Everyone thinks the troll is made of stone.
His long terraced fingers rest inanimate and no breath shoots from between his closed lips. His body is grey and ever-locked in a soulful expression of grief, lost in thought. Encapsulated in one grand silver eye, his wandering expression gazes over the hill, seemingly through the bridge, seemingly through the haze of Seattle's drizzle and outward into the empty universe.
Everyone believes he is made of stone, for the only trolls they have ever encountered were in the pages of storybooks and tabloid magazines. They take pictures with his cold hands, let their children laugh and kick at his worn claws, and their couples steal precious moments to eat their lunch and smooch beneath his giant nose.
The troll is impassive.
He has no ambitions, but at night his mind wanders. He lets his troll arms, lost beneath a pillar of sand long-paved over as a roadway, jostle back and forth to create miniature earthquakes for the houses above.
The troll needs nothing. He ponders this thought. Is he nothing because he needs nothing? All the people and animals that scatter themselves about his earth, near his bridge and his chest - each has a need or desire they wish to fulfill. But the troll sits, motionless, sand and pavement coating his limbs in a thick blanket, and wonders. He constructs long theories about his own existence, then abandons these thoughts at first light. The troll is made of stone, yes, but this stone is a clever material.
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