Greyex took a few minutes to sit down on a handy log and inspect the blisters on his feet. He hadn't had blisters like this since he was little, but two days of walking over increasingly rough terrain had done a number on his callouses. His stomach clenched. Two days without anything more filling than a handful of live grubs had his insides twisting up in knots of hunger, but he couldn't stop moving - even if the village had probably given him up for dead already and stopped looking for him, there were lots of things out here that wouldn't hesitate to eat him if he got careless, and there wasn't anything bigger than bugs he felt confident in his ability to catch and eat without backup.
Once he was done poking at the painful bumps, he slid off the log and set about laboriously pushing it over. It rocked, then rocked back, and only excessive caution saved him from it rocking back onto his fingers, but finally, after far too long, it ripped free of the moss that had grown up its side and rolled over out of the depression that had formed around it.
Greyex fell to his knees and began to search through the menagerie of bugs he'd uncovered. Without a bag to hold his finds in, he had no choice but to stuff the dirt-covered things into his mouth as they were, still wiggling, and do his best to chew them with his sharp teeth. Some of them, worms and grubs too small or wiggly to chew easily, he ended up swallowing whole and still moving. They were unpleasantly cold and mobile, and he wasn't a fan of the slimy texture, either, but he was too hungry to be choosy.
Eventually, everything that was good to eat had either been eaten or dug down into the moist soil, and everything that was left was either unfamiliar or gave him the runs. Greyex picked up an unfamiliar creepy-crawly and thought about it... but no. He didn't have the luxury of risking illness right now. He dropped it and rose to his feet, then continued his journey. The sun was hot, and he was thirsty, especially after eating dirt and bits of rotting log along with his bugs. Walking hurt, but he forced himself onward, glancing this way and that, watching for danger, but also for --
There!
He darted to the side and dropped to his knees next to a familiar vine. Thick leaves, thick, hairless stem, the color, the texture, the smell...
Greyex grinned a pointy grin and took a bite. It tasted terrible, plants always did, but the bitter juice inside was harmless. With effort, he sucked at the plant and, when what was in his mouth stopped yielding any "water", he moved on to another section to suck dry. He drank and he drank, until his belly fairly sloshed with it, and then he drank some more.
Then, he moved to an undamaged section of vine and bit off a length just barely short enough for him to carry, wrapped around himself, and tied the ends in knots to stop the water from escaping.
Once he was satisfied that he had water for later, Greyex looped his treasure about his torso and over his shoulders, and went back to walking. Sooner or later, he'd find a way to survive long-term. He just had to keep his eyes open.
Something crashed, too close for comfort, and he scrambled up a tree. Distantly, he noticed that some of his blisters popped on the rough bark, and his hands scraped and stung, but a bit of discomfort was irrelevant when it came to safety. Greyex's eyes darted from tree to bush to shadow, searching for whatever had made that loud sound. Something moved, something big. He froze and waited.
The... thing was five times his height and big enough otherwise that it could have sat on the chief's hut and probably squashed it flat. If it had wandered through the village, that might have been the end of the village. Or it would have been the end of the thing. If there was one thing his people were good at, it was attacking in force to kill something bigger than they were. Greyex stayed perfectly still, only his eyes moving to track the. The thing. He wondered what it tasted like, then carefully tied that thought up with string and dropped it down a hole.
It trampled a tree and smushed a bush and moved along. He watched it go, and decided to not go that way. He had no desire to catch up to that. Thing. Whatever it was. He waited until the crashing of its passing had faded into silence and the birds and bugs were making noise again.
Once he was double sure it was gone, Greyex slowly climbed down from his tree and carefully walked over to the footprints it had left behind. Feeling a little numb, he lay down in one of them. Neither his heels nor the top of his head touched the edges of the depression. He spread his arms out, and his fingertips didn't reach, either. That thing could just step on him and there'd be nothing left but a bloody smear, like swatting a bug.
He got to his feet, considered the monster's trail, and set off away from it, at an angle. If he walked a little faster than before, or didn't check as carefully for potential sources of food, well, it must be that his belly was full (of vine squeezings) and he was feeling better after a brief rest (up a tree, terrified).
---
Taaku woke when the air around him cooled. He stretched, winced, stretched again. His head hurt. His scales itched. He swished his tail, back and forth, and slowly realized that he was alone.
Then he remembered why he was alone.
He crawled out of the mass of tree roots he'd crammed himself into when the sun started to come up, staggered, and continued away from the mountain he'd called home his entire life. Downhill. He needed to go downhill. He focused on that thought - 'downhill'. Every time he slipped, downhill. When he tripped and fell, downhill.
