Chapter 8 Ren #2
Traitor, Ren thought, even though it made no sense. Mushroom wasn’t their cat. He was Pansy’s. So why should Ren care who Mushroom cozied up to?
Blossom giggled and lifted the kitten into her arms with practiced ease. “Is that what Pansy named him? I’m glad. I was worried she was going to name him something uninspired like – oh, I don’t know, ‘Cat’.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that kind of name,” Ren said, suddenly defensive on Pig’s behalf.
Sure, they hadn’t been the one to name her.
That had been the work of her previous… owner, Ren supposed was the right term, icky though it was, and Pig had simply refused to take another even after Ren had liberated her from the slaughterhouse.
“And not that it matters,” they continued after a beat, feeling oddly unsettled by the whole thing, “but I’m the one who named him Mushroom. ”
Blossom’s eyebrows, two delicate, perfectly manicured things, shot up high on her forehead. “You named him?”
Ren stiffened. “Is it so difficult to believe that a goblin could come up with a suitable name for a cat? Pansy certainly didn’t have any bright ideas.”
A line of knowing dragged across the corner of Blossom’s mouth. “Oh, not at all,” she chirped, her eyes once again sparkling with that same twinkling sheen.
Mischief, Ren concluded. That’s what it was. They’d seen it in Mushroom’s eyes too. Far too many times, in fact. Always right before he pounced on something that was very much not a toy.
“Just go on in,” Ren said, gesturing towards the door. “I’m heading back inside anyway.”
“Done with your weeding?” she asked, still far too pleasant for Ren’s liking.
No. “For now,” they answered. They would come out again later to finish the rest – when it was cooler. A believable enough excuse.
They started towards the door, and Mushroom, who’d seemed otherwise content to lounge in Blossom’s arms, wiggled free, just barely managing to land on all fours. He then scurried over to Ren in a gratifying display of loyalty, for which he was rewarded with a firm scritch behind the ears.
Perhaps you’re not a traitor, after all, Ren thought, heart swelling with unexpected fondness. Realizing that Blossom was watching them, they quickly swiped the feeling from their face.
“What are you waiting for?” they barked, embarrassment turning their voice rough. “I said go on in, didn’t I?”
Blossom looked like she was trying very hard to stifle a laugh. She pressed one hand against her mouth and said, in a somewhat muffled voice, “I figured it’d be more polite to let you lead.”
Rolling their eyes, Ren stepped up onto the stoop beside her and pushed down on the knob’s latch.
The door swung open easily, revealing the entry hall in all of its mossy glory – along with a few heavily patterned rugs and brightly colored knits that had definitely not been there when Ren had left that morning.
They frowned, confusion weighing heavy and low on their brow.
“Ren, is that you?” Pansy asked, her voice echoing from the adjoining room.
“And Blossom!” Blossom noted cheerily as she strode through the doorway.
So much for wanting Ren to lead…
“Blossom?” Pansy’s head popped out from around the corner, her expression already bright with anticipation. The second her eyes landed on her friend, dressed in a brilliant blue pinafore, her face turned downright luminous.
The sight speared through Ren, and for the briefest of moments they could almost believe that this look was meant for them.
But reality was ever so quick to reassert itself.
Stuffing the mess of yarn she’d been in the process of knitting down into her apron pocket, Pansy rushed over to Blossom and swept her into her arms, leaving Ren to stand there alone, awkward and forgotten.
It shouldn’t have mattered. What did they care if their presence paled in comparison to Blossom’s?
Of course it did! Blossom was Pansy’s friend, and Ren was… a nuisance, a thief, a squatter.
Each word was another coal plinking against the bottom of Ren’s belly, still sloshing with acid from before.
Their hands clenched at their sides, teeth gritting against the white-hot urge to scream.
They swallowed it down, again and again, throat working around a feeling like tar, black and sticky and noxious.
“You’ve got more plants in here than I do in my entire shop,” Blossom remarked, looking around now that she’d been released.
Pansy laughed, musical and bright, the opposite of the churning in Ren’s gut.
“Oh, you haven’t even seen the half of it.
But don’t worry. Ren’s assured me several times now that the cottage was designed for it.
