So, when the two of them finally stepped out into some sort of vestibule, its walls more tree root than dirt, they did so hand in hand. This proved quite the shock to the goblin positioned on the far side of the room, where the roots had formed something like an archway, edged with delicate, drooping boughs of wisteria and iron lanterns bearing purple flames.
“Ren?” the goblin intoned, his eyes going wide. Judging from the dagger strapped to his hip, a perfect mirror of the one Ren carried, he seemed to be some sort of guard, presumably there to keep out undesirables.
Undesirables like her, Pansy realized, her chest constricting as the goblin’s gaze narrowed on her, his fingers already inching towards the hilt of his dagger.
“Halflings aren’t allowed in here,” he said quickly, before Ren had even had a chance to say hello.
“She’s with me,” Ren replied, their chin held high.
The guard scoffed. “Yeah, I can see that. But why?”
“Because…” Ren hesitated, their brow creasing as their lips thinned, seemingly unsure of how to answer.
The question, though deceptively plain in its wording, was not nearly so simple at its core.What is she to you?the goblin might as well have asked, the very thing Pansy herself had wondered yet feared to know, her heart once again kicking against her ribs. She awaited Ren’s answer with bated breath, her insides churning with every shift in their expression.
At last, Ren said, unflinching and determined, “Because she’s special to me.”
The goblin let out a snort, the same words that had sent warmth snaking down Pansy’s limbs pulling nothing but derision from him. “Then let her be special to you somewhere else. We all know that halflings ruin everything they touch. Nothing in those heads of theirs besidesme, me, me. No doubt this one didn’t even think of how it’d make you look when she begged you to bring her here.”
“I’m the one who offered,” Ren corrected, their posture winding a touch more rigid.
Another snort. “Sure you did.”
As Pansy moved to adjust her basket on her arm, the pie proving surprisingly heavy, an idea occurred to her. “What if I trade you a slice of pumpkin pie?” she ventured, peeling back the embroidered cloth covering the top of the basket. “I baked it fresh this afternoon.”
“Are you trying to bribe me?” the goblin asked, eyebrows arching high beneath his shaggy hairline.
Pansy’s eyes widened. Aghast, she shook her head with as much vigor as she could muster. “No! Of course not! I just thought… Ren said that when goblins want something, they trade for it, so I—”
“Thought you’d give me a slice of pie in exchange for letting you in,” the goblin finished for her, the corner of his mouth twitching ever so slightly.
Well, amused is better than offended, Pansy thought, though it failed to keep her cheeks from burning.
Seeing an opportunity to cut in, Ren said, “It’s very good pie. Pansy’s an excellent chef.”
“Hmm.” The goblin cocked his head to the side, eyes trained on the pie sitting in Pansy’s basket. “Well, it does look good. And I guess she can pass for a gnome if she covers upthose ridiculous ears of hers…”
“Then it’s settled,” Ren declared, their tone unusually clipped. “Pansy, give him a slice. We’ll call it a token of ‘new friendship’.”
For a moment, the goblin seemed like he was going to offer further protest. But as Pansy passed a slice, neatly balanced on a paper napkin, into his outstretched hand, whatever additional arguments might have been building on his tongue promptly vanished. Granted, that didn’t stop him from offering one last quip, formed around a rather large bite of pie: “If I get in trouble for this, I’m blaming you, Ren!”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Ren snapped, already breezing past him with Pansy in tow.
Evidently, the goblin’s comment about her ears had struck a nerve, though Pansy herself wasn’t offended in the least. Her ears were perfectly attractive by halfling standards. Still, there was something about that whole exchange that left her feeling… off, as if the world beneath her feet had been knocked slightly off its axis, and the sensation of tucking the rounded shell of her ear beneath several curls only made it register that much more sharply.
“Oh, blessed Nature,” the goblin guard gasped, clutching at his chest with equal melodrama, “that girl’s turning Ren into a halfling!”
Pansy snorted, the wordsI didn’t realize having table manners turned you into a halflingitching to be let loose. And they might have, had the sight of the Goblin Market, stretching across the massive cavern that lay beyond the archway in an eclectic mix of cobbled-together stalls and patchwork tents, not swept the very breath from her lungs.
Even just the cavern itself was something to behold, flushwith greenery across its many levels, the roots coiling along its walls not just roots but seemingly entire trees, with branches as lush and full as those that crowned the ones in the forest proper. Had Pansy not known for certain that they were still underground, she might have thought this just another glade, illuminated by gently swaying lanterns and thick beds of Wayfinder flowers.
“Wow,” she breathed, her eyes wide with wonder, the goblin at the entrance all but forgotten. “This is amazing.”
“Is it everything you imagined it to be?” Ren asked with a grin.
In truth, she wasn’t sure what she had imagined. Maybe the stalls packed with mushrooms and moss, the herbalists stirring their cauldrons in order to add yet another tincture to the walls of glass bottles behind them. But certainly not the bulbous tents that seemed almost alive, rising and falling with each puff of sweet-smelling, not-quite-floral smoke that wheezed out from underneath their flaps, nor the merchants hawking strange, singing crystals in every color of the rainbow and then some.
Equally unexpected was the diversity of the market’s attendees. Although there were plenty of goblins, as the name suggested, the bustling crowd was far from homogenous. A group of trolls, their shaggy pelts thick with scrub moss and other high-altitude growth, sat around a nearby campfire, slowly roasting some variety of beast until its skin crackled and gleamed. They paid no mind to the tall, spindly limbed woman circling them like a shadow, her form oscillating between youth and old age with every step.
