Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
Once upon a time in a particularly unattractive valley menaced by the Carpathian Mountains there was a village. The climate was hostile, with freezing cold, snowy winters, springs with sleeting rain and humid harsh summers. As there were few trees autumn was redundant.
The people had learned to live frugally. They were insular, keeping to themselves and shunning intimacy even towards each other. The result of this was a small population that barely reproduced sufficiently to sustain their numbers. What the people valued most was the condition of normalcy. Difference was not tolerated.
Every day when the sun finally struggled over the mountains and collapsed weakly into the valley the people stirred. Eventually the ubiquitous odours of sour kale and cabbage soup emerged through the damp air.
One day a baby’s cry was heard. It had been a very long time since this sound had been heard but being the villagers they were there was no rejoicing nor expressions of interest. Soon after, however, a very unusual thing happened. Another small cry joined the first. The villagers then knew that something very different had occurred and it gave them no comfort.
The uneasiness in the village about the Czadlzti family only grew as their twins grew. The boys progressed from infancy to boyhood to adults but they defied the comfortable norms of development for one was a giant and the other a dwarf.
Because of this the Czadlzti family was forever ostracised and their lives became even more desperate. There was little love in the Czadlzti house for Great Jok and Tiny Jek.
And because of that the twins became inseparable. Little by little they explored their valley, which didn’t take a lot of time because there really wasn’t much to discover apart from rocky scree slopes and spindly grasses. Eventually they climbed out of the valley and over the Carpathian Mountains never to return.
Unfortunately Tiny Jek died in the arse of another unattractive village in an equatorial nation from a terribly contagious disease. Not surprisingly, Great Jok soon followed his brother to the grave. No one mourned them.