Riverbank Awakening

Little mother…

The voice was warm and heavy as sun-warmed earth, curling through the dark that cradled her after drowning. They would have taken your life to feed their spite. I take it back to feed my people.

She tried to speak, but the dark filled her mouth.

You will not be small again. You will carry my strength between your legs, my will in your hips. Let them see you, let them want, let them open. Every step will be a planting, every embrace a sowing. Wake, and be mine.

Her eyes flew open.

Cold.

Not just air-cold, ****-cold, marrow-deep, as if the water still sat inside her lungs, ice on her ribs. The sky above was a flat smear of grey, the skeletal branches overhead shaking in a wind she couldn’t feel.

She coughed hard, rolling onto her side, and retched up river water until her stomach cramped. Her hands clawed into the mud for balance, small, green hands, the fingers wrong, the nails hooked and sharp.

Her breath stuttered. She turned them over, once, twice. “What…” The voice didn’t sound like hers. Higher, raspier.

Her chest tightened as she pulled herself toward the water’s edge. A slick, rippling reflection formed between the reeds: a face she didn’t know: yellow eyes too bright, pupils narrowed like a cat’s; wet hair plastered to a skull narrower than it should be; a mouth full of sharp teeth that parted in disbelief; big bat-like ears that stuck far out to either side.

Her pulse began to race. She scrambled back from the water’s edge, splashing into the shallows. “No, no, no, no-”

She clutched her head, pressing against the unfamiliar skull as if she could squeeze herself back into her halfling shape. “It’s fine, Veth, it’s fine, just… just… think. Maybe you hit your head, maybe you’re sick, maybe…”

The thought hit like a hammer. Yeza. Luc.

The names hit like stones dropped into her chest, and with them came the rush of how she’d gotten here: the stink of the goblin camp, the cold weeks locked away with her husband and little boy, the frantic night she’d shoved them ahead into the dark, telling them to run while she turned back to lead the pack away. She could still feel the weight of the acid flask in her hand, see Drekkit’s face as it broke and burned him down. She’d thought, for one breath, she’d bought them their freedom. Then Khaaz’s hands were in her hair, her voice hissing in Veth’s ear as she dragged her to the old witch. Make her suffer.

She gasped. “The goblins- oh gods. Where are they? Did they- did they get away? Did they... oh no, oh no, oh no...” Her voice pitched higher, faster, words tumbling over each other. “I have to find them, I have to-”

The movement brought her knees up and something moved with her. A drag, a wet slap against her shins.

Her eyes dropped.

She froze.

It lay across her lap like some obscene log of flesh, green, veined, thick as her arm, the blunt head resting in the mud beyond her feet. Flaccid, yet so long it spanned from her hips to her ankles, the weight of it bowing slightly under its own mass. Each tiny motion made it sway, dragging at the skin of her lower belly. Beneath it, two massive, pendulous balls rested in the muck like water-heavy gourds, each one absurdly large for her tiny, wiry frame.

Her stomach turned over violently. “What- what- no, no, no, no-” She scrabbled backward on her hands, the thing folding and coiling clumsily over her thighs as she moved, heavy enough to thump against her knees with each shift. She grabbed at herself, as if she could tear it away, but the sensation, the living, attached reality of it, shot up through her belly and made her gag.

“This isn’t- this isn’t real. This isn’t- oh gods, this is disgusting- this is wrong-” Her voice cracked, a sob catching in her throat. “I’m a goblin. A goblin with… with…” she gestured wildly, unable to say it, “…this!”

Her mind spun. Goblins were filthy, vicious little monsters that stole chickens and gutted travelers for a crust of bread. And now she was one. She could picture her husband’s face if he saw her like this- his horror. Luc’s fear. Her gut clenched so hard it hurt.

A rustle. Footsteps through damp leaves.

Veth’s head jerked toward the sound and froze.

A human woman stepped out from between the trees, skirts muddy, a basket of greens hooked on her arm. She stopped dead when she saw what was crouched in the shallows.

Veth scrambled backward on her hands, the cold water lapping at her calves. “Don’t- don’t come near me!” she blurted, voice breaking. “I’m not- I’m not a goblin!”

Her little green hands darted uselessly over herself one up to hide her bare little tits, the other trying to cover the massive, length sprawled between her legs. It folded and shifted wetly as she moved, the weight dragging in the mud past her feet, too big to shield with fingers and forearm.

The woman didn’t scream. She didn’t run. She just… looked.

Veth didn’t see the way her gaze flicked down, held there a heartbeat too long, then darted back up. Didn’t see the small crease between the woman’s brows as the image in her head. Of goblins as relentless raiders, ever striking at the edges of settled life failed to match the sight in front of her: a soaked, trembling, weaponless scrap of a goblin, eyes wide with fear… and that.

“Stay back!” Veth pleaded, her words tumbling fast. “Please, don't tell- there’ll be a posse. If they find me they’ll kill me, they’ll-” Her breath hitched, and she tried to fold in tighter, to make herself smaller, but the thing between her legs only coiled over her thighs like some obscene, living rope.

The woman’s expression softened. Not with warmth exactly, but with something almost like curiosity. This wasn’t the cackling, blood-smeared raider of tavern tales. Just a pathetic, shivering thing. Still… well-hung enough that the image would stick in her mind longer than it should.

“Marla?” A man’s voice called from deeper in the trees.

The woman turned her head toward the sound.

Veth bolted.

She splashed through the shallows, scrambling up the opposite bank, wet mud sucking at her feet, heart hammering. She didn’t look back to see the woman watching her go.

She didn’t stop running until her lungs burned and her thighs trembled, the constant slap and drag of that obscene weight between her legs turning her gait into an awkward, lurching lope. The thing shifted with every step, heavy enough to pull at her hips, the swing of it forcing her knees wider than she wanted. Even in her panic, she hated the way it felt, hated the way her body simply carried it like it belonged there.

She avoided the game trails, keeping to the roughest ground she could find. Settlements were out of the question; a lone goblin near farmland was as good as dead, especially one without weapons or clothes. But the wilds weren’t much ****. A lone goblin was the bottom rung of the ladder out here.

That memory almost made her miss the first sign she wasn’t alone.

The snap of a branch. The quick hiss of voices. She whirled toward the sound just as the underbrush erupted.

Three goblins came at her at once, knives in hand. She stumbled back, throwing up her hands, expecting the blades to bite. But they didn’t. They’d stopped short, eyes wide, all three pairs fixed squarely between her legs.

One of them barked something in Goblin, a tone that was half question, half disbelief. Another snorted and said something that made the others glance at each other and laugh.

They didn’t kill her.

A knife flicked toward the trees, a gesture for her to move. She didn’t have the strength to fight, not bare-handed and panting like this. They circled her instead, eyes never quite leaving the pendulous length swinging under her belly. One reached out and poked the side of it with his knife-hand, as if testing a melon for ripeness. The other two cackled.

They spoke again, this time slower, and though she barely caught a word, she could guess the gist from the way they kept glancing between her face and the impossible thing she carried. She heard one word clearly, og’ruk, and she thought she understand: ogre-blood. In their minds, nothing else could explain it.

They bound her wrists and drove her on through the underbrush.

She really hoped they weren't dragging her back to that bitch Khaaz.