Chapter 6: A Good Meal & a New Bed

My second day was pretty unremarkable.

It was like doing chores out at a country home.

That brought me up cold.

The only friend who asked for help with chores around the house in the country was Liam. And I now wanted to beat him into a bloody pulp! That and find that chick who was with him and rip her tail’s glue free from her spine!

There was no one around to watch me staring off into space thinking about throttling my buddy and his girlfriend.

I placed the next felled dead tree over my shoulder. A low branch was cut short and left as a handle and shoulder harness to drag the scraggly dead weight out of the woods for further cutting and reduction into firewood.

I did notice that I was calmer than normal. Something was different about this place, different in a nice way. I was more relaxed and just felt better about everything. Right down to oddly not having my normal full sensation in my balls like I had felt every day of my life leading up to today. Even with the weird wet dream from the night before there was no mess.

There was just something about the work and the air, and probably the pleasant, stress-free company that I found relaxing and fulfilling. Not to mention the whole day was like working in a gym, without attention seekers butting into your space with their stupid phones.

I leaned into the harnessing branch over my shoulder and broke the fallen dead tree free of whatever snag was hanging it up and ignored the snapping sounds of kindling breaking off.

Truth be told, I did not mind spending my days working on the Wizard’s estate helping and hauling heavy stuff for the girls.

Normally I would think I was losing my damn mind, but the occasional rewards were nicely met. Instead of some yoga-pant-wearing snob like I normally dated sneering down her nose at the work that kept her living in pampered ease, every time I passed these little green Goblins their jaws dropped seeing what I was pulling.

That genuine response sort of tickled me!

We all knew that I was twice their size, but being appreciated for it, instead of sneered at made a huge difference for me!

Were my civilized friends to see me now, they would have probably been gobsmacked. The fulfillment I gained from doing natural, hard work while being eyed by cute little females, even if they were tiny and green, made me just want to work harder.

The simple things in life were speaking clearly to me.

The wood area had a two-Goblin-sized saw with a wooden frame to reduce the fallen trees for cutting. After shearing off all the remaining branches I rode the tree, I guess it was a log now, onto a low cradle that allowed lengths to hang out for cutting before they were split.

The simply supported split-plank ‘V’ was too low, and I found myself either kneeling or bending over too far to fully remove a chunk. So I ended up kneeling to start and then standing to finish, so I stopped dropping the cuts on my legs when they fell.

After I ripped the tree into small manageable chunks that the four little green women had seen me hauling, Elara and Vespera came trotting over to visit.

They did their near-twin trick of finishing each other’s sentences and flirted their way into, “Alex, you’re so strong,” and the other finished, “I bet you can’t lift us up!”

That made me sigh.

The two little imps were distracting me from my work. And I really did not want to get zapped for playing around.

My ego and pretty smiling girls won the day.

Before I knew it we were playing at doing curls with Vespera and Elara hanging from my arms, a little blue and then a little purple head appearing above my fist as they hung from each arm during curls. They dangled giggling as I lifted each in turn moving their seventy-five or eighty-pound bodies like dumbbells at home.

I figured I would get in trouble when Azura came stumbling to a halt around the corner, rushing from the house to one of her errands in the tower. She just stared.

I winked at her and pulled Vespera and Elara, all giggles and clinging bodies through the ninth and tenth repetitions with each arm.

Azura smiled at that.

When Vespera and Elara dropped from my arms, giggling and amused to no end, I noticed that Zephyra was shoulder to shoulder with Azura watching.

It was nice to see that even Auntie Zephyra’s edge faded.

After a day of chopping down, dragging in, and reducing trees into ample firewood, I was pretty dirty again. Covered in sawdust, hot from the day’s work, dripping sweat, and whatever death-reeking remnants of the slime I ingested on Halloween and was finally finishing sweating out.

When it came time, I volunteered for a dunk in the pond!

