The valley went on for a night’s flight before it started to slim down. It turned into more of a gorge looking almost like a miniature canyon. Crevices split off here and there feeding the small river at the bottom from the mountains. It was wide enough for me to fly comfortably but meals had gotten scarcer. There was still enough to survive but I was unable to practise my [Owl’s Shadow] when resting in the day.

By the second night in the ravine, I was considering just flying up and finding a larger valley. The storm had done very little damage down here, steep walls protecting most of the area. Only a few broken boulders here and there confirmed I was still following its trail.

Then I saw something unexpected. Between two ridges just wide enough for a small person to walk on a few ropes dangled from wooden poles driven into the rock. Some boards still dangled off but not enough to make a whole bridge. There were people here.

I decided to investigate. If someone came, I could just fly away in case they were hostile.

The poles were made of pale wood. It had the colour of bone and only the lines and rings typical to trees let me know they were logs. They reached slightly above my head when I stood to my full height, so maybe half a metre? The ropes had the brown colour of dried liana. They were made of several small fibres woven into a spiral. Just normal ropes.

I jumped up onto one of the poles and scanned the walls and ridges on both sides for more signs of people. And I froze. Someone was watching me. A diminutive creature reaching up just to my eyes while I sat on the pole stood on the other side of the broken bridge.

How did I not hear it coming?

Its slit pupils stared at me from wide yellow eyes. The half-open mouth revealed small sharp teeth in a bad state of health. On top of its head, long pointed ears stood up attentively. Strands of unkempt black hair hung down between them.

Simple clothes made from a mixture of leather and scales covered most of its dark-green skin. A pouch was attached to the right hip. In one hand it held a stick of wood as tall as itself. The other hand was outstretched to lean against the wall. Its feet were bared covered in small hairs and lots of dirt.

It stared.

I stared.

An unpleasant feeling suddenly invaded my very core. As if someone had looked at a part of me even I could not see. Did he, [Identify] me? I clicked my tongue and sat upright imperiously.

[Identify]

Species: Mountain Goblin (adult)

Gender: male

Goblin, huh?

His already wide eyes became even larger. I almost thought they would pop out of the sockets. His mouth got ready to catch a mouse in one bite. Someone had just gotten their mind blown. Ha!

It took him almost five minutes to reboot. Once the initial surprise had ebbed off however a veritable stream of words poured out of its mouth. At least I assumed it was words since I could not understand a single thing.

When he finally caught a deep breath I interjected.

Hoot.

He spluttered a few chipped sounds and again I interrupted him.

Hoot.

‘No idea what you are saying, bro. Take it slow!’

He looked around in panic and his eyes fell on his pouch. A smile spread on his face and after some digging, he pulled out a dead rat from his bag. He threw it towards me accurately and I snagged the snack out of the air.

Pumping his arm he took out another rodent. This time he did not throw it but just held it out to me.

Did he want me to come closer? Did he think me that gullible?

I jumped on the pole right next to him and took the snack. As I was swallowing, his hand slowly edged towards me. I eyed it warily but the dirty fingernails while cracked a little were too short to do any real harm. As he tried to put his hand on top of my head I squirmed away and snapped at his fingers.

‘No touching! I’m not a pet!’

He lifted his hands in an appeasing motion. A few slow words confused me more than reassuring me. This time he held his hand out in a familiar motion. A handshake. The little guys wanted a handshake. I only had wings, but a wingshake was fine, right?

So I stretched my wing forwards and put its tip in his hand. He shook excitedly and I snapped my wing back immediately before he could break any bones.

‘Be careful a little!’

No amount of exasperated hooting could calm him down. After a minute of jumping around on the precarious ledge where I wondered how he did not fall down the ravine, he started to walk off and gestured me to follow.

And I did. I had made a friend. Of sorts. There was no way for either of us to understand each other but we still somehow conveyed a desire for cooperation. Maybe I could learn his language and then he could tell me all about this world. If I could somehow make him understand me. I had no way to speak after all. All I could do was hoot, screech and hiss. That was no language. I was hoping we could communicate with gestures somehow.

The goblin walked along the ridge carefully placing his steps to avoid slipping. I followed by hopping back and forth depending on which side had more space to stay on. There was no way I could stay behind him while flying so I had to take it slow.

I quickly noticed how his steps made not a single sound on the bare stone. Neither did his stick. He had to have some skill to stay silent. At least I knew how he snuck up to me.

Not far from the bridge he stopped in front of a crack in the wall. Checking to see if I was still following he ducked in, the opening barely wide enough but a little short even for his small body. Once I followed him through I saw a tunnel open up a few steps ahead. It was just wide enough for me to spread my wings and tall enough I would be able to sit on his head and barely not scratch the ceiling.

There was faint light coming from luminescent moss on the walls barely enough to make out the goblin. He seemed to have a little trouble finding something in his pouch. When he finally got it out a small lantern sat in his hand. After a moment of curious silence, a rhombus-shaped crystal put a faint green glow on the walls.

A magic lantern. I only noticed I was staring when he cleared his throat.

We started walking down the tunnel. It sloped slightly upwards in the beginning, probably to avoid flooding before it started to drop. I was a little concerned about the walls. They would get in the way of my flight which was my most important survival strategy. Okay, my instinct was screaming at me. But I ignored it. I had made my first friend! Surely he did not plan to turn me into soup?

After several turns and twists, my musing was interrupted by the tunnel opening up into a larger cave. This was somewhere I could fly! We entered it near ground level, only a slight ramp leading down no more than half a meter before us.

