Lgthpt loved to climb things. From way up high, everything seemed so much more interesting, there were so many more things for the young goblin to see. On the ground, it was just endless legs, blocking her sight and keeping all of the fun stuff away from her.

“Lgthpt, be careful!”

She heard the voice, but it didn’t manage to get her focus. People were hardly ever interesting enough to get her attention, especially since they kept on saying the same things. “Don’t do this, don’t do that, you’re going to get hurt.” Well she had been climbing things for a whole year now, and she had barely been hurt even once!

This time, she had eyed the highest tower in Goblintown. It took her a few minutes to find a way up, but now she was perched on the very top, one hand clutching the spire as she looked out over the hectic action below.

The wind was stronger here, and it made her clothing flap violently. It wasn’t this windy on the ground, was it?

“Lgthpt!” the voice shouted again, insistent. With an exaggerated sigh, the young goblin pulled her attention toward the source of the voice; one of her older brothers. She couldn’t make out which one from up here, though. As she squinted and leaned forward to try and make him out, a gust of wind knocked her legs out from beneath her and thrust her out into the open air.

She kicked her legs back and forth over the entrance of the barracks, shamelessly hoping that someone would try to walk underneath. It would be hilarious, she decided, but she would have to save that for another time. She had places to be going, there was no time for harmless pranks.

She hopped off of the roof, and the thick, furry cloak she had taken off of a table in the Crossing caught on one of the roof’s tiles. Her fall stopped for a split second, and then she dropped the rest of the way to the ground, landing with barely a stumble. She brushed herself off and checked the cloak—there was a big gash on the end. She looked at it with a frown.

Hm. No. Actually, it looked better this way. She nodded to herself and trotted off toward the entrance of the city.

She had given serious thought to letting her people know that she was leaving but had decided against it. Celeste had known something was up, even before Lgthpt did, so the goblin didn’t have to say goodbye. Learn was always busy now, and Alvin was working with him all of the time too. And Best had left a while ago, so she didn’t need to do anything there either. In fact, Best was her excuse—her favorite person had left without saying anything, so it would make sense if she did too, right?

It had hurt a little bit, when Best left, but Lgthpt knew that the elf would come back at some point. Or Lgthpt would run into her somewhere. Unlikely things tended to occur around Lgthpt, and running into her favorite person out of all of the people in the world was pretty unlikely to happen—so it would. Just because she couldn’t see a path as to how an elf would end up in Goblintown didn’t mean it couldn’t happen, after all. She barely saw anything coming!

As she strolled down the street, she let a nervous thought flow into her head; but only one. With this long of a journey ahead of her, she couldn’t afford to plan ahead. But for her friends, she allowed herself the one. She would come back to Shrike as soon as she could, and she would reunite with her friends.

While lost in her thought, the young goblin didn’t notice a large orc carrying a package of cured meat wrapped up in an oiled sheet. She bumped into his leg, and startled, the orc dropped the meat. Lgthpt smelled an opportunity, and as she fell, her hand shot out from underneath the layers of crumpled clothing she was wearing and snagged several strips from the package. Clutching her prize, she accepted the apologetic orc’s brokenly-accented apologies with grace—with as much grace as she was capable of; and continued on her way after helping the orc package up the jerky again. Of course, she accepted the offered strips when they were presented, though.

She left the gates of the city chewing absentmindedly, humming a tune she couldn’t quite remember the words to.

——

The meat was delicious, but it had only lasted Lgthpt through a few days of her journey, and Goblintown was like, forever away. It was very lucky, then, that she had run across this clearing just as she was running low. She took a deep drink from the pool of fresh water, then resumed looking through the pack that had been left on the ground, alongside the clothing strewn haphazardly. She had been disappointed when she saw that. People should learn to take better care of their clothes, they were important. She took the pair of trousers from the ground and tied them around her waist, then took the shirt underneath and folded it this way and that, until she could comfortably tie it around her neck. If these strangers wouldn’t take care of their clothes, then Lgthpt would just have to take them off of their hands. They deserved to be worn.

The bag was full of food that the young goblin didn’t recognize, and a few skins full of wine and—aha! One that was halfway full of sweet wine. Jackpot! She slung the bag over her shoulder, and right as she was about to leave, she froze. A voice—no, two voices. Was there anywhere to hide? There were several trees, maybe she could climb one swiftly enough. Or she could jump into the lake… no, she probably couldn’t hold her breath for that long. Tree it is, she thought, and swiftly scrabbled up as fast as she could. She held her breath as two young humans came to the edge of the pond.

“Isla, you must learn to be patient,” the shorter one berated as she pulled tight the strings around her waist. “Else you’ll never learn to swim.”

The taller girl—Isla, probably—came over to the shorter one, right underneath Lgthpt’s tree, and caressed the girl’s shoulder.

“Sami, sami, sami,” Isla whispered, “you know it’s not about the swimming.” For some reason, this set the shorter girl—Sami, Lgthpt guessed—blushing a deep red. Lgthpt was confused. If they weren’t swimming, then why did Sami say that they had been? And why was she putting on clothing, while Sami was standing there, naked as Lgthpt had spent the first years of her life. And—

A loud shriek shook the goblin from her thoughts, and nearly startled her off of her safe perch. She clutched the wrinkled branch beneath her and stayed as still as possible. Ah. The humans had noticed that their bag was missing. And the clothing, if she had to guess. But was the screaming really necessary? Lgthpt had left the undergarments where they were, and that should be enough for the human girl to wear back to her home!

