Shine-Catch stared. Out in the open sand, beyond the safety of the rocks, something gleamed. The harsh sunlight was reflecting on something, something half-buried. That something called to her. It had the promise of the unknown. It could be anything.

Just like anything could happen once she left the safety of the stone underfoot. Good, reliable stone. Unbending and unyielding. Sheltering and safe. The precise opposite of sand, which could hide any number of nasty crawling things hungry for goblin-flesh.

She kept trying to tell herself that - stone good, sand bad - but her feet were itching. She caaarefully scooted down towards the very edge of the stone outcropping, and reached one toe down to brush the sand. Nothing bad happened.

Which meant nothing bad would happen. Right?

Well. She could get yelled at. That would be bad.

Carefully she looked over her shoulder, trying to be stealth-like. Bug-Eater wasn’t paying attention. Bug-Eater was licking the underside of a rock.

Biting her tongue, Shiny grabbed for her spear and dropped onto the sand. It squished up between her toes, warm and gritty, but nothing leapt out to eat her. She tip-toed further out, watching the sky for shadows, watching the earth for something tunneling towards her.

When she remained un-eaten, she just ran. Darting over the sand to grab the shiny-thing and beat a hasty retreat back to the rocks.

By the time loathsome, dull-brains Bug-Eater finally looked over his shoulder, a centipede dangling from his lips and doing nasty wriggling things, she was sitting at her post looking dutifully watchful. He slurped up all those wriggly legs and Shiny suppressed a gag of horror.

Waiting for him to go back to his namesake hobby, she uncurled her fist. Within the small green fingers sat a pile of sand, some old dried up bug-husks, and a small ring made out of deep green crystal. She kicked her legs happily as they dangled off the edge. Yessss.

She knew it was something good because there was a rift-storm the day before, and those always brought strange things from faraway places. The ring had little letters on its sides, and even if she couldn’t read, she knew what they said. They said ‘HEY SHINY I WAS MADE FOR YOU.’

They said ‘SHINY WE LOVE YOU.’

They said ‘SHINY OTHER GOBLINS HAVE BRAINWORMS. YOUR BRAIN IS BIG AND NOT ALL CHEWED UP BY WORMS.’

They were little letters from the god saying how she was the best of the goblins and shouldn’t give up hope that someday, some very special day, all the other goblins would die horribly and she’d be free to roam the wastes like a magpie-princess collecting all that glitters.

But today, she was on snail-watch. This was deeply unfair, because while someone had to watch for snails, it definitely did not have to be someone named Shiny.

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The goblin tribe was built into a cliff, see? A beautiful big cliff full of dark little burrows where goblins could hide and be safe. Lovely, wonderful cliff, made of stone so nothing could dig up from beneath while they slept and eat their toes off while they dreamed of snail-meat roasts. Wild-Eye was the chief, and Tusk-Mouth was the warchief, for wars and the like.

Shiny should have been the chief, but she’d yet to win the absolute adoration of her peers. Somehow. They were taking an awful long time to notice her, except for the times they made fun. Or caught her sneaking around and said stupid things like ‘Shiny you’re supposed to be watching for snails.’

She haaaated that.

See, the bad thing about the cliffs was other things like it there, in the dark and the relative cold of the earth. They liked to rest their slimy bodies and dream their slimy dreams, and while they’d mostly cleared them out, there were still caverns deep beneath the earth where bad things grew. The Low Caves.

Mushroom-folk. Those were bad. Hydrapedes, those were awful. Gibble-rollers, toe-biters, shade-cats. There was even a second, worse kind of mushroom-folk. The ones that made Shiny afraid of every person whose face she couldn’t see. Actually, if it wasn’t a goblin it was probably bad. Goblins did not make many friends.

But the worst - absolute worst, hands down, sworn on the mummified pinky finger she kept in a jar - were snails. Snails could slink through the tunnels like shadows. They made no noise, and they would ooze along the walls searching for days.

Goblins would be walking happily along and down reaches a big, oozy snail mouth and bites their head right off so quick the body keeps walking for a few heartbeats and then falls down.

Now, the good bit was, snails didn’t come up into the High Caves too often. Actually they wouldn’t at all if they were left alone. It was only when a special breed of worm chewed its way into their brain that they got the urge to come up, out into the sun. Nasty, awful worm, that melted their brain so they’d come up topside and get eaten by rocs and the worm could breed in big piles of birdshit left behind.

The world was nasty.

But - because the snail was pretty dumb and stupid what on account of its brain being goo - it was also the best chance the tribe got to hunt. Which meant somebody had to sit here all day, fishing for snails with wormy brains.

She hefted her spear. It jangled with dozens of shiny bits she’d stuck on leather cords and threaded through the handle. Some people liked to put skulls on their spears. That was lame. Everyone had a skull. Having two wasn’t scary. Now, scorpions could be scary. You never knew if a scorpion was in your boot, and then-

“SHINY!”

She turned in time to see the shadow crawling over the rocks. The sunlight poured through its thin, goopy flesh, and she could see the worms in its brain. They were bright stripes of red and yellow and orange, and they breathed in and out, shrinking and expanding within its veins. She could see the teeth in its mouth too, dripping over with hungry slimy spit.

Every bit of Shiny froze except her legs, which trembled like leaves in the wind. Bug-Eater tackled her out of the way just before the tide of gelatinous grey slug poured down over the rocks where she’d been, its body slithering and slipping down the rocks towards open sand.

It hadn’t even noticed the tiny goblin in its way. If it had, she would’ve been chewed up in a heartbeat. Bug-Eater had saved her from being Bug-Eaten. She stared up into his big piss-yellow eyes as he asked if she was okay, and awkwardly pulled his hands back from being wrapped around her waist.

She would have kissed him if his mouth wasn’t famously full of bug.

“Come on.” He climbed off of her, looking out at the snail as it glided through the desert. Soon the rocs would come swooping over and see their prey waiting for them. If the tribe didn’t catch their breakfast soon, somebody else would catch it for them.

It was time for a big ol’ family brawl with a giant snail high on brain-eating wormfarts.