Dan spent the rest of the day making adjustments to files that didn’t need adjustments. They were the kind of changes that, by the end, put everything where it had been at the start. Real hair-pulling stuff.

  He spent his time between revisions working on his special gift, and looking up information about goblins. His talk with Mitzi had made him realize just how much he wanted to learn. The search did not enlighten him. Most of the information he found bore no relation to Runt or his brood. Especially not Mitzi-Doodle.

  He blinked. Had he really called her that in his head?

  The search, once again, showed him how little interest the world took in her kind. He was beginning to think there might be two distinct branches of goblin, because even the physical descriptions were so far off from this brood that he had to look up photos of the other kind on the website for the Order of St. George to remind himself of the ones he’d grown up with.

  By five, Dan was more than ready to be gone. He made sure he spoke to his friends on the way out. As he headed for the door, he caught sight of Candy. She was staring daggers at him. He waved. She sneered and walked away. She must have seen Mitzi or something. Fine. Fuck her.

  He walked out into the lobby, and there was Mitzi, waiting for him sitting in a chair. She’d changed into jeans, red flannel, and a baseball hat that was only slightly too big. He hadn’t thought to tell her to change. He smiled.

  “I don’t like the elevator.” She said when she saw him.

  “What?”

  “I said, I don’t like the elevator. It feels like my stomach is trying to leave.” She said.

  M, the receptionist, sat at her desk trying not to grin at the goblinette.

  Mitzi was happy to learn there were stairs. She seemed more comfortable on them. He was less than thrilled, but it could be worse. It was exercise. Plus, it was time around Mitzi. She told him about her day around town and some books she’d picked up. He explained the horrors of graphic design. As they exited to the street, he looked down at her.

  “I’m glad you changed out of that nice dress. I’d hate to think of it getting ruined with paint.”

  She looked up at him, beaming.

  “I know we had to dress in old clothes to paint the house and I figured if arting had paint then it would be a good idea to change for this too.”

  He laughed. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t think he could bring himself to correct her on “arting”.

  “What?! What’s so funny?” She yelled, clenching her fists and frowning at him.

  “Nothing!” He said. “Ok. That’s not true. I just like how you call it arting. It’s perfectly fine.” He said. “Don’t you dare stop.”

  He realized she was sweating.

  “Good lord, Mitzi. You didn’t have to wear flannel. It’s got to be a hundred degrees out today.”

  She looked embarrassed.

  “It’ll be better once we’re inside. I’m ok. It’s not as bad as burlap in the furnace room in the dungeon.”

  As they walked, Dan started thinking about this relationship they were starting. Specifically, was it a relationship. She looked up at him again.

  “Something on your mind?” She asked.

  “Yeah, actually. How’d you know?”

  She shrugged.

  “I guess you’re easy to read? Anyway, what’s up?”

  Dan thought for a moment about how to phrase his question.

  “What are we, Mitzi? Like, what do you want to be? Is this casual? Serious?”

  Her hand slipped into his and she smiled.

  “I want to see what we CAN be. Goblin relationships are partnerships. There’s a lot of necessity in how we live. I’ve seen human relationships. I’ve read romance novels. It seems, I don’t know. Nicer.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him.

  “Besides. I like you, Dan.”

  He smiled down at her and held her hand all the way to his apartment.

  It was only two blocks to the building his apartment was over. It wasn’t a huge building, but it was three stories with a shop on the first floor. He took Mitzi around back and up a set of enclosed stairs and stopped at the door to the hallway on the second floor. He led the way down to his door and let them both in, Mitzi first.

  Dan threw his keys on the table by the door as Mitzi walked into the central living space. It was living room, dining room and open kitchen. She stood there, slowly spinning and looking at everything with curiosity and wonder warring on her face. A thought suddenly occurred to him. This might be a bigger deal for her than he’d realized.

  “Have you ever actually been to someone else’s house before?” He asked.

  “No.” She said, as she began walking around the apartment looking at everything. She stopped and looked at him.

