The characters and Discworld belong to Terry Practchett. I am only borrowing them.

YOUNG SAM IS GROWING UP

After SNUFF

PG 500 words

Sybil Ramkin-Vimes bit her lip as she watched Sam eat breakfast. Today she had made it specially with all the crunchy bits.

"There's something I needed to tell you, dear."

"That's nice."

"It's about Young Sam."

"Very good."

"He ate the alligator."

Vimes surfaced from the dual husband conversation he'd been having, musing about adding yet another species to the watch. Banshees were never going to work.

"Really, what?"

"Well, you know he's getting older."

"What—fif-sixteen now? Yes?"

"Sixteen. He's been spending all summer here at Crundell. He really likes it. Um, and he likes all the people here. And, um, actually, one of the people here more than the others."

"Yes—what now?" It was becoming dreadfully apparent what she was working up to. Sometimes he regretted that Young Sam had put away his poo piles years before.

"Not one of the twirling housemaids?" Sybil certainly couldn't be bothered by class differences; she had picked the boy from Cockbill Street right out of the gutter.

He cast around.

" Rust's granddaughter?" That would be truly revolting.

"It's Tears of the Mushroom, dear."

"The harpist, yes amazing musician—wait-Young Sam? And a goblin?"

"Yes."

He choked on his coffee.

It shouldn't bother him, really it shouldn't. But he discovered in that instant that he would not have been as startled to learn that that Sam was dating a dwarf, a troll, any other species. Was he more prejudiced against goblins? Wasn't this the true test of acceptance, not to mind who, no, what, no, WHOM your child cared for?

"Do you think they—I mean do you think that they are, they are-?"

He was turning bright red, he knew. And his eyes were crossing. The inevitable picture surfaced in his mind, was beaten down with his truncheon, but lingered like the smell of the Ankh. Gods, did his son, his SON, need any Sonkies? Could goblins and humans even reproduce?

"I'm talking to him right now."

"Sam! Wait, dear!"

He walked firmly into the music room.

Young Sam and Tears of the Mushroom had been playing music together, she on the harp and he on the piano accompanying her. Now they were sitting together on the piano bench, their backs to him, with their arms around each others' waists. The little flat-faced, protruding jaw creature had laid her head against his.

As he watched, his son kissed the girl's forehead and she sighed. Sam couldn't do anything that wouldn't make him a meddler and a hypocrite. He backed out of the room and bumped into Sybil.

"Come away, Sam. You can talk to him later."

At least he had that much of a reprieve. He laid his head on his wife's bosom, and sighed, in the same way, he realized, that the goblin girl had sighed A new world, yes. But he had Sibyl, always dear Sibyl, to help him navigate it.