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thewatercolours · 2 months

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King's Quest Fic: "The Fairy" (Goblin Graham, #12)

"Gwendolyn. What are you still doing in here? Didn't you hear the guards order everyone out? Can't you hear everything creaking?"

"Um - what? Sorry?"

"Something's wrong, cousin. The castle's shaking on its foundations. Has been since early morning. Something strange here, making it go unstable all of a sudden. You didn't notice? There's... Oh my stars. Gwendolyn! Did those bricks fall while you were in here?"

"Maybe? I didn't really notice. The mirror -"

"I know, I know, you were too busy watching the mirror. I mean, look! It's taken out a quarter of the ceiling? What would you have done if it had collapsed on your head? Look, we'll take the mirror with us, but we've got to get out! Did you even hear me?"

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Perhaps it was the rich overground air, or the long hours spent escaping, or maybe the cold was more comfortable these days. Graham drifted off as easily as any sleeper could wish. As he blinked away his last moments of consciousness, he felt vaguely that he ought to toss and turn now that he’d been told of Manny and the goblins’ siege of the castle. Insomnia felt more responsible. But exhaustion smoothed his fears away before he could wake himself to make a plan. Three quarters asleep, he snuggled deep into his cloak between the roots of a burly yew.

Mid-dream, something roused him. He rolled onto his right side, meaning to squint at the bedside clock in the castle’s royal chamber. Instead, he found himself eye to eye with a face, glowing blue as midwinter stars. The face giggled.

Untangling himself from the cloak, Graham yelped and scrambled to sit up, back against the tree.

The person before him was close to his own goblin size, and knelt to one side of him with a starry-eyed smile. Unnaturally lithe and dainty-featured she looked, just as he had always heard wood sprites described. He could not see much of her wings, but they appeared to be coolly golden and folded neatly behind her shoulders. Tittering musically, the fairy tapped the end of his nose with one shining finger, sending specks of light he could only just make out skittering over his skin. “Well, aren’t you the wee little goblin man! How precious!”

Half awake and wholly thunderstruck, Graham could not choke a single word from his throat.

She took hold of his long ears. They twitched away reflexively, despite her gentleness. She laughed in gleeful surprise. “Awww! Did I make you flinch? I’ll be careful. You’ve got such big, swoopy, droopy ears, haven’t you? Yes you have, yes you have,” she crooned, reaching again to stroke them.

“Who are you?” whispered Graham, but his voice was even hoarser with sleep, almost nothing like speech. She did not seem to notice.

“A sleeeepy goblin, a tuckered out little goblin,” she went on, fondly rumpling his hair. Her hands were kind, but cool to the touch, even to his strange skin. And though it was hard to tell what she was doing, it appeared that every time she made contact, her hands glowed the brighter, just for a moment. “Oh, your pupils are so big right now! Great big eyes to see in the dark. What are you doing up here in the forest? A bit lost? Or were you just too dozy to crawl downstairs to your home? Are you a tiny bit scared?” she asked as Graham made another attempt to speak up. “Don’t be frightened, little friend. I know something that might make you happy.” She spread her luminous golden wings wide, and flapped them so that gleaming dust dropped in their wake. Her grin grew broader. “See that? I’m a fairy! Yes, you know all about us, don’t you? From your games?”

Graham straightened up where he sat, and cleared his throat pointedly. “For your information -”

Enraptured, she paid no heed. “Just look at you, though.Your little tummy, and your nubby little fangs, and those little pink… freckles…” A suspicious look flashed across her face. She poked an interrogative finger at his chin and cheekbones, considerably less gently. “Not freckles,” she muttered, narrowing her eyes. “You, good sir, have holes in your skin. Or growths, maybe. That’s human flesh, that is.” She sounded positively disgusted. “Or possibly mould. Comes to much the same thing.”

He had never demanded this of anyone, but enough was enough. “You,” said Graham firmly, “will call me ‘Your Majesty.’”

