I ascended the steps to the Temple of Elders slowly, my legs dragging and catching on the smallest things. I wanted to go but my body didn’t seem to agree. So while I was excited, there still was a pit in my stomach and my heart was pounding away. The fearful eyes of my mothers, waiting at the base of the steps, didn’t help my anxiety. Two of them were peeking between their fingers as if the steps would swallow me whole like a blink beast. My mothers were scared. And to tell you the truth, on some level, so was I.

I gave my mothers what I hoped was a reassuring smile, but I knew that wouldn’t do much. So instead, I gritted my teeth and kept climbing the steps. I ascended quickly, not out of a sense of urgency, but because I’m just fast by nature. That’s why they called me Quick. I know, it’s not a very inventive name, but it works better in Goblin, I promise. The Northman tongue…well, it muddles things. There’s a reason why none of the great three poets are Northmen. Sure, none of them are goblins, but that’s because elves are narcissistic—Okay I’m getting off track. Sorry.

Finally, I reached the top of the steps. Most would have collapsed from exhaustion, but not me. Instead, I just leaned against a pillar and caught my breath. I was winded, but not out.

The Temple of Elders sat atop a hill, overlooking the entire city. The view was spectacular from here, the red tile roofs of the city were like rows and rows of red trees. Unfortunately, the only public way up to here was the steps of memory; hundreds of impossibly well-maintained marble steps.

Having caught my breath, I walked up to a guard, who was standing ramrod rigid, clutching a spear like it was the only thing keeping him from floating off into the sky, and said, “Hi, my name’s Quick, of the house Thunderhorse. I was called here for an audience with the Elders.”

The guard didn’t respond to me, he just extended his arm and pointed down the hall. I shrugged, said a quick thanks, and walked on. Every five or so meters, there was another guard, all in very similar positions to the first. None of them so much as blinked at me as I went by. Not that I looked like much of a threat. I wasn’t much of a fighter. No, I’d always been better at the…lighter professions.

Finally, I reached the tall oaken doors that lead into the Chamber of the Elders. On the door, the stories of our people were carved in small but intricate detail. Every young goblin knew of these doors, we had to come and visit them for school trips. Let me tell you, when you’re only a foot tall, those stairs are even worse.

Two guards stationed by the door saw me coming and pulled on chains that hung next to them as I drew closer. The door to the Chamber of the Elders began to slowly swing open without so much of a sound. It didn’t even creak or groan. Amazing engineering, that. One of my mothers, Sandy, was an engineer, though she built things like plumbing systems, not doors. And I’d never got her knack for engineering, I just couldn’t figure it out. But still, she impressed enough knowledge onto me that I knew a giant door swinging open completely silently was an impressive feat.

I stepped inside and found myself staring up at the Thrones of the Elders. Seven thrones were reserved for the elected Elders of our community, six of which were empty right now. I was a bit confused. I’d never heard of an audience with just one elder. I looked at the middle throne, where I saw my grandmother, Carter. She’d been elected as an Elder before I was born and had held onto the position ever since.

“Hi Grandma,” I said, “where’s everyone else?”

“Quick,” my Grandmother said, her voice booming over the stones, “I’m afraid I’ve called you here to give you some bad news.”

A momentary flash of panic washed over me. Bad news from Grandma could only mean one thing: someone was dead. I did some family accounting. All my mothers were, of course, alive. I’d seen them not half an hour ago. All my aunts and cousins were fine too, I’d seen them just this morning when I got the summons. I thought of my friends, who had been the first ones outside of my family that I’d told about the summons. They were all alive too, as far as I knew. I decided to just ask.

“Is someone dead, Grandma?”

My Grandmother hung her head and let out a long sigh. “How…how old are you now, Quick?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I’m twenty now, Grandma,” I answered quickly.

“And…how are you feeling about your…condition?” my Grandma asked, shifting uncomfortably in her chair.

I flinched and looked down. A wave of shame washed over me. My condition, as she so delicately put it, was never far from my mind. How could it be? I was a freak.