  “It’s so bright, and new looking.” She lowered her voice. “And quiet.”

  Dan walked over and knelt in front of her, and reached out and took her hand again, then kissed it. She blushed.

  “Well, I’m glad to have you here, Mitzi.”

  She looked around again.

  “Is all this yours?” She asked?

  “Uh, no. Not really.” Mitzi looked at him and he knew she was confused.

  “All the furniture belongs to the landlord. When I first moved here I barely had anything. I had my easel, my clothes, and my computer. I didn’t get to bring much from home.” He remembered the argument.

  Mitzi suddenly turned back to look at him and squeezed his hand.

  “You ok?” She asked, suddenly concerned.

  “Yeah. I’ll be ok.” He smiled. Man, she was perceptive. He stood and walked over to the couch to sit, bringing his work bag with him. She sat on the opposite end.

  “How many goblins live in your house?” he asked. He vaguely remembered Runt mentioning a number the previous day.

  “About twenty or twenty-five?” She said, shrugging. “It’s hard to get a count with all the running around and different shifts.”

  He just blinked. Twenty-five goblins. All living in the same house. It sounded like madness.

  “How in the hell do you read in that?” He asked, hoping the question wasn’t offensive, but Mitzi laughed.

  “With difficulty. Sometimes late at night I can get in the tub and read while everyone’s asleep. Otherwise, it’s in snatches at home and work.”

  He reached into his bag and pulled out the box he’d brought with him and held it out.

  “I know this is all happening quickly, but you told me about your problems with books and I said I might be able to help. Well, there’s two things I wanted to give you. This is the first.”

  Mitzi very carefully opened it and pulled out the small tablet and charger. She looked at him in confusion.

  “It’s an e-reader.” He said. “Press the button on the bottom.”

  She did and once the screen turned on she looked carefully at everything.

  “It’s like the computer at work. Touchscreen.”

  “Yep.”

  “Is this like a list of books I can check off as I read them?”

  Dan couldn’t wait to see her reaction.

  “No. Those ARE the books. It’s digital copies of them for you to read. Those are YOUR books now.”

  She looked up at him and he didn’t know if she was going to laugh or cry.

  “I have a friend with a bunch of books on a server so I grabbed as many as I thought you might like and loaded them on. I preloaded your account with funds so when something new comes out you can buy it from the online store and read it.”

  She stared at him.

  “Did,” she swallowed, “Did you just give me ALL the books?”

  “Kinda.” He couldn’t stop grinning. “The other thing I wanted to give you is a little, uh, well, you don’t have to accept it. But if you need somewhere quiet to read, you can come here. Even if I’m not home. And if I am, I can work on paintings or commissions. I won’t get in your way and you can read in peace.”

  She was shocked. He thought that might have been a step too far. But she needed somewhere calm to read, and this empty home was driving him crazy. He wasn’t this person. He missed HIS brood. He NEEDED people.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Mitzi stood, walked over, and knelt by him on the couch. She reached out and put her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly.

  “You’d let me come here and read?” She asked. “And, you gave me all these books?”

  “Yes.” He said quietly by her ear. She shivered. “I miss having someone around me. Badly.”

  She squeezed him again, and he squeezed her back.

  “I’ll get you my spare key before you go.” He said.

  “What’s happened to me?” She whispered. “What’s happened to both of us? I barely know you. I should be terrified of this. Or at least more frightened than I am. What is this?”

  Dan just closed his eyes and rubbed his face into her neck. He felt her cheek press against him. He sighed.

  “I don’t know, Mitzi. I don’t know that it matters to me. I just know I feel like I can trust you. God, I missed that.”

  “It IS weird though, isn’t it? For humans?”

  “Probably. Maybe we can figure it out.” Dan said.

  He kissed her cheek and pulled back, putting his hands on her shoulders.

  “For now, would you like me to teach you to art?” He smiled and Mitzi’s eyes lit up.

  “Can I see your art first? I want to make sure it’s not just stick-figures with boobs on them.” She asked excitedly and he laughed.