The fairy leaned back, looking him over from tuft to toe. She still smiled, but her merriment had changed to mockery. “‘Your majesty,’ eh?” she drawled. “A little king, eh? Look here. I happen to know the goblin king, and you ain’t him, sugarplum.”

“I’ve met him too,” said Graham with dignity, squaring his narrow shoulders. “I am the King of Daventry.”

A flicker of doubt passed over her, but she regained herself a moment later. “I don’t keep up much with politics, but even I know the king of Daventry is your standard, garden-variety human. Now, you,” she leaned in again and began connecting the dots on his face with her finger, “are just a goblin with human pimples. Ugh! They’re warm!”

He brushed her arm aside, frowning. “Look, I don’t particularly care if you believe me,” he said, mind whirring, “but if you don’t quit touching my face…” What could he say? “… you’re gonna be going home with spots yourself.”

The fairy recoiled, and turned from blue to something slightly closer to violet. “It’s catching?” she shrieked.

“Like a fishing line,” said Graham brightly. “Take the warning where I didn’t.”

The fairy backed off further and rubbed her hands off her sides, but there still seemed something unconvinced in her. “You’re very well-spoken for a goblin,” she said slowly. “Why did you say you’re the King of Daventry?”

“Because I am. I’m under a spell of sorts.”

“A spell. Oho.” She stroked her chin. “Well, that’s easier to check up on, isn’t it? All right, cupcake, on your feet.”

“Oh, but my -”

Graham’s body parted ways with the forest floor. He rose three feet into the air, and tilted into a standing position despite himself. His dark hair billowed out as though he were underwater. Even his clothing did not drape in the ordinary way. His green wrists stuck out of his sleeve cuffs without the fabric touching them. His satin-trimmed cloak followed his trajectory up into the air, and then wandered gently and randomly like cream on a hot drink. “Hey!” he cried, throwing himself forward, hoping he could dive back to the ground. But he only found himself turning the slowest of slow-motion somersaults in the air. Head over heels he spun, groping for anything solid, but the fairy had lifted him into the middle of the clearing. Nothing met his grasp.

As he turned right way up, he came face to face with the fairy. She tapped his nose again, with just enough force that he lost momentum and didn’t fall into another somersault. “You know you go cross-eyed when I boop your nose?” She crossed her own eyes exaggeratedly. “Adorbs.”

He had no intention of using his claws on her, but this couldn’t go on. He glared and held up a warning finger. “I’m gonna have to ask you to put me down right this second, or this is going to be a diplomatic incident under Daventry Decree 90983.”

“Yes, yes, that sounds fun. But now, let’s have a better look at you.” She twirled her finger playfully.

A mellow warmth kindled in Graham’s core, kind as hot soup and a blanket when you’ve just come in from the cold. It fanned out through him to the tips of his overlong toes and gnarled, spindly fingers. His eyes widened in shock, and he gasped. Gentle as fog melting off a window, his claws flattened and pulled back into themselves, and his fingertips softened into tender pink skin.

The forest quieted. His vision dimmed, and the luminescent greens and purples of the night faded into a largely detail-less darkness.

Then he found himself laughing giddily as he changed and changed. He could hardly see a thing, but oh stars, could he feel it! He threw out his arms above his head as though he had just woken up, and stretched. Never had it felt so rewarding, for his arms actually stretched along with him. He could feel his spine and legs doing the same as that warmth spread through every inch of him. Meanwhile, his hands and bare feet shrank, growing less supple but so wonderfully familiar. And yet, remarkable in their unfamiliarity too. He flexed his goblin hand, and then his human hand, which hadn’t deserved that name in so long, marvelling at how new the sensation of closing his own fingers felt after only a few weeks. It all seemed so much more real than anything had since his transformation began. There was a clarity and quickness in his head that made him wonder how much his mind had been damped till now.

And his face, his face which he hardly ever dared touch, thawed into its true self. He ran his fine fingers over his great big nose, his cheeks, his eyelashes. He knew every line. His fingers came away from his eyes wet with tears. He couldn’t help but smile through them, a smile full of the greatest gratitude he had known in his life. “Thank you,” he murmured, turning to the fairy, hardly able to see her through the mist in his eyes. “Thank you!”

