The old one

(Rating: 1/5 (ABDL-adjacent), CW: goblins, mentions of wounds and deformities, imprisonment, vomit, depression, pull-ups and diapers.)

This goblin has lived in the wild his entire life.

A “feral”, some would say. He bore the scars to prove it. The nastiest one was on his right eye, where a painful-looking gash split his eyelid in half and left the eye underneath milky and blind. But it was far from the only scar on his skinny body. His long pointy ears had been nicked and cut dozens of times, his dark green skin was marred with old wounds that didn’t quite heal properly. He was missing teeth, nails, swathes of hair, a whole toe on his left foot, and underneath his rough skin, several of his bones had been broken and mended along the years.

Yet he had endured. If every feral goblin could show some kind of scar acquired during their dangerous life, this one wore them with pride. It showed the other green skins that he was a protector. A warrior. A creature who would not let the world bully him and his loved ones just because they were small and weak. He had risen time and time again to protect the ones he cared about - his family, mostly, but also every other family who lived nearby. This goblin had driven away creatures ten times his size with nothing but a pointy stick, a sharp rock, and unlimited reserves of anger in his heart. He knew how to scream, how to bite, how to stab, and every dirty trick in the book to finish on top. If goblins kept written records, he would be a living legend told to inspire other protectors.

But he was old now. He had no family left, not anymore - they were all gone far away, or dead. As his health declined, he had started to drift away from his old territory, looking for a quieter place to end his life in peace. One where the food didn’t run as fast, hopefully.

Tonight, he was hungry, and his body was aching from a life of accumulated wounds. He limped away without direction, hoping to find a place to rest.

If we’re being honest, he was in no shape to fight anyone, let alone against four humans who had cornered him against a rock. But he wasn’t willing to go down without giving it a try.

“Easy now, easy!” said one of the giant silhouettes.

The goblin had never been around humans long enough to learn their language, so to him, these words of appeasement might as well be threats. So he hissed back, bared his teeth, scratched and stomped the ground, waved his pointy stick to keep them at bay. Lesser animals would be running away by now, and mightier ones would gear up for a deadly fight. The humans, however, didn’t seem to be afraid of him. They inched ever closer to him, only shuffling back if the stick got too close.

“Watch out for that thing,” said another voice, a deeper one. “You’d catch a nasty infection if he hits you with the spear.”

“I know,” replied the first. “Try to get his attention to your side, I’ll get him with the leash.”

The old goblin screamed some more, his voice modulating from guttural growl to shrill screeches that made birds fly away in panic. The human with the deep voice tried to sneak closer, so he lunged forward and menaced him with his spear, giving short stabs to the air as warnings of what was to come. The human stepped back… right as something slipped over the goblin’s head and snatched his neck.

Those bastards, they approached him from his bad eye’s side! A thick leather collar at the end of a stick had been wrung around his neck, strangling him ever so slightly. He dropped the spear to slip his fingers under the leather, trying to snap it in half, but the collar was simply too resilient. The human who had caught him lowered the collar-stick towards the ground. Despite his protestations, the goblin’s head was pulled lower and lower until one of his ears touched the dirt.

If the humans thought he was noisy before, they weren’t prepared for the absolute ear-piercing wails that the goblin was now letting out.

“I’m sedating him,” said a third voice he hadn’t heard, a higher, more feminine one. That human also had some kind of long stick in her hands, which she used to poke the goblin in the shoulder. He felt a sharp pain as a needle pierced his skin, which made him double his efforts to escape the trap. But the human was too strong, the collar too tight, and they were all too far away to strike with his claws. He was held firmly in place as the humans watched him flail impotently.

Over the course of a minute, he felt his movements become sluggish, his limbs suddenly lacking the coordination to stand up or strike. His breath became labored, his vision blurry, his screeches of impotent rage devolved into whimpers. His body stopped moving, incapable of acting on what he ordered it to do. The anger still burned behind his eyes as they closed on their own. The world went dark.

If this was death, it wasn’t so bad after all…

… It wasn’t death, of course. The little bugger had too much life left in him to be put down by a simple nap - even one that humans forced on him.

When the goblin woke up, he found himself in an utterly alien environment, like nothing he had never seen before in his entire life. He was inside a tall cave whose walls were white and perfectly vertical; an empty room, even if he didn’t understand it that way. More precisely, he was stuck inside a smaller cube, which was barely big enough for him to stand on his feet. One of the faces of the cube was transparent like ice, yet warm to the touch. He might not have a word for “prison”, but he understood instinctively that he was now stuck in this unfamiliar place.

