Fate Deals the Cards: Temperance

  Ch1: Hungry Like The Wolf

  I woke up angry…, more than that, I was furious, filled to bursting with an undirected rage and a desperate hunger for someone on whom I could vent my spleen. My eyes peeled open terribly slowly, blinking in the bright, diffuse light of the gathering evening.

  The day’s warmth slowly began to flee, only dimly remembered by my naked skin; so too did my boiling rage diminish and subside… It remained, though, like an insatiable, desperate hunger behind my empty belly, which was also ravenous.

  With hunger came rational thought… Though my head felt thick and my mind refused to focus up on anything but rage and hunger. I was alone, naked and deeply unsettled in mind and body, laying on a patch of wet grass under a sky slowly darkening, as innumerable stars spilled across the indigo velvet of night.

  I took a slow deep breath in, counting a measured beat in my mind; after a slow four count I held that sweet, warm and swampy lungful for another slow four count. I released my breath, expelling all traces of it from my lungs in that same, slow measured time signature, then held my aching windbags empty for another bar of the song of living and breathing. For some reason it felt like I was out of practice, like I hadn’t taken a real breath for a while, a long, long while. Somehow, my body picked up the beat and carried it on, taking the cues and managing my internals without my attention.

  My heartbeat felt odd too, terribly slow and thunderously fierce, when it did hammer back and forth in my chest; more like a terrible, implacable machine than a living organ. As I listened to that awful and painfully slow thudding in my ears, the pace evened and joined up, syncopating with my breaths. With heart and lungs working in harmony, I began to feel a little more human.

  I looked around slowly and carefully, feeling terribly vulnerable, once my fury subsided and the weirdness of my body began to settle down. It was about then I realized I had no idea where I was or what had happened. My last coherent memory was of riding my rusty, broken bicycle down a lonely road after work.

  I was certain that I had just been headed for my ‘home’ on a disused industrial yard, lost and forgotten among the orchards of rural northern California… I was equally and absolutely certain that it had been a terribly long time, since I’d blacked out over my handlebars, amid a scent of toast and strawberry jam.

  There was no sign of the road, the canal ditch or the train tracks… No orchards planted in neatly disorganized rows, tractor tracks, diesel exhaust or traffic noise at all. No jet contrails streaked the endless, starry, moonless night sky above. I looked to the horizon, seeking the rising moons, familiar friends in the night, ever since I’d died the first time…

  The thought that two moons should be circling above my head was almost as jarring as the alien constellations, un-selfconsciously swirling and dancing up there, heedless of the impossibility of the thing.

  “Wait, What?” I croaked, in a voice that was much higher pitched than I expected. I also savagely bit my tongue in the process, filling my mouth with blood, among all those sharp, jagged teeth and fangs. That was pretty jarring and started me to checking out my current situation a little more carefully. That really hurt!

  My teeth were a real mess; super sharp and pointy, curved and just… everywhere. That brought my attention to my hands, which were… green, with short, sturdy and very sharp talons at each fingertip.

  With dread, I looked down at my body, struggling against the slowly growing awareness of my situation. My disordered mind kept screaming in my skull, simultaneously insisting and denying the reality dangling meatily below my navel. I was packing a disturbingly, almost comically large cock and a pair of balls only slightly less intimidating, atop a pair of gangly green legs.

  “I’m a goblin…” I sighed very slowly and carefully, hoping to avoid a fresh mouthful of my own blood. The mind numbing sense of dislocation, time and distance still echoing in my skull made a little more sense, considering my new body. “How the hell did this happen?” I demanded of no one… which also felt super weird. Something in my heart insisted that I hadn’t been alone in a long, long time… not even in my own mind and dreams. That sense of loss, of familiar presences, bound tightly to my body and soul being torn away by some unremembered, violent event was the worst part by far.

  Another violent event, I suppose… I remembered the first time all too clearly; the crash, the pain, grief and misery, the brutal and cold indifference of ‘the system’... Just as I clearly remembered my escape from juvie, living on the streets and working illegally at old man Halls’ musical instrument shop. He hired me off the books to work in the back room, repairing instruments for the friendly geezer, under the pretext that my folks were religious nuts that wouldn’t allow music in their house. Halls never believed me for a minute… and in hindsight, he probably knew exactly who I was, all along.

  The news reported our story at the time… Maria Ward, prominent and well respected session musician and singer died in a car crash with her husband and father in law, leaving their teenaged son, Gary Ward terribly injured and unlikely to survive.