His real voice.

She nodded, smiling wryly. “Well, I guess you are human.” Casually, she snapped her fingers.

Almost instantly, Graham’s whole body reverted. His arms and legs snapped back like stretchy putty released, and he lost half his height. His skin shuddered, rippling and goosebumping. The sensation was something like plunging into a freezing pool through a layer of algae. The warmth inside him extinguished. Then green, and claws, and long, floppy ears flattening against his neck. He plopped to the ground, landing gracelessly on his bottom.

He hardly processed the jolt his ankle took when he made impact, or the forest’s restored brightness. She had turned him back. Back into a goblin. “What?” he growled, rounding on her and shaking with sudden fury. “Didn’t you see? Couldn’t you tell? I wanted to be myself again! I thought you were helping me!”

“Aww,” the fairy jeered, crouching down to the ground with him and tilting her head to one side. “Are we having a tantrum? Is that the king or the goblin side coming out, I wonder?”

“Turn me back,” he said sternly, stumbling to his feet. “I need to be human. My kingdom’s under attack as we speak. They need me.”

She rose and patted his cheek. Her touch only made him aware that his skin had curdled again. “Take it from me,” she said. “As a human, you’re not much to write home about. Better stick with the twitchy ears, little guy. You’re cute as a button.”

With a surge of ferocity, Graham snarled and shoved her backward. She squeaked and tripped over her own feet into a tall patch of bracken. He started forward angrily, unsure of anything but that he would make her understand the gravity of his situation. But with its customary unfortunate timing, his ankle buckled, and he sank to one knee, wincing and sucking his teeth to keep from snarling further. The voice of reason surfaced. Keep your head. Don’t give in to that side. Anything but that.

The fairy sat up and stared, her jaw hanging open. “Oh. Oh. Did I do that?” There was a long pause as they pulled themselves together. Then the first note of sympathy since her realization that he was human entered her voice. “I see you have a bad foot. Do you… do you want me to put you back up in the air a while longer?” “I’m fine. I’ll just sit down,” said Graham, leveling his voice and grabbing at a branch to support himself. He nearly pitched over. It was a flimsy evergreen, and it wobbled in his hand.

The fairy chewed her lip uncomfortably, and her hands glowed again, though he hadn’t seen her touch anything. “Okay.”

In a moment, he was steady again. The same unseen power carried his legs out from under him. “None of that now!” he shouted, but he need not have worried. The magic set him down carefully in a seated position, propped up against a generous oak, and his foot elevated on a mossy stone.

She settled herself on the farthest side of the clearing from him, folding her hands in her lap. “I don’t like seeing a little goblin hurting,” she mumbled, hanging her head and sounding a bit ashamed. “Even if they’re actually a human king.” She spoke more slowly. “I won’t touch your foot if you don’t want me to, but I’d like to make this better, if you’ll let me. I mean, not magically. But I could find food, or a change of bandages, or something.”

Graham took a deep breath, and pushed away the sneering, angry remarks he could have made. “I… am grateful you want to help me,” he said carefully. “But you would help me and my people a lot more if you worried less about my foot and more about the spell I’m under. You’ve already shown me it’s easy for you to break it. So…”

Yet again, she interrupted him, twiddling her thumbs and shaking her head with a doleful smile. “I think you’ve jumped to conclusions here, um… What’s your name?”

“Graham.”

“Graham. Mine’s Orri. Yeah. So, I didn’t break any spell just now. I just took a quick peek at your real form. It’s a pretty basic magical maneuver, and it doesn’t actually change anything.”

“Well, it certainly felt real,” Graham said, rubbing his ears.

“I guess it would. But it would have undone itself in a few seconds anyway. It’s just a peeling back of the magic for a moment to get a glimpse. It’s not a transformation.” Orri looked up and met his gaze with a disheartened shrug. “I couldn’t turn you into a human if I wanted to - not without a wish, and those are, um, pretty serious.”

