The Last Goblin < TRUSTED >

The baker’s wife did not wake. The smith did not stir. The little girl dreamed of princesses and plastic toys.

“I remember,” Snikk whispered. His voice was like dry leaves skittering on stone. “I remember the taste of coal smoke and the smell of wet dog. I remember how to tie a knot in a horse’s tail and how to make a candle burn blue. I remember the old game where you swap the salt for the sugar.” the last goblin

They had simply... dwindled.

The elves had sailed into the West. The dwarves had sealed their mountains against the clamor of a race that no longer believed in the pickaxe’s echo. The dragons had grown still, their bones becoming chalk ridges for shepherds to walk. The baker’s wife did not wake

His name was Snikk, though no one had spoken it in three hundred years. He was very old, even for a goblin, and his skin was the color of a thundercloud. His ears were tattered, his nose a lumpy root, and his eyes—his eyes still held two coals of that dying green fire. “I remember,” Snikk whispered

Then he turned and walked into the woods. Not to hide. Not to steal. Just to be.

As the first gray light of dawn touched his back, Snikk walked to the edge of Harlow. He looked back once. The village was still asleep. The fountain gleamed. The new road stretched straight and true toward the factories and the freeways.