Chương 2: Lil Gramma

Bucket's long, bat-like ears pinned against the back of his head in fright. A threatened goblin's first instinct was to duck behind someone larger. This instinct was something of a dead end considering Gnal was his only option. He settled for a pitiful cower, spilling the proverbial beans as quickly as his trembling jaw would allow.

"It's all Mop's doing!" Bucket was quick to clarify that point. There really was no need. It was always Mop's doing.

"She found this secret back room, you see, hidden behind a rollaway bookcase. That's where I found the goat." Gnal willed a hundred different eyes to sweep every inch of the scorched basement at once. Her vision converged into a single point of focus on the bookshelf. True to Bucket's word, it had been shoved aside, revealing a hidden doorway.

Keen to distance himself from the impending reprimand, Lawyer came waltzing out of the room with his hands clasped behind his back, attempting his best I-didn't-do-it whistle. Gnal's withering glare was all the motivation he and Bucket needed to start cleaning. Both goblins grabbed their sponges and soap and went to work on the pentagram with uncharacteristic vigor.

"Mop." Gnal's voice was not so much a thunderous boom as it was a quiet tremble. It rose from the depths like an earthquake and rattled the basement walls until clouds of sediment shook loose from the ceiling.

"What-ee?" Mop called in a singsong voice as sweet as pie. Mop was probably used to being ordered to come out with her hands over her head. Gnal went with a less hostile option.

"Bucket says you found a baby."

"Bucket's a bald-faced liar!"

"Is he lying in this instance?"

"... Maybe." Gnal's irritation intensified. The cement floor buckled and heaved beneath her. The still-shuddering walls considered packing up and moving to a better neighborhood altogether.

"All right, all right! Stop with the theatrics, already. I get it. You're big and scary." Mop waited until the walls were structurally stable again before venturing out of the hidden room, cradling a bundle in her arms. She rocked it back and forth, making peculiar cooing noises with every step. Mop halted several paces from Gnal's hovering form.

"Well, here I am," the goblin said, still bouncing the swaddled bundle.

"You gonna come have a look-see, or not?" Gnal drifted tentatively closer. Cosmic horrors, by nature, did not fear many things, certainly not harmless infants. And yet, there was no ignoring the white hot heat that pulsed at the center of her core, sending ripples of panic through each incorporeal tendril. Had Gnal been capable of sweating, the basement would have been about ankle-deep and rising. Wrapped snugly in a blanket, Gnal caught only a glimpse of the creature's face.

It reminded her of a freshly hatched brain worm: squishy, wrinkled, and pink. Gnal's terror was not for the creature itself, but for what in the cosmic dust she was supposed to do with it. It was not unheard of to find survivors during a cleanup. Those situations tended to sort themselves out, however. The moment she arrived on-scene was usually the same moment that any surviving humans took off on foot, screaming. Based on the odd shape of its body, Gnal was uncertain whether or not the baby human had legs at all.

Oh, dear. Gnal felt her tendrils go squirmy. The handbook hadn't mentioned what to do in this scenario, which was ridiculous, considering it deserved its own chapter with footnotes. Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. When she found her voice again, it was abysmally small.

"You didn't happen to find its parents hiding in the secret room, did you?" Mop shook her head.

"Just the goat."

"How unfortunate." Gnal took one last look at the infant before spinning all of her eyes in the opposite direction.

"Make sure you put it back when you're finished cleaning."

"Nuh-uh. It's mine now. I'm taking her home."

"You can't do that."

"Yes, I can. Look for yourself." One reluctant eye slowly roved back in the goblin's direction. The rest followed. Mop drew the blanket away, putting Gnal's concerns regarding the baby's missing appendages to rest. She saw two arms and legs. They were short and stubby, and apparently not what Gnal was supposed to be noticing. Mop tapped her clawed finger against the baby's pink polka-dotted onesie, indicating a sigil that had been drawn in permanent marker.

Gnal peered closer but regretted it, suddenly grateful she'd skipped dinner. Her vaporous tendrils turned sickly green.

"They were gonna use her as an offering, Gnal." The ancient symbol was inexpressible outside of the eldritch tongue. Sifting through her knowledge of common languages, the closest comparison Gnal could find was the phrase "individually wrapped for freshness". The seal was often found on baskets of muffins, which, to be clear, was the preferred offering. What in the cosmic dust was an eldritch horror supposed to do with a baby? They didn't have little hidden pockets of chocolate inside!

"They offered the baby," Mop continued.

"So, I'm taking it."

"That offering was left for a cosmic horror, which you are not."

"But I'm a righteous terror. You've said so yourself. Close enough, right?"

"No." Mop set her jaw in defiance as a thousand qualifying arguments darted behind her narrowed eyes. She settled on her best one, forcing the words through clenched teeth.

"I name it. I keep it." It was never wise to let a goblin name anything. The act of naming was a slippery slope that soon led to questionable, if not downright unethical, claims of ownership. Gnal had lost a cat that way. Gnal beat Mop to the punch.

"Little Grandma."

"What?"

"There's no need for you to name the baby. I've already done it."

"That's a terrible name, Gnal!" Gnal thought it was quite fitting, actually. The child bore an uncanny resemblance to an older specimen of the human species, the kind Gnal typically encountered confined to rocking chairs, yelling at the television. Having named the child, Gnal considered the matter put to rest.

"Leave Little Grandma where you found her, and finish your job."

"You don't get it, do you? We can't just leave her here."

"The rules clearly state—""Forget the rules, Gnal. She's a blasted baby! Lil Gramma will die if we leave her as we found her." The majority of eldritch-kind regarded humans on the same level as insects: a fleeting annoyance. Here today, gone tomorrow. Gnal had to admit, for a bug, Little Grandma was sort of cute—in that pitiful way one felt for conventionally unattractive animals. Still, rules were rules. Gnal couldn't allow a living organic being to cross between the dimensions.

The consequences would be positively disastrous. Mop had stopped bouncing the baby sometime during the argument. Little Grandma raised a tiny, clenched fist into the air and voiced her displeasure with a disgruntled wail. It was a haunting sound. The kind capable of wreaking havoc on a cosmic horror's guilty conscience, tearing at the seams until moral threads unraveled from the weight of an overburdened superego.

"Take the baby upstairs." Gnal turned away with a shudder. She kept her tone stern, as if this was an everyday order and not a moment of weakness.

"Find a doorstep or something. Leave it where others of its kind will find it. Make sure no one sees you." Mop's ears lifted, relieved. With a compliant bob of her head, the tiny goblin braced Little Grandma against her chest and scurried for the stairs.

"Mop?" Mop froze. She glanced hesitantly over her shoulder, panicked perhaps that Gnal was about to change her mind.

"Never speak of this again."