With all my clothes soaked again, I stripped them off in the water, watching the sawdust and wood chips float away in the water. This time there was no layer upon layer of rancid brown filth to wash off, just honest labor and sweet from work.

I did hope that regular bathing became a permanent thing!

It was amazing how quickly my opinion turned on that subject too. With only twenty-four hours on the ground with these four Goblin girls, I wanted to spend that time playing in the water.

They started to quickly adapt and become bolder too. Which was weird, but fun.

Playing in the water with the Goblin girls, it seemed curiosity overwhelmed shyness on their part and mine.

Once my clothes were rinsed, wrung out, and tossed onto the grass, there was hardly the span of a breath where I did not have two and probably three girls within a double arms length or less. And usually, all were there and closer than that. The only reason one fell away was to get something from the shore or paddle off to dunk her hair unmolested.

Even Zephyra spent most of her time within arm’s length.

Elara and Vespera with their Blue and Purple hair, loose and wet, but plastered to their heads as almost black were super cute. Both were cute in the flirty college girl way.

Secretly I spent as much time as I could trying to admire Azura’s big beautiful tits!

But because I’m a big dumb boy, I was constantly getting caught by the Azura, Vespera, and Elara.

Zephyra did not seem to care. She just smiled, shook her head, and kept paddling around.

Vespera and Elara both had cute perky little tits, but Azura’s massive jugs were magnificent! Her huge tits on her tiny four-and-a-half-foot tall frame made Azura look like some sex-Goddess crafted in a horny teenage boy’s craziest fantasy!

And then her sparkling eyes, full of mirth, intelligence, and life just drew me in.

Zephyra left first, to go make the evening’s ‘brown’.

I slowly swished my hands, driving me slowly farther and farther away from the pond’s shore.

Purple and Blue both let Azura know they were cold, which made sense since they were both skinnier than either Azura or me.

Azura waved them off and then kicked out after me.

Wanting to be alone, but not really, I arched my back pushing my chest up and swished my arms away from the shore. Driving my head back and underwater, blotted out the natural sounds of the birds and swaying trees in the vast mountain forest. The sun set quickly in the mountain valley, going from above to touching the western mountains. Staring at the sky while feeling the water sloosh past was also nice.

The extra splashing at my feet finally drew my attention after a good fifty gliding strokes.

Lifting my head and dropping my body back into the water, I realized Red was paddling after me.

She eyed me with something between curiosity and suspicion. She was treading water in a frantic doggy style. Though not yet tired she was burning energy faster than she should have been stationary.

While trending water calmly only an arm’s length away, my inner wise ass asked, “Can I help you, Miss?”

The little green woman with amethyst eyes and sopping wet rose-red hair demanded, “Why are you trying to drown yourself?!”

That made me smile.

She was not as strong a swimmer as me.

With a quick kick and pull I was by her side.

I gripped her little hand to calm her down and calmly dismissed, “I’m not going to drown myself.” I gently passed her hand into both of mine and slipped my right hand up to Azura’s upper arm into just below her armpit. I gently rocked us both back, and right as she started to tense and flail tilting backward. I suggested, “Give it a nice soft inhale, Azura. I’ve got you. Keep the air inside and we’re just going to float on our backs and gently float to shore.”

Her eyes darted back to me from the worst side eye any female had ever given me. She did inhale and hold it gently though.

I encouraged, “Good. Now slowly kick and gently sweep your arm from above your head in the water and down your side.”

She listened and after a few uncoordinated strokes, she started watching and getting the timing, before smoothing out her movements.

As a reward for my good deed for the day, of teaching Azura a modified backstroke, I got to stare at her tits, just below the crystal clear water!

She did catch me staring a few times.

She just smiled and the third time she just tapped my chest, and shook her head, sighing from the water, before inhaling again to keep her flotation.

We reached the shore and climbed out. While whipping my muddy feet on the grass shore, Azura watched me.

I gathered my wet clothes and bundled them up into my arms.

