Goblin Greed & Goblin Need
Jamari woke with a start, fighting against something he could not see. Where was he? What was happening? His breath caught in his throat but, no, that wasn't right. There was something tight around his throat, pinning him to something firm and rigid -- a pole? Rough ropes twisted across his chest as he struggled, though there were voices rising around him, approaching, flickering light dancing through what had to be a blindfold tugged tight over his eyes.
Voices edged nearer though he shuffled away from them, a curse in his mouth, tongue tangled even as he tried to let it fly forth. He didn't know where he was. The last thing Jamari remembered was being in his camp and then... Nothing. Nothing at all. Did darkness count as nothing? Heart hammering, he twisted and mouthed another curse, though the sounds of the night were not from those who were also of the human persuasion.
How had he gotten there? There had to be some reason! He finally managed to spit out some manner of curse under his breath and twisted but a hand grabbed his chin roughly, forcing his head up as the blindfold was yanked off. He blinked rapidly, though it still took him a while to come to his senses, spots floating before his eyes as the dancing light of a nearby lantern showed him the scope of a tent with a pole in the centre to support the roof -- the same pole that he was tied to before a frowning goblin.
He was tall, for a goblin, and Jamari screwed up his face as the rancid beast approached him, leaning in close, barefooted with gnarled toenails arching out like the claws of a creature from the depths of the woods. He tried not to breathe but that in itself was impossible as the goblin wrenched his head back and forth, seeming to survey him, his skin wrinkled and old-looking even though the vitality of his body and the muscle of his bare chest suggested that he was a similar age to Jamari, perhaps in his twenties. It was funny how other creatures had different ways of ageing about them but his off-brown, somewhat green-looking, skin did not do him any favours as the reek of him filled the tent, hardly helping Jamari back from the edge of gagging at all and losing what little bile was surely left in his stomach at that point.
Thrusting him away, the goblin scorned him, spitting a glob of saliva (he dared not think what else could be encased in that slippery globule) to the bare dirt floor to his side. Without thinking, Jamari flinched, the blindfold under his chin like the strap of a helm, his face glistening with dirt and sweat, layered on him in such a way that it itched furtively. Grimy and filthy, he was not himself, though he'd never been one to consider his physical appearance all that much, brown hair most often a tousled mess on his travels.
But the goblin didn't care about that either.
"Quit your yapping!"
Jamari scowled, words flying from his lips without thinking.
"I wasn't talking! What the hell do you want with me? I'm not rich or anything... I haven't done anything to you!"
As if that was going to stop the goblin but a sharp slap to Jamari's face that had his face snapping to the side and his ears ringing did the trick in that regard. He had not been expecting it -- who would have? Maybe it had been the wrong thing to say but it was hardly as if he was directly to blame for any ills that the goblin had faced, yet there was no way to deny the coursing pain lining his jaw, creasing his skin as if it had been a punch rather than a slap. Jamari did not know which would have been more humiliating as he blinked, striving to come back to some sense of himself in the dingy, lonesome tent far away from anyone who may have been able to help him.
Rocking back on his heels, the goblin shook his head, smacking his lips over and over again. Jamari could not tell what that was supposed to mean and something in the churning, writhing pit of his stomach told him too that he did not want to know.
"Shut it," the goblin growled, though his physical altercation had more impact than his words, gravelly and raspy. "Your kind always thinks you're better than us, don't you? All mister high and mighty, look at ol' me, the big human..."
Jamari made a face, working his jaw, though he could already feel his face swelling, a dull, throbbing heat that pulsed up along the side of his face. He'd never even seen any goblins up close before so he didn't know where in the kingdom words like that were coming from but the strange goblin seemed to have something to say, making a face back at him and spitting, this time the glob of saliva trickling down the man's face. Muttering under his breath, though the words were unintelligible even to his ears, Jamari rubbed it off the best he could on his shoulder, the stench of filth and sweat and grime seeming to rise tenfold as the goblin stood before him, legs braced, scrawny and yet still, somehow, managing to shift with muscle beneath the cheap, rough cloth.
"What..." He shook his head but that only made the ringing in his ears worse, tinny and deafening. "Fuck..."
He wasn't usually one to swear but, sometimes, the situation called for a coarser tongue. What the hell did they want with him, a travelling merchant? He wasn't worth anything but his wares were -- and just where were those? Jamari could have asked but, for once, he held his tongue, chest rising and falling sharply as he panted, adrenaline coursing through him and sharpening his senses, putting him on the edge of motion while he had nowhere to run. In that moment, there could not have been a more difficult conundrum for the human body to face.
"Iesb?"
Another goblin stepped into the tent, followed by another and another, leading them to be three in total. Although there were different nuances in their skin-tones, one more blue-grey than the others, which was at least a small, notable thing that Jamari's frantic mind clung onto, they could have all been the same to him, looming and hunkering at the same time, beasts that did not have the intelligence of human beings. Well, that was debatable. They could have had the intelligence of human beings, with some goblins even living in towns and cities amongst humans, but most of them were but feral imbeciles, scorning modern life and the trappings of time that could have pushed their kind so much further forward, progressing with the times. That was their choice, however, and he was hardly going to change his opinion about something that he could see so very plainly and blatantly before his eyes.
"He's a good 'un, isn't he?"
One chortled and groped his face, squeezing his cheeks even as Jamari grunted and wrenched his head away.
"Ohhhh!" The goblin practically squealed, arms flailing. "He's feisty! He don' wan' to be touched now, do he?"
Jamari turned away, lips pressed tightly together, mind racing. Yet for all the questions racing through his head, he could come up with not a single answer that made any sense at all to him. That only seemed to rile them up all the more, clustering in around him as Iseb shook his head, ears drooping as the tips pointed down, though the late hour showed in him too, how he held himself, the lines of his body sagging. They would sleep soon... Jamari's heart flickered with a flourish of hope. Would that be his chance to escape?
"He thinks he can talk now," the first goblin, the one who seemed to go by the name of Iseb, from how the others had addressed him, said in a grunt that was barely intelligible. "Thick meat. Be glad to be rid of him. No fun in taking a man for ransom when they talk back at you like that."
