Fidget was fully outfitted for her journey. She had wrapped her gingham curtain cloak around herself and pulled it up over her head like a hood, then fastened it in place at her shoulder with a wooden clothespin. Her large leather bag full of chicken eggs hung on her hip with the thick strap around her body. She stomped past the garden in her new booties that Arvel had made for her; the soles were thick leather from an old saddle he found in the barn, and the tops were made out of cloth from a pair of tattered trousers he’d relegated to the cleaning rag pile. Fidget was unaccustomed to shoes, as goblin soles were as tough as hide, but for her first solo outing to meet the humans, she wanted to put in an effort to meet them on their level, and she knew humans had pathetic feet.
Fidget marched up to the edge of the goat pen, put her hands on her hips, and called out firmly, “Tim!”
The goats ignored her.
Fidget grabbed the gate and rattled it.
“Tim!” she yelled again.
This time, the goats began to wander toward her, thinking they were going to be receiving an early lunch. Among them was Tim, the sole billygoat in the yard.
“Alright Tim,” Fidget said firmly, planting her hands on her hips again, “Fidget has to ride into human camp today. Fidget needs to look human so the humans don’t get scared and get pitchforks.”
Tim stared at her, his rectangular-pupiled eyes vacant as he chewed his cud. Fidget stared back at him, deep in thought, before she held up a finger to gesture for him to wait, and she ran away to the storage shed. When Fidget ran back, she was carrying a bundle of leather straps with metal rings in one hand, and in the other hand, a freshly picked strawberry she snagged off of the garden as she passed by. The strawberry held Tim’s full attention.
“Here, Tim,” she taunted as she waved the strawberry outside of the goat pen.
Tim banged his horns against the wooden bars of the fence a few times before he managed to get his head in between the pickets, reaching single-mindedly toward that luscious red strawberry. Fidget held it out further and further until she was sure that Tim had stretched as far as he could go, before she grabbed hold of one of the horns, stuffed the strawberry in his mouth, and began to wrestle the bundle of leather straps over his head.
“Hold still!” Fidget snapped.
“BAAAH!” Tim bleated defiantly, before he dropped his strawberry and lowered his head to pursue it. In his distraction, Fidget finished forcing the halter around his face and secured the buckle on the back of his head.
“There!” she exclaimed, holding up the end of the lead in her hand. She then paused, and looked at it. She’d seen humans and their horses before, but this seemed different somehow. When the lady knight showed up, her mount had a loop of leather that she pulled on, but Tim’s halter just had the single strap. She wasn’t entirely sure how it worked, but she wasn’t about to go back inside and ask, not after Arvel entrusted her with a task of this magnitude.
While Tim finished his strawberry, Fidget passed the lead through the pickets of the gate, and helped Tim navigate his horns out as he backed up, before she guided him out of the pen and closed it up behind him. Though Tim was significantly smaller than any horse, he was still too large for Fidget to simply hop on top of. Instead, she grabbed hold of a fence post, put a foot on a brace, and pushed herself up so she could swing a leg over Tim’s back and sit astride him.
The second Fidget’s weight landed on Tim’s back, he let out a startled bleat and threw his head back, swinging his horns around chaotically before he began to jump and kick.
“Bad goat!” Fidget yelled as she held tightly onto the leather lead with one hand, and wrapped her other arm around Tim’s neck to try to hold on, “Behave!”
After several failed attempts to buck Fidget off, Tim began to trot around the yard, rubbing against fence posts and bumping into the corner of the porch to try to scrape his goblin rider off. However, Fidget would not give in. Foregoing the cumbersome lead, she wrapped both her arms around Tim’s neck, laying down on his back and shouting, “Tim, go to town! YAH!”
With her ‘yah’, she kicked both of her heels into Tim’s side, and the goat bolted forward with an irritated bleat. With nowhere else in the yard to go, he ran for the open front gate, and began to race down the winding gravel trail toward the settlement.
Hanging on for dear life, with her cloak and dress fluttering in the breeze, Fidget excitedly watched the world whip by from goat back. With her eyes wide and a victorious grin across her face, Fidget cried out her achievement; “YES! YAAAH!”
The encampment had been uneasy all morning. The last of the loggers had returned in the evening, saying that Ser Lunette had ordered them to return to camp immediately, even if it meant abandoning their tools or logs they were still working on. Some of them even claimed to have glimpsed Arvel covered in blood near the edge of the clearing where they worked.
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Having heard their reports, Frederik was beginning to organize a search party to look for Lady Deleraine, Ser Lunette, and Mr. Arvel. But just as he was amassing a small group of young men with spears and clubs near the western edge of the camp, he heard one of them ask, “What’s that on the road?”
