Anonymous: Subtle Overprotective Syndrome
A fisherman heads out on his rickety boat, determined to catch enough to sell at the last market before he has to pack up all the supplies and think about setting up for winter. The waves are choppy and his family insists he doesn’t go, but if he doesn’t make enough money to buy supplies they might not make it through the harsh coastal winter.
He’s skilled out on the water, and does manage to net quite a few fish, but he lingers out there too long. The waves get to be much taller than his little boat, and it’s getting harder and harder to control it, to aim it for the safer shore and not the harsh rocks.
Knowing there will be some I-told-you-so’s, he flashes a desperate signal to anyone that might be waiting at the shore: S O S.
And someone answers, but not exactly who he’d expect. There’s a giant living in the hills near the shore, and that’s who wades out into the choppy water like it’s little more than a diving pool.
At first the fisherman doesn’t even see what’s happening amidst the high waves and clouded sky, until a rush of water beneath catches his attention.
Then his boat rises on what he thinks is a swell of a wave at first, until it just keeps going up. A hand big enough to cradle the whole fishing boat in its palm lifts him free of the battering waves and cups it close to a huge, hunched chest.
The giant almost never involves himself in the affairs of the small fishing village, but this time he carries the foolish little fisherman back to shore … and all the way up into the hills despite his calls to let him off at home.
It takes a night and a day to convince the giant that he’s not about to go back to the water.
Writerly Things 