to a stop at the giant’s face. This one was actually somewhat small as forest giants go, but it still towered a few times the size of the tree which it had just consumed. It opened its cavernous mouth, revealing its huge, flat teeth; expansive, dark-red tongue; and the opening of its massive tunnel of a throat.
Hilda shivered, but steeled herself. “Right then. I’ll tie the other end of the rope around one of your teeth, and when I’ve found my sketchbook I can climb back out, sound good?” she asked.
“Seems reasonable to me,” the giant replied, sending a gust of air across Hilda’s body. She took a deep breath.
“Well, here it goes.” Hilda said, moments before leaping off of the giant’s hand and landing on the broad surface of one of its many teeth. Trying to keep her mind on task, she ran the thick rope around the sides of the tooth, before hopping down onto the creature’s squishy tongue to fasten the line with the sturdiest knot she could tie.
After checking things with a few strong tugs, she felt satisfied and turned away to face her latest adventure. Hilda was a brave girl, but even she couldn’t help being frightened by something like this. Her boots squelched against the giant’s tongue with every step as she approached the edge of the throat, Twig in tow, and peered apprehensively over the precipice. All they could see was an inky, black void as the dark-red flesh quickly faded into the creature’s depths.
“Oh boy, Twig. Well, here goes nothing,” she said with a quiver in her voice as she reached down to pick up her terrified companion. The shaking deer-fox in her arms, she took one last deep breath, closed her eyes, and jumped.
She felt herself land quickly, her boots making contact with a squishy, slimy surface which seemed to quickly give way as the flesh around her shifted with a deafening *GULP*. Suddenly, she was no longer falling, but sliding. Being nudged down the giant’s throat by waves of contracting muscles. She held Twig tightly as they descended, carefully letting out the rope as she went, accompanied by the squelching of the wet muscles as they together pressed firmly above her head and opened up beneath her feet.
Just when she was starting to wonder how long the giant’s neck could possibly be, she felt herself suddenly released, dropping a few feet before grabbing the rope with one hand while cradling Twig in her other arm. As she caught her breath from the sudden fright, she could feel herself begin to sway back and forth. She was dangling now, surrounded by deep, low rumbles and what sounded to her like the groan of a dozen wooden houses settling.
Steadily, she started releasing the rope, descending a few feet at a time until her boots found solid ground again. In fact, it was surprisingly solid. Reaching into her sweater, she produced an old flashlight (because what good adventurer would go adventuring unprepared) and flicked it on. The narrow beam of light barely seemed to make a dent in the suffocating darkness, but aiming it at the ground she could make out what appeared to be pine needles. Looking around, she found the area was covered with them, filling in the gaps between jagged pieces of splintered wood. She let Twig down onto the surface.
“Is this why none of the trees around here grow very tall? Because this guy eats them all?” she asked aloud.
An abrupt, violent crunching sound startled her. She jumped round and shined the light in time to see the stomach walls finish contracting on a rather large section of pine, crushing the wood to splinters without much effort. It was a good few feet away, but still too close for comfort.
“Alright, we better get out of here before that happens to us,” Hilda decided. “Do you think you can sniff out my sketchbook?” she asked.
Twig, eager to do anything except stand around and tremble as he contemplated his own demise, quickly put his nose to the “ground” and began to sniff. Hilda shone the light around, looking for any sign of her missing item, or maybe some kind of… familiar branch? Anything that would give her a clue as to where to look in this cavern of a stomach.
As she searched, she couldn’t help but take note of the smell. Despite the fact they were in a giant’s belly, the air smelled, well, nice. Since it seemed to eat (on the majority) trees, its insides ended up smelling like the forest, a smell which Hilda greatly enjoyed. She had to admit it did help to take the edge off an otherwise terrifying situation.
Thankfully, it wasn’t much longer before Twig began to bark, signaling that he had found something. Hilda came running, only to find the deer-fox pawing at what otherwise seemed like a nondescript pile of branches. “Are you telling me it’s buried under there?” she asked. Her companion gestured to the spot again, affirmatively. “I was afraid of that.”
So she bent down and started lifting assorted branches and armfuls of pine needles, chucking them off into the gurgling blackness, slowly making her way into the mess of lumber. Sure enough, she was soon able to make out the familiar color of her sketchbook’s cover beyond the tangle of twigs, but as she kept burrowing she soon noticed something else as well.