The cave was bright, but not with the light of the Sun: it was a pure white shine that didn’t feel natural. Every surface under his fingers was clean, smooth and cold as stone, yet the air was pleasantly warm. And the smell… he had never smelled anything like it. Waves of hundreds of acrid scents that burned his nose and offended his senses, so far removed from the natural aroma of earth, plants, fire, meat and blood.

The humans had done something to him. He couldn’t open his bad eye anymore, and when he ran his fingers over the eyelid, he felt it had been sewn shut. This annoyed him greatly. Even if he had no use for that eye, having it closed against his will was some sort of insult to his very being.

That wasn’t all they did. Old aches had left his body, and he felt more at ease breathing than he had in a long time. His skin was cleaner, too, as he could plainly see on his mostly naked body. And while the flimsy rags he used to wear had been thrown away, he was now clad in some kind of underwear around his loins, as white as the walls around him. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was unusual.

Before he could make sense of what he saw around him, a noise startled him, his long ears perking towards the source of the disturbance.

Humans!

Two new humans had entered the strange place, laughing like they owned the place. The goblin’s eye darted left and right, looking for a place to hide, to no avail - he was stuck in a box with nowhere to run. As they approached, he resorted to what seemed appropriate: growl menacingly as he cowered in a corner of his little cell.

To his surprise, after a click, the top part of his prison slid open, and before he could react, two gloved hands descended from the skies and grabbed him under the armpits. One of the humans lifted him off the cold floor and dangled him over a table, with what he could only interpret as a smile on their face.

This was his chance! He immediately bit the hands that were holding him, but the gloves proved a mightier protection than he thought. They were soft like cloth yet left an aftertaste of metal in his mouth, and the few remaining fangs he had weren’t able to pierce through them. He kept trying and trying, hoping to find a weak point that seemingly didn’t exist.

Profiting from this temporary setback, the other human deviously reached for the garment around his loins and lowered it. The old goblin tried to wiggle his legs to push them away, but just as quickly, the human pulled the cloth upwards again. It said something that the goblin was too enraged to understand, then both humans laughed. Goblins understood the meaning of laughter, and the old warrior hated that they laughed him off - an insult to his pride as a warrior.

He wiggled impotently some more, held tightly in place by the gloved human who didn’t seem to fear his raging snarls. At some point, he felt a prick on his shoulder. A needle, again! The pain went away as quickly as it came, and then the humans placed him back in his cube again, folding and closing the roof of his cell with a click. Once more, he was trapped.

There was something new, however: in the opposite corner to his own, the humans had placed two bowls of food. And what strange food it was. It looked nothing like what the goblin used to hunt for himself and his family. There were two bowls, one filled with some honey-colored goop and the other with hard brown nuggets.

The goop had a vague taste of fruit, but was sickeningly sweet: the goblin immediately spit it out right after lapping a mouthful from the bowl. He had never eaten fruits that weren’t sour or overripe before, and this was simply too much for his palate. The nuggets fared better. They crunched like pine cones under his teeth, and they had a faint aftertaste of old meat and nuts. Well, more like ‘meat left to dry out in the wind’ and ‘nuts from long ago’, but still, he enjoyed the crunch. He meticulously ate every one of them, masticating loudly as he did. Then, because his instincts were telling him that a goblin never knows when their next meal would be, he forced himself to lap the fruity substance, holding back the nauseous feelings that overcame him.

Once he had finished the bowl, he noticed a new element that had escaped his vigilance: a bottle of clear water, dangling upside down on a wall, with an odd transparent nipple underneath. He poked and prodded it until it produced a trickle of water. He hadn’t realized how thirsty he was. So he wrapped his mouth around the item and worked it with his lips and teeth, drinking the entire bottle in one go. The water was clear, cold like a winter stream, and lacked the delightful aromas of a stagnant bog, but it was enough to clear his mouth from the sickening taste of that bowl of goop.

It was only when he waddled away from this strange meal that he realized how stuffed he was. The goblin was not used to gorge himself like this. His meals could be as small as a field mouse and a few laps of morning dew, and they were few and far between. Never in his life did he have the chance to treat himself to a feast like this, with such rich foods. And in the last few days, he had skipped a few meals for lack of an easy hunt, and…

With a revolting belch, the goblin puked everything back out.