She walked back with me silently, which was nice. A confident comfortable silence was also a nice change from the frenetic, talkative, phone-addicted, incessant chatter I was used to on dates.

Not that a woman who held a remote control to my shock collar and who I just taught a lazy way to paddle around the pond was much of a date.

The most interesting part of dinner after our community bath, was a mostly naked Azura except for a thin blanket used as a towel wrap of light wet cloth that adhered magnificently to her massive curves. She did again press me down into my seat at the butt of the table on the floor, her little hand on my head. Fingers lingering a little longer than normal.

I shuffled and seated wrapped in a larger thicker blanket to stay warm and dry.

Azura accepted another copy of the prior night’s drink from Auntie Zephyra. She placed it for me, and then stroked my hair again, driving water down and out instead of pushing back and shooting water all over the table.

Once I accepted and sipped the slightly salty drink before dinner Azura retreated to her normal seat to my right side at the far side corner of the table from me. But her butt was up on a bench.

Auntie Zephyra started to deliver bowls, first to Azura and herself, then returning with the bowls for the younger women. And finally a larger oversized bowl for mine.

I eyed the burdensome load of ‘brown’ before me that I was expected to consume.

Vespera and Elara giggled at a joke of their own.

I wondered if they saw the look of mine appraising the larger portion.

Once the rest were seated and Azura and Zephyra started to eat, quickly Blue and Purple started shoveling into their mouths.

I started to eat after everyone else.

I regret to say I was a terrible guest again.

The chef in me got tired of trying to pick out the flavors in the stew. I noticed the overcooked meat and the mashed vegetable flavors. But I absolutely could not discern even what meat was used. It could have been deer, lamb, or squirrel for all I knew!

I asked, “What is in this stew?”

Her loose wet now dark purple, almost black, hair shaking with amusement while she laughed silently Vespera bit her lips closed visibly.

Elara, her own blue hair darkened with the water, needled Auntie Zephyra, offering a comment on the sole cooking ingredient, “Dirt.”

Vespera added, “And water, don’t forget the water.”

Infuriated Zephyra slammed her palms on the table next to her food.

She chittered so fast that I could barely follow her chittering Goblin language rant. Even with whatever magic was putting the meaning of words into my head. It was so fast and jumbled together that it made almost no sense to me.

I did pick up that Auntie Zephyra questioned the girls’ parentage, intelligence, who raised them, and why they existed in the world, along with a hundred other insults in rapid succession.

That just made the youngest members break into gales of rolling laughter.

I apparently hit a subject of great amusement to the younger girls, and aggravation for Zephyra.

Feeling like I stepped on my crank with that last one, I offered, “Would you like me to cook tomorrow’s meal?”

Four sets of eyes stared at me like I grew another head.

Azura asked, “Why?”

I mentioned, “Well, it was my job. I was the head chef and managed a restaurant because the boss was a drunk jerk who only got the job because his Mommy and Daddy wanted him out of the house a few hours a day.” I only got shocked stares at that comment. I dialed back my rhetoric and offered clearly, “I would like to try cooking here in a real kitchen instead of wasting my time like I was only forty-eight hours before under Mark drinking away our liquor and pissing off my workers.”

I got partial blank stares. I got an understanding about the name Mark being a drunk and bad boss, but the concept of ‘hours’ was alien. It took me a few minutes on the uptake to realize that the goblins were confused by hours. And then in the next moment, I remembered that I saw no clocks or any other technology that would require people to use exact clock-based times.

I corrected, trying to clarify, “Two nights before this evening I was working my job. But my boss is the owner’s son, and he is a spoiled little drunk shithead. I love cooking but hated working for Mark and that family.”

They understood that.

I just had to remember that there were both cultural and technological references people here would not understand. It was a struggle to remember that magic replaced technological innovation here.

Getting no response, I offered again, “Can I please try to cook something tomorrow evening?”

Elara and Vespera glanced at one another on the bench to my left. The girls enthusiastically agreed, begging, “Please, please! Cook something other than ‘brown’!”

