Juenet

Juenet was the mountain that loved the stream, the lively things nimble around his feet, that he could only watch go by. His size at birth was reported in provincial newspapers, and he had only continued to grow. He stood like a block of granite, shoulders so wide he was inclined to turn sideways when people passed by, like a building politely giving leave. Juenet had a massive, square head, the jaw a grotesque animated steam shovel from an old cartoon, hanging mangled from the boulders of his cheeks. He wore his bulging forehead like a crown of iron that he was welded into at birth, and had warped and bulged with his prolific development. The monolithic broadness of his chest could be heard to thump with an echo, like the great empty hall of a magnificent estate.

He was as quiet as he was huge. It was impossible to put him in a crowd, no one could get close to a man so spacious. He looked uncomfortable at all times, people saw his uneasy shifting from foot to foot or pulling at his clothes. They did not realize he could not be properly fitted for a suit, and always dealt with chafing and tightness. His size invented distance, and he felt the skittering of people around him too far away to talk to intimately. Every conversation was the jocular, surface talk you have across a room. Juenet was described as a gentle giant but he saw the suspicious eyes of the people around him, he felt like they regarded him as a pit bull, no matter how many good things people said there was a vague ontology of danger. When he came around a corner, pulling on his shapeless coat, he always gave the women he met coming the other way a start. They looked embarrassed when they gave a yelp, then smiled and backed away at his baritone apologies. He saw the sidelong glances cast walking up lonely stone streets at night, in chance meetings with strangers.

A continent onto himself, people felt sorry for Juenet, and the alienation he must feel every day in a world full of the normal. They thought he must practice amazing self control, an anchorite of his own body, pondering the consequence of even a momentary lapse of restraint. They thought the remoteness of his demeanor was for their benefit. Juenet felt all the same things they did, but didn't see the point in expressing them when there was nothing he could do. His anger could never be expressed physically, and the dull resonance of his voice embarrassed him, so he never opened his mouth crossly. He understood a horrible pointlessness to romance, with his freakish size and emotional abstraction, so he never pursued the delicate creatures that dwell in his shadow. He wore the same indecipherable expression every day, and there were never any guesses as to what it might mean, so he never changed it. Juenet decided that he was the mountain, and the mountain loves the stream, and one is a thing that can never move, and one is a thing that can never stand.