Somewhere in a cabinet, Fidget found herself an apron. Though it would’ve been short on an ordinary human woman, it was long enough to brush the ground in front of her feet as she walked. But, the goblin made good use of the pockets, stuffing in pebbles and trinkets she found on the floor as she swept the house, kicking up clouds of dust as she knocked piles of dirt out the front door with her ragged broom.
“I think you’re reading too much into this,” Arvel said as he sat at the table, chewing on a dry, two-day-old biscuit.
“She’s already put on an apron and started dusting your filthy house,” Rain replied, sitting across from him with her arms folded across her chest; “In addition to deciding that you aren’t eating properly and that you need to be stronger to provide for her.”
“Those are fair assumptions,” Arvel said, “They’re wrong, but it’s not a bad guess. I get plenty of protein.”
“She’s already acting like she’s your wife!” Rain shouted.
“She’s just being grateful!” Arvel replied, “You could try it.”
Rain’s face flushed with embarrassment, her brow knitting and hair standing on end. She stood up with enough speed to shove her chair back with a dull scrape on the floorboards, before marching toward Fidget.
“Give me the broom,” Rain said firmly.
“What?” Fidget asked, “No!”
“You can do something else. I’m going to sweep,” said Rain as she reached out to grab the end of the broomstick, high above Fidget’s head.
Fidget clung tightly to the shaft just above the frazzled head of the broom, wrapping both her hands around it tight and saying, “No! Human slave can find another job!”
“Slave?!” Rain shouted, “How dare you! I’m not a slave!”
“Then how come you don’t have pants?!” Fidget asked, her voice haughty and accusing as if she’d backed Rain into a corner. If Fidget knew what chess was, she might’ve punctuated her statement with ‘checkmate’.
“Well, you’re barely wearing scraps!” Rain fussed, yanking on the broom handle.
“Fidget sewed these herself!”
“I could’ve sewn a better outfit with my teeth!”
“ENOUGH!” Arvel shouted as he stood up, slamming both his hands down on the table hard enough that one of the legs cracked and went slightly askew. Both Rain and Fidget startled, clinging to opposite ends of the broom, but pausing in their tug of war to stare at Arvel. He clutched the edge of the table, rocking it back and forth slightly before nudging the leg back under it with his toe until it was more stable. A few awkward, wordless moments passed as he corrected his destruction before he stood up straight and said, “I don’t know if either of you’ve ever had to show someone you’re grateful before but this ain’t how you do it.”
Fidget looked confused, her brow furrowing, and asked, “Then how?”
“You do things that actually need doing,” Arvel said, “But most of all, you don’t muck up the peace and serenity of my farm.”
Rain and Fidget slowly lowered the broom, but neither let go of it.
“You keep sweeping,” Arvel said, nodding to Fidget, “Rain, you’re gonna help me with choring. It’s well after breakfast time and the animals are gonna be right awful pissed.”
Rain was quiet as she followed Arvel around the farm, carrying things for him as he went about his morning chores. Her broken shoes were traded in favor of his spare boots, which were loose and clunky around her delicate feet, making an awkward clomp in the mud with every step she took behind him.
“You can quit pouting any time,” Arvel said, handing Rain a bucket of feed.
“I’m not— I’m not pouting,” she replied with an audible huff as she took the heavy bucket, holding the handle in both hands, her long sleeves bunched up around her wrists.
“Yer pouting,” Arvel replied with a chuckle, “Been pouting ever since I separated you and Fidget. I didn’t expect you to get so bent out of shape over dusting.”
Rain looked down at the bucket of hay in her hands and said, “I don’t want to seem ungrateful. You saved my life yesterday. You put yourself at risk, and you even got killed, for my sake. You didn’t have to do any of that, but you did.”
“I couldn’t just let you die,” Arvel said, “I still meant what I said. I’m no Immortal Knight, or hero, or anything else. But you don’t have to be a hero to know what’s right.”
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
“I still feel like I made you betray your ideals for me,” she said quietly.
Arvel laughed and replied, “Well, kinda, yeah!”
Rain flinched, biting her lip, though she slowly relaxed when she realized that Arvel didn’t seem the least bit worried about it. She looked at him as she followed him from the tool shed out toward the animal pens and asked, “Why do you not want to fight?”
“I just like a peaceful life is all,” Arvel replied, opening the latch of the goat pen gate and stepping inside, holding the gate for Rain to follow.
“A peaceful life,” she murmured as she followed, “Are you a pacifist?”
Arvel laughed heartily, bending forward and slapping his knee, asking, “A pacifist?! Not in the least! I’m a farmer.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Rain asked, in confusion.
“Well, I have to kill animals pretty often,” Arvel said, “Animals I’ve raised and known their whole lives. Sometimes they get sick, but sometimes it’s just because I need food. What kind of person is alright with killing their livestock but draws the line at strangers they don’t even know? That’s just asinine.”
