He awoke to a sharp pain in his right thigh. As his eyes snapped open and he struggled to get his bearings, he again felt the pain in his thigh burst through his whole body. It felt like a chunk of flesh from his thigh had been ripped off. He screamed. It was a loud, booming noise that made the birds in the surrounding trees fly away, shrieking in alarm.

He tried to push up from his prone position but the movement brought fresh pain to his thigh and he screa­med again. There was a sudden movement and disturbance of leaves somewhere south of him. Whimpering, he lifted his head up slightly, and saw an animal with sharp, bloody canines growling at him. It was a dog-like beast whose muscles were tensed. The Giant wasn't sure if it would attack him or run away. The blood on the dog’s snout made the Giant whimper. He knew it was his blood.

He didn't want to be eaten alive in a strange forest by a dog. He gave an almighty heave and propped his upper body upright. The movement made the dog reali­se the sheer size of its erstwhile prey and it fled through a thicket of bushes.

The Giant looked down at his right leg, teeth clenched. The canine had in-fact taken a bite out of his thigh. The wound was a horrible, mangled mess. The Giant whimpered again and teared up.

He looked away from his leg, bile rising in his gullet, but some macabre fascination made him glance at the injury again. Somehow, miraculously, the pain had lessened in the last few moments. He suspected his body was going into shock which was possibly a bad thing, but he was th­ankful, the earlier pain had been unbearable.

Now with the edge of agony muted, he was left with wildly racing thoughts and a sinking, hopeless feeling in his gut. He could feel the panic rising. He had no survival skills and certainly no medical skills. All he knew was that he could die from a wound like the one he had.

After some moments of panic, he forced his mind to calm down and focused on what his next step should be. A small part of him also marvelled at the remarkable effectiveness of shock in combating pain. He felt clear-headed and relatively normal despite that the fact that he was going to die from blood loss.

He looked around the foliage trying to see what he could use as a dressing for the wound. Most of the leaves looked like they could work, infections be damned. But what size leaf would he need for the wound? He looked towards his leg to eyeball the size of the injury only to feel his jaw drop in shock.

The red mess of mulched flesh and blood had somehow been transformed into some­thing more like scar tissue. Surely he was hallucinating! His mind went back to the berries of last night. Was he stuck in a fever dream? Surely the pain he had felt when he awoke had been real?

As his eyes stayed on the formerly gaping wound, he could actually see tendrils form between disparate patches of skin and strengthen. In just a matter of minutes, the lump of scar tissue had flattened to become level with the rest of his thigh. All that remained of the big bite in his flesh was a patch of skin that was slightly darker and thicker than the rest of his skin.

The Giant was perplexed, and stay­ed in the same position for some time struggling to comprehend his own body. Eventually he returned to thinking about the poison berries that he had eaten. How had he survived that ordeal? Som­ehow he was sure a human would have died horrifically after consuming those poisonous berries. He, however, had not only not died but had also managed to sate his hunger. He check­ed himself all over to make sure he hadn't turned purple or had some abnormal growth erupt from some part of his body... but all seemed normal.

He got to his feet gingerly, still scared to put weight on his right leg. But he felt fine , better than fine even-energ­etic. He moved out of the forest and back onto the dusty road on which he had been stalking the three humans. They were nowhere to be seen.

He stood there and wondered what to do next. He had been following the humans in the hopes of finding food. But now that pressing need was gone and it seemed his body was hardier than he could h­ave known.

On the other hand, he was worse than a new-born babe in his current amnesiac state and at some point he would face a situation which he couldn't handle alone. He also felt the deep need for some comp­anionship. Ultimately, he decided to continue in the direction which the humans had been headed in the hopes of finding a friendly settlement.