His frail body was shaking once he was done. Too much food, too fast, too rich. A noise warned him that the humans had come back in the room. He tensed up immediately: the humans would not take kindly to seeing their own food wasted like this. His captivity might be short-lived after all…

The ceiling clicked, swooshed open, and the gloved hands returned. He could only shake lightly as they picked him up. To his surprise, all the hands did was to move him to another cube, on the other side of the room, that was filled with soft cloth and pillows. For the next few minutes, the goblin looked perplexed as the humans opened the clear part of his cell, cleaned its floor, and filled the bowls of food to the brim. As soon as they were done, the gloves came back again and placed the goblin in his original cage, atop a fresh and soft blanket that wasn’t there before. Then the humans left him alone once more.

He darted a killing glare at the bowls of food, refusing to touch them. Poison, it was, poison by excess. He only agreed to take a few glugs from the upside-down water bottle. It was surprisingly easy to use, once he noticed that it was made for him to nurse on.

The goblin didn’t know what to do with the situation. The humans, as dangerous and deadly as they were, were treating him with a form of kindness. The prison was odd and unfamiliar, but they provided food and comfort, and left him mostly alone. If they wanted him dead or punished, they were doing it all wrong.

At some point, the lights in the great white room dimmed out, like dusk happening in a matter of seconds. There was neither moon nor stars in the sky, but he guessed it was this place’s version of night time. He rolled himself in the blanket the humans had provided. It was just as good as any other time to sleep, and he needed to be well rested for tomorrow. Maybe the humans will stop being nice to him and he’ll have to fight, after all. He could never be sure what tomorrow would bring. Such was the life of a goblin.

But the next few days only brought an affliction the old goblin didn’t expect: boredom. He had been shoved into a routine that was completely different from his old life, with no time to adapt. And this new life proved to be so much less exciting than the previous one.

He stayed put in his cage with a glass door, crawling in circles and waiting for something to happen. He would nibble on the food that was provided, one or two nuggets at a time - he had given up on the sweet purée, even if it was offered to him every day - and suckled on the bottle when he was thirsty.

At several points during the day, two humans would come to the room to check him. He would growl and hiss, making himself look more dangerous than he was, to no avail. The gloves would come down, then the goblin would be lifted in the air and either dangled over nothing or placed upright on a metallic table. They would inspect him, checking how his wounds were healing and if his teeth were still in place. If they found something they didn’t like, they would poke him with a needle or apply some smelly cream on his body, put him back in his cube and call it a day. His protestations were just for show, at this stage, as no human seemed to take him seriously, no matter how threatening he was.

One new element had been added to these inspections: at almost every inspection, they would remove the garment around his loins and replace it with a new one. In the wild, goblins didn’t really have to care about toilets: they would just go wherever they wanted, whenever it was convenient. Not so much in his cubic prison, where he couldn’t even piss in a corner without soiling the entire place - and you didn’t piss where you slept, that was just common sense for the green skins. Bereft of other options, the goblin relieved himself in the underwear when he needed to. To his surprise, it seemed that it was what the humans expected him to do - and they would put him into unsoiled garments after every inspection.

The ritual puzzled him, but seeing how it kept from dirtying his new home, he just ran with it. After all, if goblins are known for one thing, it’s that they adapt to every situation, no matter how unusual it was.

Days passed. The absent course of the Sun made him lose count of the days pretty quickly. It was day when the room was lit, and night when it was not, simple as that. He slept, he ate, he relieved himself, the humans came to look at him, he hissed, they ignored his threats, they put him back into his cage. Rinse, repeat.

He was growing weak and fat from the lack of exercise. Fat! If there’s one thing goblins can never be, it’s fat. Their life would never give them enough to become fat from idleness. And yet, here we are.

In his cubicle, he remembered running in the forest, catching wild hares with a twig for only weapon, splashing in the stream of a cold river. He dreamed of eating, of laughing, of making love, of leading his old family to discover the world. He longed for a life that felt like living, and not just waiting for the next meal and change of underwear.

So when he decided that he had enough of this routine, he began acting up.

The old goblin might not have had all his claws anymore, but what was left was still pointy and dangerous. He began scratching every surface in his cube, until none of the walls looked clean and smooth anymore. He paid particular attention to the ceiling, trying to find a spot that would make the panel go ‘click’ and lead him to freedom. By the end of the week, it looked like the place had been ravaged by a savage beast. He was happy with his little carnage, but it still wasn’t quite enough.

