Turner wheeled the bags of flour from the gristmill on his nightly delivery to the bakery, the cart bouncing along the weathered cobblestones at the edge of town. He glanced up gratefully at the clear night sky. The east side of Yarnsford led down a steep incline to the oceanfront and beyond Turner was the harbour. The ocean breezes swept away the dust and smell of this mining town, exchanging it for the salty aroma of the sea. Turner boasted that the only smell better to wake up to in the morning than the sea was that of his mother's hearty breakfasts. Tonight, the wind was particularly strong, and the fragrance of the sea was heady. Turner revelled in it.

The dark cobblestone streets were quiet. Little stirred except leaves in the brisk breeze. It was late in the evening and people were either finishing their dinners or preparing to retire to bed. The only places still open for business were the steel mill at the far end of town, where the blast furnaces never ceased to smoke, and the shops that served soup and meatballs in sealed flasks to the late-shift workers.

Yarnsford had its roots as a humble mining community at the foot of Mount Gilgamesh, where industrious spirits had come to roost in homes crowned with slate tiles and stone chimneys. Over time, the mountain had been found inordinately rich with precious ores, and the municipality had naturally prospered. After developing nearly every inch of land there was beneath the mountain, the locals had begun to build into it. A bevy of homes lay carved into its outer crust, stacked one upon another. Turner looked up at the warm, lit windows of hundreds of homesteads scattered throughout the earthy hive.

A train rattled on iron tracks past Turner as he neared the bakery, blasting silvery streams of smoke out its sides and towing several empty carriages behind it. It was one of many steam engines that ran for the convenience of the locals, particularly the miners. The rail lines traced the town, up and around old Mount Gilgamesh, several delving partially into the mines. The conductor blasted his whistle as he passed.

Turner lifted one hand from the cart to wave back, only to have the wheel on his cart catch in a rut. The handlebars jerked out of his grasp. Turner cursed as the cart tipped, and grappled with the sacks, unable to keep several from pitching to the ground.

Sighing in frustration, he reloaded the cart. As he reached for the last sack, Turner looked up and paused. He blinked. Surely his eyes were playing tricks on him. Emerging from the sea towards the shore along the town was some kind of giant. It was oddly liquid though, in the rough shape of a man, but with unusually long arms and legs. There was nothing menacing about the colossus; if anything, its motions were languid, graceful, and entirely silent.

"Holy crow!" Turner muttered.

The simplest course of action would be to shout out and draw someone's attention, but he was afraid that, if he took his eyes off it, even for a moment, the giant would vanish without a trace and then what evidence would he have of what he had seen? Turner yanked off his shoes and socks and raced down the flight of stairs to the beach to gain a closer look at this strange visitor.

Looking up at it was like peering through solid glass, the starry sky curved in its translucent build. All sorts of aquatic life could be seen swimming in its legs; a school of silver-scaled fish swam merrily in circles, before dipping below the surface.

The giant reached the shoreline, knelt on the sand above the tideline, and gently laid something down on it. It was a girl. She lay motionless on the strand. No sooner had it delivered her than the giant's watery body began to quiver with increasing intensity, until it collapsed to the ground, like water tossed from a bucket. Turner watched as the remains of the giant were absorbed into the sand like the many waves that stained its shore. Turner hesitated a moment, still trying to understand what had just happened, and then headed towards the girl. Pulling aside the curtain of blond hair that blanketed her pale face, he brought his cheek down to her mouth and felt a warm puff of air touch his ear. He swiftly shed his vest and shirt and cloaked her in them.

"Don't know who you are, but we'd better get you some place warm before you freeze to death," he murmured, and hoisted her up in his arms.

He carried her up the stairs and laid her atop the flour sacks, just as dark clouds moved in and brought a hard rain with them. Long grey sheets of it tumbled from the sky, breaking upon the pavements with the constancy of a tireless drum. He would go home first, Turner decided, and worry about the bakery delivery later.

