In this chapter, Mark starts to get to know his goblin interloper and they learn each other's names.
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The morning after left him cold and frigid.
Some people are emotionally quick on the uptake, capable of processing events and actions as they come. But it's not precisely an easy skill to have, to the point that it might not be a skill at all. An inborn gift? An abnormally mature mind? Or maybe just the fruit of experience and age?
Whatever the case, it is also true that some things are easier to process then others. Somethings, are, when you get down to it, so normal that they are flashes in a pan. They make the neurons that are familiar with their feelings burst for a moment and then you are either elated, annoyed or indifferent. "Letting go" of things is, then, evidence of an emotionally mature mind because no one has an infinite capacity to feel everything. Therefore, people must, by necessity, set priorities to themselves.
But what do you do when you are hit with something you can't ignore, don't know how to properly process and yet have to act on anyway? Of the many tactics to put off introspection for a later date, perhaps none are so common as suppression.
Mark woke up without the warm body that he'd had by his side. The tiny green woman that had, unbelievably, stayed with him during the night. She'd left him cold and frigid in a literal way, because while the jacket might have been cut and damaged from the fight yesterday it was still the best jacket that he had.
Figuratively? Mark didn't sleep with anyone else and hadn't since his brothers were too old for that sort of thing. Circumstances being what they were, it surprised him that he even got anything from that simple rest. All the same, there it was; a cold spot that should have been warm.
Was he immature? Was he so childish that he was already longing for the first girl he'd fucked?
Perhaps. Perhaps he really was that weak. Perhaps he really was that childish. But it didn't really matter.
The morning was cold, and the breeze was biting. There was no snow, but with his luck it would take no longer then today to start falling. His sides hurt from bruises and scrapes he had not noticed the day before; his ribs felt tender and there was an ugly line gash going across his stomach. But he was in his home, in his tent and in his sleeping bag. He had a few clothes that he could throw on, a pelts that he could presently be made to provide warmth and a pile of chopped wood that could be set on fire to provide warmth.
But what did it matter?
Standing there outside the foundations of his home, looking at things that he had not managed to pick up the day before, and that had not been blown off the mountain by the brisk night winds, he could only stare transfixed as he finally caught up with everything.
The first thing to die yesterday had been his dream and he was now standing on it's corpse, but he was barely even able to feel it. But other things had died too. His heart broke and, now, that he was properly dealing with it, he was faced with his conscience.
He had killed 5 goblins.
They weren't human, they were quite honestly ugly and they were smelly. They had weapons in their hands, and they had been interlopers in his home, but he had personally, violently, spilled their blood.
They were people, he had to assume, with their own hopes and dreams though Mark had stopped caring about other people's aspirations long ago. They were men out in the field finding a stash of resources that perhaps were like a treasure to them, though Mark had also stopped being moved by the similarities that he had with other people. They had attacked him, or had he attacked them?, and most of them fought bravely to the end. Was that enough for Mark to feel for them?
No, not really.
Mark could not say that he felt sorry that they were dead.
But he was sorry that he had killed them.
Just when he thought he couldn't lose anything else, well, here was innocence left to burn.
And the goblin girl? The goblin girl...he had no idea what to feel about her. His victim one moment, his sleeping partner the next. Here one evening and gone the morning today. She had offered herself to him when he had snuffed the lives ot her friends and, in that moment of emotional height, he had taken her.
That was rape, wasn't it? He didn't force her, but the implications were bad. He didn't think he would have killed her, but he honestly didn't know what he would have done if she hadn't offered herself at that moment. So should he feel bad that he had taken her after she and her band of scavengers made sure that he had no future?
He didn't know. He didn't want to say. The response at the tip of his mouth was an ugly thing that went against his morals and so....and so...
He would wallow in what was in front of him.
The morning was cold and frigid. And now he had to pick up the pieces.
There was so much that was simultaneously too little. Too much of a mess that didn't make him feel better even after getting rid of it. He was trying, he suppose, to clean up after himself before leaving. But, really, what a disaster.
4 years. 4 years of toiling just to make this a reality. He was 24 years old and all he had knew was work, but he had hoped that here he would found some measure of peace. Some time and space just for him. And while the dream had been alive, he had. And, perhaps, that made those 4 years valuable.
But now what?
Now what?
A light rain started to fall as he set his a little stove straight and fed it some lumber. It wasn't the wood he had cut for that purpose, from a pile of timber that he had been saving up for winter, but from the rough cut planks that he had planned on using to build up walls. And why not? He wasn't going to use them.
But that did mean that he had to see them go up in fire.
It was all so surreal, in anyway. He was in his home but it was really no longer his. Here building a future that was no longer real. Here, in this mountain, toiling for nothing.