He began playing with his food, willfully stuffing his jowls full of pellets before spitting the resulting gross and wet mass on the floor. He used the goop that he didn’t care for as finger paint on the walls, especially on the glass. The humans had to clean his mess every day, until they stopped giving him his daily bowl of goop. He was excited about these little acts of rebellion, but it still wasn’t quite enough.

He discovered that the water bottle’s nipple was soft enough that he could tear it apart with his teeth. Now, when the humans weren’t looking, he would bite and rip the nipple, which emptied the entire bottle in his cube, leaving a layer of water all over the floor. He would sit and bounce on his underwear-covered butt in the water, feeling the garment swell more and more as he did, and roll on the floor to make himself all wet and unkempt. The humans had to clean and dry his cube every day, each time looking just a bit more annoyed. He was delighted in their torment, but it still wasn’t quite enough.

Unfortunately, it was at that point that the humans had had enough of his antics. One day, when the gloves held him over the metallic table, they reached for his hands and put something over them. Mittens, like gloves without fingers, soft padded balls of fluff. His hands were rolled into balls before the restrains were strapped in and locked into place. No more fingers, no more claws.

Oh, he didn’t like that! Not one bit. Depriving him of his hands, his own hands, not only made it impossible for him to continue his series of mischiefs, but severely limited his autonomy. Even feeding himself was proving to be difficult. The humans also replaced the water nipple with a harder metallic one that he couldn’t break open with his teeth. The old goblin felt the rage of his warrior days rise once more in his heart.

So, deprived of any other alternative, the old goblin began to scream. For hours on end, he screeched the loudest, most obnoxious shouts he knew. He only stopped to drink every once in a while, only to resume his cacophony once he was satiated. Several of these screams were insults and taunts in the (admittedly simple) goblin language, and he loved to use these ones when the humans were nearby. Even if they didn’t understand him, it felt good just to say them. After some time, the humans were looking increasingly annoyed and stressed out when they came to take care of him.

It amused him for a couple of days. Eventually, he grew bored of it. He stopped his constant screeching, but his interactions with the humans were still nothing but death glares and snarls. He had given up on the idea of making a difference in his daily life, but he certainly wasn’t ready to let them win.

He was a warrior. He would fight until victory, or death. Yet it seemed like death was too far away to ever reach him.

One night, as the lights dimmed out and the goblin wrapped himself in his blanket, three humans stayed in the room to talk. The goblin listened idly to the sound of their voices. Of course, none of the words made sense to him, and their conversation flew over his head, but it was a nice change in his dreadful routine.

“He’s not making any progress,” lamented the youngest-looking female of the group. “His health has improved dramatically, but he still behaves like a wounded animal. I don’t think he’s ready for adoption yet...”

“I don’t think he’s ever going to make it to adoption”, assured a slightly older looking female. “He’s been living in the wild for too long. He’s feral, through and through. For a goblin to live among humans, they must learn to trust us when they’re still kids. This one is too old. He’s never going to get used to human socialization. He can never be adopted.”

“But we’ve been doing everything we could!” replied the first one. “We’ve been giving him shelter, space, medical treatments, we let him reconstruct himself at his own pace… for nothing. He doesn’t trust any one of us. We can’t even touch him without him trying to attack us...”

“Look,” interrupted the third human, “I know how it feels. It’s not the fun part of our job. I wish we could find the perfect family for every rescue so they can all have a happy life, but sometimes it’s just not in the cards. Sometimes, all we can do is… make them comfortable, so they can spend the rest of their life without suffering. And that’s all there is to it.”

They looked at him in silence for a moment.

“What if we put him with the others?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea. It would be a lot of stress for him. If he reacts badly to the group already in place, he might even attack them, and you know what these teeth can do. He’s not ready for that yet.”

“But when will he be ready, then? Will he ever be ready?”

There was no answer but an awkward silence. The old goblin had fallen asleep, unaware that his fate had been discussed in such plain, human words.

Nothing changed in his world for a little while, until one morning, very early, when the lights had not come back up yet. The old goblin awoke to the sound of something tapping on the glass wall of his prison. He groggily turned to see the cause of its commotion, and what he saw startled him awake.

Standing on all fours before the glass panel was another goblin. A young female one that looked at him with big, curious eyes.

