Glacier DevontiIn the beginning, there was only the cold.
It was the time of ice and wind and frost. Of terror and of dread.
Out of the snow came the frost giants.
Huge, monstrous beings they were - all as unforgiving as the land they called home, as tall as glaciers and with eyes that glittered like diamonds. There was no concept of 'honor', 'kindness', 'desire', 'mercy', 'melancholy' among the giants. They were the people of the ice, and ice was all that they had in their lives. They did not love and did not hate. They simply were.
They were a great race. A terrible race.
They were my people.
My name is Gris Hild. Or it was, but we will come to that later. Gris Hild meant 'the dark battle' in the language of the frost giants. You understand of course, why I must tell you this. It is important that you understand.
In the early days, there were no male or female giants. Both sexes were one. The idea of separate genders served no conceivable purpose except to complicate matters, and that would not do. New giants were born by means of what I am told now means 'asexual reproduction'. But it was deeper than that. The older giant returned part of himself to the frost, and in turn the frost would spit out a humming icicle which had to be left buried in the snow for a day before it began to resemble one of us.
It is not known when the first female giants began to appear. Perhaps it was around the time when the dark canopy above the earth first seemed to be turning lighter than it had been. There was talk of sightings too - strange creatures that repelled the darkness as if they were made of its antithesis. Those were stirring times for a people whom had been encased in the same trenches of life for generations.
So it was almost no wonder that the arrival of the first females went unnoticed.
But oh! I grow cold again now. Be a kind soul now and close down the shutters, please.
There now, it is much better. Do you not agree?
Such a dear child. So sweet. So young.
It was not purely just an arrival of female giants, actually. Nor was it much of arrival. The giants just realized one day, during the time of the brightening canopy and the strange beings, that there appeared to be noticeable differences between some of the giants. There looked to be two types of frost giants now.
Some say this is when the frost giants first started to acquire their legendary intellect. It made sense to believe so because nothing stretches the mind quite like change itself.