“A wish?” Graham stiffened, and he stared at her fixedly. “You mean you could grant a wish?”

Orri heaved a sigh that was more sincere than anything she had said thus far. “Full truth here for a second? I’ve never done wishes before, exactly. Humans aren’t really my thing, if you couldn’t guess. I mean, technically I could probably do it. But it’s messy. Messy for you, messy for me. And give me another ten minutes and I won’t feel so bad about hurting your foot, and I’ll just be mad at you again for not being a real goblin.”

Something crinkled in the corner of her eye. A new light came over her features, literally, and traveled all the way to the ends of her hair. “I mean, I suppose I could make you into a real goblin. That’s loads easier than going the other way ‘round, and it wouldn’t take a wish!” Orri's enthusiasm grew with every word. She practically bounced up and down where she sat.“Oh man. Oh man, I could totally handle that! We’ll just sand down your mind a bit, make a few simplifications …”

“Oh, no, no! That won’t be necessary,” stammered Graham. He forced himself to stay calm, trying to pull her back to her more collected state. “Er, ouch, my foot, my poor foot!”

But Orri was back in full swing, already leaping into his personal space again. “Oh Graham, that would solve everything! Just a few tweaks in that little head of yours, and no more sad king. Your mother taught you all your nursery rhymes and fairy tales when you were a boy, I hope?”

“M-my sister, actually, but that’s -”

“Then you’re ready! You’d be so happy. I mean, you could still be a little grumpypants if you wanted to. It’s not like they don’t get mad sometimes. But most of the time, they just act out stories, and make costumes and stuff. Not a care in the world.” Her fingers began to glow an intense white, and she wiggled them playfully in his direction. “Why don’t you just give me your hands, and I can - ”

In spite of his resolve to stay even-keeled, Graham started crawling backwards, crab style, trying to put the oak between himself and Orri. “Oh, I’m sure being a goblin is a real barrel of laughs, but um, I can probably help my kingdom better with my mind intact. So let’s just reroute and-”

He cried out as she leapt, making a deft grab for his hand. Even before they made contact he could feel power surging from her fingertips like static, connecting with his. Something vital in him wanted to grab hold of her hand and draw that energy in. But he wrenched himself away in a side roll, panting nervously as he came to a halt lying on his front. He tucked his hands under his stomach as she fluttered down beside him, the blue-white of her skin more intense than the fullest moon. Again, the instinct to use his claws came, but not only would that set him further down the goblinification track, probably, it would only give her access to his hands.

She clicked her tongue consolingly. “You know, little friend, your mind’s already changing to match your body. I took a peek at what you really are, remember? You don’t have a duty anymore. That’s for humans. You couldn’t help your kingdom for much longer, anyway. Just give me your hands now. It’s just the human side of you being stubborn.” She prodded his side with her foot.

Graham swallowed and dug his fingertips into the patch of soft earth beneath him. “But if I can help them even for a bit, I’ve got to go for it. You said you technically could grant wishes. Can’t we try that first? Nothing to lose, right?” This felt utterly ridiculous, to fight a fairy by lying flat on the ground. But what choice did he have? To this overenthusiastic sprite, he was more or less just a cuddly puppy who was going to the vet’s, whatever he might think about the matter. What would he do if she flew him up in the air again, and he couldn’t hide his hands anymore? Play the world’s highest stakes game of ninja slap until she caught him?

Orri hunched over, and whispered in his enormous ear. “Graham, I don’t have ideas I can be proud of very often,” she said, almost confidingly. “Just let me have this.” Then she seized his ear, and twisted it where it attached to his head.

“Augh!” It was more than he could stand. He didn’t have much understanding of goblin biology, but he did know that twist was about ten times more painful than he would have expected. Before he could think, he pawed wildly to yank his ear out of her reach, to pry her fingers free.

Her hand clasped his. She didn’t seem to care about the claws. She just held on tight, and twined her fingers through his. He felt the magic lock on to him.