Immediately, the old goblin jumped forwards and pressed his face against the glass. Another goblin! He wasn’t alone! He let out a mewl and tapped the window a couple of times with his padded mittens, trying to see if she could understand him. The young one mewled in return, and pressed her hands on the window, right where his own hands were. If it weren’t for the glass, their hands would be touching.

The old one felt his heart pumping madly and energy come back to his old bones. He smiled for what must have been the first time in weeks. They communicated for a short moment in excited chirps, observing the other in every detail.

She was small, probably still immature, her skin was the same light green as frogs, and her eyes were the color of the Summer sky. She was dressed with an odd tunic, colored like freshly-opened flowers, and she wore the same kind of white garment as him, except a lot thicker. She had something in her mouth, an odd item held lightly between her lips which hid most of her teeth. There was something in her face that got the old goblin’s heart aflutter. She looked like…

The young one’s eyes darted to the side. She had noticed something outside the cube, and immediately went for it with her dexterous fingers. The old one leaned forward, trying to see what she was doing.

A lock! She had found the lock! She was trying to get him out! He jumped up and down with excitement. Soon he’ll be free, and they’ll run away to another, less boring place! What a good girl she was!

But their joy was short-lived. The lights suddenly lit up the room, and in the corner of his eye, he saw one of the humans approaching. He screeched a word of warning, but the human scooped the young girl away, who didn’t seem to resist in the slightest. Powerless, he could only bang on the glass as he saw the only link to his old life being whisked away to a mysterious place. She waved him goodbye right before the two disappeared from his sight.

From the moment the door closed, the old one began to scream. It was a high-pitched wail, short and modulated, repeated over and over as he ran in circles in his cube. Oh, if only the humans understood the language of goblins, they would notice he wasn’t just making noises for the sake of it.

He was yelling ‘Come back!’ in their primitive tongue. Calling for the young one with increasing despair.

That’s the only thing that seemed to matter to him right now. Come back! Come back! Agitated like a dog during a thunderstorm, he paced back and forth in his minuscule jail cell, calling for her, hoping she would hear him. Come back! Come back! Come back!

Even the humans noticed something was wrong. When they came to clean him up, he was more agitated than usual and tried to jump on the floor, away from their helpful hands. Come back! Come back! Not for a single moment did he stop to yell his repetitive cry for help.

They changed his pants, but he didn’t care. Come back!

They gave him food and filled up his water bottle, but he didn’t even look at it. Come back!

They let him back into his cube, even tried to dim the light to make him feel like it was nighttime already. He couldn’t care less about what time it was supposed to be. Come back!

Alone in the white room where his screams echoed in the void, he called for her, again and again, without pause.

Come back! Come back! Come back!…

After hours of calling, his wails become more spaced out, one every few minutes at most. He yelled once more, and nobody answered.

Come back.

His energy was slowly leaving his body. Now he knew that he wasn’t the only goblin in this strange place, but he was still alone, stuck in this damned cube. It made the solitude even worse.

Come back.

He understood why her face was so familiar to him. She was the spitting image of his daughter, his favorite one, the one he protected over everyone else. He hadn’t seen her in so long. So long, in fact, that he had forgotten her face, until he saw it again in the young one’s traits.

The young goblin had filled his heart with hope. But that hope was snuffed like a candle flame, just as quickly as it lit up…

Come back…

Maybe it was a dream. Maybe he had been visited by a ghost. It would explain why she wasn’t coming back, why she ignored his calling. What a cruel ghost it was, to warm his heart near the fire before burying it in the cold snow.

...

The goblin stopped crying out for her. It made no difference. Silence fell in the white room like lead, and it was a thousand times sadder than his wails of impotence. Broken, he laid down on his blanket and turned his back to the door. He was tired and felt empty inside.

If this was his new life among humans, then he would have preferred to die there in the forest. It would have been less painful. It would have been over...

There was a click behind the old one. He didn’t care to look. Then another click, above his head, and the sound of something sliding open. He didn’t dignify it with a reaction. He felt the gloves touch him and try to prop him up. He didn’t move, letting the human hands manipulate him like a cloth doll. They pulled him out the cube. He didn’t even care to open his remaining eye.

But then, he felt his body bounce up and down fast, and heard the sound of the door opening again. The routine was broken, and he startled awake, expecting danger.

One of the humans, the young one who looked so worried the other day, was holding him like a bomb about to explode, and rushing him down a hallway. The goblin had never seen any other place than his prison room since he got here, and his eye darted left and right, trying to figure out this new world before him.

