What on EARTH had just happened?

Allyria sat hidden in a treetop trying to sort out her thoughts whilst flicking a flame in her palm, but every memory about the past hour was completely insane. Had it really happened or had her sanity left her along with all of her belongings? Well everything except her cuirass, she was still wearing that. But if everything just now hadn’t really happened, why was she in a tree and where was her stuff?

No, at least part of her blurry memories must be true. Yes. She had gotten back to her camp with the assorted beetroots, mushrooms and herbs that were going to be dinner. She had sensed something wrong and had dropped the food to sneak up on her campsite, where she was ambushed by…

What in the name of the mother tree had that thing been?!

Yeah okay, maybe this was where the hallucination had started. She had been attacked by something fast and small and then something way bigger and then she probably had escaped. That must’ve been it, because what she DID remember couldn’t possibly be true.

… or could it?

It obviously couldn’t. No way in the netherworld an orc would spare… no not even spare… HEAL an elf. It had to have been something else. An extremely large human? An extremely large human with teeth like that? Nah, that was insane too.

She had to check.

That was a bad idea, but it wasn’t as if she had someplace to BE or anything. Allyria climbed out of the tree and moved stealthily through the woods, trying to find a smell that was out of place. She found one. The smell of roasting flesh.

Allyria scolded herself for loving the smell. As all elves are, she was strictly vegan, and she KNEW this was the smell was of dead animals being prepared for dinner. Unconsciously she licked her lips anyway. Staying upwind from the camp she noticed her own shelter. It was just sitting there, empty. She ducked down as she heard voices talking. Orcish, she immediately recognised, although she didn’t understand a word.

Minding dry wood brush that would make noise and carefully staying in an upwind position, she tried to move to a position where she could see the animal killing elf murdering horrors. Well technically she was alive, so they hadn’t murdered this particular elf, but anything that spoke orcish must have, right? Orcish was the language of evil for a good reason.

The second she got a clear view of the fireplace her heart almost stopped. It was just as she remembered. A noisy blue goblin and a huge oaktree of an orc. Just the two of them. Sitting together eating. It was a crazy sight. Normally if you spot a goblin you KNOW there are at least 20 more, but she had scanned the surroundings thoroughly: she would have noticed if she’d walked into a goblin ambush. And then the one orc. There was NEVER one orc. Not even as a diversion. Orcs thought hiding was dishonourable. Which was stupid and the reason elves always beat them. If you stay hidden long enough, you know your enemy and you can ambush them when the circumstances and numbers are in your favour. Everyone knows that.

So why was there one goblin and one orc sitting there? Had the orc really spoken the truth? Were they both without kin? Thinking about what the orc had said was weird. He’d been speaking a human language and no orc would do that. Yeah, and nor would they be able to do healing magic, her mind added. And heal YOU of all things! The last part of her mind screamed at her.

Strange… there must be an explanation. Maybe she HAD died and this was a sort of… was this the netherworld? Allyria had always thought about the netherworld as a dark wasteland with nothing but orcs and dead things. But the only thing dead here were the rabbits, and there was just one orc. Okay, one-and-a-quarter orc. The blue goblin counted for a little bit.

Ugh, she was hungry. Seeing those monsters eat reminded her of the delicious meal she was going to cook for herself before everything went sideways. She couldn’t risk it now, it was getting dark already so cooking was out of the question. They’d see the light as well as smell the food, even if she was upwind. And leaving, well…

Allyria stopped her mind for a second and scolded herself for doing the nervous flame on-flame off tic again. She completely hadn’t noticed. She could only hope the monsters hadn’t either, but in any case, it would be better if she left NOW.

Why didn’t she want to leave? She had just confirmed that what she had seen was the truth, so what was she still doing here? Nothing. She should pick up her ingredients carefully and leave. Set up camp somewhere else without her stuff and live on. Stuff didn’t matter anyway.

Pulling herself away from the scene was harder than it should have been, but Allyria did it anyway and found a secluded space downwind, far enough away from the road to not cross paths with these monsters again. There she set up camp using ferns to build a cover and a stone with a dent in it to use as a bowl to heat her food. Not ideal, but it worked. Allyria ate a little then wrapped herself under the ferns and fell asleep.

***

The following morning by the break of dawn, she found a little stream to wash herself in and then set out again. Allyria was curious of what happened to her campsite after everything and sneakily tracked back to the place where last night an orc and a blue goblin had been camping. She moved carefully to avoid being detected, but it seemed as though both monsters had already left. Her tent was still there though.

As was her stuff.

As was a note in human that said: ‘here is your stuff back, if you’re really alone you need it more than we do.’

Wow. Just… wow.

Allyria pinched herself, but she already knew she wasn’t dreaming. The orc and the goblin had really given her bag back. She checked the contents. Even the gold was still there.

What were they thinking? She was an ELF and a horrible one at that. And they had not only healed her after she had almost burnt them to a crisp, but given her back her inventory as well? WHY? Why would the evil ones do such a thing? Elves were the good guys and they’d NEVER do such a thing for an orc. She knew she wouldn’t.

Maybe… maybe they were cursed. Maybe they were humans that had been cursed to look like that, the big one had spoken a human language after all. Damn that curse was harsh. If she’d ever find the witch that would have done that, she’d burn her at the stake.

Allyria decided to follow the duo. Maybe she could finally do something good and help them change back. But just to be certain, she’d just track them silently. Just until she was completely sure they were cursed humans. They HAD to be though. Otherwise nothing made sense.