There was...a release in it. To see what he had worked for burn. It provided him a certain ending and made the corner of his eyes water-
"Tagay?" a voice interrupted him.
"W-what?" Mark whipped around to see where the voice came from. How had he not noticed someone sneaking up on him? He was briefly afraid that it had been the lone escapee from the day before. As he was, with nothing in his hands but pieces of wood, he could have easily been speared from behind. Small as they were, it didn't really take a lot to push a sharp rock into a grown man's body and Mark had been lost in his own mind.
But then, he recognized her.
The coat he had lent her the day before she still had around her shoulders. It almost dragged on the floor, but the goblin girl was tall enough that it fit like a cape on her. She had tied the tips of its collar together with woven rope, when the coat had a zipper that she could use, and laid it on top of the robe that she had brought.
The goblin girl was looking at him in confusion, tilting her head as she stared at the wetness in his eyes.
"Why are you back?" Mark cleared his throat. And then he noticed that she was carrying things in her arms.
It was a stack of bibulous sticks that looked simultaneously soft and firm. They were brown in shade and bit fussy. They were about a foot in length and widen from one end before ending up in a mushroom cap.
...mushrooms. They were mushrooms. The goblin girl brought him mushrooms.
"Hed-ha!" she happily said as she...dumped them all in front of him.
"Is this a gift?" Mark asked, confused. Fire burned proudly and happily as he stared at the bundle. Why? Why this? Why a gift? Why mushrooms?
"Tera!" the goblin replied, pushing her ample chest up and making his coast part around it. But as happy as she was, there was an under current of expectation there. And Mark? He was polite, he had been taught manners, but he had absolutely no idea what to do with this.
"Thank you?" he gandered, making the goblin peer up at him, as she decided if she, what, believed him?
"Kya," the goblin chirped after a while, happily nodding to herself before she took the cord tying his coat collar together and pulled it undone. She then placed his coat on the grassy ground by the fire and sat on it as crossed her legs and looked...expectantly..at him.
"What?" Mark asked a bit more brusquely then he intended. The goblin actually flinched and leaned away from him, making him want to stifle a groan.
"Look, I don't mean to scare you," he said, despite the fact that it would have been really hard for him to not be scared had he been the girl, "But I just don't know what to do about any of this! About you!"
"I just....don't know what to do about anything," Mark deflated. The only thing he could do now was salvage what he had here and cash it in town. But what then? It wasn't like he didn't make a good living, but he couldn't truly compete against the well connected no matter what he did. He could make money, that was true. Not enough to be wealthy in the way that the well-connected were, but enough to be able to help out his friends and family. And therefore, wealthy enough to be forced to helped them.
Wealthy enough to give it all away and therefore not be wealthy after all.
The goblin girl just nodded along with him. She had no way of knowing what the hell he was saying, but she was nodding along with him. There was no understanding in her face, she wasn't following along. She was just there, letting him talk, and...
"What is your name?" Mark asked. She had said many thing the other day, and the little green woman talked, but if she had introduced herself, well, he wasn't sure.
"Tagay?" she tilted her head, not knowing what he was asking. Because of course she didn't.
Well, then.
"Mark," Mark pointed at himself, "I am Mark."
He had killed her friends and slept with her, and he was only JUST know introducing himself. It was incredibly silly of him to care about rudeness all of a sudden but, well, here they were.
The goblin perked up.
"Mak?" she asked, pointing at him.
"Mark," he repeated sticking a thumb on his chest.
"Maaark?" she attempted again, leaning forward.
"Mark," Mark agreed, poking his chest again.
"Mark," the goblin mused as she got up and walked up to him.
"Yes," he said, suddenly being a bit wary.
"Mark," the green woman said again and extended a hand out. Right next to where his thumb was poking his chest was now a green index finger poking him.
"Yyyyes," Mark ground out as he let his finger drop.
"Mark!" the goblin ooed as another finger joined her index and started prodding his chest.
"That is my name," Mark agreed as he leaned back. Not that it did any good, the goblin simply followed him.
"Hmm, Mark," the girl pensively said as, suddenly, it wasn't just her fingers poking at his chest, but her whole hands.
"What are you doing?" Mark asked.
"Koto nafner," the girl hummed as she started squeezing his pectoral muscles with her small hands, making him feel confused.
"Stop that," Mark softly slapped her hands away from his torso, but the goblin just didn't get the message.
"Nafner," she said as the arm that pushed her hands away were suddenly the object of her attentions. Her hands traveled along his forearms, pushing into his sweater and the sleeves underneath that to feel at his muscle. They slid down into the crook of his elbow and started feeling and squeezing his biceps and triceps.
