They Are Sleeping

When I was little, she said, I used to pretend that before humans lived here, the earth was inhabited by these massive creatures.  They were so big that they kept crushing all the other littler animals whenever they moved or did anything, and it made them really sad.  So one day, they decided that they were doing more harm than good, and thought that they should let another race rule the world for a little while.  So they lay down and went to sleep and they lay there for thousands and thousands of years, until moss grew over them, and trees, and forests, and they forgot that they were alive all together.  I used to think that they had turned into mountains, and I used to look at the mountains and try to figure out what kind of animals they used to be.

See that one over there?  That was a lion.  Do you see its mane?  The way its head is resting on its paws, with the little village in between them?

We sat in silence and tried to see animal shapes in mountains.  I imagined that one day they would shake themselves awake, take one look at the world and decide to start crushing all the little creatures again.