  The death of old Issac Ward, master luthier and guitar maker to the stars made less of a splash and his son’s death left even less of an impression on the world. The fate of the old master craftsman’s grandson and last apprentice went wholly unremarked, even if his survival was considered a miracle in the local medical community.

  My parents and grandpa were long gone, killed in the car crash that left me a crippled, mangled wreck. My family home, our workshop and music store were gone, taken and sold at auction to pay for ‘final expenses’ and such.

  A horde of greedy piggies and vultures in cheap suits descended on our little domain while I was in the hospital, unaware that my home was being taken away; just one more in a long string of indignities and abuse I got to enjoy during my time with the state.

  They took everything, all nice and legal like, leaving a huge pile of medical and funeral bills for me to enjoy; bills that were going to haunt me forever. I eventually escaped from the careless clutches of the state care system and ended up living under a tarp on the outskirts of the city I’d once called my home.

  Home… that word rang in my skull each time I thought of it… there was something there, something forgotten but urgently important, something and someone I had to get back to, somehow. My other family… I was certain of that, in a hazy and confused way.

  A disjointed portion of my mind kept insisting that I would be seeing familiar and beloved faces in my dreams, which was madness, of course. That fleeting thought brought a warm rush of fond and familiar warmth into my heart. I could almost hear beloved voices uttering similar phrases; fragments of fond memories I’d forgotten, yet still resonated in my deepest depths.

  “Fool” A sweet, lilting upland brogue murmured in my ear, a shard of memory strong enough to warm the lobe with her remembered breath.

  “Mooncalf!” Another whispered, a young man’s smooth speech, with a slight New Zealand drawl. More and more came and went; nameless, faceless and barely recalled, but so desperately real and so far away in time and distance. My surging, white hot fury lurched in my belly as I considered those half baked memories, turning over like a half tame wolf, hoping for a belly rub or a bite of any hand that might come too close.

  I had no doubts about it… Somewhere out there I had a wife, kids, a home and a life; one I’d built with care and allowed someone to rip away from me. That someone was going to die, a lot, once I figured out how to get home.

  A night bird hooted in the distance, returning me to the here and now, wherever and whenever that might turn out to be. I felt with absolute certainty that it was no-where and no-when close to anything I had ever called home before.

  A mad scattering of brilliant, jewel bright stars, in every color of the rainbow filled the sky, drenching the world with colors and light, even without a moon in the crowded heavens. That was no sky I’d ever seen before, not even close.

  All around me, tall grasses and clumps of brush spread over a wide, marshy valley floor. The wet earth beneath stank wonderfully of clean swamp and natural decay, like home. That word again, so warm and snug sounding… Home… I shook the feeling off, along with a definite feeling of deja vu. I’d done this before, wandered naked in the wilds, searching for habitation. When? I had no idea, but it was unmistakable, this was not my first rodeo...

  “Rache… Come back!” A soft, frightened voice called from a distant cluster of brush, startling me enough to jump out of the clothes I wasn’t wearing. The voice called again, sounding even more desperate. “Come back! It could be dangerous!” She whispered from the distant thorny scrub.

  “Oh! Lookie lookie!” A soft, sweet sounding voice purred behind me, as a large hand landed on my shoulder. “It’s a little lost gobling!” Sharp claws and green skin gripped me firmly and gently, pulling me from my little bed of grasses and out into the night. “Where’s your mama, little one?” She cooed, pulling me close to her towering frame.

  It took a few seconds to hit me… she wasn’t a giant goblin, I was a goblin baby… which was even less encouraging. Those thoughts flew out of my mind, as she pulled me closer with a soft whisper. “Hungry little one… Rache has only one gobling, but two pupfeeders… Lucky you!”

  Her huge, gentle hands tucked me into a warm, stinky sling under her breasts, beside a tiny goblin who looked at me with big, dark eyes, while suckling at one of the plump green boobs dangling in the cozy fold of warm, sweaty fur.

  “Make nice with Sheela, your new sister. Poor nameless little gobbo.” Firm, gentle fingers popped her nipple into my mouth, filling my nose with even more of her scent. It took a good bit of effort to wrangle my teeth, but biting her tit would be socially awkward at best. Once I got my lips arranged, a flood of sweet milk and pleasure washed me away into darkness and comfortable oblivion.

  “... a great risk, sister! All for an abandoned baby gob. A boy, at that!” Someone was whispering tersely nearby, when I woke. I was tucked in beside a tiny green child who was greedily sucking my thumb in her sleep.

