They face each other across a hundred yards of ocean, colossal feet anchored amidst the silt a fathom below.

They’ve crossed forest and mountain, forded the great rivers and stood astride vast cities on their way, drawn by the gravity of previous acquaintance.

And now they’re here, face to face at last, and neither know how to cross the distance that remains.

Once, they were smaller; once, they were more vulnerable to the world and its barbs, before those barbs stung body and mind and they instinctively laid down layer upon protective layer. Now they tower over mountains, taller than all the works of humankind.

Once, they’d spoken quietly in the still of the night, two friends alive with the joys of summer, bound together by shared excitement and braided thread.

At last, the taller of the two can bear it no longer.

They lumber forwards, arms raised. The ocean shies away, afraid of the cataclysm their conflict portends.

The two colossi collide amidst the briny air, a thunderous crash as they wrap barnacled arms around each other. One of them is weeping now, soft tears slipping from hardened flesh to join the ocean below.

And then stillness, broken only by occasional happy sobs.

“I missed you too.”