Princess Amber Fairpeach

For long moments the goblin did not speak, and he merely trembled, caught between following the programming of his mind, and breaking free of that routine to do something that the goblin had never done in countless year.

'My name is Pr-...' she paused, unsure as to whether to say her full name and title now that she had practically given up on ever regaining her freedom, saying so would have been useless, 'Amber... just Amber. I was kidnapped when I was to meet my husband-to-be and...'

'Tellok.' Came a response from vocal chords that sounded like they were filled with more cobwebs than vital blood.

'I'm sorry, but... Tellok? Is that right?'

He nodded his head and slowly turned around to face her, eyes looking down at the ground, averting his gaze from her own.

Now that Amber had the goblin's attention, she suddenly realized that she had nothing to follow through with, 'Ummm... Master Tellok...' she stuttered, reverting back to the small talk that was often used in the royal courts to pass the time, 'How do you do today?'

Tellok the goblin didn't say anything at first, his eyes, so gummed up with rheum and somewhat cataracted she could swear he was very nearly blind, slowly, very tentatively looked up to meet her gaze before flitting down again to look at the floor. His mouth opened and closed, and he worked his jaw so very, very slowly as if the act of even just using his throat to vocalize and work his mouth at the same time to form words had been forgotten so very long ago. He didn't seem to be a feral goblin, for he wore clothes to conceal his genitals and a tattered rag drooped over his shoulders like a shirt.

Tellok didn't reply to that for he simply turned around and began his routine of dropping the bowls of gruel from a cart he pulled.

Amber wanted to reach out again like earlier, and her hand so very nearly did, and she placed it back down on her lap even as she picked up her own bowl. She still watched him, only now just realizing how profoundly lonely she was actually feeling. The past week had not been kind to her, both physically and mentally, and the strain on her mind was only now beginning to make itself known to her as she finally had a quiet moment to herself.

Tellok stopped in front of Fiona's cage and dropped her bowl on the floor with a splash of gruel and unceremoniously pushed it forward with his foot. The Halfling girl did not even rise from her bed of hay, either she was too tired or sleepy, Amber did not know, but Fiona's hand shot out from beneath the pile and she grabbed the bowl and pulled it beneath the hay to where she usually slept.

The goblin moved on, dropping a bowl of gruel from his cart in front of the cage past Fiona's and repeating the action he had probably done hundreds of thousands, if not millions of times, in the past, before disappearing from view.

'Tellok! Wait! Please!'

She didn't even realize she was grasping the bars of her cage and trying to peer down the corridor until her chicken struggled against her cleavage, the poor creature caught between her heavy, ponderous breasts and the rusted wrought iron bars. Amber immediately pulled back and in her haste she fell on her rump with a big oof! She caressed her chicken on its head gently, apologizing profusely to the poor creature even as it gazed up at her with its beady eyes.

'Not even an old goblin would have anything to do with me.' She murmured, her voice brimming with sorrow even as she began to sob. It was all she could do to not cry, and she wondered why she felt such a profound insecurity with the recent turn of events.

Is something the matter with me? Am I really just an ugly person? What if I really am? Oh, my goodness, it's probably because I'm fat. Nobody would buy me because they think I eat too much. I'm just not worth the amount of food they think I'd need.

Amber crawled back to the rearmost corner of her cage and embraced her chicken to her breasts and wallowed in her misery and self-pity.

It wasn't that she was resisting her fate as a slave, no. What bothered her so much as of the moment was a deep and profound loneliness she found difficult to tackle, for never in her entire existence has she ever dealt with such isolation and helplessness. The kingdom of Fairpeach was more than a community; it was a family. Someone was always there to help one out, and that was the same for the nobility. Her father, so much the stoic and strong figure who was the family's bedrock, and her mother who helped soothed any emotional turmoil she experienced and encountered as a child, plus her younger brother who always seemed to have the right quip or jest to turn any gloomy moment into one of joy and laughter.