  “Better to dash his brains out with a rock, than raise the poor thing. He’s not even our clan! Unbranded!”

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  “What clan, sister? We ran away, remember?” The owner of the warm, soft tummy we were pressed against whispered, sounding like thunder in my sensitive ears.

  “All the more reason to not pick up hungry strays!” The other voice grumbled.

  “I’ll not leave a child’s belly empty while there’s a boob available, Keerie.” She answered with finality. “He’s mine now.”

  “So be it… There’s a witch in the deep marsh, she is cunning with her knives. Old Jereel will geld him for you, if she can keep his shaft and stones for her occult uses. He’ll make a good camp slave I suppose, once his balls are clipped off and that thing is trimmed short.”

  “No!” The boob bearer barked, disturbing the gobling who still had control of my thumb. “I won’t allow it! Shame on you sister! That’s why we ran away in the first place! Remember?” Those hands reached in, guiding the girl away from my poor, wrinkled thumb and back to her nipple. My new roommate smiled and cooed in mindless pleasure and went right back to sleep, her long, pointy ears wiggling in time to her suckling.

  When Rache reached for me to do the same, I squirmed away and managed to pop my head out of the sling for a good look.

  “Oh! A curious little gob…” She cooed, her huge, green eyes and wide smile taking up my entire world, as she peered into her top at me. Between those bouncy funbags, a smiling, cheerful goblin face looked down at us with endless delight and wonder in her eyes. “He has teeth already, a full set! And I wasn’t bitten! Not even a scratch!” She declared, sounding amazed.

  A new face pushed in beside Rache, the unseen sister, no doubt. “Another reason to let him loose in the swamp… he’ll be a menace soon enough, mark my words.” Keerie grumbled, peering down her sister’s top at me as well. “Boys are always trouble, Rache, always.”

  “Welcome to the family, little nameless one. We’ll hold a naming rite once we find a home.” My benefactor said softly, her smile filled my vision, as she shoved me down her top and stuck her boob in my face, holding her nipple out insistently.

  My desire to tell her I had a name and express my thanks flew out the window, when that dark green titty leaked a drop of her irresistible milk, right onto my lips. I could explain everything later… after lunch and a nap.

  I felt more than a little embarrassed and super weird about the whole thing, but she just smelled, felt and tasted so good… soothing, warm and compassionate, even to a foundling she’d picked up along the way. I felt myself responding to her as any baby might… and The Boobs!

  /

  Waking up, warm and snug in a belly sling, tucked under the bosoms of a gentle and nurturing woman is seldom unpleasant, especially considering my current state. The problem was my roommate, little Sheela… She was still struggling with the niceties, like sucking her own thumb for a start. Bowel and bladder control were still a distant dream for the little lass, so I woke right along with her, feeling unpleasantly full and absolutely coated with baby goblin stuff. She’d run the table, from snot, through drool, spit up milk, piss and topped with a huge stinker. It was actually a little impressive that something so small could produce so much reeking filth.

  Poor Rache was out cold, curled up around us, under a thornbush as dawn broke across the misty lowlands. I wriggled free of what had been a comfy and pleasant place and began scraping the crud off myself with clumps of crushed marsh weed.

  I was already green, so a few grass stains wouldn’t hurt anything. I used up all the scrubby grasses under our thorny bower, so I slipped outside to gather more… I wasn’t looking forward to cleaning up my new sister, but Rache was out cold and the poor thing was starting to get pretty miserable.

  Tiny as I was, slipping out into the pre-dawn darkness couldn’t have been easier, or more rewarding. Under an endless dome of star scattered night, the swamp mists hugged the earth and glowed in subtly shifting colors, as the vapor danced and swirled.

  Night birds made their reports to the morning shift, as giant moths flitted into the woodlands up the valley on silent, dusty wings and daytime life awoke with the coming sun.

  After taking a few moments to savor the wonders

  Of the silent, almost waking world, holding its breath between day and night, I slipped into a clump of scraggly bushes and scratched a hole in the soil with my claws and squatted down to unload.

  I wasn’t expecting a huge volume of slimy, pale silver ooze to burst forth from my bladder and bowels, but there was already plenty of normal goblin shit in play this morning. I put toilet troubles on the ‘crazy stuff I need to handle later’ list. I could worry about my weird output after I made sure no one was going to try and snip off anything of mine.