The young goblin saw that the humans were distracted and decided to take it as an opportunity. She wound up, then scampered across the branch and made a jump for the nearby tree. She landed with a rustle and a crack, but didn’t stop to see if the two humans had noticed. She simply continued on her way, leaping from tree to tree until she was far away from the frantic humans.

——

Her wrists were very uncomfortable—the leather thongs that kept them bound dug in ever so slightly with each loping step of the donkey she had been unceremoniously tossed on top of.

“I’m thirsty!” She called out to the bandit who was watching her, a grizzled human with a series of scars across his chin and no hair. He grumbled, but steered his mount over to Lgthpt’s donkey, and held a waterskin up to her mouth. She took several deep gulps, and when she was done she let out a loud belch. The man looked disgusted, and Lgthpt just gave a wide grin back at him.

While being kidnapped was uncomfortable, it was working out pretty well so far, she had to acknowledge. She had been nearly delirious with thirst when they captured her, weeks out on her trip. She had long since finished the rations in the pack she—hadn’t stolen, that was the wrong word. The pack she had… liberated from those two swimmers. After that she had only managed to find some fish that had flopped out onto the riverbank. Oh, and that deer that she thought had been struck by lightning, that had a surprising amount of edible bits on it that she had managed to nibble on. And that horse that some traveler had needed to leave behind, it had a pack underneath it chock full of dried vegetables.

She had been captured while trying to take one of the really neat bandannas these bandits had tied around their neck. They were all bright colors, and she wanted one or five of them, and she had been caught while trying to tie them together into a cape.

It was lucky, though, that they assumed someone would pay good money for her. It was the rare group of humans who were willing to go to Goblintown, so Lgthpt had somehow managed to get both a caravan to protect her and free food and drink on the journey. And all she had to do was put up with some discomfort.

“I’m booooooooored,” she moaned at the grizzled guard. “You have cards right? Can we play?”

The man looked at her, then pointedly looked forward in silence.

“Hule, please,” she decided. The man looked like a Hule. “Let’s play cards!”

The scar-chinned man scoffed at her, then stirred his horse forward at a faster pace. Lgthpt yelled some choice expletives as his back went further into the distance and he reached the rest of the bandits. When she thought he was out of earshot, she sat up, wincing as her side cramped. She hadn’t moved in days.

No bandits were close, and they weren’t paying particular attention to her anymore. She didn’t think too much about it, and jumped off of the donkey. It was really silly that they hadn’t tied her down. It was even sillier that they left the packs on the animal. She finagled her arms into the pocket, and winced as one of her fingers was pricked by a sharp point.

“Ow!” She maneuvered carefully around the object until she found a handle—it was! She grabbed what she could now see was a sharp hip knife out of the bag, and after a few moments managed to free her hands.

She ambled up to the side of the donkey and placed both of her hands on the sides of his face.

“Friend. You’ve been going real slow, but I know it’s because you don’t like those mean men any more than I do. So I’m going to make you an offer. If you help me go real, real fast, I’ll give you all of the carrots you can eat? Good?”

The donkey didn’t answer, but she could tell from its wet gaze that it agreed. She hoisted herself back onto the animal and kicked in with both feet, the way she had been taught to do with a horse.

They were off! She was right that the donkey could move fast, and she was soon far enough from the bandits that she was comfortable taking a break to rest. The sun was setting anyway, and she was very tired.

——

She could tell that she was close to the outskirts of her hometown by the smell. Oil and metal, grease and smoke. It all smelled… so much more than it did when she lived here. They were still familiar smells, but she was no longer used to them. The first whiff gave her strong memories of why she had left. And it was a good indicator of why no other races tended to come visit Goblintown. They were scared, and whenever any of them got close and began to smell the city it was as though all of their worries were justified.

Finally, she crested a hill and the city came into view: vast, constant motion gave off the impression of a hive of insects. But rather than being dug under the ground, this was built haphazardly atop sharp, metal spires, plunging up from the ground, grasping toward the heavens.

She kicked Hule—the donkey, who she named after the scar-chinned man—and trotted down the other side of the hill toward the city’s entrance. It looked like the monorails were going today, so maybe she would be able to hitch a ride to where she needed to go.

After about half of an hour of riding, she made it to the edge of the town, and was very relieved that there were only three guards she had to get through. She probably had enough of a bribe left over that they would let her through, but it was always a close thing. To be safe, though, she pulled up the pair of pants that she was using as a scarf, covering up the lower half of her face.

She brought the donkey to a slow stop in front of the guards. Reaching into the bag, she pulled out one of the bandits’ journal. She had looked through it, and there wasn’t very much of interest in it, but they didn’t know that.

“Greetings,” she said, pitching her voice far deeper than she normally spoke. “I am—”

The closest guard’s eyes opened wide, and he pointed at her for a second, slack-jawed, until he apparently remembered who he was. He slammed his helmet’s faceplate down and shouted for the other two to grab her. As they approached, she shrugged, then tossed the book at one of them, leapt off of the donkey, and ran past the guards through the gate. Behind her, she could hear the guard yelling stop that girl! As the ground slapping past her feet changed from dirt to stone to metal, she let a grin grow over her face. It was like she had never left.