Zephyra looked upset, and then she glanced at Azura.

Azura shrugged.

Zephyra cheered at being relieved of the task, and snapped, “Good! I hate cooking for you little ingrates anyway! Tomorrow afternoon you two young ones will attend to me and I will teach you how to sew and mend your garments on your own!”

Both youngsters groaned and sunk into the bench at the newly added workload. It probably served them right for messing with the old bull and getting the horns.

It seemed settled, so I finished scooping the ‘brown’ into my mouth and chased the clinging dirty flavor with the drink I was given.

After the work and light stress of the day, while lacking digital entertainment, it took no time to crash to sleep quickly again after dinner.

And again, without the digital distractions, I had nice dreams about being ridden all night.

Once I woke and we got our morning chores parceled out, I spent most of the next day fiddling in the kitchen, cleaning, smelling, tasting, organizing, and learning what was where. The kitchen looked, not modern, but like you might see in one of those old pictures of frontier towns, with the wrought iron arm sling to hover pots above the fire and other areas to warm things over the hearth.

I even found an iron grate that looked like it was made to be placed over the fire heat for grilling meats.

It was pretty hard to not get a big head after my first meal prepared in the new kitchen. We had fresh meats, roots, ground grains, vegetables, and leafy seasonings. Though it took a little planning to figure out the portions and times, that first night I managed lamb ribs, cornmeal flatbread, and green beans with sliced onions.

I was extremely self-conscious because not all the cornmeal pancakes were cooked and hot like I liked them. That and the need to send a runner with food to the Wizard before everyone else ate threw my timing to the breeze!

I ended up making a few meals for the Wizard, alternately using Vespera and Elara as runners to deliver the meals over those first few days.

No one got my Gobo-Meal-Dash joke. Then I kicked myself for the lazy American cultural reference that these people would never understand without me explaining it.

I chalked that up to another bad joke failure and reminded myself to cut out the cultural references, along with the technological and time-based references.

It was nice to receive compliments coming back from Azura’s mid-day meetings about the food improvements. She seemed to glow and bounce effervescently while sharing those pieces of good news.

Azura really seemed to enjoy the compliments, which she shared with me in every happy detail when she returned each day. Her cheerful enthusiasm for my work was exceptionally rewarding!

Especially, when held in sharp contrast to the shit-show that was my normal employment!

After the first week, I surely did not miss that part of my life. I was almost content to live without any of the comforts of home that I was missing.

Except for my bed.

Sleeping on the floor was getting old fast!

Still, it was amazing how quickly I could manage to fall asleep after dinner when there were no television, phones, computers, or other light pollution distractions to trick my brain into thinking it was still light outside. The circadian rhythms returned with a vengeance as my first week progressed!

Sleeping early after dinner was starting to grow on me. I always had sexy dreams about one of my cute little green hostesses coming to visit.

Even as it got colder out, the pond stayed nice and coolly refreshing. The four women still joined in bouncing around with me in the afternoon. So there was always dream fodder from those pleasant experiences!

I woke up again in the morning as always rested and relaxed. But I felt sweaty from the heat of the bedding, and sore from laying too still for too long on my back.

I was finally done sleeping on the floor.

Between the kinks in my flesh and the oppressive heat while sleeping I had enough.

The kinks in my back were from the overly hard-tamped dirt. It was creating rough spots in my back, or on whichever side I slept. And the overly hot blankets folded as an unyielding floor mat, and then the additional hot blanket over my body, were just oppressive! I had to sleep without clothing because it was so hot, and I was still sweating, which meant I needed to wash the blankets frequently or they would start to stink and mold.

My project materials list was not terribly extensive, but it was harder because there was no store around I could zip over to for purchases. I had to cut, work or make every piece I needed.

It all came down to collecting large long straight pieces of tree trunk wood each at least four inches in diameter. And then four much thicker lower trunk rounds that were between ten and twelve inches around and more than eighteen inches tall.

