Husband of the Goblin Tribe

[Interludes Vol. 1.5] In which we meet Melon, a gourmet goblin.

~~** Interlude | Melon **~~ 

“HaABEe!”

The first word I can recall saying is Hubby. I had intended to call him Husband at first, since Pear and everyone else also called him Husband. But he seemed intent on wanting me to call him Daddy. I wound up getting confused and calling him Hubby, but my reward for speaking at all was to get picked up and squished into a warm hug by him before he put his mouth on my belly and blew on it, making sounds that tickled me and made me giggle, so, I assumed it was him telling me that it was fine to call him that from now on.

I hadn’t come into the world for very long and I was already feeling tired, lazy, and hungry all at the same time. But I was certain of one thing already… these two goblins knew how to live it up!

We’d be lazy and nap together, with me in the middle, nice and warm after having eaten a lot of food and drank a lot of Pear's milkies together with Hubby. Then I’d be carried to the smelly room called the shit-pit since that’s where that stuff went, and then we’d go back to my cave-hole where Hubby and Pear would play games with me. Pear liked playing Strike, while Hubby taught me games like checkers and four-color! (It was a game where we had to make a line of four colors that matched.) Hubby was pretty good at it, but I was better!

I also got to meet plenty of other goblins as well. Adult goblins like Berry who hunted for tasty berries, Old One who poked me all over my body a whole bunch and called me a fat and lazy strong-one, Ivory who brought me a bone charm that I liked very much. Then smaller goblins visited, like Diana Artemis, my eldest sister, who said I wasn’t going to be much of a hunter. Orchid and Lilac who said I should try fire-meat and see if I like it (which I did). Button who spoke for my youngest older sister Glace who didn’t talk at all herself, but who said through Button that I should learn a special skill from Hubby called cooking since she felt I had a talent for it.

I didn’t know what a talent was, but the thing called cooking had to do with making and eating tasty food, and that was something I was sure I was going to be good at doing. It wasn’t long before Hubby stopped staying in the same cave-hole Pear and I shared, but he did continue to visit us a lot. As it turns out, He, Glace, and Vera—Glace’s maker goblin—were digging a cave-hole right next to this one to turn into a kit-chin, which was supposed to be a special cave-hole I would be using in order to make all kinds of tasty food, so I was looking forward to it being finished!

Glace would visit my cave-hole often, to join me when it was time for drinking milkies from Pear. She tried to teach me something called Magic, but I wasn’t able to do the things she could do. I did figure it out, but only enough to activate something called a Rune. However, that was exactly what she wanted me to be able to do, so I was told that I did a great job.

I was still a strong-one and not allowed to walk the whole of Goblin-home yet. I could only go to the shit-pit and Hubby’s cave-hole by myself, and that was only after being escorted many times by both adult goblins and my older sisters until I was familiar with how to get there and back to my own cave-hole without getting lost.

It seems that Button had gotten lost once before I came into the world, and it made many goblins worried.

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It wasn’t too long after the kit-chin was finally completed that I became a big sister myself. An adult goblin named Toy had made two strong-ones at the same time, my sisters Game and Fun. They were also like me, goblins who weren’t considered to be strong as hunters or casters of magic, so they would be makers, instead.

I was told that as far as us younger sisters went, Diana was in charge of any goblins who would be hunters, Glace was in charge of any goblins who would be casters—goblins who used magic to hunt, and I would be in charge of any goblins who would be makers. At first I didn’t understand why that was important, but I was told that there were going to be many many more sisters coming into the world from now on, and that they needed someone to look up to who understood what they were good at, and what they weren’t.

I also began to learn a bunch of things all at once shortly after those two came into the world.

Pear would take me to visit Old One who lived in the back of Goblin-home and she taught me all about what it meant to be a Bloodmaw Goblin. I was often joined by Game and Fun since they lived in a cave-hole close by to Old One. Turns out Hubby had a really important job in the tribe. He was responsible for helping to make strong-ones with all the adult goblins, which meant that he was responsible for making me all my sisters. Eventually we would become old enough to make our own strong-ones and when that happened, Hubby would be the one to help us with that as well.

I had seen Hubby and Pear do the thing that makes strong-ones when they thought I was asleep, and I have to say, Pear seemed to enjoy it a whole bunch. Especially the part that came after when she laid down and Hubby laid next to her and fed her lots of fruits and rubbed her milkies and squished her belly.