Graham’s thoughts windchimed off each other, too fleeting to follow. His head grew light. She pulled him to his feet. The ground seemed to shake underfoot, but all that felt faraway. Everything outside himself was irrelevant, because it felt like his mind was turning inside out. Something surfaced in his head. Something dauntingly clever and complicated and warm and royal red, and everything in him knew it didn’t belong here in his head. He had to get rid of it now before it could struggle. But it hung on awfully hard as he tried to reject it. But here was something else, edging it out, filling his mind. Yes. Something. Pushing it out for him. Something… good. Something yes. Yes, yes. Something something something rum-tee-tum-tee-tum, yes yes yes. Oho, filling up the corners. Hehehehehehehehe! Yes yes yes!

And then ow! Ow! Hand gone. No more hand! No more yes! Rage! Not fair! Ow! Whack you! Whack you! Someone grabbing. Someone pulling him away. No more magic. Turning it all outside in again. Everything spilling over again. Maybe a touch of nausea - in his mind? If that made sense? Nothing made sense, but it was coming back. His feet weren’t touching the ground, but neither was he floating this time. There were huge, pudgy arms lifting him up. No, not arms. Gigantic fingers.

Clarity shot through him. Olfie had him in his careful grasp, and the forest clearing below was a good twenty feet beneath him. Even with dark vision, Graham couldn’t see Orri anywhere. He craned his head back to look up at the bridge troll’s honest, hideous face. “Olfie!” he cried, overwhelmed with relief. “Oh, Olfie!” Olfie smiled, not without concern, lifting him up to look at him straight on. “You okay, King Goosie? Saw you were havin’ some fairy trouble down there. Did she try something?”

“No, I’m good.” Graham said, his chest still tense with stress but trying to let it go. His head bobbled on his neck and the world swam a bit, but fixing his eyes on Olfie’s face gave him a point of reference to stabilize from. “I think you didn’t arrive a moment too soon, though! Is she - did you see where she went?”

“Disappeared as soon as I got a hold on you.”

“Praise the consultations.” Graham muttered as Olfie propped him up in his palm. “I mean the consolati- no, the constellations. Sorry. She tried to mess with my head, and I might still be coming back from it.”

Olfie nodded, about as sagely as a troll could. “Gotta watch out for them. Always pulling tricks. One time they got Pillare thinking she was croissant, and you don’t want to hear how that went down at the meeting. Glad it’s all okay for you. So, I went and got them like you said. You ready for this?”

Graham tried to collect his disoriented thoughts. “You went and got who, now?”

“You told me to get them,” said Olfie. And before Graham could ask any further questions, the troll brought his two hands together - the palm where Graham leaned against his fingers, and the other - where to Graham’s astonishment, sat two of his royal guards, cross-legged in full uniform. Numbers One and Two.

Number One gasped.

#Tune in next week when Graham meets a walrus #So - in this version Graham is not running off like a coward. He's buckling down to be the leader Daventry needs now even if #it's an emotional ordeal for him and everyone involved. Prior to this scene he asked Olfie to gather a few people for him and bring them #to meet with him in the nearby woods - outside the anti-goblin shield that's keeping him from entering the castle and town.#Scrapping that other scene helped me plough forward and re-imagine! I may have to change a few details retrospectively #I'll edit the old chapters at some point but in the meantime I'll give you the heads up on any necessary retcons in the notes.#(price of posting as I go but I KNOW I would never have persevered with any of this if I tried to write the full fic in isolation.)#I might have had too much fun with this scene. It's been in the back of my head (though in a different form) for ages.#This is the reason I tried to drop so many mentions of fairies and wishes in Rippling Consequences scenes - Stargazers is the main #example. Now all my wonky foreshadowing is too old to be remembered but I did TRY to set this up not to come out of nowhere.#Goofy half-planned fic that got re-planned partway through that it is...#king's quest #king graham #rippling consequences #goblin graham #my writing

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thewatercolours · 2 months

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Scrapped KQ Scene: "Roadtrip"

