"Goblins, as a race, are probably one of the natures greatest miracles, but also one of the natures saddest jokes. They are one of the oldest races on Ehtran, having stayed almost unchanged from the day the first goblin was sired, keeping all of its weaknesses and all of its strengths, though many may denay that there would be anything worth calling as strengths in this creature."

- The Beginning of Goblins: Miracle or a joke, by Gm. A.R. Elfhart

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"Mira!"

Alex yelled right after opening his eyes and sprung up to sit from where he laid, before falling silent as he looked at the dark cave room he found himself in, with no memory on how he got there.

"Alex?"

"Mi-"

He turned to the direction where he heard a sleepy mumble resembling his name being called from, expecting to find a human woman next to him. Instead, what he found was a maybe 1 or 2-year-old little girl, with dark brown hair and sleepy golden eyes, naked without a single piece of clothing on her and clearly only having just been woken up from her sleep by Alex's yell. What made this girl differ from normal human girl however were her elongated ears, her carnivorous teeth visible from her slightly open lips, and her green skin. Not to mention that those golden eyes of hers seemed, no they did not just seem, but they were glowing in the poorly lighted room.

"A-lex?"

The girl was also slowly getting over her sleepiness, as she once again called his name while tilting her head, this time however with a slight uncertainty in her voice.

"Yes? Who are yo-, no, wait. Mira?"

Alex was going to ask the girl's name, but then a corrected his question as he got this idea that should make no sense, but was clearly correct as the girl's, Mira's, eyes opened wide upon hearing Alex call her name.

"You are Alex?"

"Who else would I be?"

Mira was seemingly searching for something in Alex's eyes, something that she found a moment later, at least if the mischievous smile that bloomed on her lips is anything to go by. Alex felt a bad feeling fall over him, but before he could ask, his eyes opened wide as Mira jumped onto him, pushing his back to the ground and sealing his lips with hers. When Alex finally got his bearings back, Mira had already pulled her head away with her face glowing like a child's that had just succeeded in her prank. For a moment Alex was enthralled by Mira's smile, before...

*bonk*

He chopped the top of Mira's head with his hand, which made Mira fall on top of his lap while holding her head with both hands.

"Ouch! Why?!"

Instead of answering Alex continued observing Mira’s face.

“Why do you look like that?”

“Like what?”

“The glowy eyes, pointy ears and green skin.”

“But that’s what you look like?”

Mira said while tilting her head, which startled Alex and made him bring his left hand before his eyes, while using his right hand to feel shape of his ear. Only now did it occur to him that his voice was also of a much higher pitch than it used to, which should have woken him to his own changes much earlier.

Alex moved his gaze from his hand back to Mira, locking eyes with her.

“Glowing eyes?”

“Yes.”

“Not human?”

“No.”

“Alive?”

“Maybe?”

Mira emphasized her answers with a nod, a shake and a tilt of her head respectively, after which Alex suddenly pulled her towards himself and stifled the rising yelp by pressing his lips against hers, this time being the one kissing Mira. After a while Alex had to pull his head back to draw a pained hiss, as he felt Mira twisting the side of his waist with a pinch of her fingers.

“I give! I give!”

Alex yelled and Mira gave a last good twist, letting go of his waist with an audible “hmph.”, before laying down on him with her arms on his chest and her head resting in the nape of his neck. Alex heard a barely audible “Idiot.” to which he just reacted by putting his arms around Mira’s waist.

They just laid there for a while, until Alex felt that they really should discuss the elephant in the room.

“So, where are we? What are we?”

“In a cave? Santa’s little helpers?”

“Be serious.”

Alex admonished Mira for her nonsensical answers to his serious questions.

“But I am. We ARE in a cave and I would say we are goblins, but they are said to be a lot uglier. Hence I thought of the kind of elves that are said to help Santa in his workshops.”

“Oh, and how much uglier would a goblin be?”

“Well, about that much?”

When he turned his gaze towards where Mira was pointing, what he saw was the room’s entrance and standing in it was a creature that shared many of their new features, such as the glowing eyes, pointy ears and green skin. However, different from their golden eyes, this creature’s eyes were green. Where their faces could have been described as cute or even beautiful in human’s standards, this creature had an oversized sharp nose with a chin to go with it, its face covered in wrinkles from its cheeks to the back of its head with hardly any hair on top. It stood maybe little over meter tall and its limps seemed a little too long and slightly out of proportion compared to rest of its body, giving the creature a scrawny look. All in all, it had the look that made anyone with even a little bit of knowledge about fantasy creatures yell “GOBLIN!” from miles away.

Alex and Mira watched as the goblin used both of its hands to drag the body of some kind of boar to the middle of the room they were in, where it unceremoniously let it fall to the ground, before opening its mouth to let out a loud “KRIEK!”, after which it simply walked out of the room. They didn’t have long to wonder what that was all about, as soon they started hearing smaller cry’s coming from all around the room. They noticed that the walls of the room were not uniform, but were instead full of small ledges that they hadn’t noticed before, on one of which the two of them were also on, and from those ledges smaller goblins started to crawl down onto the floor and dash towards the carcass waiting in the middle.

The small goblins tore down on the boar with their claws and teeth, ripping out pieces of meat that they then swallowed raw, with blood flowing down their chins. Alex and Mira watched from where they sat, as in no more than 5 minutes the mostly complete animal was stripped down to its bones, with only its head being somewhat complete.

“You know, as much as that should have made feel uncomfortable, I kinda wanted to join in.”

Mira whispered, which made Alex turn his gaze her. Mira, who had moved to sit next to him during the 5 minutes they spend watching the goblins feast on the boar, looked at the carcass with rapt eyes and Alex could’ve sworn he heard her gulp down her saliva, but then opened his eyes wide and turned his head back towards what was left of the animal as he realized that, deep down, he felt the same way.

They looked at each other, and reaching a silent agreement, they both nodded and clambered down form their ledge and made their way towards the middle of the room.

By the time they had walked to the center, the small goblins had already retreated to their own ledges, probably to sleep until the next meal. The smell of blood was quite thick, but instead of making them feel sick, it just made their hunger even more prevalent.

Taking stock of what was left, almost all of the meat and the organs were gone, only bits and pieces left on some of the bigger bones. Before Alex could ask what they should do, Mira took good hold of the skull with both of her hands and ripped it off from the spine. She then proceeded to smash the back of the skull to the stone floor.

The skull was big and heavy compared to small Mira, and it took 4 or 5 smacks to the ground before they heard the crunch that came from the bone breaking, making Mira quite tired. She didn’t however let it stop her as she pried open the cracked back of the skull, revealing the brain that was surprisingly small compared to the size of the skull.

As Mira did all this Alex had used a rock he found on the floor to break some of the bigger bones, trying to see if he could get some of the bone marrow out, with bad results.

“Thanks.”

Alex said as Mira scooped the brain out of its hole and used her fingers to split it in half, taking a bite out of the other and offering the other half to Alex.

The brain’s texture wasn’t as slimy as Alex had thought, but more like a soggy tofu. Without thinking any more of that, he took a bite of it and it wasn’t really anything good, but it wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t eat it again.

The brain split in half couldn’t be called a hearty meal, but as there was nothing else left to eat from the boar, they made their way back to their ledge, where they laid side by side.

“So, goblins?”

“Would’ve rather been Santa’s helper.”

Alex let out a chuckle as Mira took a more comfortable position by snuggling to his side and resting her head on his chest. It didn’t take long for Mira to fall asleep and Alex just smiled before also closing his eyes and letting Mira’s steady breathing lull him to sleep.