I grabbed the crossbow with one hand, held the little guy with the other. Pixie? Is that what he was? Sprite. No clue.

I fired from the hip at the goblin. The bolt zipped right over his head. So, bad idea Zach, don’t hip fire. You’re not a cowboy, you idiot.

The sprite flew up, and hid behind me somewhere. The goblin sprang forward, knife raised. I kicked him in the face and he rolled backward.

I fumbled with my bolt, but eventually shoved it in place. The goblin got to his feet. I pulled on the crank as hard as I could.

I wasn’t sure I’d get the tension locked in time.

A knife zipped past my shoulder, and buried itself in the creature’s eye.

The goblin fell over, dead.

I turned to the tent. Bernie had a second knife in her hand, just in case.

“How many of them are there?” I asked the sprite.

“Ah, I think that’s it,” he said, looking around, panicked.

“Where are the rest?”

“Um. Uh. They’re just down the road. I think, trying to set an ambush for the morning.”

I looked to Bernie.

“I’ll start packing up,” she said.

I’d only gotten two hours of sleep. Bernie had gotten, if she’d slept that first time, probably about six or seven.

“What's your name?” I asked.

“Why do you want to know?” the sprite replied, peering at me suspiciously.

“Do I just call you sprite?”

“Ugh, gods no. I’m a pixie.”

“Okay.”

I stared at the pixie. I was using male pronouns in my head, but other than the leafy loincloth, it wasn’t immediately clear if they were a man or woman. Like, being shirtless, you would think it was easy to tell, but real living creatures didn't always have the proportions of an action figure or doll.

“You cool with the pronoun conversation?” I asked. “You like, a dude?”

“Do I look like a dude?”

“Yes?”

“Nice!”

“No, I mean, what do people call you other than your name?”

“I don’t know, most people just go ‘hey, you! Leave that alone!’”

I scratched my head. At this point I couldn’t put my finger on why they were being so evasive about their identity, but I figured it probably had something to do with their pixie nature. Most people don’t dance around this kind of stuff for so long. I just resolved to use a gender neutral pronoun in my head for ease of use.

Rachel once took me to task for always trying to figure out ‘what that guy was’ every time I bumped into an ambiguously presented person in Austin. At the end of the day, you can always just use someone’s name, and if you don’t know that, it probably doesn’t matter anyway. Ambiguity was annoying, but was also sort of how the world works, yeah?

“Would you mind telling me your name?” I asked, moving on. I tried not to pat myself on the back for it.

“You asking for it?”

“Yes.”

“Names are a big deal with my people. I’m not just gonna hand out my name to any old kid. But you can call me Robin,” they said with a mischievous smile.

“Alright Robin, since I rescued you from certain death—”

Bernadette cleared her throat pointedly.

“She rescued you from certain death,” I clarified. “And you did us a favor letting us know about the goblin ambush. We could part ways, or we could see this as an opportunity.”

“For what?” Robin asked, buzzing up and down hesitantly.

“You’re small, and I assume you can dim your shine if you need to.”

“I can…”

“Having a three inch high spy that can scout ahead would be very valuable.”

“Three and a half, thank you very much.”

“Right. I can see that now,” I said. “What do you think about working for us?”

“You’ll pay me?”

“Yes?”

“Ugh.”

“Would you rather something else? Well, I mean, what could we offer you for your help?”

“I wouldn’t mind a hat,” Robin said, rubbing their chin, and listing to the side in the air, like a boat with a leak, while they thought. “Can you make a hat?”

“A pixie sized one?” I asked, thinking about the suture kit I had in my bag. “I think so.”

“Let’s start there!”

“Yeah?” I said, holding my hand out for a pixie sized high five. Robin flew into my hand and slapped it with both of theirs.

“Yeah!”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“What do you think, Bernie?”

“I think it could help,” she said, tying the bedroll to my pack.

“Cool!” Robin said. “I’ll be back when you least expect it!”

They shot off.

“Wait, aren’t you traveling with us?”

Robin flew back and sputtered like a horse.

“Of course not! If I stick around, I can’t surprise you!”

“But I thought—”

“Bye! Hope you don’t die!”

Robin rocketed away. I wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

I helped Bernie get the camp packed. It didn’t take long, but I was starting to get tired. It was one thing to drag yourself to class hungover on two hours of sleep as a college freshman. It was something else to hump a forty pound pack uphill on two hours of sleep.

We worked our way through the woods as light crept into the sky. I kept to Bernie’s right while she kept the road to her left. She was pretty good at the stalking thing. I jingled with my chainmail, and stepped on more sticks than I missed.

Eventually, we came upon the goblins, camped just a little off the road like we had.

“Okay,” she whispered, “let’s leave the pack here. I’ll sneak up without you and take out a couple that look exposed then come back and we can rush them together. If I get in trouble, I’ll call for help.”

“Okay. Wait. What’s the call for help? What signal are we using?”

Bernadette did sarcastic jazz hands and whispered, “help, oh help!”

“Got it.”

She slunk off into the early morning shadows.

The goblin camp was really just six tents and a low fire. I stayed crouched in a bush and watched. One goblin rounded a tree. Bernie covered his mouth, and slit his throat with her new sword, lowering him to the ground softly. Then she was gone.

I waited and watched. I wasn’t able to see her very well, but I saw the goblins disappear one by one. There were more goblins here than I thought.

Then I heard her say, “shit. Help! Damn it. Help!”

I started running. They’d caught her between the tents, three of them with swords and two of them with bows.