Colors. A hallway. Other doors. Lights. Noise. And a human voice behind her that sounded anguished. “Oh, I’m getting into so much trouble for this…”

The old goblin saw it as a chance to escape. He tried to wiggle out of the glove’s weaker hold, and succeeded at slipping out, hitting the ground with a ‘thud’. But just as fast, the gloves picked him up again and they continued their frantic race. If he had been younger and his reflexes were intact, he would have escaped right here and there…

Finally, a door flung open, and the goblin was immediately assailed by a torrent of scents. Some smells were new, some were already familiar, and some made his heart jump in his chest. No, it couldn’t be…?

When the human finally let him on the floor - a soft, plushy floor that he had never laid a foot on before - he was finally able to focus on the room. And the inhabitants within. He couldn’t believe what he heard.

‘Watch out! Look! Look there!’

The language of goblins.

‘Look! Friend!’

Several distinct voices, squealing excited words of warning.

‘Friend? New friend!’

‘Look! Look! New friend! New friend!’

‘Everyone! New friend!’
‘Excitement! Excitement!’

The room was large, noisy with an explosion of colors and strange shapes, so much so that it was dizzying to the old one. But what mattered the most was what was happening before his single eye: half a dozen goblins were converging towards him, excited looks on their green faces. A couple young ones, but a few adults too, rushing towards him in a show of friendliness.

They were all wearing strange clothes with bright colors that only humans could make. All of them were clad in the same strange white cushion around their loins, in place of underwear. They looked happy and healthy, for the most part, and the vast difference in appearance between them made him believe that this wasn’t a single family, but a whole tribe of goblins coming from different places.

Their little fingers grabbed his arms, his legs, his hair. They were all so excited, squealing nonsensical words and laughing in bursts, like infants playing around. The old one had trouble understanding them, but he found himself laughing along. He was so happy to see anyone of his own kind after such a long time in isolation.

‘Come back!’

The cry shook him. He looked around in a panic until he saw her: the young goblin who had found his prison this morning. Abandoning the other goblins, he rushed towards her and grabbed her in a tight embrace, like he was scared she would disappear again.

‘Found you!’ he yelped, using the exact same words that young ones used when they played together. The other goblins laughed at this sudden display of playfulness, and two of them immediately began running around the room. They wanted to play catch, too!

The young girl grabbed the old warrior by the wrists, and with a few twists of her dexterous fingers, she had removed the mittens from his hands, like it was the easiest thing to do. The old one threw them away, and grabbed her cheeks between his hands, finally getting a good look at her face.

No… It wasn’t his daughter. She only resembled her from afar. The young female’s eyes were similar in shape, and so was her nose. But her ears were just slightly too short, and she lacked the freckles of deep blue that dotted his daughter’s sky-colored eyes. She was still precious in the ways only a very young goblin could be.

When she smiled, so wide that the strange bulb she was chewing on fell off her mouth, revealing two rows of perfectly pointy teeth, he knew that it didn’t matter if she wasn’t his daughter. He wanted to cherish her just as much, staying by her side and shielding her from the harshness of the world. That’s what he did best. He was a warrior, a protector. And he had found something new to protect.

After spending so long stuck in a single featureless room, this new place was overwhelming to the old goblin. He had to patrol the room in its entirety, searching for dangers and hidden traps. But he quickly felt like everything was… off.

The floor was the color of dry grass, but soft like wool and bouncy under his feet. There were eight suns on the ceiling, square in shape and producing a white light without warmth. The walls were painted with the scenes of a forest, but whoever painted it must have never set foot in a real forest before. The mushrooms were too big, the trees too straightforward, and the colors were all wrong. The sky could never be this shade of blue, birds simply couldn’t wear this striking shade of red - and he certainly had never seen a pink rabbit before.

But aside from this confusing backdrop, the room seemed designed to host goblins in comfort. It had soft places to sleep and sturdy toys to chew. There were plenty of nooks and crannies to hide, and food aplenty on a board set aside for them (even that dreadful fruity goop)... No predators, no dangers, not even a sharp thing they could cut themselves with. It was a paradise to raise your young ones in, far from the dangers of the world. A safe place.

One by one, he inspected all the goblins who lived in this strange room, and curiously, there was something off about each of them as well. Chief among them was that they all looked more well-fed than a goblin ought to be.