That was her family, and that was her world. Now it was all gone, never to be seen ever again. The weight of that fact now only began to crash down upon her mind once she had absorbed the fact that she would be nothing more than a sex slave from now on, perhaps a dignified servant in the best of cases, yet she knew deep down that her life as Princess Amber Fairpeach was well behind her.

Amber determined that if she was to be a slave, then she would be the best slave she could. And yet... how could she even accomplish that if nobody even wanted her? It felt all so very, very terrible.

Amber must have been sitting there, embracing her knees and her chicken to her chest, for who knows how long - even she wasn't sure how long specifically - before she heard a gentle tapping upon the front of her cage. Her heart leapt for she knew who it was before she even looked up and her face lit up when she turned her eyes upward and her momentary suspicions were confirmed.

Stood there a bit past the bars of her cage was Tellok, clad in his rags but missing his squeaking, rattling cart. She didn't even hear him coming. She supposed working as a servant for years upon years in this slave shop gave him the skill with which to sneak around unheard despite his advanced age. He was smiling, yet he still kept his eyes towards the ground. Amber approached him, followed by her chicken, stopped only by the bars that separated them

'You returned,' she breathed, smiling wide, 'I was so worried that you wouldn't return and that I had lost a friend forever.

'Tellok.'

'Yes, your name is Tellok but I should be calling you Master Tellok from now on.' Amber paused as she searched for topics to discuss but there were so many that she did not even know where to begin.

'Perhaps it is a bit rude of me to assume that you begin our conversation, so let me begin instead,' Amber cleared her throat as she settled into a kneel in front of the bars and assumed as much of a proper and modest position as she could, 'Forgive me for being so presumptuous, but do you know how dressmaking is done, Master Tellok?'

'Tellok.'

The gave Amber some pause when she heard the goblin repeat his name again. Apart from his disheveled clothes and the scars that crisscrossed his body, he seemed to be in good health. He even settled down to sit in front of Amber's cage, as if he expected her to continue talking. Though he mostly averted his gaze from hers and even her general direction, she noticed that the tilt of his head and the posture of his body language was beginning to edge towards her feet. The goblin's behavior mostly reminded her of bashful children who were slow to begin talking but they could not bring themselves to leave, the situation was something that Amber had encountered a number of times before. She might not have been the best at her passions, but if there was something apart from illustrations and dressmaking that she was naturally adept at and loved doing, then it would have to have been interacting with the young children who lived in her kingdom.

'Before I came here, I was wearing the most beautiful dress you could ever imagine,' she continued, not taking longer than was obvious or necessary to process the fact that to tease out a person from his or her shell, one needed to make friends with them, 'and it was the perfect dress that I had always dreamed of ever wearing.'

Amber drew the basic outline of her dress on the dirt, using her finger, starting with the long, long skirt that went down past her ankles, then the bodice that she herself specified be spun from mother of pearl shells.

Intricate embroidery inlaid with precious stones ran up and down the front of the bodice, beautiful designs that she herself conjured after years upon years of seeing and studying the gowns of other royalty that had visited Fairpeach Kingdom.

Her delicate finger finally traced the silk sash that was wound around the waist and tied it all together, describing in words what could not be conveyed in the dirt. Tellok was staring, wide-eyed at Amber's illustration of dust, and it seemed to be that apart from the slaves who came and went daily that this was the first new thing he had ever seen in a long, long time.

Amber noticed this, and she knew enough to keep talking about the various dresses she'd designed and wore throughout her childhood and teenage years. She narrated how a dress goes from the simple seed of an idea to being laid down on parchment and experimented upon before the cloths would be measured and cut and sewn together before final adjustments are made while the dress is placed on a mannequin.

Soon enough with Amber's animated description of her hobbies, her kingdom, her childhood experiences - both comedic and tragic - the small plot of dirt that separated her and Tellok was covered in her doodles and scribbling that would not look like anything without a proper description of how they came to be.

Tellok started to make pleased sounds as she continued. Faint and almost inaudible at first, but Amber could hear them nonetheless. She took this as a sign of progress and smiled, so she continued on and began to entertain the elderly goblin with descriptions of her hopes and dreams for the future.

