Dawn hadn't broken yet, though the not yet risen sun was casting light up from the horizon onto the scattering of clouds above the valley. The scholar had asked to be rousted from his slumber by the villagers who were hosting him, lending him a mat of straw that he might unroll his blankets in their small loft. When he emerged with his face unshaven, hair uncombed, and journal tucked under his arm, he stood at the rail of the overlook and saw what he had traveled all this way for.

The Great Striders were called Thigg, a small name that belied their strange elegance. The scholar had 'spoken' with a scant few of the younger ones. They had no cities or nations, and their numbers were few. They were scattered and sparse, and yet they did seem to have a culture all their own. The younger ones were human in most ways, though tall and broad in the shoulders, with large hands. It was their strange heads that identified them; a featureless orb of black fluid. They were voiceless, and their only speech was hypnotic ripples across that sphere of shining black.

No one knew where they came from. Even the Thigg themselves professed not to know. But when they reached a certain age, they would begin to grow. They would wander into the wilderness as if called there, and their orb would swell vast, their body would grow tall, attenuated, taller than the trees, eventually taller by far. This was such a one, just stepping into view at the valley's distant end, a thin silhouette against the brightening sky.

It might linger in the village for a short time; though the Great Striders no longer spoke, most believed they still listened. They were welcomed as enthusiastically as their younger counterparts, even at their vast size. But after a time, it would move on. No one knew where it was they went, beyond 'into the mountains' north and west. No one had tracked them. They walked without sound and they left no footprints; not even a blade of grass bent in the wake of their passing.