One of the youngsters was bald, with unsightly protrusions on his head and a hunched back. Another one had eyes of silver which clouded his sight, and barely any teeth. An older goblin currently playing with a doll had their ears cut short and missed fingers on both hands. Even his young protégé had bad legs that couldn’t support her own weight - she crawled everywhere, dragging her legs behind her, unable to stand up.

Those things were not unusual for goblins, especially those who still lived far away from human civilization. With his many scars and his missing eye, the old goblin certainly fit among the tribe. But usually, the uglier goblins were left alone by humans. They only wanted the “beautiful” ones, that is to say, the ones that looked like humans the most. Smooth skin and big eyes, silky hair and a chirpy laughter… All things the old one didn’t have. None of the goblins here had them.

Then why were they here? Why were all these goblins, marked by scars of a dangerous life or pains from an unlucky birth, accepted in this safe place and treated like fragile and precious things?

Maybe they were placed here on purpose, separated from the rest of the world. A room set aside for the imperfect ones, for the tribe of the broken goblins. Keep them safe, keep them away. A cruelty or a kindness, depending on how you looked at it.

After hours spent among his kind, several humans entered the strange room. The old goblin was immediately ready to pounce, but the young one gave him some reassuring pats. ‘Friends’, she said to him. His experience with humans didn’t allow him to trust her.

Indeed, the other goblins rushed to the humans like they were friends. The old goblin was shocked to hear them talk: human and goblin words mixed together, squealing excitement in two incompatible languages. He heard them say the words ‘food’ and ‘comfort’, mixed with expressions his ears had never witnessed before. How familiar were the goblins with these humans?

One of the humans said something in a sing-song voice, and two of the small goblins rushed towards a piece of elevated furniture that the old one had ignored thus far.

With the help of humans, they were lifted up and laid down on the furniture, and then proceeded to open the garment around their loins and clean them. It looked like a much more involved process than the simple slip-and-replace routine that he had gotten used to in the white room. It made sense, as theirs were much bigger, too. The whole scene played like a well rehearsed ritual, and the old one couldn’t help but wonder why humans tended to invent such silly things.

He heard the sing-song question near him, and he turned towards the source of the sound with a growl. It was the human who had brought him here. She looked tense, and didn’t want to approach him any closer. With a trembling hand, she offered him a cylinder. The old one didn’t touch it, but the young female grabbed the item with eagerness to show him from up close.

It looked like the water bottle from his cube, with the same kind of soft nipple, but filled with a white liquid instead. She presented the bottle to him, smiling behind her bulbous mouth-toy. He let a few drops fall on his tongue. The thing was almost tasteless, just a hint of sweetness and not much more. But at the same time, it felt oddly nostalgic. Like he had tried this beverage before, but had forgotten about it until today. Without really understanding why, he picked up the bottle from her hands and began to drink, slowly, one mouthful at a time. He was weary of human foods by now, but he finished the bottle nonetheless.

The distribution of bottles and the wiping of bottoms continued for a few minutes, until the humans began chanting together as they left the room one by one. One of them touched the wall, and the light of eight cold suns faded down, leaving them in a comfortable twilight. The old goblin liked twilight: it was easier to hide when the Sun wasn’t looking.

Yet, like they were obeying a silent order, the misfit goblins all seemed to move towards the same place, a mound of pillows and blankets in a corner of the room. The old warrior followed them, curious. They all seemed to prepare for sleeping, despite being full of energy a minute ago.

They laid down on the blankets, some of them picking up a soft animal-shaped toy to hold tight. The old goblin found himself a place to lay down, and immediately, the other goblins joined him. He was soon surrounded by all sides, his new tribe snuggled against his aging silhouette. The young female crawled on his body and wrapped her arms around his neck.

For a moment, his single eye expressed nothing but confusion and fear. But as he heard the other goblins all but purring in delight around him, he relaxed a bit.

He blinked. He was tired. This had been such a rough day. For the first time in a long while, he was able to let his guard down. The place was safe. He was among his kind. He would probably never face the hardships of the outside world ever again. And his daughter, wherever she was now, had sent him a good fortune to save him from his lonely fate. A good fortune who looked almost exactly like her.

He blinked once more. A tear had found a way in his eye. That had not happened in a long time, too. He squeezed the young female closer to him. He didn’t want to lose her. He would teach her all of his tricks, so that if she ever leaves the room, she will know how to survive in a world that was too big for them. Even without him.

He closed his eyes and fell asleep. After a long, long life filled with pain, the old warrior had finally found a place to rest.