Until he got to the bottom, and everything was suddenly uphill.
Taaku lay down for a bit, and thought. He was so thirsty, and water went down. He came to a conclusion. He got up, then skirted around the hill in front of him. He picked his way through tangled plants and over piles of stones, smelling for dampness and watching for animals small or weak enough for him to catch on his own.
He wandered for the whole night, and didn't find so much as a trickle. By the time the sun came up and he had to find a place to sleep the day away, he could barely think, and wasn't sure if he was going up a hill or down one. Taaku had the terrible feeling that, without a miracle, he wasn't going to last another night. Maybe it would rain.
He crawled under one of the large trees, into a tiny cave of roots, and closed his eyes. Maybe he'd get to open them again.
Maybe the afterlife wouldn't be lonely.
---
Greyex trudged up yet another hill. Spending the night up a tree, in case something came along while he was sleeping with a taste for flesh, hadn't done his mood any favors. Finding another "drinkable" vine had, though, and he'd been able to make a (barely) usable bag out of the chewed up remains of the last one. He packed the holes in it with moss as he walked, then set about dropping edible bugs into it when and as he found them.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
"If I eat when I stop to rest, instead of stopping to eat when I find food, I can go farther," he reasoned out loud to himself. "And if I talk to myself," he continued, "I can pretend I'm not alone, and stay sane longer."
He stopped to flip over a likely looking rock and scoop up a few juicy looking worms and a fat grub, then continued on his way. His stomach cramped a bit - days of drinking plant juice and hardly eating anything was taking its toll on him, but he could keep going. The crude bag bumped against his side with every step, reminding him that where there was stuff, he could make tools, and where he could make tools, he could (hopefully) survive.
The bag was half full of squirming, writhing "food", and the water vine was still mostly intact, when the sun got low and Greyex started looking around for a place to sleep. He was debating the usability of some of the hollows he'd seen underneath the larger trees when he saw the foot. It was grey, scaled, and had wicked looking talons attached to the toes, all three of them.
He picked up a nearby stick and gave it a poke. It twitched a couple of times and slowly withdrew into the hollow under the tree. When nothing came out and tried to eat him, Greyex crouched down and took a closer look. There was something - someone? - under there. Who (or what) ever it was had two feet, two legs, one long slinky tail, and a leather loincloth held up with a crudely braided belt. He reached in with the stick and gave the foot another poke. The person? under the tree hissed softly.
"You don't sound so good," Greyex said conversationally.
His answer was an unintelligible hiss, and he gave the foot another poke. The other foot twitched, and the poked foot flinched.
"I suppose you'd prefer if I tried to help you," Greyex went on, thinking out loud as much as he was talking to the prone figure under the tree. "Not that I know what you are, but with claws like that, you're probably pretty mean when you're feeling well." He grinned what he'd been told was a nasty little grin and gave the foot a jab with the stick. The tail flopped over weakly.
Greyex crawled partway into the root cave under the tree, firmly gripped the stranger's ankles, and backed out on his knees, dragging his bag of "food" and water vine in the dust, mystery creature in tow. In the dying light of the sun, he got a better look at the thing. The scales were everywhere, and it had no hair. Its hands, and it did have hands, had four fingers, counting the thumb, all of which were tipped with the same wicked talons as its toes. The grayish scaled skin sagged and drooped, and near the fanged mouth it had begun to crack. He gave its cheek an experimental pinch and felt scales crackle and crack between his fingers. The indentations stayed where they were, pale and thin.
Whatever this was, it was nearly dead from thirst.
Greyex ran his fingertips over the water vine wrapped around his chest and shoulders.
"It's your lucky day, friend," he said softly through a pointy grin. "If this doesn't kill you, you get to live."
---
Taaku woke to a miracle. There was water in his mouth. Strange, bitter water with bits of stringy stuff in it, but water. He drank greedily and whined like a needy hatchling when it stopped, but then it came back, gushing and dripping, strange and stringy and exactly what he needed.
After a wonderful eternity of water, water in his mouth, water running down his cheeks, cool and wet and oh thank everything he wasn't going to die, he felt strong enough to open his eyes. He stared, for a long moment, into a large pair of hairy nostrils, and closed them again.
"Ah," he said to himself, "this is a dream. I'm still dying."
"Not a dream," a strangely mushy voice said from above and to the side. "Just a very, very strange day."