Ok, so I've been working on Goblin Graham again, and I was more or less following my outline from 2021, which is not the most coherent thing in the world. (That happens when the story is actually the decision, partway through a challenge, to see if you can force all the prompts to relate to each other.) And honestly, sticking with that original outline is no longer serving the story. Because I realized I had made Graham run away from Daventry while the castle was being besieged. mainly because I want his family to show him lots of love after the whole goblin transformation thing. Also back then I had never shown the Crackers, and I wanted to explore them. But - none of this works character-wise. Graham would die before running away from Daventry in its time of need. He is brave, and ready to fight for his people. He might falter, but not to the point of running off to Llewdor! And by this point, I've shown the Crackers many times. I don't need to shoehorn them in. I do need to do some rethinking to figure out how to keep certain things from the original storyline, because as clunky as Rippling Consequences is, I want it to work, at least technically. The setups are paid off, etc.

I was really grateful to @captmickey for talking this through with me and offering some helpful insights. She suggested that I take the scene where Graham flees and just make it its own thing. I don't think I'm going to reshape it, but I do like some of the things I did with this scene, so I am going to post it as is just for fun. It'll help me move on from the sunk cost and get the story back on track. So here we have it - the non-official, out of character scene where Graham behaves like a coward and runs, but also has bonding time with a bridge troll.

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Those who have never journeyed overland in the palm of a bridge troll might assume that such a mode of travel saves time. Ordinarily, they would be right. Though trolls are a clumsy, lumbering lot as rule, the gigantic length of their stride makes up for it. Further, trolls never worry about following the twists of the road, or detouring at mountains and rivers. As long as you have no plans to cross the sea, you can more or less travel as the crow flies when you ride with a troll.

But if secrecy is an issue, well, you’re better off overloading a lame donkey with luggage and not watering it the whole way. You will get there faster.

Every day Graham and Olfie got just a bit further north, by way of an awful lot of east and west, and a significant amount of south. They chose secluded routes through the wilderness, giving towns and farms a wide berth. Bridge trolls weren’t unheard of outside of Daventry, but most surrounding nations distrusted them. Graham suggested that the best way to avoid attracting monster-slayers was to keep their heads down, sometimes literally. Olfie crept through the Miser’s Hills on his hands and knees. Graham rode on the bridge, trying to keep his balance. There wasn’t much to hold on to unless he sat by the very edge. That seemed unwise, but he tied himself in place with his cloak. His body lost height each day. The cloak was now about twice as long as he was, giving him lots of material to work with.

“Isn’t that the cape with big ol’ pockets?” his enormous friend asked after the first few hours. “Olfie could tie it to something. You could just ride in one of the pockets.”

But the experiment did not go far. The splint and poultice helped, but getting in and out of pockets proved difficult with Graham’s ankle. Besides, he found it easier to keep it from bending at odd angles if he rested on a flat surface. Once past the Hills, he spent most of his daylight hours in Olfie’s hand.

He leaned back against the tremendous cupped fingers. and watching Serenia’s hinterlands thicken as they passed. By daylight, his vision blurred and most colours washed out, but the contrast between light and shadow was sharp. The sunshine itself felt glorious on his clammy skin. When night fell, the world came back into focus, alive in luminescent purples and greens. Even under the new moon, he could pick out insects crawling a quarter mile off.

Scrub gave way to forest. Graham enjoyed trailing his hand on the overstory, much like he used to dip his hand into the water when he tagged along in the rowboat with his sister. Forest gave way to… well, a forest that clearly went to the gym and ate five dozen eggs every day. Massive paleghost trees dwarfed even Olfie, great-trunked and covered with what had to be the world’s thickest moss. Sometimes Graham snatched a leaf or a tree flower as they passed, just to give his overlong fingers something to fiddle with. He’d always been a fidgeter, but his goblin fingers were impossible to satisfy, just for sheer restlessness.

It did help that he and the troll talked so much.

Roadtripping with Olfie was a revelation. They had always gotten on well, and Graham had never felt he needed to put on a kingly act for him the way so many had needed him to since his crowning. But Graham had never taken him exactly… seriously. He was grateful to him for all the times he has been kind and useful. But, well, he was Olfie.