Amber looked up from her drawing and locked gazes with Tellok for the first time. She expected him to avert his eyes like he had done so since the start of her narration but not anymore. His eyes were no longer fogged up and hazy like that of a man lost in the stupor of drunkenness, and where before they exhibited a certain far away look, the beautiful young lady now beheld a sharp awareness in their clear depths and that astounded her.

'Master Tellok...' Amber began, inching closer to the bars and pressing her face between them, 'Are you well?'

Tellok did not reply, instead he looked down at his hands, as if seeing them again for the first time in a very long time. He looked around, and the same expression was upon his face, 'Wh...' again the wheezing of air through long disused vocal chords caused him to struggle with words that were not his name.

'Cuh...' Tellok was suddenly interrupted by a loud rabble from the main entrance, and while he turned his ancient head towards the commotion, he was trampled over by a gaggle of young men and women who had come as one large herd. They seemed to be looking for something, or someone, and the loud noises they made startled Amber's chicken and caused it to cluck in panic and begin running around in search for a place to hide.

Amber screamed when she saw that some of the people who came in were standing directly on Tellok, and she cried out and began reaching through the bars and yanking as hard as she could at the trousers of whoever it was that was crushing the poor goblin beneath his weight. There were more than two of them, and she even had to pull at a skirt while practically yelling at the top of her lungs to get the clumsy buffoons to even notice her and move out of the way so that the poor goblin could stand.

'You idiots! Move! You're crushing Tellok!' the crowd of humans milled and shuffled about, mindless of the life they were beginning to snuff out, 'You're killing my friend!'

'Oh wow! So this is the slave shop of War Hero Kogruk!'

'It stinks! What are we doing here?'

'Do they serve coffee? I want a pumpkin spiced latte. Quick, make an illustration of me standing next to this cage. Smile, slave! Say cheeeeese!'

Amber shrieked and began punching ankles and pulling with all her strength, but all she could manage was to cause some of the legs to part enough to see a hand reaching upwards, clawlike, as if trying to grasp for a lifeline. She thought she could hear bones crunching and tendons tearing amidst the strangled cries of the poor goblin.

'Hey, I know you!' one man said, turning around when he noticed Amber's desperate pleas, 'You're the impostor who's claiming to be Princess Fairbottom! Look, everyone! It's the wench who's been trying to pass herself off as royalty!'

The others slowly turned around, one by one, distracted from their tourist-like behavior and began to point and gawk at their new point of attention.

'She looks hideous and misshapen.'

'How could anyone think they're pretty enough to try and pretend to be royalty when they're that ugly?'

'Hey, you impostor, show us your tits. I want to see your tits and compare it to the poster outside.'

'You idiot, Marcel took that poster already.'

'Her tits are big enough, but I think they're too big and too saggy to even compare to the real Princess Fairpeach's tits.'

'Yes, you're right. I touched the real Princess Amber's tits once before. She let me touch them, even.'

'You did? I'm jealous!'

Amber screamed in outrage and stood up and tried shaking and yanking the bars, 'You did not! I would never! I don't even know you, much less even let you touch me!'

'Oy, let the man talk, you impostor. He's telling a story that obviously doesn't involve you, only the girl who you couldn't even begin to dream of comparing to.'

The man reached in, quick as a striking snake, and slapped Amber on the cheek with such force that her head was jarred and she saw stars before her eyes. She took a few steps backwards as a sudden bout of vertigo overtook her and she pressed a hand to the cheek that was struck. Her ears were ringing and everything became a subdued blur of sound.

Alien, it was all so alien to Amber. Such rude and ill treatment of anyone would not have been tolerated in her kingdom, not that it would have happened anyway and she could hardly imagine such an occasion that would warrant such rudeness despite the circumstances.