  I quickly buried the mysterious silver slime, while it dissipated and evaporated away, leaving almost nothing behind. I took a deep breath and joined the morning’s chorus, whistling in reply to the local songbirds as I gathered what looked useful from the immediate area. I either set aside, or munched on the plants I recognized as edible, while I worked, once my face and hands were as clean as I was going to be able to get them.

  Cowslip, dandelion, sourgrass and fiddlehead fronds slowly piled up, as I roamed the nearby bogs and fens for more supplies.

  I must have looked ridiculous, a naked, shit smeared goblin, covered in dried grass and dirt, grubbing around in the weeds like an animal. There was no one to see me after all… and I felt a need to be helpful in some way, even if only with cleaning up and scrounging for food.

  At a narrow creek of fast running cold water, I didn’t hesitate. I dove in, washed up properly, collected a few freshwater clams and snails and came up lucky, finding a big nodule of fine flint in the stream bed.

  Back at the shelter, I washed Sheela and my still unconscious benefactor as thoroughly as I could, gently scrubbing away the worst of my new sister’s indiscretions with damp grasses and soft, marshland herbs I’d selected for their cleansing properties. The duck-root and its leaves were especially good for that, as were common plantain and a few other herbs I’d collected.

  Sheela wriggled and giggled merrily while I cleaned her up, becoming fussy when I set her down in a cozy nest of woven reeds, just under the edge of our thorny shelter, where the sun would warm her nicely.

  Race barely stirred when I took the fur sling from around her shoulders and gently wiped her as clean as I could manage. Keerie’s problems were her own, as far as I was concerned, since she thought castrating and enslaving me was a solid strategy…

  The certainty and confidence I felt while foraging and cleaning up my new goblin family gave me a huge self-esteem boost. These were familiar tasks, ones I’d very clearly mastered at some point, somewhere along the way, even if I couldn’t remember exactly where or when.

  Almost every plant I saw or touched was intimately familiar, their many and varied uses tumbling wildly in my mind. Somehow, the natural properties of the things made themselves clear to me without conscious thought.

  Recipes and ideas churned in my skull in satisfying, pleasurable ways, drawing my lips back in a painful, awkward smile of absolute happiness. The tasks I’d set myself on satisfied me in some deeply fundamental ways, soothing my troubles away, as I worked on my pile of random marshland rubbish.

  Two years living rough on the edges of modern society had left me moderately well prepared for the rigors of primitive life… but I could feel knowledge and memories stirring in my mind, things I didn’t consciously know anything about.

  Herbalism, stonecutting, cooking and sewing, along with so many more skills and crafts, all jostling in my hands and mind. I could feel creativity surging inside me, struggling to express itself and alter my environment… just like when I was at my best in grandpa’s workshop.

  “I can do this… I’ve done it before, somewhere…” My own squeaky voice startled me so much that I bit my lip, tasting blood again. No minor details like biting my own lips was going to slow my roll, I had a ton of work to do.

  “Well, fuck it!” My hefty, round quartz rock cracked sharply against the lump of black, shiny stone I’d pulled from the river bed, splitting it neatly, almost exactly where I’d hoped. Sheela giggled merrily at my outburst, then started softly mewling with hunger. “All right, kiddo… I’ll find something.”

  /

  The sun just peeked its blinding face over the mountains, almost lost in the distance, when Rache and her sister woke up. Sheela sat in the sunshine, under the edge of the bower, cooing and rocking on her butt, snug in a nest of warm grass and leaves, sucking on a slice of sweet, purple plum, plucked from a gnarled and twisted tree a few dozen yards off.

  She enjoyed her treat, while I worked at my crafts with sure hands and a profound awareness of what I was doing, while having no clue where I’d gained this knowledge. At least my new sister was entertained, watching as I whistled and hummed idly, working with a deft and sure skill that felt good, really good. This work eased my mind, soothed my soul and satisfied like a fine meal.

  Just for fun I sang and whistled an old, silly song about a cave man, to amuse Sheela and hopefully, help me get a better handle on speaking through the jagged mess in my mouth. Alley-Oop was pure nonsense and campy fun, but somehow the lyrics landed with a strange gravity, while my hands continued their tasks, unguided. I had no Idea why I felt the urge to inscribe the lyrics to the old song on the bamboo rod I split and shaped carefully to hold my chosen shard of stone.