***

In the days that followed Allyria tracked the duo carefully. She couldn’t be completely sure about their senses and she knew an orc could smell an elf from quite some distance, so she kept it. Therefore, she was only able to catch only glimpses of them and hear them only when the wind was exactly right and the birds weren’t too noisy. She had picked up on a lot of their habits though.

The goblin would hunt for meat on a daily basis, then the orc would gather normal foodstuffs and cook it all together. They talked in orcish a lot and they’d leave drawings at every campsite of well… Things that seemed like married stuff in which the male was always smaller than the female. She was pretty sure the guy who had been turned into a goblin was married and trying to figure out how to deal with his wife if he couldn’t break the curse. 

He was quite creative with it too, but Allyria still felt really sorry for the guy. She really hoped she could help them break the curse. Being separated from your life partner was heartbreaking. She had seen her own father wither away and die from it after her mother’s death. No one should have to go through that, even someone that had insulted a witch so bad he got himself turned into a blue goblin.

The little guy didn’t seem all too heartbroken though. Most of the times she spotted them he looked and sounded cheerful, as if he was looking forward to something. Maybe they had figured out the cure and were travelling somewhere to get it. Well either that or humans didn’t experience love like elves did.

Allyria pondered that. It made her think of Daniel. She had been trying to avoid the dark place her mind went when she thought of him, but there was no avoiding it now. What had he been doing? He had been married to Anna and yet he had tried to marry her as well. She still couldn’t wrap her head around it.  

All the humans in the village had had only one spouse and his wife had been angry when she had seen Allyria naked in the smithy, so it probably wasn’t normal for humans. They were a decent species after all, like dwarves. Orcs and goblins and their ilk apparently had no values nor the concept of love so they just reproduced with anyone, like rabbits and rats would. But obviously worse, since rabbits and rats were animals and orcs were evil and all.

But Daniel hadn’t been evil. He had been a kind and caring human being who had taught her so much. Could she have misunderstood? It didn’t matter. He was dead now. She had killed him. Now his wife would wither away and die, his children were fatherless and all because of her. If anything, SHE was evil. Evil like an orc. Maybe SHE deserved to be turned into one instead of the healer.

As she was drifting away in her own negative thoughts, she suddenly heard a song she knew. It was sung loudly by the one trapped in an orc body. He didn’t have a nice voice, but it wasn’t off-key and it sounded genuine. It was a human harvest song. It wasn’t harvest time now, but hearing it touched her heart anyway. In a good way and a bad way all at once. It reminded her of everything she had destroyed, but at the same time put a feeling of hope in her heart.

The blue goblin clapped loudly when he had finished and started an enthusiastic conversation in orcish again. That was the one thing that kept confusing her. Why were they speaking orcish?

In the days that followed Allyria found the answer to that question. The little guy didn’t speak the human language. She learned this because in some conversations she overheard she could hear the orc teach the goblin human words. He’d point to things and name the human word for them and then the goblin would repeat it. From what she had heard he had at least picked up fire, rabbit, orc, deer, yes, no, I, you and friend.

As adorable as that was, it confused Allyria to no end. Her theory of the two of them being humans originally made no sense anymore. Well, it did for the orc, but what the hell was that blue goblin? Was that REALLY a goblin? Did a cursed human healer have a goblin FRIEND?

But in the end that was the only explanation that made sense of all the facts, so crazy as that sounded, she went with it. It made her less sad thinking about the lost wife though. It wasn’t as if goblins were capable of love, so both of them would probably be fine.

Wait… The sketches hadn’t been of two goblins. Was this goblin drawing… EW! Interspecies marriage! As expected from a goblin, the little one clearly had no morals whatsoever.

The disgust of elves towards interspecies marriage was a deep one. It was the reason why elves preferred not to mingle with other races, other than for short business ventures. There were recorded cases, even in Allyria’s village that an elf had found its love in a human, but that always resulted in a very short and unhappy life for the elf. When the norm is to live up to about a thousand years of age, you are pretty unlucky if you give your heart away to someone that only lives for about 60 to 70 years, okay maybe 90 or 100 if you do your magic right, but still. It’s a very dark ending that you wouldn’t wish for anyone.

***

One night, after about eight days of trailing, Allyria’s curiosity about the duo got the best of her. When she had confirmed the both of them were sleeping soundly, she went over to the campsite to check their belongings. She wanted to find out more about where they came from and about the curse, so she sneaked over to the sleeping orc and went through his bag. Carefully, without making a sound, flames ready just in case.

The goblin snored loudly as she rummaged through the items, but at one point the orc stirred and Allyria ducked behind the large bag, holding her breath. She could hear the orc’s breathing and heartrate elevated, but he didn’t move, so Allyria waited patiently for it to go down again. When it did, she waited a bit more and as carefully as she could, pulled a book out of the bag. It was a beginner’s book on healing spells, badly calligraphed in human language. It was addressed to one ‘Nargi’. Allyria realised she had heard that word before, but had assumed it had meant something in orcish. Now she realised it was probably the orc’s name.

She immediately shoved the book back in the bag and ran from the camp as fast as she could. Nargi certainly sounded like an orcish name. What if the guy really WAS an orc?

Allyria kept her distance from the camp from that moment on. She kept following but took bigger precautions just in case. 

However, something strange had happened. It seemed that no matter how far she stayed away from the camp, her presence was noted, for every night when he was cooking, the orc would sing and after the song he’d add loud comments in human that were strange to say the least. “ARE YOU HUNGRY?” he would shout. “WE WON’T HURT YOU” he’d yell out. Clearly meant for her to hear. They knew she was following them, but Allyria couldn’t be sure if the words were a trap, so she didn’t take the invitation and as a result was more on-edge than she had ever been.