Chương 4: Involuntarily Shifted

Mop slunk into view, bouncing a squalling baby on her hip. The goblin's leathery hide, normally as black and sleek as obsidian, was dull in color. There were deep bags under each cat-like eye and the hair atop her head was a frizzled mess. The hair was the strangest change of all, considering Mop didn't normally have any. It was as if the stress of having a baby had sprouted it simply as an excuse for something to go gray. Mop's weary gaze settled on Gnal.

Her eyebrows tried to lift in surprise, but got only halfway before the effort proved too much. The pair gave up and sagged back down over her eyes.

"Why do you look like that?"

"I didn't choose this form!" Heat flushed across Gnal's silky hide as her color bridged the gap from pink to beet red. She threw her bulbous head backwards and heaved, managing to unstick two stubborn tentacles from the tile with a series of indelicate plop-plop-plops. While her six other limbs may have still been stuck in place, the change allowed her to speak without tasting the fact she hadn't swept the floor in weeks.

"I involuntarily shifted," Gnal said.

"I think they've got meds for that."

"What?"

"Diapers at least."

"Shifted, Mop! I said shifted!" Gnal's glare settled on the wailing baby. It too looked different than she'd last seen it. Little Grandma's face was nearly as red as Gnal's and streaked in fluid. Regrettably, not all of it was tears. Gnal tore her eyes from the unsightly dribble oozing from the baby's nose and refocused her fury on Mop.

"It's the cry. I told you, didn't I? This is what happens when you smuggle living organic matter from Earth into other dimensions!" Mop continued patting the infant's back. While it didn't improve the baby's disposition, the repetitive action seemed to bring the little goblin some comfort.

"Did you?" Mop's voice was oddly hollow, lacking all trace of sarcasm.

"I suppose that might explain a lot of the weird stuff that's been happening." Humans, like eldritch horrors, possessed magical capabilities. It was the reason the species was so adept at opening portals into the Void. Housed safely within their own dimensions, most humans lived blissfully unaware of their potential. It wasn't until one entered another dimension that their abilities made themselves known, often with disastrous consequences. An adult human possessed some manner of control.

Unlike an infant, which couldn't control its powers any better than it could its legs. Unbelievable, Gnal thought. It was as if Mop had gone out of her way to smuggle home the most lethal creature possible.

"I specifically told you to leave that on another human's doorstep, Mop. Why is it here?"

"I thought you meant it like, 'Hey, Mop, you should definitely leave that helpless baby behind. Wink, wink.'""I said no such thing."

"Yeah, but you winked."

"I have twelve hundred eyes. I can't help that they don't all blink simultaneously!" Currently equipped with a single pair, Gnal missed the other eleven hundred and ninety-eight already. Her glare didn't have the same potency without them.

"Why didn't you leave the baby on another doorstep like I told you?"

"Because there weren't any other doorsteps, okay?" Exhaustion packed its suitcases and fled Mop's face. The goblin's ears rose to stiff points, mirroring the sudden fire in her eyes.

"It was a cult cleanup, Gnal. The house was in the middle of nowhere. The closest neighbor was miles away. I know how you are with the rules—""For good reason!"

"You would've shrugged your shoulders and told me to leave Lil Gramma anyway." Gnal wanted to argue that she didn't possess the capability to shrug but, as the rest of Mop's accusation was accurate, decided against pointing out her abysmal lack of shoulders. She stewed in silent fury instead, still attempting to unstick her remaining tentacles from the floor with limited success. Little Grandma's continuous crying wasn't doing her fraying nerves any favors, either.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"I couldn't do that. She's a helpless baby, Gnal. Just didn't sit right."

"So why are you here?" Gnal snapped.

"You obviously didn't care to listen to me in the first place. Why are you making it my problem now?"

"You might have been right about some things." Mop and Gnal traded looks, forcing the goblin to clarify her stance.

"I said some things! Not about all of 'em, alright? Don't take this as an invitation to start climbing back onto your high horse." Again, not physically possible. Also not worth bringing to Mop's attention. Gnal gave up trying to unstick her suction cups from the floor. She took her two free tentacles and folded them over one another in the universal sign for 'I'm not mad, just disappointed'. It wasn't true, of course.