"There is a goblin lap under my head," Taaku said firmly. "The goblin was feeding me plant water. That is not real."
"Nah, it's real," the goblin mushed with its weird squishy mouth. "But, funny thing is, you know what I am, friend, but I don't know what you are."
Taaku was a bit taken aback. Goblins and kobolds had been fighting for generations. For centuries. For a goblin to not know what he was, to not kill him where he lay, was unheard of.
"I'm a kobold," he said before he could think better of it.
"Hm." The goblin seemed lost in thought. While it considered that information, it bit a new hole in the plant and brought it to Taaku's mouth, squeezing and releasing more of the strange water, which he eagerly drank down, even knowing where it came from. He was too thirsty to care. "Granny always said," the goblin said slowly, "that kobolds were terrible monsters that hunted in packs and ate goblins."
Taaku was too busy drinking to reply. Distantly, he recalled that goblins didn't taste very good.
"The thing is, though," the goblin continued, "that in my experience, goblins are also terrible monsters that hunt in packs and eat goblins." It grinned down at Taaku, revealing a mouth full of teeth that made up for their lack of sharpness with sheer numbers. "And I don't see your pack anywhere, so you and I, we can be friends, I think."
Taaku choked on his plant water. The goblin waited. Taaku coughed and sputtered. The goblin waited. Taaku gasped for air. The goblin waited.
"I could eat you," Taaku pointed out.
"Then who would help you find water?" the goblin asked, unconcerned.
"You just taught me there's water in plants," Taaku argued.
The goblin grinned. "Try it," it dared him. "Most plants are more full of poison than water."
"Why do you even want me?" Taaku finally asked, all of his confusion spilling out in a torrent of frustration. "Your kind eat everything in front of you, you don't rescue people!"
The goblin had the audacity to laugh in its weird, squishy voice.
"Most of us don't," it agreed. "Of course, most of us don't know that there's water in plants, or that you can make a bag out of nearly anything if you're patient enough." It held up a bag that was. Made of plant. It was green and brown and half dry and a bit fuzzy.
"What's in the bag," Taaku was too confused to even ask a question properly. He wasn't even sure he wanted to know what was in the bag.
"Food," the goblin answered. "Want some?" It shook the bag a little for emphasis. It seemed about half full.
"Yes!" This was humiliating. Asking a goblin for food, being rescued by a horrible stupid monster, loosing all sense of honor or community... maybe this was some sort of divine punishment for refusing to do his duty.
The goblin reached into the weird plant bag and pulled out. Ugh.
"Bugs aren't food!" Taaku protested.
The goblin put the wiggly bug in its mouth and worked its jaw, then swallowed.
"You sure about that?" it asked.
Taaku was sure, but. Maybe. Maybe eating bugs was part of his punishment for not dying like he was supposed to. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth and felt like a hatchling asking to be fed. Something small and wiggly dropped in and he swallowed it. It hadn't tasted like much, but it felt good to have something in his stomach again.
"Well?" the goblin asked. Maybe it sounded amused or smug. He couldn't tell. It was all mushy.
"It. I guess it was food." Taaku curled his tail around his thighs. It was childish, but so was being fed by someone else. The goblin reached back into the bag and tossed another bug into its mouth, then offered Taaku the bag.
Taaku, much to his increased shame, accidentally squished three of the squirmy things and didn't get anything more than yuck on his claws. He licked them off anyway and curled his tail tighter. The goblin pulled out a bug and offered it, and he opened his mouth to be fed. Together, they finished what was in the bag, and then the rest of the chunky bitter water in the plant.
Taaku tried, and failed, to get to his feet after the meal. He fell back to the ground and lay there on his back, hissing in frustration.
"Sun's down," the goblin said. "Time to sleep."
"Sun's down," Taaku countered, "time to get up."
"...I was walking all day. You can't even stand up." It stared toward him, eyes unfocused, pupils huge - oh. Oh.
"You can't see at night, can you?" Taaku asked slowly.
"You can?" the goblin asked in return. Then, "of course you can. Nothing's ever easy."
With some effort, Taaku crawled closer to the weirdly soft thing and leaned against it. He'd killed goblins; he'd eaten goblins; he'd never noticed how soft and warm they were.
"We can sleep until morning," he allowed, "but you're leading the way. The sun hurts my eyes."
"You can lead if we walk in the dark," the goblin slurred softly. "I can't see anything in this."
Then there was silence, but it was a silence punctuated by soft snoring and someone else's heartbeat. Taaku put his head on the goblin's chest and dozed, eyes half open.
He still missed home.