The Hullin family's dwelling presented a simple, slender, dignified countenance to the street, extending back into a humble, three-floor abode. The kitchen, living room, and dining space comprised the ground floor. His parent's bedroom was situated above that, along with the bathroom, and at the very top lay the attic. It was there that Turner slept.

The wind buffeted the rain, blowing it under porches and eaves, against windows and doors, dousing the town at every angle. By the time Turner reached the doorstep of his home, he was exhausted and soaked to the bone.

"Pa, Ma," he called from the door, shaking the water from his clothes, "I brought someone—"

"Where have you been, boy?" roared his father, from the living room, where he sat hunched over a bit of machinery he'd brought home from the steel mill to repair. "I have a load of hungry men 'bout to come off shift, and I dun have the nerve to tell 'em their bellies'll have to go wantin'."

"Pa, it's a girl!"

"Hah!" barked his father, a rush of smoke rolling over the pipe in his mouth. "Hear that, Penelope? And you thought our boy was too young to pay the lasses any mind."

"Never did I say such a thing, Travis," Turner's mother said, stepping out of the kitchen and drying her hands with a flannel. "I'm sure your eyes were roaming well before you turned fifteen."

"Only in search of you, my love."

"Look." Turner pointed towards the cart on the front step. "I found her lying on the beach."

"Good Lord!" his mother exclaimed. "She's soaked! She must be chilled to the bone. Travis, set her by the fire. Turner, go get that extra blanket off your bed. Hurry, now, the both of you."

Hoisting her up in arms as thick as elder trees, Travis laid the girl on the couch facing the fireplace, his clay pipe still hanging from his mouth.

"Should I go fetch Doc Monroe?"

"No need, I think." Penelope looked at her closely and stroked the girl's forehead. "Dear's only asleep. Where did you find her, Turner?"

Turner handed her a thick woollen blanket.

"On the beach, along the way from the mill."

"The beach?" Travis asked, scratching his head with the mouthpiece of his pipe. "Girls don't just wash up on the beach, boy." He snorted and threw a mischievous glance at his wife. "Unless they're whales, that is, and this one dun look a thing like your mother..."

"That's quite enough out of you," she retorted, thudding her husband across the back of the head with the rolled up blanket.

"She didn't wash up on the beach. She was left there."

Penelope gasped. "Who would do such a thing?"

"It wasn't a person. It... it was some kind of giant."

"A giant?"

Turner nodded. "Made of water."

His father's eyes narrowed. "Water, you say? Like from the tap?"

"From the ocean, more like."

"And this giant – from the ocean; made of the same – what exactly happened to it?"

"It... sort of... fell."

"Fell, did it?" Travis brandished his pipe in the air. "So, that's how you got wet, boy? And here I thought it was because of something crazy, like the rain that's pouring outside."

"I'm telling you that's what I saw!"

"Of course we believe you, dear," his mother reassured him. "We just don't know if what you saw was, well, what you think you saw."

"I know what I saw, Ma."

"Let's ask the lass, shall we?"

"Leave her be for now," said Penelope. "She needs her rest more than we do an explanation. Turner, get that flour down to the bakery and then get back here and into some dry clothes."

"Unless the giant comes lookin' for her," chortled Travis. "We'll have to give her over, then. Don't want 'em collapsin' on the house. My workshop's flooded enough as it is."

"If you spent half the time fixing this house as you spend on all those bits and pieces you keep bringing home, we wouldn't have to worry about a little water, would we?"

"Now, love, I told you, I'm savin' the mill money by fixin' these. We can't have 'em openin' their coin purse for every rusty pivot and cracked gear."

"The reason why this town pays the taxes it does is so these things can be replaced. Not to have you wrangling every broken bit and bob about, bringing them here and tinkering until even the most idiot of monkeys would realise the futility of it."

Turner donned socks and shoes before heading back out. The rain was still coming down hard, like a thick mist reaching up into the depths of the now starless sky. He kept a vigilant watch in search of other peculiarities that might either explain or compound the mystery of this giant watery creature.

Smoke rolled from the steel mill's stone towers and night passed into morning, taking the rain with it, but no other giants came to pay the mining town of Yarnsford a visit.