  “Absolutely!” He said. She jumped down and he stood. He led her to the second bedroom door and opened it. Inside was his “studio” such as it was. There were drop cloths and plastic sheets all over the hardwood floor. His easel was by one of the windows overlooking the street, along with several rolling carts full of paint, thinner, and brushes. Leaning against one wall were rows of canvases, both new and used, with plastic sheeting covering them for safety.

  Mitzi walked in and made a small circuit of the room, taking in every detail.

  “It IS like painting a house! Just in a small space!” She said.

  Dan nearly choked as she hurriedly removed her flannel shirt and tossed it onto a chair along with her baseball hat. She was wearing overalls, not pants. Full stop. That seemed to be it. She looked, more or less, decent for public. It was the implications that were killing him. There was so much of her back and sides visible when her hair was out of the way. Maybe this was modesty for goblins? There was just so much, well, her.

  Mitzi turned back to him and looked like she was going to say something, but she stopped. He thought he’d kept his expression blank.

  “What?” She asked, confused. “This was my painting outfit when I worked on the house. Is it ok?”

  “It’s fine. It’s nothing.” He said shaking his head slightly, and walking over to a row of paintings he mentally referred to as his “A-game”. He pulled the plastic sheeting off.

  “So this is some of my better stuff, so I’ve been told. Look through as much as you want. If you have any questions I’ll be happy to answer them.”

  Mitzi began looking through the row slowly and carefully. She treated every painting with a reverence that HE had never shown them. He watched her as she went canvas by canvas, gently handling each and making sure she never touched an image with her claws.

  He just smiled. She was completely engrossed and her care made him feel like they, and he, might be special. The art had never really meant anything to anyone besides him. Well, not these. And only as a step to the next piece. Another step to a perfection he knew deep down he couldn’t reach. Not any more.

  After a series of paintings of antebellum homes there in Natchez, Mitzi stopped dead at something else entirely.

  “What is this?” She asked breathlessly. She carefully pulled the canvas out and leaned it against the row so she could see it better. It was various shades of blues and grays, dripping and running from the edges of the canvas toward the center, where there was a dark space that all the colors seemed to sink into.

  “That is an abstract.” he said, and sat on his stool by the easel.

  “But what IS it?”

  Dan thought about how to explain.

  “So,” he began, “these first paintings are of places, and things. People. They actually look like what they represent. Right?”

  She nodded.

  “This,” He said, pointing at the abstract, “Is like a picture of an emotion. A mood. It’s an image of what I was feeling when I made it. Not all abstracts are like that, but this is definitely a mood.”

  Mitzi nodded and seemed to stare deep into that dark center.

  “You must have felt awful. Did you miss your family that day? Did you remember something bad?” she asked.

  Dan stared at her in shock.

  “That is exactly what I was feeling. How did you know?” He watched her closely. She turned to look at him.

  “It just feels like sadness to me. Your sadness? If that makes sense?”

  The feelings when they kissed came back to him. Something had connected them. This was beyond an attraction. She knew what he was feeling and didn’t realize it. Dan picked back up with his explanation.

  “Anyway, like I said, this abstract is a picture of a feeling. They can be the easiest thing in the world to paint, or the hardest thing you’ve ever tried to do. I know artists that just can’t seem to grasp them, and that’s ok.”

  “That makes sense though.” She said. “How are you supposed to paint a feeling?”

  “Great news!” Dan said standing. “That’s what I want you to try!”

  Mitzi’s eyes went wide.

  “Me? One of these? Here? Now?”

  Dan grabbed a blank canvas, nothing too big. 8x10 would work. He set it up on the easel and dropped the top bar down and tightened it to hold it in place. He picked out a decent array of basic colors, all water-based paints, on his palette. He grabbed a few different shaped brushes and put them on his clean topped cart along with his Mason Jar of water. Finally, he walked over to a still ogling Mitzi, picked her up by the waist, and sat her on his stool. He realized he’d been touching bare skin and turned red.

