Giants could be called a lot of things. Strong, hardy and durable, certainly. Persistent and intuitive regarding certain topics, too. But anyone daring to use adjectives related to their intelligence to describe them would be a liar, unless the adjectives focused on the lack of it. Giants were, at least from what we managed to observe, incredibly dull creatures. The only reason I didn’t immediately go and call them beasts was their humanoid physique and lack of fur, giving them an appearance similar to that of humans, or Firnelves for that matter, meaning the assumption of intelligence was merely that, an assumption born from biases. Prejudices and assumptions, nothing else, were making me think that these creatures were anything like Sigmir had been, or like I was.

Initially, my family hadn’t agreed on the best way to interact with the giants. Should we try going up and introducing ourselves? Or would it be better to remain concealed and observe until we were confident in their behaviour, allowing us to make the best impression possible?

Prodded by Luna, I tried to interact with the giant we encountered first, but the result was, well, it was disappointing. The moment the giant realised I was present on the path it was moving on, it immediately roared like a challenged animal and tried to attack me, forcing me to retreat as I had no desire to kill the giant. I had encountered beasts with higher cognitive functions, as I soon realised with my Mind Magic, and after that first attack, our observation of the giant and its fellow became concealed and circumspect.

Instead of trying to interact, we observed using stealth and scrying constructs, but what we found wasn’t overly promising. While we initially only encountered one, we soon realised that there were a few more in the area, though their number wasn’t that large. From what we could tell, they were somewhat solitary creatures, each having their own territory and protecting said territory against other giants. The only exceptions to that we observed were two family units, composed of a male giant and its gravid partner. It seemed that in that case, when the partner was expecting, the male helped to sustain their partner, likely until the partner gave birth and maybe even afterwards. We hadn’t been able to observe any young yet, so we couldn’t tell whether the family unit would stick together afterwards or if the male would leave to find a new partner.

We came across a few giant dwellings and, to my disappointment, the one we saw first was the technologically most sophisticated one. Compared to that giant with a grasp of weaving together branches, leaves and vines to form a fairly strong wall, even going so far as to make a door and coat the roof of its dwelling with clay, the rest of them were, well, even less intelligent. Sure, most, but not all, of them had a certain mastery over fire to the point that they could set up small campfires without burning down half the forest, but that was about it. Their dwellings were either caves with minimal creature comforts provided by badly processed pelts and hides or simple structures formed by breaking off two small trees, leaning them against a larger one and using the branches of that larger tree, alongside some gathered branches and leaves, to form a somewhat tight wall with those two broken trees as the base.

When it came to clothing, the giants were similarly primitive. Some of them used loincloths, others draped themselves in pelts, but that was about it. That lacking attire allowed us to see far more from these creatures than I had ever wanted to, though we also learned that the breasts of female giants only grew during pregnancy, or maybe only during a certain stage of pregnancy; we had yet to confirm that. Regardless, their lack of clothing and primitive tools only drove home just how simple these beasts were. I had seen what I considered animals use better tools. Hel, if I recall correctly, there had been animals before the change with a higher ability to use tools, driving that very point home.

We even came across two giants, on the edges of our surveillance range, who seemed to have no permanent dwelling at all. Instead, those two simply roamed through the forest until they came across something that challenged them or that they could eat. Then, they fought the thing they came across and either ate it, if they won the fight, or fled until they could try again. That even held true when coming across other giants, though we hadn’t been able to confirm that they’d try to eat another giant, as neither of those two roaming giants had been able to best another of their kind. Maybe that was why they were roaming; they didn’t have the strength to hold a territory of their own, forcing them to wander.

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“So, Mother, have you found what you are looking for here? These things don’t seem to be all that… special, unless you consider them being especially slow as being special,” Lia asked, her snark in full force.

“It’s not what they are now, it’s what they might be in the future,” I admitted, even if I had to stretch the truth to make it believable. These giants were far from the stock I wanted to use to make a body for my beloved, but at the end of the day, these simpletons were what I had access to. Sure, I would love to have access to some sort of primordial giant’s body, a being of supreme physical and mental perfection, if there were such a thing, but I didn’t have that access. If I wanted to incorporate giant blood into the body I wanted to eventually craft for Sigmir, this might be the best chance I had to get said blood.

“You want to perform a few experiments with Luna to make these things better?” Lia prodded, “But if that were the case, why all this observation? You never cared to study the baseline all that much, just to the point of having an idea what you were working with, then you two got to work.”

“It’s not about changing these giants,” I admitted, “It’s about making a new giant, or at least something based on a giant but better.”

“Ah, your Sigmir,” Lia realised, palming her face in realisation, “I should have known. You want to see how similar these are to your Sigmir, and then what?”

“Not so much comparing these to Sigmir than considering which parts of these brutes I want to use for my beloved,” I explained, getting a nod in response.

“You could wait until one of the two gravid ones gave birth and use the newborn; those should have the largest potential to be changed,” Lia reasoned, making me gnaw on my lip as I thought about that. Sure, infants had the biggest potential and had no identity, making them the best test subjects I could ask for, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go there. Likely because of the giant’s humanoid nature, which made me briefly chuckle at that particular bit of hypocrisy, but that was neither here nor there. Did I want to wait until the giants gave birth, hoping the birthed giant would be female so I could…, do what?

How could I go from a newborn giant to getting my beloved Sigmir back? Was there the possibility of drawing her soul into this world and infusing it into the body of an infant giant? If that were possible, would I be able to somehow impart Sigmir’s memories into the body, too, so it wasn’t just somebody who had the potential of becoming like Sigmir, but that it immediately became Sigmir and could remember me? Oh, and age the body until it was adult because I didn’t think Sigmir would enjoy growing up the slow way, I certainly didn’t want to wait. If growing up slowly was even possible, Luna hadn’t grown up slowly; she had grown up at a hugely accelerated rate, so what would that mean for Sigmir?

“It’s complicated,” I shook my head, not wanting to admit that I didn’t have a good plan, or any real plan at all.

“So make it less complicated,” Lia challenged me, getting a frown in response. I wasn’t sure what I actually wanted to accomplish here. Observing the giants, sure, that had some purpose, though given how dull these creatures were, I wasn’t sure if we would be able to learn anything from them. But other than that, would we be able to accomplish anything just by watching them? Would there be some sort of revelation that allowed me to learn more about them than what we currently knew, more than what we had seen of their simple nature?

Did these creatures have any hidden depths to them, something that we would be able to study and learn something we were currently ignorant of, or was I simply deluding myself, hoping that these creatures held the key to bringing back Sigmir?

I just didn’t know and wasn’t sure where I might be able to start finding out.