Chirp. Chirp.

I woke up at my bedside, much the same as I had gone to sleep the night before. Beside me, Grandma sat in the chair, her eyes closed as she lay back in the seat. Birds played outside my window, and soft golden light streamed through the room.

I shot up in bed. Had it all been a dream? The cookies, the goblins, the oven, the goblin king? Had they all been just pieces of the night left behind? I patted my chest and checked for cuts or bruises but found none. Grandma looked perfectly fine as well. There were no signs of what had happened the night before.

That was if they had happened at all.

"Grandma, Grandma!" I jumped out of bed, wrapping my arms around her, and hugged her tightly. "You're alright!"

"Hzat—" she said, her eyes snapping open and searching the room. "What are you doing now, child? You can't go jumping on an old woman like that. You're getting far too big to be roughhousing around with me!"

"The goblins!" I said. "They came last night! Don't you remember?"

She looked at me with her grey eyes, a faint smile curling her lips, but shook her head. I frowned, leaning forward into her warm embrace, and she hugged me tight around the shoulders. It had been so real. I knew I had saved her from the goblin king last night.

"Dear, dear," she said, humming softly as she rocked me back and forth. "I'm afraid that my stories have caused you to have a flight of fancy. Last night was as normal as any other night. I put you in bed and had a nightcap for myself before nodding off in the living room chair. I didn't hear a peep out of you or any goblins last night. Of that, you can be certain!"

"But—"

"No buts," she said, wagging a finger in my face. "I may have goblins on the mind, child, but making up stories about them is just as likely to bring them here than anything else you might do. Goblins are something that is best left alone and only talked about when the threat is real!"

I wanted to argue, but she wasn't going to let me. I already knew she was in one of her moods. So long as her mind was set, she wouldn't change her mind. I hugged her tight anyway. She might have been a crazy old woman, but she was my Grandma all the same. Last night, she had almost become a meat pie, and I had saved her.

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I smiled despite her reprimand. I had saved my Grandma from goblins. There was no greater feat than that. All the knights in the world couldn't say the same. Sure, they had fought off dragons and saved princesses, but where were the stories about them saving their Grandma's from goblins?

"You know, I even made breakfast for you but forgot about it while I was resting in the chair," Grandma said, her reprimand forgotten. "I spent all morning cooking it for you."

"You did?" I asked, glee rising up in my heart.

"I did," Grandma said, scooping me into her arms and picking me up.

She carried me out of the room slowly, as was her pace. I didn't stop her. I would cherish my time with her from now on. I almost didn't notice the brown object on the floor, shaped like a disk near the foot of my bed. However, Gradnma walked slowly, so I had plenty of time to see it.

By the foot of my bed, there was a cookie, partially eaten and discarded on the floor. I remembered I had left it on the table beside the bed the night before. I hadn't finished it, and it was the goblin who had dropped it on the ground. I licked my lips as we headed for the door and out into the hall.

I should have been happy to have that confirmation of the night's events, but instead, it left a solid weight in my stomach. I had saved my Grandma, right? I had stopped the goblin king from forcing her into the oven and baking her into a meat pie.

Yet, I doubted everything.

As we walked down the stairs, I smelled a sweet scent wafting up from the kitchen. I held onto Grandma tightly as she slowly took her time going down the stairs. Each step caused her to grunt a little, and I suddenly felt like I was being a bother.

I could walk down the steps on my own. I was growing up. I didn't want to be a burden.

I left those thoughts unsaid as we made it into the kitchen. She sat me in a chair at the kitchen table and shuffled over to the oven. Everything seemed so normal to me. Almost too normal, in fact.

"Oh, you'll really like this breakfast," Grandma said as she put on oven mitts and made her way over to the oven. "I haven't cooked it in so long, and your parents always appreciated it. It was your father's favorite back when he was your age."

Sweat rolled down my back as she talked. Grandma never talked about my parents with me. She would only ever talk about the goblins and how dangerous they were. The only reason I even knew I had parents was the old diaries I had found that my mother had kept. Yet now, Grandma couldn't seem to not talk about my parents.

I licked my lips. What was wrong with her? Was it just my imagination because of the night before? I watched her as she opened the oven, blasting the kitchen with the smell of hot bread and a burning sweet aroma. Where had I smelled that before? I couldn't remember in the haze.

"What is it?" I asked, gulping down the lump in my throat.

"Why." Grandma smiled as she pulled the tray out of the oven. "It's a meat pie!"