  “But, what do I do?” She said in a near panic, staring at the blank canvas.

  “Two things. First, I don’t want you to worry about doing anything wrong because there are no rules. Second, I want you to think of a memory. Something that made you feel something. It could be happy or sad, but today let’s try happy.”

  Mitzi thought for a minute, then gave a quick nod.

  “Ok, want to know what it is?” She asked.

  “No.” Dan said. “I want you to use the paint I gave you there and show me how it made you feel. No faces, no words. Just colors and shapes. Again, there’s no wrong here. Just fill the canvas.”

  He was proud of himself. That was as good an explanation of how to start as he’d ever heard from one of his professors. But Mitzi still sat there staring at the canvas with a brush in her hand, frozen. He had another thought.

  “I’m going to do you a favor.” He said, and picked the brush from her hand.

  “What’s that?”

  “What you’re experiencing is paralysis. It happens to everyone. It’s that fear of a new canvas. Sometimes it’s intimidation on how to start. Sometimes it’s fear that you’re going to ruin it.”

  Dan dipped the brush into the red, and made a point near the top left, then pulled the brush down. It left a tapering red line, none too straight. He then pulled up a chair and sat next to her.

  She looked at him, curious.

  “There.” He said with a smile. “I went ahead and ruined it for you. Now you can just paint on it with no worries.”

  The grin that split her face made him happier than he cared to admit. Mitzi turned back to the canvas and began placing paint. It was not with the reckless abandon he might have expected from a goblin. It was deliberate and methodical.

  As she went, she would ask for help. How to clean the brush, which colors to mix for another color, things like that. For the most part, he just watched her. He never corrected or offered suggestions. He just answered questions and enjoyed watching her paint. He watched her for the better part of an hour as she just placed points of color.

  She was taking it so seriously. He reached behind her and grabbed a clean and dry, very small fan brush from one of his carts. He leaned forward to where he could watch her and very quickly tickled her nose with the brush.

  “Quit it!” She yelled, swatting his hand and the brush away, but smiling. “That tickled!”

  He laughed.

  “Oh, Mitzi-Doodle, that is information I should not have been allowed to have.” He said.

  He started attacking her neck, cheeks, and shoulders with the brush and she squealed, trying to stop him without actually trying to stop him. She giggled squirmed until finally she grabbed the collar of his polo and jerked his face close.

  “If you keep doing that, I am going to nail your ears to the floor.” She said into his face. She looked dead serious, but he could feel amusement in her. Dan could feel her now. He gave her a peck on the nose and she blushed and let him go. She tried to hide her face.

  The entire process of her blushing fascinated him. She blushed pink. Parts of her ears turned pink and seemed to glow in the late afternoon sunlight from the window. He thought it’d be green. She was adorable. Everything she did was adorable.

  “Is nailing my ears to the floor a goblin thing?” he asked as she went back to painting, but much more loosely.

  “Yeah. I don’t guess that would work on you. Human ears are too small.”

  He nodded his agreement.

  “Are goblin ears sensitive?” He asked.

  “Yeah. I pinch Bandy’s ears when she won’t stop being a goober.”

  He smiled and had a wicked thought. He took the fan brush and trailed it softly from the exposed back of Mitzi’s ear, near her hair, all the way to the tip. As he did, her hand opened and dropped her brush. A soft, low, moan came from her as her eyes closed. Finally she let out a long, shuddering breath, holding onto the front of her stool for support.

  The fan brush dropped from his hand as he stared.

  “Mitzi, I am so sorry! I had no idea that, uh, I’m just sorry, ok?” He put a hand on her shoulder. She turned and gave him a look that made him swallow.

  “Um.” He said.

  She turned and slid off the stool, eyes never leaving his. She climbed onto his lap and wrapped her arms around his head, bringing her face very close to his.

  There was absolutely nothing subtle in the look she gave him. “I’m wound up now.” Large, dark green-in-yellow eyes stared into his. The look was almost predatory.