Frederik turned to look, and saw something moving along the trail with great alacrity. He saw the trail of dust being kicked up before he could even tell what was doing it. He held his hand up to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun, and squinted toward the approaching creature, before asking, “Is that a goat?”
He squinted a bit harder, and saw Fidget desperately clinging to the goat’s back, tilted and nearly falling off of one side.
“Stop that goat!” he yelled, pointing toward the road.
Several of the men, more athletic and able-bodied than the one issuing orders, ran toward the oncoming goat who began to slow down at the sight of the crowd. Tim panicked, and veered off of the gravel path and into the scrubby underbrush and craggy rocks nearby.
When Fidget looked up from beneath the mess of her hair and her hood, she saw human men with spears running toward her and Tim. Her eyes opened wide, and she clung to Tim tightly, screaming, “Leave Fidget ALONE!”
A bolt of lightning streaked down from a bright blue sky, striking the road just behind them, and Tim reared back on his hind legs, letting out thunderous bleat that harmonized with the deafening crack that rolled across the wasteland. Some of the men fell to their backsides in astonishment, while others simply turned and ran from what seemed like a goat of the apocalypse.
“Wait!” Frederik yelled as he ran toward Fidget, waving his arms in the air, “We come in peace! We’re not going to hurt you!”
Fidget lifted her head when she heard the familiar voice, and with one more well-placed buck, Tim sent her flying off of his back to land in a heap on the ground. She landed hard, but sat up quickly afterwards. Fidget grabbed a rock to throw at the victoriously prancing goat.
“You jerk!” Fidget shouted in a huff.
Frederik slowed, holding his hands up for Fidget to see them as he approached, and said more calmly, “It’s okay. Someone will catch your... goat.”
Fidget looked at Frederik, and immediately shrank back from him, baring her teeth protectively. She remembered him screaming the first time he saw her. Even now, as she snarled at him, he looked fearful. But this time, he swallowed his fear, and waved his hands a bit.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, before smiling sheepishly, “I don’t think I’d be capable if I tried.”
Slowly, Fidget let her snarl fade. She looked Frederik over, and asked, “Skinny man writes records... and gives orders, yes?”
Frederik’s slim shoulders drooped under the moniker of ‘skinny man’, but he sighed and said, “Yes, my name is Frederik. And you were... Fidget?”
Fidget flinched away as Frederik extended his hand, but she slowly reached out and took it, letting him help pull her up to her feet.
“Fidget is here to deliver message,” she said, “And trade!”
Fidget grabbed her bag off her side and spun it around in front of herself to yank the flap open, and show Frederik the smashed eggs inside, their whites and yolks soaking into the bag’s lining. She stared down at the ruined eggs, gripping the edges of the bag, as her eyes began to mist. The clouds above began to move and darken.
“I-It’s okay!” Frederik said, kneeling down and squeezing her shoulders, “It’s perfectly fine! Eggs are fragile, it happens. How about we give you some packages of jerky and some jars of pickles as an advance, for the next time you bring eggs? I know you’re good for it!”
Fidget sniffled, the clouds hanging heavy in the air, darkening the area.
“You mean it?” Fidget asked, “Not gonna give Fidget something then say Fidget stole it?”
Frederik was taken aback by her question, audibly gasping, “I would never! I swear on my honor, as Marchioness Deleraine’s personal scribe, that you will be treated equitably.”
Fidget’s brow furrowed, tilting her head as she tried to discern the meaning of that word, by the context of the conversation. She assumed it meant something good, but his penchant for complicated words was bothering her. A low rumble of thunder rolled across the sky.
“You’ll be treated fairly!” Frederik said, “Fairly! We’ll be good to you, as long as you’re good to us. Is that alright?”
The sky began to lighten, and a big grin spread across Fidget’s face as she replied, “Good!”
Arvel spent nearly two hours scouring the yard for signs of Tim. There were no holes in the ground or broken fences, and the garden was still intact. Arvel had once been certain that the demons weren’t brave or foolhardy enough to snatch up his livestock, but their recent actions had led him to question his preconceptions. On the other hand, none of the nannygoats seemed at all upset.
“It’s like he sprouted wings and just flew off,” Arvel muttered as he looked around.
“Arvel!” Rain weakly called out from the front of the house.
“Coming!”
Arvel climbed out of the well-inspected goat pen and walked around the house to the front, seeing Rain standing on the porch, looking toward the gravel path, holding a cup of tea in her hands. Arvel looked the way she was staring, and saw a small procession headed up the trail.
An ox was pulling a cart with a couple of men and some crates in the back, and another man walked alongside it leading Tim by his halter. At the head of the group was Frederik, with Fidget riding on his shoulders. In her hands, Fidget held up two pickle jars in victorious elation, waving them for Arvel to see, much to the wobbly Frederik’s dismay.
“Well,” Arvel muttered, “This feels like a story...”