I asked Pear about making strong-ones and she said it would take a few moons before she could make another strong-one come into the world, so I would have to wait a while for another sister to be made by her. That was okay, since I had plenty of other sisters made by other adult goblins, like Game and Fun to keep me occupied until it was my turn to make strong-ones with Hubby.

Lessons with Hubby were also some of the most fun I could possibly have since they involved making and eating tasty food. Hubby had given me a special thing called a vernir knife. It wasn’t meant for hunting with, though. He said it was going to be one of the most important tools I would need for learning how to cook.

And he was right.

Near the front of Goblinhome was a cave-hole that was kept cold. Vera was in charge of it. Before Vera learned how to use picture-magic from Hubby, food which came from hunted beasties didn’t last too long and had to be eaten quickly. Now it could be kept longer, which meant that hunting didn’t have to happen every single day.

I was brought there by Hubby, and three other goblins were waiting for us when we arrived. Vera, Pepper, and Orchid. Vera melted the cold hard water called ice that the beasties were kept in so it could be removed and dismantled. Pepper and Orchid showed me how to separate the skin and fur from the meat, and then the meat from the bones. There was no part of the beastie that didn’t have a use.

The skins and furs would be made into things like loincloths, pillows, blankets, and whatever else Hubby might think up that went over well with the tribe by Pepper. Bones were almost exclusively traded to Ivory, who would make things out of them (like my bone charm) in exchange for bloody meat. And the meat… well, that was the most important part.

What Hubby was trying to teach me about butchering the meat of a beastie was something called the cuts. He admitted to not knowing enough to be an expert on it, but that meat from the different parts, such as legs, or the ribs, had different ways of being prepared and had different tastes and textures that came with them. I also didn’t understand what he meant at first by that, and neither did any of the other goblins who were present and helping, but it wasn’t long before I did.

I can’t explain how it happened, but while Hubby and I were testing out cooking various pieces of meat I had cut up using the vernir knife on the magic hot stone in the kit-chin, I tried samples of some and began to understand how each piece tasted and how it could taste better depending on how it was turned into fire-meat.

It wasn’t just fire-meat that I learned how to cook. I learned how to make things called desserts as well. How to mash big tree-fruits into a pulp and serve it next to meat on the same plate. How to ferment things to make stuff like sauces and condy-mints. There was a particular one that was made from a juicy red vine-fruit which went extremely well with hamburgers. Glace was so happy to have it that she had Pepper make me a special loincloth called an Apron to wear so I wouldn’t get burned while cooking.

Old One had come to visit one day, wanting to eat something that was not fire-meat. Hubby was with me in the kit-chin and decided he wanted to fool her a bit. He showed me how to make something called a pate which was from a food he liked to eat called a bon-me. It was finely chopped meat and liver mixed with onion and even had some blue water added to it before it was very lightly cooked on low heat using the special magic hot stone which was made by Vera and had all sorts of picture-magic Runes drawn into it.

When it came out, it was served with some of the applesauce desert on the same plate and, with the pate meat looking pink in color, it was enough to fool Old One who said it was some of the easiest to eat bloody meat she had ever tasted. From that day on, she would come in from time to time to have the same thing, telling me never to get too serious about learning Human fire-meat cooking, and to keep thinking of all the goblins who preferred the taste of bloody-meat.

I now know what Button meant by always saying that Hubby was a tricky one.

There was no way I could ever tell Old One that what she had been stopping in to eat was in fact, fire-meat.

I didn’t spend all my time in the kit-chin. Hubby would take me outside to the playground, where there were swings he would push me and my sisters on, and a ladder I could climb that went into some kind of wooden cave-hole that led to a thing called a slide that brought you from up high to the ground really fast and in a fun way!

My older sisters were quite busy doing all sorts of things, like hunting, so the sisters I did play with were mostly Game and Fun. They lived with Toy and helped make new games for the Bloodmaw to play. They stopped by once in a while to eat fruit salad with nuts, saying that it was good food for helping them think of new games to make.

That’s when Game had a good idea and a few days later had brought Hubby in and the part of the cave-hole where people sat and ate food underwent a huge change. Many many tables were made and each of them had a place on the top for a game board to be inlaid in and played on (along with pieces!).

My kit-chin had now become a place that goblins wanted to stop in at for eating, drinking blue water, or playing a relaxing game or two with another goblin. Some goblins brought in bloody meat they didn’t care to have made into anything, and others brought their meat for me to make it into something tastier. They’d play chess, or checkers, or color-four, or whatever new games Toy, Game, and Fun happened to make that were interesting and enjoyable.

As things started to fall into place for me, that was when I became an older sister once again...