Further down, just a bit below where her target rested, something seemed to shine and glimmer whenever she cast her light on it. After she got a bit closer, she realized it almost looked like water, and it seemed to be rising toward her sketchbook as she neared it herself.
“Oh no you don’t,” she declared, redoubling her efforts as she chucked wood left and right. Finally, after crafting a tunnel a few feet long, she managed to get within arm’s reach of her book, and she eagerly reached out and grabbed it. It was a bit beat up, and a little soggy, but miraculously still in one piece.
“Got it!” she announced triumphantly, holding it up in the air like a trophy. But her sudden shift in weight caused one of the sticks she was resting on to snap, sending the broken pieces clattering down through the wood until they were quickly swallowed up by the rising liquid with an audible plop. She looked down, realizing that said liquid was also only an arm’s reach below her.
Looking down, she noticed her pencil resting on a slab of wood just a few inches below the innocuous fluid. She put the flashlight in her mouth and grabbed a couple loose sticks, hoping to fish her writing implement out. But to her surprise, as soon as she did so much as nudge it, the pencil broke apart, as if it had been rotting there for days.
“Yeah, alright, don’t want to be taking a dip in that. I’d better get out of here,” she decided. “Right Twig,” she began as she climbed back to the surface, “now we just have to climb back up the way we came. Nothing to it.”
She let the deer-fox grab onto her sweater and then stowed her flashlight and handily recovered sketchbook before taking a firm hold of the rope and starting to pull. She began to climb, leaving the earthy ground below as another resounding crunch filled the dark chamber. She felt Twig flinch at the sound. “It’s okay, just don’t look down… Not that you could see anything anyway.”
In no time at all she felt her hand press against the somewhat slimy pucker of flesh at the roof of the giant’s belly. She could clearly feel the rope continuing through the tiny opening it made, so she did her best to try and stretch the hole wide enough for them to fit. It was tricky, and she almost lost her grip a few times in the process, but eventually she managed to get her hands and head past the squishy flesh. From there, Hilda continued to press her body up into the tunnel until she was completely surrounded once again by the smothering confines of the giant’s throat.
That’s where things started to get difficult. In the slimy embrace of the esophagus the rope had become slippery, and now she had to fight through the walls of muscular flesh every inch of the way. She recalled for a moment how long it had taken going down and realized dishearteningly that she was in for a long struggle. At least, as far as Hilda could tell, the giant was doing his best not to swallow, but every now and then she still felt the involuntary waves of peristalsis wash over her, threatening to send her back down to its stomach.
Still, Hilda did not give up. Pushing one hand up over the other as she slowly climbed through the slimy tunnel.
“How much *pant* longer *pant* could there be?” she asked, her fingers now beginning to ache. “Don’t worry, Twig. I’ll get us out of here.”
That’s when she suddenly heard a loud *GULP* come from nearby, and a strong wave of contractions quickly squeezed against her. Try as she might, she felt her hands slip from the rope, her fingers too tired to hold on. She winced against the pressure as she felt herself start to fall downward again, sucked along by the giant’s gullet.
That is until she felt an abrupt pull on her waist. She held Twig as tightly as she could, surprised and relieved as she felt them begin to move upwards again, hoisted along by the rope tied around her. They were moving much faster now, sliding along against the smooth muscle, until they were suddenly met with a rush of cool air and a blinding light.
“Hmm, I thought that little tickle might have been you,” came the giant’s voice. Hilda rubbed her eyes, trying to clear away the mucus. When she could see again, she found herself being placed gently on the giant’s furry palm, the line attached to her waist wrapped once around a finger of its other hand.
“You pulled me out? Boy do I owe you one for that!” Hilda said politely.
“Well it was the least I could do after I ate your tree,” the giant replied. “Did you get your drawings back?”
“Yes, I did!” she declared, brandishing the weathered book.
“You know, you certainly are a brave little girl to have done all this,” it remarked.
“Well, of course. I’m an adventurer. I have to be brave! Oh, but thank you for not being mean about it, swallowing my book and all. A giant your size could have easily just ignored someone like me.”
“Yes. Well, it was nice to meet you, um…”
“Hilda.”
“Hilda…” the deep voice echoed.
“Well, I’d better be off now, before my mum gets too worried,” she said. The giant lowered its hand to the ground, and she hopped off with a sigh of relief. “Bye!”
“Goodbye, Hilda…”
--Later That Day--
“Mum! You’ll never guess what I did today!”
. . .
“You did WHAT?!!”