I stopped, fired my crossbow, saw that it hit one of the bow goblins, then kept running. I drew my sword, crashing through the brush.

Adrenaline Rush: the goblins glowed red and Bernadette blue.

They all seemed to slow.

Let’s try an Inspiring Words.

“I believe in you!” I said.

She slipped around a swipe from a goblin, suddenly much faster, and drove her sword through his neck. I smiled. It worked.

I crashed into the last bow goblin, sending him to the dirt and leaves, then stabbing him without stopping. Next, I slammed into the closest sword goblin, and pushed him into another.

Bernie slew two more before the ability ran out.

One left.

He threw himself prostrate and screamed, “not yet, not yet! Let me speak!”

Bernadette held back the killing blow. I stood there not sure what to do. I kept my head on a swivel and tried to make sure we weren’t ambushed.

“Talk,” she said.

“Okay!” the goblin screeched. “So, you need to kill me soon, but I don’t like how stabbings feel. Give me a sec to be ready for it.”

“Oh, it’s coming,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Look, I’m not really a goblin. I mean I am, but only til I die.”

“Okay,” I said, not understanding at all.

“You’ll understand later,” he said, smiling a wide goblin grin. “I’m not in a good position to pull off any tricks the DM can’t just undo, not with this body. But I figured out where he stays.”

“Do NPCs know about the DM?” Bernie asked, looking at me.

“I have no idea,” I admitted.

I fished out the monocle and popped it over an eye. The notation marked all the dead goblins as ‘Goblin— corpse.’ The last living one, just had a smudge of broken pixels where his name should be. So, that didn’t help.

“Yeah they aren’t really NPCs,” he said. “The people of this world, but they also ain’t like you. Anyway. Tell your buddy, Ailmer, that he lives in the Western Lighthouse. He’ll know what you mean.”

“You’re not making any sense,” I said.

“Oh, and don’t message him this. You got to tell him yourself.”

“How do you know all this?” she asked.

“That’ll take too long to explain. You can kill me now.”

I looked to Bernie. She shrugged. “You need the Experience,” she said.

I ran the goblin through with my sword.

“Hurts. Every. Time,” the goblin said, crumpling to the ground. “See you… later.”

Then he died.

“I think I sorta get it,” Bernadette said. “He’s rebelling against the DM?”

“Yeah, but why?” I asked. “And how would he know? And who was he?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t have killed him,” Bernadette admitted.

“Nah. They were just trying to kill us. Could have been some bizarre ploy.”

I put ‘tell Mark about Lighthouse’ in the notes section of the quest tab on my slate, anyway, just in case. I had now had two of the strangest conversations I had ever had in as many hours, right in a row. But I was sure that it would all make sense eventually.

After piling the goblins into a pile, burning them, and moving through the forest for an hour, we set the tent back up so I could get some sleep. We didn’t talk much, which I was grateful for given my splitting headache, while we set up camp.

Bernie said she’d keep watch. I passed out, and slept for three hours.

I woke up to her singing. It was that Rat Pack song we liked. Then, I joined her. She laughed. She had blood on her cheek still, but she was radiant.

I was stunned.

The sunlight through the trees dappled the skin of her face and neck like it did the wavetops at sunset during summer break on the Texas beach back home, and I was there, loving her face and neck, and back home too, looking out over the water at the same time. I was here now, with her, and I was also home in the past loving the sun and loving my freedom. And for a moment it felt like she was home, and she was freedom wrapped up all in one person.

But that wasn’t true. She was just Bernadette. She was just a girl. She couldn’t be anything more.

Damnit, Zach. You’ve got to figure out how to love somebody without making them your world.

My mind raced. Did I do this every time?

I thought back to Rachel, meeting her on the bus as an awkward fourteen year old kid. She was being pestered by another girl, older. I said something mean to her, chased her off. We played video games together at the arcade for my birthday — yeah they still had those — and spent damn near a hundred dollars on one cabinet.

She’d gotten her boobs early, and I had a huge crush on her. Asked her for a kiss one day, and she said ‘why?,’ and the next time she brought it up, we laughed about it. And it didn’t hurt so much. And soon I hardly thought about it at all.

Of course, next I thought of Sofia, sketching some kind of animal person, alone in the cafeteria. We talked for hours on the phone for weeks. Then she got a part in the play, and never again.

Not until that choir trip. She’d ditched the rest of the class to cut herself, but put the razor away when I rounded the corner. I talked to her about her family, about the expectations she had put on herself, then she kissed me on the lips — quick but it didn’t need to be long to get my attention. She said ‘I wasn’t going to really do anything,’ then I didn’t see her again til college, but damn did I follow her on socials.

That moment was just who she was at the time, and it had nothing to do with me. Didn’t feel like it. Damn, it felt like destiny.

Then was my college girlfriend, Marina. But we were never friends.

In my head, I’m some white knight saving these girls. But they didn’t need that. They didn’t want that. They just wanted a friend.

You are allowed to love your friend.

Bernadette is my friend now.

Don’t be weird.

“What?” she asked. Quizzical, but still laughing.

“Nothing. I’m just thinking about Baytown, where I’m from.”

She got a little more serious.

“You miss home?”

“A little. Austin is great. Here is… interesting?”

“Sure is,” she laughed.

“But I don’t know if I miss home as much as the person who got to be home. What about you? You’re from Kansas City right? You miss Kansas?”

“Missouri.”

“No shit? Why is it called Kansas City then?”

“Let’s just get this place packed up.”