Rain stared at Arvel as she processed his words, and said, “Most people would have a harder time killing a person than a farm animal, you know.”
“Well I ain’t most people,” Arvel replied.
Though Rain wanted to debate Arvel’s seemingly backward logic, she was knocked off of her line of reasoning by a sudden impact hitting her in the backside, sending her stumbling forward a few steps and into Arvel’s shoulder.
“Ow!” Rain yelped, looking back to see a goat looking up at her expectantly with his big, orange, rectangularly-pupiled eyes.
“Tim!” Arvel scolded, “Don’t be rude!”
Tim bleated instantly at Arvel, scratching his hoof on the soft, damp dirt, bobbing his head, and swinging his horns around threateningly.
“What a vulgar animal!” Rain said, holding her bucket of hay up and away from Tim.
“It’s my fault for spoilin’ him,” said Arvel, “What with the regular meals, the neck scratches, and the harem, he thinks this is his farm, not mine.”
“A harem?” Rain asked, looking at Arvel in surprise.
“Well, sure!” Arvel said, turning around to dump two pails of hay out on the ground for the other goats to begin rummaging through; “He’s got four pretty does all to himself. Meet Daisy, Lily, Rose, and Petunia. And seeing as I need goats making plenty of milk all the time and I’ve got no other bucks around, Tim thinks he’s the cock of the walk. Which makes the actual rooster over on the other side of the farm mighty irritated.”
Again, Tim headbutted Rain in the hip.
“Ow!” Rain yelped. She turned her back toward Tim, holding the bucket up over her head spitefully, and said, “I’m not going to feed you if you’re going to be a jerk! You can share with your lady friends if you’re that hungry!”
Tim pawed at the ground again, bobbing his head angrily, and lifted it up as he went in for another headbutt. But this time, one of Tim’s horns found purchase.
Rain let out a scream, and threw the bucket down on the ground. Arvel turned around in a panic, expecting to see blood, but what he saw made him nearly choke. He bit his lip hard to hold back his laughter and asked, “What are those?”
Tim had caught one of his horns in Rain’s underwear and was furiously tossing his head back and forth to try to dislodge himself. Rain had reached down under her shirt to grab the front of her undergarments, desperately holding onto them as the backside stretched out, layers of frilly lace on display as seams and gathers popped and tore.
“D-Don’t look!” Rain shouted, her eyes wide in panic and face deeply flushed.
“The hells are you wearing under there?” Arvel asked, leaning down to get a better look.
“Arvel, don’t you dare stare at my bloomers!” Rain shouted, her feet shuffling in the mud as Tim yanked her backward.
“Who puts all that lace on something you don’t even see?” Arvel asked.
“Make him let go!” Rain shouted, “Let GO you... you... devil goat!”
Tim bleated loudly at her, before resuming his thrashing.
“Just take them off!” Arvel said with a laugh.
“Absolutely not!” argued Rain, “I will not lose to this perverted beast! I’ll make mutton stew out of him before I give up my undergarments!”
Arvel could see that the struggle was going nowhere. He walked over to Rain and reached down, grasping her hips to pick her up. He lifted her from the goat pen with such ease, that for a brief moment, Rain thought she was flying, before he sat her up on one of the cross beams of the fence. Rain looked down at Arvel, cheeks flushing deeply, as she felt his sinewy hands still resting on her hips.
“Ah,” Rain said softly, “Arvel you... you’re very strong.”
“Yeah,” he said with a little grin, “I don’t know exactly how it works, but even though I don’t lose any vitality, if another Warrior kills me, they still absorb something. So when I kill them, I get that back too. You wouldn’t believe what a scrawny teenager I was.”
He was far from scrawny now. Rain touched Arvel’s forearms as he held her hips steady on the fence, feeling the muscles of a hard-working farmer, only further enhanced by his heroic victory. There was a voice inside that told her that she was being foolish, that she was only drawn to him because he rescued her from the most traumatic event of her life. But there was another voice inside that reminded her that there was nothing wrong with showing her gratitude, and the myriad ways she could repay him began to brew in her mind as she gazed down at his sun-tanned arms.
But then, she cast a glimpse over Arvel’s shoulder.
In the middle of the pen, Tim was eating mouthfuls of hay from the bucket that Rain had been forced to drop. When he lifted his head, a pair of stretched and mangled ruffled bloomers were hanging from his horn like an ill-gotten war trophy. Tim looked directly at her and bleated firmly.
“MUTTON STEW!” Rain shouted as she violently shook her fist at Tim, “Goat skewers! Rosemary garlic goat chops!”
Arvel threw his arms around Rain’s waist to catch her as she nearly flew off of the fence, and even with his strength, he struggled to hold her as she kicked and punched at the air in Tim’s direction. He laid her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes as he trudged for the gate, and said, “Alright I think it’s time you went inside and cooled down.”