Plus”– she gave an easy shrug, not even so much as glancing Ren’s way the entire time – “it’s rather charming once you get used to it. ”
Charming. That’s all this cottage was to her.
Meanwhile, for Ren, their clan, this cottage and its rich farmland were a lifeline!
Somehow, she’d nearly made Ren forget this, distracting them with a full belly and a handful of not entirely unpleasant conversations.
Were they so desperate for a reprieve from carrying the clan’s future on their shoulders that a few plates left out on the counter for them was all it took to undo every last knot of their resolve?
“I brought you these.” Blossom lifted up the bouquet. “But it seems like more plants are the absolute last thing you need.”
“You know I always love your bouquets,” Pansy assured her as she took the bundle of flowers, her fingers carefully running over the bit of twine holding it all together.
“In fact, this’ll look great in the sitting room.
I spent most of the morning decorating it, adding some rugs, tapestries and paintings – that sort of thing.
There’s a bunch of stuff stored around the cottage.
I assume they’re my grandmother’s old things.
Anyway, sorry – I’m babbling. Have you already had breakfast? ”
“I wouldn’t survive the walk out here on an empty stomach,” Blossom said with a laugh.
“Elevenses, then? Ooh! Ren has a whole assortment of goblin teas, if you’d like to try. They’re actually quite good. I had one earlier with breakfast, and—”
“You took my tea?” The words burst out of Ren, violent as a lit barrel of spellpowder. Meanwhile, the tar-like feeling in their gut churned, condensing into something hotter, brighter: fury.
Pansy blinked at them, her lips parting around a soft “o” of surprise, as if she’d forgotten that they were still there. “Is that a problem?” she asked. “It was in the cupboard, and you’d told me how goblins often put sugarfern in tea, so I assumed—”
“That you needed it more? After all that I’ve already shared with you?”
The tea had been Ren’s one and only indulgence, the one thing they’d allowed themself to keep in the overwhelming face of their clan’s need. Now, the inherent selfishness of it all was plain to see. Because if a halfling needed it more than they did…
Ren swallowed, unable to finish the thought, their throat squeezing around an unexpected clot of shame.
Pansy, meanwhile, had the decency to look somewhat ashamed as well – even if only for a moment. She came back at them quickly, her chin raised high in stubborn halfling defiance. “I’ve shared with you too! Remember who’s been cooking all of your meals.”
“With ingredients I grew!” Ren plunged headfirst into their own anger, desperate to scald away the miserable burn of their shortcomings. Because someone had to be the villain here, and it wasn’t going to be them. Not for this.
Pansy sniffed. “I bought a fair number of them myself, actually. But, honestly, Ren. It’s just tea.”
“Then drink your own!” they snapped.
“I don’t— I forgot to bring it with me,” she admitted after a beat, her gaze dropping briefly to the floor.
For a moment, Ren could only stare at her, speechless. How was it possible that she looked more embarrassed by her own forgetfulness than by the fact that she’d simply assumed Ren had a limitless supply of tea?
“It’s okay, Pansy,” Blossom said, placing a gentle hand on Pansy’s shoulder, swaddled as usual in a fluffy cardigan. “I don’t need any tea. Water is fine.”
“But it’s not elevenses without tea,” Pansy protested weakly. “It’d be like having steak for second breakfast!”
A second breakfast? Ren’s head spun. Did halflings have second dinner too? Second lunch? Was there two of everything? It seemed unreal, unthinkable. No goblin would dare engage in such wanton excess. But halflings clearly knew little else.
Disgust tore from Ren’s throat, visceral and sharp, twisted as the thorns that wound around their thoughts, blotting out the truth.
Greed, gluttony and selfishness – that’s all halflings were.
They didn’t damage the land like the dwarves did, but that was almost certainly only because the vast majority of them never bothered to set foot beyond the bounds of their own villages.
All they lacked was opportunity; Pansy was proof enough of that.
Upper lip peeling back to reveal the gleaming points of their canines, Ren said, with all the cold venom they could muster, “I’m not sure what I was thinking, expecting anything different from a greedy, selfish halfling.”
They spat the words, whetted to knife-point sharpness. And as Ren pushed past the two halflings into the welcoming darkness of the floor below, the last thing they saw was the barest quiver of Pansy’s lower lip.
The blade had hit home.