The crowd of people were all now pointing and laughing at her, gathering in a tight congregation in front of her cage as they all spoke rude and demeaning words as if she were some deformed animal or invalid who could not understand the words they gleefully spoke. They all stared, fingers raised as they each pointed out parts of her face or body they thought were unattractive or outright hideous, a form of mass hysteria overcoming the crowd as they reveled in at least making someone else much more miserable than they were.

Amber's world was beginning to crash around her, disbelief and plain confusion clashing in her heart and producing such a profound fear that she began to take slow steps back until she felt the cool sensation of wall stones against her rump.

In her mind, she could already see the crowd yanking the bars apart and stampeding into her cage. Hands reached out to poke and prod and pinch and jab before feet started kicking at her and she fell to the ground and they all began to stomp and pummel her into the ground.

'Freak!'

'Impostor!'

'Cunt!'

'Ugly!'

She imagined seeing Tellok on the ground, lying at an awkward angle on the ground outside her cage, every bone in his frail body shattered and his vacant eyes staring at her accusingly, 'Why didn't you save me? Why didn't you save Tellok?'

Amber heard an angry screech, and suddenly the crowd of tourists was outside her cage again, looking surprised and confused as piles of gruel were thrown at them, 'Get out! I'm trying to sleep! Get out, you stupid asses! You insufferable cow farts!'

Though she couldn't see where the gruel was being thrown from, Amber was aware enough to know that she was curled up at the back of her cage, hugging her knees to her chest as she tried to shield herself from the merciless crowd of onlookers and kibitzers who had come here only to make fun of her. She did not know where her rooster went, but she hoped he was fine. She could not see Tellok anymore, however, and that frightened her even more so.

Shrieks of protest and indignation emanated from the crowd as each man and woman who partook of the pogrom shielded themselves from the gruel being thrown at them and it was long moments before they finally left.

'Come on, let's go. It stinks here.'

'Yeah this place is filthy, why did we even come here anyway?'

'I forgot I had a stew at home and the hearth is still burning.'

Amidst the complaints coming from the boorish crowd, Amber turned to see Fiona crawling back into her pile of hay. She shot Amber a venomous glare before covering herself up in her kingdom of dirt. On any other occasion, she would have done the same, her utter dislike for the Halfling girl would not have allowed her to let such a gesture go unanswered. And yet...

Amber scrambled forward in panic when the sight of Tellok getting crushed under those feet and legs flashed before her eyes and she cried out in panic as she scrambled towards the bars, 'Oh no, no, no...' she was practically tearing up, hesitating on her hands and knees, both wanting and not wanting to see the goblin's final fate, 'Tellok, please be okay.'

The only friend she'd made in this hellish place and he was taken away before she even had the slimmest chance of getting to know him. Killed. Dead. Her only friend and the only one she had dared to open up to and attempt a form of connection since her arrival for all the others had met her with disbelief, scorn, ridicule, and worse.

She peeked past the bars and saw the crumpled and twisted body of her goblin friend and she cupped a hand too her mouth and choked back a sound of shock and anguish. She reached for his body, her hand just falling a few inches short of it before shaking the door and trying to open the locked portal. She heaved and struggled, bare feet scraping and sliding over the filthy floor, sharp pains blooming over her body, but to no avail, 'Tellok! Tellok! Tell me you're alive! Please! You're my only friend, please be okay! I'm sorry I couldn't save you, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!'

Tellok was lying face-first on the ground, unmoving. His torso was not even rising and falling with the suggestion of breathing.The goblin's limbs were twisted and contorted in unnatural and painful looking angles and his clothes had now been completely torn off his body, leaving in plain view the scars that dotted skin that was black with callouses and soot. As far as Amber could tell, the goblin was dead.

And that was the story of Amber's first and only friend. Dead as a stone even as she held her hand out in the vain hope of some glimmer of life.

A hand grabbed hers even as she was staring at her knees, sobbing. It was firm of hold and unwavering in its grip and though her first impulse was to pull her hand away, her inner voice told her to help whoever this was up. The hand was heavily calloused in areas similar to those fighting knights whose palms she'd seen and this suggested to her that whoever this hand belonged to was no stranger to the sword.