Normally, goblin skin came in hues of greens, oranges, and reds. Mine was a clayish brown, more suitable for a riverbed than goblin skin. As if my skin condition wasn’t enough, there was more. So much more.

My ears were small and while they were pointed, they weren’t long and semi-horizontal like most goblins’ ears. No, they pointed up semi-diagonally, running nearly parallel to my face. My teeth were also dull, not sharp enough to let me easily tear raw meat from the bone. I needed to use knives to cut food a lot of the time. It was humiliating. Add it all together and all of my deformities meant I hardly seemed like a goblin at all. Like I said, I was a freak.

“Fine, Grandma. I’m feeling fine,” I lied.

“Well, um,” my Grandma said, scratching her chin, “we kind of…figured you’d have worked it out by now. You’re a smart girl, it’s…” She trailed off, lost in thought.

“Worked what out, Grandma?”

Grandma Carter continued to shift uncomfortably in her throne. She cleared her throat and began to say something, but just sighed.

Finally, she said, “You know your mother?”

“Which one?” I asked.

“Your birth mother. My daughter.”

“Yes,” I said, “of course. Mother Steadfast. She saw me off today. She’s waiting at the bottom of the steps right now.”

“Yes,” Grandma Carter muttered, “Steadfast always was an anxious one. Her and her wives…” She trailed off and sighed. “They were supposed to tell you when you were younger,” she said, as if that was supposed to explain anything. “But they never quite got to it…so we agreed to just wait for you to figure it out on your own.”

“Figure out what?” I asked, my voice indignant. Tears were welling in my eyes.

My Grandmother groaned and slumped in her chair a bit. “You’re not a goblin, Quick.”

For just a second, everything froze. Even my heart stopped beating. The room seemed to expand, my grandmother’s throne going miles away.

“What!?” I shouted. I took a deep breath and tried to compose myself. I failed.

At first, I denied it. I’d said things like, I can’t be a human, what about my birth mother? She’s a goblin! And then Grandma Carter gave me some quite obvious, but still difficult to hear, answers to my questions. Like, for example, that, Mother Steadfast, the woman I’d believed my entire life to be my birth mother, wasn’t actually my birth mother.

Then, I got a bit angry. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I did. I kicked, cried, screamed, and slammed my fists onto the floor. I’m surprised Grandma didn’t have guards come in to restrain me.

When I’d finally gotten over my little tantrum, I began to plead with my Grandmother not to tell the rest of the tribe, especially my family and friends. They’d be heartbroken, I said. Then, my Grandmother told me they all knew. Every single person in the city did, actually. All twenty thousand did. And they’d all been ordered to pretend I was a goblin. For my own peace of mind, apparently.

After that little revelation, I curled into a ball and began to sob. That was when the guards came. They got a stretcher, rolled me onto it, and carried me down the steps. One of the guards was a friend of mine, a schoolmate named Ripper.

“It’s okay, Quick,” she said, holding the arm of the stretcher with one hand and patting me with the other. “Nothing’s going to change around here, don’t worry. We’ve already known for a while.”

“Yeah!” another guard said, a bit too excitedly. I think he’d gone to my elementary school, but I wasn’t sure. “I mean, they told us in Kindergarten, so we wouldn’t bully you.” I groaned. I recognized him. He was Pen, the runt who’d bullied me all of elementary school.

Wait…they’d known since KINDERGARTEN? I began to sob again. Ripper thwacked Pen on the shoulder and he shut up. He also had the grace to look a bit ashamed of himself. That made me feel a bit better, but not enough to stop me from crying.

“Look,” Ripper said, wiping away the tears that were streaming down my face, making the traditional makeup I was wearing run, “I always thought it was kind of hot that you weren’t a goblin. It gave you an exotic flair.”

For some reason, that made me cry even harder. So, I cried all the way home. There, my mothers carried me to my room, where I continued to cry until I fell asleep.