Gnal was absolutely fuming, but she hoped it would motivate the goblin to get to her blasted point. Little Grandma continued to scream. Mop switched the baby from one hip to the other, still absentmindedly patting her back.

"Look, I might be in over my head here, alright? I think I have to take Lil Gramma back. She doesn't belong in this dimension." Finally, the goblin was talking sense.

"Which is why I'm here. I need you to help me take her back." Gnal withdrew her internal statement about Mop talking sense. The goblin's plan was in direct violation of every interdimensional portal regulation in existence.

"Me? No. Take her to the station and do it right."

"They'll make me put her back where I found her!"

"Not my problem."

"It'll be your problem when they find out I smuggled living organic matter into the Void under your watch." Mop added insult to injury with the addition of a cavalier shrug.

"They'll fire me, sure, but you're not walking away from this unscathed either." Gnal's soft body lost its grasp on solidity and puddled over the tile. Great cosmic dust, she hadn't considered that.

"How long did it take you to become a level-three eldritch horror?" The goblin wondered aloud.

"Two millennia? Three?"

"Four," Gnal said miserably. Advancement wasn't easy when climbing the social ladder involved being social.

"I wonder if they'll demote you all the way back to level one? Make you start from the beginning again?"

"Fine!" Gnal knew when she was had. Mop had clearly put more thought into this argument than she had the initial smuggling.

"I'll help you portal the baby back."

"And not where we found her, either. If you want me to keep this on the downlow, help you maintain your precious rank, then we're going to do it proper-like. Find Lil Gramma a home where she can be taken care of the right way. Big lovin' family and all that."

"An orphanage?" Gnal ventured. She was pretty sure the inhabitants of Earth had invented those by now. The demand was certainly there, based on the number of adult individuals she regularly removed all trace of.

"What? No! We're gonna pick her a family."

"We can't just handpick a family. That's not how it works." It could have been a result of the still caterwauling infant, but Gnal swore she saw tears start to well within the goblin's magenta-colored eyes.

"An orphanage is no place for a baby." Gnal allowed silence to argue her point all on its own. It was surprisingly effective.

"Fine, but I'm making sure it's a nice one, you hear? Lil Gramma's going to grow up with standards." Gnal didn't know what constituted a nice orphanage, but was prepared to agree to just about anything so long as someone helped peel her from the floor.

"She's not going to grow up anywhere if you don't get her to stop crying."

"I've tried everything! Bouncing, more bouncing, not bouncing. Nothing's worked."

"What about food?" Gnal was pretty sure babies needed that to survive. Mop's ears lowered sheepishly. Desperate to hide her embarrassment, she spun around and padded off.

"You keep a kitchen around here somewhere, right?" Panic surged through all eight of Gnal's tentacles the moment Mop disappeared into the display room.

"No, not there!" Gnal tugged and squirmed, willing her insubordinate body to detach itself from the floor. Her efforts were for naught. Little Grandma's howls fell suspiciously silent from within the display room. An eerie calm settled over the household. Gnal felt the unfamiliar magic buzzing across her particles ease, releasing her from its constricting grip. She shook off the octopus form and jetted into the air. Her incorporeal coils expanded, filling the hallway, as she stretched the soreness from her body.

"Gnal, you're a genius!" Mop stepped back into the tiled hallway. Clumps of frizzled hair fell from the goblin's head and littered the floor in her wake.

"Look, it worked! Lil Gramma stopped crying."

"That's my pen!" Gnal protested. The one she'd picked up at an Earth planetarium, specifically. It had a ringed planet that glowed orange with the press of a button. While the pen wasn't in Gnal's top ten, it deserved to be stored on a shelf and not shoved planet-deep inside a toothless mouth. Mop dismissed Gnal's concerns with a wave.

"You've got plenty more."

"She's getting slobber all over it."

"Gnal, so help me, there's only room for one baby on this adventure and Lil Gramma already called dibs!" Mop said, adjusting the baby in her arms.

"I got her to stop crying, as requested. Can you hurry up and summon the portal now?" Gnal unleashed the full force of her glare, pinning the tiny goblin under the weight of twelve hundred narrowed eyes. She held it, allowing the depths of her displeasure to be fully appreciated, before storming past down the hallway.

"I expect my pen back when we're done. After you've cleaned it."