Plus, I had to acquire several long runs of rope.

Azura stumbled in, looked around, and immediately started nagging and getting snappy. She had her meltdown because I was bringing the uncut firewood into my closet-sized room. Then her frustration became clear, Azura demanded, “Why are you bringing these logs inside my house? Hummie, you are leaving a mess lying around!”

I just eyed Azura, looking down at her and standing my full height.

She finally made the angry girl ‘Ooh!’ sound, and snapped, “Don’t make a mess anywhere else!”

I asked Vespera and Elara, “Are there any woodworking tools, like saws and chisels in the house?”

The two little she-devils asked, “Are you going to make a mess in your room?”

Neither moved until I admitted, “Probably.” I then followed up, and asked, “I could use some woodworking tools. A hand saw, some chisels, and a small mallet to carve things and set them into place securely. Can I get a few?”

Vespera suggested, evasively, “That will make a big pile of wood shaving mess.”

I realized Vespera was not talking to me when Elara offered, “We will look for tools at the Wizard’s tower, so you can make a mess and bother the queen with your messy room.”

Vespera chuckled, looking at her blue-haired twin imp, “That will be funny!”

That was when they agreed, smiled, and wandered off, without another word to me.

Azura returned with a basket and stared at me.

Not knowing what she wanted, and incapable of remembering if I had forgotten something, I asked, “What?”

She sighed patiently and reminded me, “Hummie, you said you wanted to go into the woods to get green leaf seasonings from the forest after I met Wizard Isidore today.”

I remembered, “Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot, with the distraction from my project.”

She shook her head, rolling her eyes.

We wandered out the door around noon. And once we were out of earshot from the house, Azura started chatting.

She just continued, from my side, patiently holding the basket for me to drop the newly uprooted basil plant onto the already leafy load, “So, my grandsire was the last Goblin king we females respected. But there were rumors my mother told me that he had a human mother. So not only was he bigger and stronger than most, but he was smarter and not mean like the gobo-boys now.”

From my knees in the forest, I was filling in the hole I just left, and I glanced at her while Azura leaned over the basket, fussing with the leaves and making sure the dirty root bottom fell out past her clean basket.

Without noticing my glance, she just rolled on, “So after my grandfather died and the many wars he steered our people through started winding down things became difficult for our people. My mother, the daughter of my grandfather the king, said that some evil sorcery began to corrupt my father and the other males of my father’s generation.

“Auntie Zephyra is not really my mother’s kin. She is younger than my mother was but between my mother and my birth. I think Hummie’s bosses call her a ‘lady-in-waiting’ whatever that is.”

I stood and Azura followed unperturbed, “So anyway, things started going to split between our goblin males and females. They started acting more selfishly. They were getting away with whatever they could get away with. Taking advantage of friends in moments of weakness. The males would turn on old allies from my grandsire’s time and attack the weakness at the first opportunity they detected.”

Spotting some long, thin stalks rising from a slight clearing, and wandering over that way, she tagged along.

Azura gently swung the basket between us.

She glanced up with her big pretty eyes to make sure I was still listening, and when she saw I was looking down at her, she continued, “So, they were treating old friends badly, but at the same time being offensive to my mother’s women. My mother was teaching us to treat our friends and allies well, so we could build better relations, so everyone could trade, grow, and be more secure. My father turned and raided them after my mother worked with them to repair their farmsteads.”

I slowed next to the onion stalks and knelt with a stick in hand to pull back the dirt from around the wild onions.

She let the basket fall into both hands while shifting to a lightly happy side-by-side sway. “The towns my mother just worked with started turning on us all, because they were assuming that my mother was scouting during the day, locating valuables and then reporting to her raiding consort. You can guess how badly that went for our clan.”

I looked up as Azura unconsciously pressed her giant tits together between her arms, lifting and presenting their brain-melting mass in her frumpy black jumpsuit. I had to shake my head to clear whatever the hell was going on in there now!