  My flint knob lay in splinters all around a clear patch of clay soil under our bower. I had a few things gathered from nearby, like tough reeds, grasses and palm fibers, pine pitch from the scrubby local trees and some resin drawn from that helpful plum tree. A few more lengths of bamboo; some green, some dried, sat by my feet, awaiting the next steps.

  /

  “Sheela… Nameless one…?” Rache asked weakly from the edge of the bower, after waking to find herself alone, clean and dry, with her sling washed and hung on the thornbush to dry. Her daughter sprawled in the sun, watching her new brother play in the dirt just beyond the shade of the bush they hid beneath.

  “N- Nameless?” She asked the strange goblin boy squatting by her daughter. This child was half again larger, more muscular by far and moved with a confidence and grace that reminded her of the clan’s best warriors.

  “Not nameless…” The unfamiliar goblin runtie croaked, around a mouthful of teeth that looked terribly dangerous and painful. “My name is Ghnash’Wharrgh… Thank you for feeding me, Rache.” He mumbled through a rush of his own blood and drool.

  /

  When Rache spoke, I wasn’t surprised, until I turned around; then I kinda lost my shit. She wasn’t nearly as big as I remembered, not by half. Or maybe I’d had a growth spurt? From somewhere deep inside me, a dim memory of watching a tiny, dark skinned girl grow from an infant to a four year old child over a night or two danced through my mind linked inextricably with a softly whispered name. ‘Amy…’ My own voice said… My real voice, from when I’d lived before, or something complicated like that.

  It was about then that I realized my teeth seemed to have gotten even more… just more, in all the worst and pointiest ways. Naturally, I savaged my tongue and lips, before I could recover my wits, garbling my name abominably and doing only slightly better with the rest.

  “A chieftain’s name… Certainly it’s so!” Rache cooed happily over her daughter and weird new son, once the shock wore off a little. “I was right to take you to my breast!”

  “Are you mad, sister?” Keerie demanded, ignoring me entirely. “Chieftain of who? What tribe or clan will take us in, even moreso, now that we have another hungry mouth? One with an inauspicious name as well!” Keerie demanded, eying me with obvious distrust from the entrance to our thorny shelter. She had a belly sling on as well, supporting a round tummy, filled with at least one more gob who would be arriving soon.

  “Better we run back home and beg chief Hargrim for mercy. Perhaps he will let us keep our daughters, if we give him this odd boy instead and beg his mercy.”

  “Do you think the chief will take us back into his harem?” Rache asked softly, while gathering her daughter to her breast. “We will be given to the common warriors, that is certain… I do not relish the thought of living the rest of my life as one of the warband’s bed slaves. Even so, our daughters surely will be taken for the human cult’s use. I would rather we be devoured by something awful, out here in the marshes than watch my daughter be sacrificed on the cult’s altar.”

  My caretaker’s words filled me with that slow simmering fury I’d been wrestling down for a while, now… The work I’d set for myself this morning had soothed me into a calm, almost tranquil state; which was now a distant memory.

  Anger surged and churned inside my soul, battering at the restraints of my rational mind. Their casual talk of sacrifices, branding, slavery, cults and children traded as commodities for the ‘use’ of others felt familiar and deeply, offensively vile. Those thoughts and ideas were all too familiar, bringing me to a fevered, trembling precipice, one I might fall from, with a moment’s inattention or a single slip up.

  “No.” I croaked at Keerie, glaring at her over my pile of natural materials, my hands continued moving with a confidence I didn’t understand, even while I spoke through a wicked set of unfamiliar fangs.

  “No cults, no slaves… Ghnash is free!” I gasped, appalled at my own fumbling, ragged speech. “Free, or die.”

  With that last word, I set down the primitive, bamboo hilted flint knife I’d just finished putting together, with no small measure of satisfaction at my results.

  I shot another sharp glare at Keerie, while I started on my next project, handling a keen edged shard of carefully knapped flint with absolute confidence. With a functional knife in hand, the next job went together with ease. I got it assembled and glued in with natural adhesives, bound tightly with tough, well spun fibers in a few short moments.

  “Hungry, need food.” I told the two mystified goblin women a few minutes later, when my spear was finished. “Back soon.”

  “No! It’s dangerous! Come back little one!” Rache called out to me as I dipped through the thornbush shelter and vanished into the warm morning sunshine, naked and alone in a strange world, again...

  “Yes, is dangerous. Wait here.” I agreed sourly, as the bright light made my big, goblin eyes squint almost closed.

  “New world, new troubles…” I grumbled in the sunshine.