But with nothing else to do day in and day out, they talked more than they had in the four years since the tournament. Olfie had infinite patience for his too-short tongue and stiff lips. He never once interrupted Graham as he tried to sort out his pronunciation. After the king had offered his fifth or sixth awkward apology for speaking unclearly, the troll had said, “Frankly, Goosie, Olfie doesn’t really notice. All us trolls got some got teeth that go outside our mouth, not in, so learning you tiny people’s words takes a while for us too.” He considered. “Kinda nice you slowed down, actually. Olfie can’t keep up when people talk too fast.”

And oddly, it was kind of nice. If the path was slow and circuitous, the stories were allowed to be too. At first, they talked little besides choosing which way to go, when to stop and forage, when to bed down for the night. Then Olfie pointed out a ravine with flowers growing up its steep sides, which apparently looked something like the chasm where he had grown up.

“Funny,” said Graham. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen flowers like those in Daventry.”

“Olfie’s not from Daventry. Started out in the lowlands here in Serenia. Kind of far from here, though.”

“Oh. I didn’t know.”

“Yup,” Olfie said, a tad wistfully. “You’re not the only outsider.”

The silence lingered. “When did you come to the kingdom, then?” Graham asked at last.

“I’m not great at keeping track. Maybe fifteen years? Ish?”

“And…” Graham’s ears sank a little despite himself, “you still think of yourself that way after fifteen years? As an outsider?”

“Nah! Livin’ the dream,” said Olfie heartily, stopping to ginger his way over a boggy patch which probably qualified as a whole bog. Then he swallowed. “But kinda.”

“I’m sorry.” Maybe he should have said more, find out if Olfie wanted to talk about it. But Graham wasn’t sure he had the stability himself, even to listen.

“Hey, it’s not the worst thing to be,” said Olfie, with a consoling, toothy grin. “Least you got an outside to go back to sometimes, ‘stead of being stuck inside.” He raised his hand up to his face so he could look Graham in the face. As usual, it was a little overwhelming to be so close to Olfie’s eyes, one of which had passed as his “eye of a hideous beast” entry. But right now ‘hideous’ was very much a relative sliding scale. “‘This is just a guess, but with all this heading north - you’re going back, right? Home?”

Graham nodded, staring down at his lap.. “Yeah. Home.” He hoped so.

“Good idea.”

Graham shrugged. “Maybe.” He could think of a few cynical responses to go on with, but cynicism hadn’t got him and the villagers through the caverns. He took the second option - curiosity. “So, what’s it like to grow up in a troll chasm?”

And so the stories began properly. They compared earliest memories, roared over most embarrassing moments, and traded lighthearted gossip about Daventryfolk. Nothing too recent at first, but one thing bridged another. By the fourth day, Graham started to haltingly share the story of what had happened after Olfie had left him in the town square that night. Of the aching choices he’d had to make, and of the enchanted cell he’d been thrown into when his first escape attempt failed.

Olfie didn’t have much to offer by way of insights or comfort. But by gum, he listened, listened in a way that was almost better than talking. “And then what happened?” he would say every now and again.

It was… a lot easier than he’d anticipated telling his story would be. Maybe it was because Olfie wasn’t human either. Or maybe it was just the nature of this strange journey that didn’t quite feel real, this step-by-step rise and fall with no crisis, no escape to plan, no friends to guess how to keep alive, no split second decrees to make, no previous king to live up to. Would the words come so freely when they arrived in Dapplethorpe and everything became real again?

Even wondering began to make it grow real again too soon.

One night, as the campfire in the clearing burned low and they finished off the last of their hunter-gatherer supper, Olfie cleared his throat. “So, King Goosie,” he said hesitantly. “You were pretty quiet today.”

“I guess so,” said Graham, gathering up the greasy pheasant bones. He could feel that with a little pushing, the day’s new thoughts would come out, and he wasn’t sure it was wise to share them.

