The Troll

There is a troll who lives in the creek to the southeast.

Pay him a visit, for he is now benign. He has long since consigned himself to oblivion, and no longer sees the point in rising at night. He is cold as stone in perpetuity.

He is not like many other trolls you've seen - Larger than the ones which march on the city now and then, smaller than those mountainous things to the north- He is an archway, a tall bridge, and the creek trickles underneath.

A tall, stone archway blighted with moss and peaceful crawling vines. In the spring they bloom and you would never guess something might stir underneath. Swallows nested in him once, I think.

He must think himself a monk, for now he doesn't eat the young girls who swim by. When I was a child he would wait until sunset, reach down, and tear them limb from limb for his meal. Now he is fast asleep and fasting.

Perhaps if he fasts for long enough he will starve himself to death, and finally become an angel, move again without the chains of mortal urges.

We won't know when that happens. Perhaps it already has.