Storytime: What Not to Say to Goblins (Part 1)

The following story is incomplete. I never finished it, but I will share anyway the 37 pages I wrote. I don't think I will ever finish it, which is why I feel comfortable sharing it.

I was digging around in a drawer today and found this gem of a story that somehow managed to preserve itself from 2005. I thought I'd thrown this out at some point, but here it is. This story is in a notebook I took to a summer job I had at 18 years old. I remember I wanted a new gaming computer, but my parents wouldn't buy me one. They had me get a job instead. My job was with the local government, where I would later be employed for over 10 years, and my task was to verify zip codes with business licenses. There was a mix up between some addresses around the border of the county, and I was to verify if those addresses were actually in the county they said they were.

A very dull task. Enter the notebook. At some point during those 3 months, I felt inspired to write a story. I didn't know how long it would be, but imagine my surprise when I found myself spending several hours of my day pouring out this story that bloomed into 37 pages before I realized it. All the sudden, I felt like I could write a book.

Except one day, the story stopped. I hit a wall. And it was never finished. I have no intention of finishing it, and after finding it this morning and enjoying re-reading it, I have decided to share it with all of you.

​This will be a 4 part series of posts. I will write it here precisely as it is written in the notebook. There will be no editing. All mistakes will be included, unless I already corrected them at the time of writing.

Without further ado, let's do a little time travelling and dive in to the consciousness of 18-year-old Kyrie.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, ​Part 4

What Not to Say to Goblins

All was normal on 341 Camden Place. There was a car in the driveway, a play house in the in the backyard, and a loving mother and father with their very happy daughter. The Camdens, for the street was named after their ancestor, lived on the outskirts of the City. Out where the hills were bald but for a few stray shrubs (that might as well have been bundles of twigs) and the roads were more composed of sharp stones than of pavement. Nevertheless, the family was content and whole.

Of course, that was eight years ago.

Later, little Kali Camden lived with ​her grandfather in the same house; however the car was different and could have used a wash as well as tune up. The playhouse roof fell in six years ago and since then, several winos and homeless have used it as a waystation of sorts. If her grandfather's arthritis wasn't so terrible, he would still be chasing them away with his beebee gun. Kali was still relatively happy, though the golden ages have passed. She didn't talk about her parents and hadn't since they disappeared. Oh? Didn't you know? The goblins took them away, and Kali was afraid no one would ever believe her.

She didn't really remember the details anymore.
As far as she knew, they were on holiday.
A very long holiday.

Her grandfather did his best to comfort her in his own way. Every night, he would tell her stories about children who outsmarted goblins and won their lives, souls, toys, friends, and sometimes entire family trees back. For her tenth birthday, he gave her a satchel full of anti-goblin tools and defenses. She had lined the objects on a shelf in her room. There was a monocle from a long dead duke, or so her grandfather claimed, that saw lies. Next to the monocle crouched a small statuette of a knobby creature, all large hands and flappy ears, bearing a grin wicked enough to curdle milk. (Her grandfather revealed that his mother had lost thousands of derniers in milk before she realised the statuette had been curled up in the corner with the cows.) The last object was a small globe of deep, blue glass. No one knew what it did, but sometimes at night, in her dreams, Kali would wake to see it glimmering like a distant sea. For almost two years those little treasures sat upon that shelf gathering dust and time. Yet, the little statuette still managed to wink at the girl from time to time, and the globe continued to shimmer. It was just after her twelth birthday when they finally were of use.

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That is the end of what I think was meant to be the prologue. There are three other chapters. I will write them in a post each.

I thank you for your time. Adiamas.

​--Kyriel