Olfie pressed on. “Yeah. It must get a little boring for you. Anything Olfie can do to liven things up?”

Graham dropped the bones into the ashes and began raking them over with the roasting stick. “You’ve been great. Honestly the problem’s all on my end.” He should have stopped there, but something unruly in him went on. “ It can’t exactly be your fault when you’re just following the King’s orders.”

“Gosh.” Olfie raised an eyebrow. “Orders. Makes it sound all official.” He sounded slightly hurt.

The king sighed, trying to backpedal. “Sorry. I’m just a little out of sorts tonight. And I’m also sorry for… for dragging you into this. I can’t imagine this is how you were planning to spend your week.” But here it was again, the urge to pedal forward. “And, and if anyone gives you trouble when you get back for abandoning the siege, I want you to tell them it was on my order. Then they won’t blame you.” (Blast it, he knew where this would lead. Why push it?)

Olfie’s great eyelids narrowed. “You walked all the way to Daventry on that leg. You tried to get in but couldn’t ‘cause of the magic.You found out the goblins and little Manny Man had the place surrounded, and they’d grab you if they saw you, probably. You didn’t exactly just abandon the siege.”

Graham didn’t look up from the ashes. A note of anger he himself didn’t quite understand crept into his voice. “OK, to make it plainer - I’m pretty much running away. When i said we should try not to be see, I admit I wasn’t thinking as much about monster-slayers as that… my own guards might be following us. To take me back. Because I ran away, like an idiot.”

“You got Baker Man and the rest of the little town people home safe. And you tried -”

He raised his voice further. “I’d been steeling myself to be okay with my friends seeing me as I am. But when my doctor screamed and crawled backward to get away from me, I chickened out. And ran away.”

“But home.”

The roasting stick snapped. “Even worse. Home with my tail between my legs and everything I tried for trailing behind me. Again. Don’t you get it?” The goblin snarl rose to the surface.

Olfie frowned and reached round the firepit with his thumb and forefinger. For a moment Graham thought the troll was going to grab him. But he stopped, and instead laid his hand down on the grass, right next to Graham. “So why are you going home anyway?” he said, lowering his great voice.

Graham didn’t answer. There were several things he could have said, but they all sounded childish. Funny how you could try to verbally whack someone over the head, trying to prove to them how stupid and cowardly and maybe even treacherous you’d been, and yet still have an inner eight-year-old who thought sounding babyish was worse.”I don’t know,” he said at last, the snarl gone. “I had all kinds of half-plans when I first told you we had to go. I thought I might make things worse. Or that there was nothing I could do. I mean, Daventry’s being attacked by goblins. And Manny. And Manny came to my cell while I was transforming, and he stopped me at the door to the surface. And, and I didn’t know what to do either of those times.”

“You kicked him,” Olfie reminded him encouragingly, clenching a fist and smiling.

“Yeah, I kicked him. Big deal. My point is - Daventry’s trying to defend itself right now. Even if they recognized me, they couldn’t trust me. Aren’t you constantly asking yourself what I might do, what I might try, now that I’m a goblin?”

“No?” said Olfie, puzzled.

Graham laughed grimly. “Thanks. But you’re you. Not everyone sees things like you. And even if they did… Look, I still plan to go back and handle this responsibly. Really. But I need to figure out what that would involve.” Olfie began to speak, but Graham cut him off. “I’m sorry I blew up just now. That wasn’t fair to you.”

The troll nodded soberly, and rose to his feet. The ground shook under him and Graham had to dodge a few unsettled sparks from the fire. “Ya know, this clearing’s a little cramped, and Olfie spotted a nice queen-size ditch just the other side of that treeline. Maybe we both could use the space tonight.”

(You know, I'm glad they had that conversation, because it was what alerted me to the fact that this scene felt all wrong. So - now we've had the scrapped scene, I can get on with writing stuff that works better.)

#graham behaving wildly out of character because the author didn't notice till embarrassingly late #scrapped scene #king's quest #king graham #goblin graham #my writing #fanfiction

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