  “Dan, please?” The words were barely more than hot breath on his mouth. Her scent had been low and subtle since she’d arrived but now it was overwhelming. She filled his mind.

  He kissed her, and her fingers ran through his hair as she pressed herself against him. She’d begun moving gently. He heard himself whimper. He put his hands on her back, and was suddenly reminded that she was just wearing overalls when bare skin met his hands. He ran his fingers along her back. She began kissing her way down to his neck and he let out a small moan. He felt her claw scrape along his back. She continued to move and her breath came in shuddering moans.

  He closed his eyes and suddenly he was somewhere else. Another place. Another time. With another person. He’d been screaming. . .

  He’d been here before. He’d been hurt here before. His hands were shaking.

  She stopped and pulled back. When he opened his eyes, she looked and felt horrified for him. She grabbed one of his arms and pulled his hand around to see it. He tried to hold it steady but it just wouldn’t stop shaking. She felt so much concern. He knew, like SHE knew. She gripped his hand in both of her and kissed his fingers.

  “I’m sorry.” She said. “I don’t know what happened. I didn’t know that could happen. Then something just told me this wasn’t right for you yet.” The fire he’d accidentally lit seemed to have completely gone out with that.

  He just sat and tried to get the sudden fear and pain under control. He finally calmed enough to speak.

  “Can we talk about THAT for a second? This feeling thing?” He asked as his breathing returned to normal. Anything to stop remembering. God. Her smell still filled his mind.

  Mitzi nodded, climbed down, and opened the window. It seemed to help clear his head. She came back though, and sat back on his lap, sideways this time. She grabbed his hand again, held it tightly in both of hers, and kissed his fingers again. Two days. He’d known her for two days. Why did he care so much? Why did SHE care so much?

  She tilted her head and seemed to be having similar thoughts. Or pick up his.

  “You can feel me.” He said. She arched an eyebrow and smirked. He realized he was still, um, recovering. “That’s not what I mean and you know it, you dork.”

  She nodded, trying to control her mirth. He was so grateful for it though. Why did this have to happen now? Well, he knew that, didn’t he? Because he was broken.

  “I think I can.” Mitzi said. “I didn’t realize it until just now, really.” She was frightened. “Is that normal for human relationships?”

  “No. I was going to ask if that was a goblin thing.” He said.

  “I don’t know.” She said, and that was worrying.

  “You don’t know if it’s a goblin thing?”

  “There’s a lot I was supposed to learn from my mom, but her and my brood died not long after Talwick was old enough to start fending for himself. I think he was two? Your mom tells you these things. Me and Bandy would probably have ended up broodmares.” The look of disgust on her face was clear. Dan wasn’t sure if it was for the concept of motherhood or for the idea of raising a brood. “The point is, I don’t know as much as I should. Uncle Runt put us in the defensive line to keep me and Bandy away from that as much as possible.”

  “You’ve been picking up on things about me since you got to my apartment though, for sure. Probably before, but it’s noticeable now. I’m picking up what you’re feeling, too. I thought we were just getting really good at reading each other.”

  He put an arm around her and pulled her to lean against him and she put her arms around him. He laid his head on hers. He looked at her incomplete painting. All the bright warm colors toward the center. The dark colors at the edge.

  “You saw flowers that day.” He said, and closed his eyes. He heard the sharp intake of breath from her and knew he was right.

  “Are you scared of me now?” She asked. He shook his head.

  “No. Not of you.” He thought about it and smiled. “Maybe this a little, but not of you.”

  She seemed to relax. Not just a release of tension, but a release of some deeper worry. Somewhere, a different question had been answered for her. He squeezed her again.

  “I feel safe with you.” He said. “I haven’t felt safe in a very long time.”

  He felt her head move, so he leaned back enough to see her face. She looked like she’d had the most important realization of her entire life.

  “I shoulda worn a shirt.” She said.

  Dan laughed so hard that someone upstairs started banging on the ceiling above him.