Only a week away from home and these weird little green women, especially this one, were getting deep under my skin!

I never even considered this short and green fetish, and now with her live and close enough to touch that was changing. I wondered about how this world was getting under my skin, and if I was changing with it already.

She shrugged and looked down from her casual back and forth, caught me looking up at her, onion stalk in hand, smiled sweetly down at me, and continued, “That was when we started to split.” She amended, “Well, I do not know about Goblinkind in other parts of the world. But our line, and the lines we had contact with, all started to split.

“Maybe the Master-Wizard Isidore Fireforge could explain it to me. He knows almost everything important there is to know! But I don’t know if he would consider us important enough to have studied for the answer. But he probably knows, because a Goblin civil war of the sexes within his domain and in all the surrounding territories probably made his notice, especially with all the homesteads my miscreant father was then burning.”

I started digging out the onion in hand.

Her slight pause let me think she looked down at me again, but she recommenced, “Anyway, a few years after I was born, my mother’s people split from the camp during the day. They left when the males were sleeping off their drunk from the raiding the night before. Mother with young me, and her few companions were lucky, because a large human hunting party found the camp during the day and slaughtered my father’s contingent. They killed everyone down to the last warrior, including the remaining females and babies, not long after we left that day. The Human warriors staked their heads as a warning around villages in the area under their protection. My mother’s people fled far and fast, coming in from the east, and entering this valley from the south passage through the mountains.”

Azura was nice and close by my shoulder with the basket ready, standing only a hand’s length away from my knee and shoulder. I popped the first large onion from the ground and set it heavily into Azura’s basket.

The weight made her look down, as she exclaimed, “Wow! That’s a good one!”

Her easy delight and gratitude for so many things made her easy to like as a person.

I tried to turn my attention to the next onion, but Azura distracted me when she gently laid her little right hand on my head, and affectionately slid her hand down and forward, smoothing my short hair under her warm little palm. She easily leveled the compliment, “Good job! That looks like a good one! I can’t wait to taste what you do with it!”

Her hand lingered on my head. And if I did not know better that we were definitely not lovers, it felt to me like that was a very possessive female marking her territory kind of touch.

I would know! I would be participating if we were lovers!

I pulled the next onion free and gently placed its roots on top of the basil plant and other various bits of leafy goodness we collected.

Wanting to start her story again, to get my mind off that last awkward path, I asked, “So your mother’s females snuck in and took up residence here?”

She went back to her gentle side-to-side swishing, and recommenced, “No, not here. At the southern end of the valley. Much lower in elevation and many miles away. It was difficult, with no lair and no protection. My mother left with only about four hands of females. The rest stayed and died with the males of the clan. People in the valley were rightly suspicious, with all the aggressive and opportunistic goblin males causing trouble and being hunted in this and surrounding regions. Mother was kept at bay, barred from the city with her few retainers. Vespera and then Elera were the last of our pure Goblin sired before the split. Eventually, when my mother was dying of old age and general exhaustion we were dislodged from our terrible little home by the south pass. There was a lot of sickness and a poor diet there.”

I placed three more onions into her basket and stood to wander a little further, turning slightly back towards the house.

Azura stayed by my side and chatted happily, on the shitty and depressing subject, “So, even as sickness and little food plagued our women, and our numbers dwindled, while I was young, I tried to carry on helping the neighboring homesteads.” Shaking her head, she admitted, “It did not count for much. Eventually, we collapsed that camp and wandered north past the city.

“Eventually we encroached on the Obsidian Tower grounds. We walked right up the path that Human residents refused to tread. Yet the road never seemed in need of maintenance from mortal hands. We found the orchards and animals wandering un-penned.

“Vespera and Elara were still very young, not yet to the age of womanhood yet. But we pitched a tent under a tree near the lake. Zephyra constantly told me it was a bad idea, and that the Wizard could undoubtedly see us on his lands. She warned that he would smite us with fire or lightning from his tower and never need to leave the comforts of his home or studies.”