The ceiling extended easily fifty meters above, maybe even a hundred. It was covered in streaks of fluorescent moss which lit up a few stalactites and gems or crystals here and there. The walls spanned a large circle about three times as far across as it was high. A few pillars of rock, former stalactites meeting their ground-dwelling brethren, stood spread around the area. Stalagmites were only left along the walls, the ground of the cavern cleared to make space for huts. A village of goblins.

The huts had been formed out of the same wood I had already seen at the bridge. Covered with thatch-like roofs formed in half-spheres they looked like gigantic mushrooms sprouting all over the ground. There were no windows, only a door covered with a leather curtain opening into the goblin homes. The doors had magic lanterns hanging next to them. Most of them glowed the same green as my guide’s lantern only more intense. A few of them gave off other colours. Red, orange, light and dark blue. I even spotted a white lantern.

As we progressed into the village proper a few curious goblins called out to my guide. He laughed and waved them off as if it was something of no importance. I tried to look as dignified as I could, but it was kind of difficult to walk with dignity as an owl. One very small goblin looking out from behind its mother’s legs snickered at me. I huffed and took off to land on Mr Guide’s shoulder.

He exclaimed something that needed no translation and stumbled a little, but after a quick look at my face, he just continued onwards. Now the goblin kid was laughing at someone else. Ha!

Nearing the centre of the village I spotted a small square with something like a firepit in the middle. Instead of a fire a bunch of crystals glowing in an orange colour filled the pit. A large pot stood above it with a fat goblin standing on a podium and stirring some kind of stew. It smelled terrible. Probably because owls can not eat human food. That seemed to include anything prepared by any humanoid species.

For now, my guide might have some more snacks in his satchel. If he did not give me any I could still hunt. I had already spotted a few small movements on the edge of the cave and even some between the houses. Where there were people, there was vermin.

After a short talk with the cook involving wild gesturing from my ride that earned him an annoyed peck, we made our way to the largest hut in the square. Carefully holding the curtain aside so it would not knock me off his shoulder we entered. The inside was lit by more crystals. The same green as the one on the outside lantern lit up a room of maybe twenty square metres.

In the back, a small section was partitioned off, probably a sleeping space. The walls were lined with shelves filled with curiosities from crystals in all shapes and sizes to mushrooms, moss and even a few still live animals contained in cages. Mostly rodents but also a few insects and spiders.

An arrangement of tables placed in a U-shape took up the centre of the room. On these tables, small amounts of the stuff from the shelves was spread out haphazardly around a few more organized arrangements of bowls, mortars and pestles, a cutting board and a miniature version of the magic fireplace outside heating a small pot on a trivet.

In the middle of all that a goblin stood. He was wearing a makeshift apron and simple leather shorts while cutting up some underground flora on the cutting board, a bright orange mushroom leaking transparent-purple goo. In his hair, small ornaments of bone and white wood were woven into a mesmerizing pattern. I would call him Bonehead!

As we were not noticed my guide made his presence known with a call that made me flinch. Bonehead also flinched, just as he had finished a cut. A part of mushroom and purple goo flew through the air and landed right on the edge of the table where the goo immediately started eating through the white wood with a sizzling sound.

An angry scream cut off as he turned around and looked straight into my eyes. Confused noises came out of Bonehead’s mouth for a moment before I felt the invasive sizzling of [Identify] only it was a lot weaker than my guide’s. He needed a name. For now, he would be Klutz!

Back to [Identify]. Did he have it at a lower level? Going by the big house he lived in I would expect Bonehead to be stronger and thus have more levels in it. Soo… was there a way to make it less noticeable? Or did that just naturally happen when it levelled up? First things first though, an eye for an eye!

[Identify]

Species: Mountain Goblin (adult)

Gender: male

I had tried to will [Identify] to be unnoticeable but judging from Bonehead’s reaction it did absolutely nothing. Wide eyes stared into my own and a mouth of spiky teeth invited every spider in the room to crawl inside.

Klutz had put his hands on his hips taking on a smug expression. I did not need to understand the language to know what he said to Bonehead right that moment. But Bonehead shot him down with a quick sentence and suddenly rushed to clean up the mushroom goop from the increasingly sizzling table with a sponge of moss.

When he stood up he had calmed down quite a bit and sat down on one of the not-burned tables where he started talking to Klutz in clear slow words like he was explaining to a child why it could not have a tiger cub as a pet.

I felt a little out of the loop and started scanning the table in more detail. The cutting board was made of bone as I could now make out. Did that mean the mushroom goo did not burn through bone? I was curious and jumped onto the table a step away from the cutting board. Both goblins watched me carefully, Bonehead on guard, Klutz more curious.

Approaching carefully I clipped the mushroom with the point of my talon. Fascinated I watched as a tiny drop of goo started melting away at the tip of my talon. A silent sizzle releasing a small plume of purple smoke. The sizzling got louder and faster and in a bit of panic, I hopped back from the cutting board only to land right on top of some moss and fall flat on my face. Hurriedly I got up but to my relief, the moss had wiped off the mushroom goo when I stepped on it.

As I looked around sheepishly after my embarrassing moment I spotted two goblins just shy of cracking up. I sat up imperiously and hooted at them. Only for both to burst out laughing. After a few moments of condescendingly staring at the jokesters, Bonehead started slapping Klutz’s shoulder and spoke in between heaves. They started smiling and talking more and more as their laughs died down and then finally both looked straight at me.

Bonehead took a small step forward and reached out his hand for a handshake. I looked him straight in the eyes. And then I looked at Klutz.

Hoot.

He chuckled and gave Bonehead a dead rat from his pouch. Which I was promptly offered.

‘You want me to forgive you? That will need more than just one rat. It was not even yours!’

I ate the rat. And shook his hand with my wing. I might have found a home.