Previously: Barbara's concerns about Jim are nearly a case study in dramatic irony.
Bolded, italicized text indicates trollish.
"Behold." Toby opened up a tied grocery bag. An absolutely awful smell wafted out. A nearby troll leaned in for a better sniff. "Month-old sweat socks. Shopping spree tonight, on me." To the relief of the humans, and disappointment of the curious troll, he tied the bag back up.
"Speaking of buying things, I got my tickets for the play," said Darci. "My parents said they'd come, too." Assuming her dad didn't get called in to work.
"Nice," said Mary. Claire groaned.
"I'm not ready. We're not ready. Opening night's practically here and Steve still can't really get into character. I mean, he knows his lines, finally, but his delivery could still do with a lot of work."
"I thought he was doing fine," said Mary. "Everyone but you and he and Eli keeps stumbling. I feel like I'm doing tongue twisters. At least when Steve messes up, he acts like he meant to say it that way, so most of the audience probably won't notice."
"Sure, it's 'good enough', but it feels like he's using that as an excuse not to try and get better. Iambic pentameter is supposed to flow, and he just … blasts it out."
"Toby, do you or Jim have tickets yet?" asked Darci.
She knew he had. As the Mole, she'd been helping sell tickets at a table outside the auditorium that afternoon. But none of her friends knew she was the school mascot yet, so she asked.
"I bought two, for Nana and me. Jimbo said he's worried some emergency might come up in Trollmarket or at the clinic so he's not sure he or his mom can make it, but I'm working on him to buy tickets in advance just in case, so he doesn't get to the door and find out they're sold out."
"How many emergencies does he get called in for?" Mary gestured at the bustling underground marketplace as the four humans stood aside for a few carts to pass by. "It's busy down here but it all seems pretty peaceful. And when stuff does happen, most trolls seem like they'd rather fight out their own problems."
They all jumped when a gnome popped out of the wall beside them and chittered angrily. They reminded Darci of squirrels that way.
"Have you noticed the hat colours?" Claire wondered out loud. "Red and blue, like in Gnomeo and Juliet. Except these little guys don't seem to be fighting each other."
"Have you noticed," said Toby, "how there's now at least two movies that take a Shakespeare tragedy, rework it for a happy ending, give it a surprise cast, and set it to Elton John music?"
"What's the other?"
"Lion King is supposed to be based on Hamlet."
"… Yeah, I guess I can see that," said Claire. "The sequel to that one was Romeo and Juliet, too, and the, what's it called, interquel, was like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead."
"I think it's a sidequel?" Toby looked it up on his phone. There could, amazingly, be a better signal in some parts of Trollmarket than in some areas of the town above. "An interquel happens in the time between other stories. A sidequel basically overlaps another story in time, but with different perspective or locations."
"Elton John also did the Road To El Dorado soundtrack," said Darci. "I've heard the first song was supposed to have another verse, where it talks about a prophecy of the gods coming to live in the city of gold and that's why everyone was expecting them when Miguel and Tulio showed up, but it got cut for some reason."
"We should do a slumber party this weekend," said Mary. "We could marathon a bunch of 'contemporary takes' on Romeo and Juliet and tell our parents it's for school."
"I really need this to go well," said Claire, going to fidget with her hair. Her hand brushed one of her clips and she stopped herself. "My parents have been on me practically since I auditioned. The one time I got a B, what was their advice? Drop the play. If this doesn't go great, they're going to be all, 'we told you so'."
"Hey, no matter how bad the rest of us stink, you'll do great," Mary insisted.
"You both will – AAAHH!" The gnome hopped onto Darci's shoulder, and from there onto a green troll with an orange – pelt? A beard and a fringe of fur across his shoulders – who was walking the other way. The troll either didn't notice or didn't care about the sudden passenger.
"You okay, Darce?"
"Yeah, just startled me."
"It's wild watching them jump," said Toby. "I wonder if anybody's recorded, like, a record, for how high and how far they can go. We should ask Blinky. Or Chompsky; he'll do anything for a Nougat Nummy."
"Who's Chompsky?" Darci brushed off her shoulder. She was pretty good with names, and that one sounded familiar, but she couldn't put a face to it.
"Kind of my roommate? He's a gnome who lives in my dollhouse. I don't speak gnome so I don't know his real name, so I named him after that linguist guy Noam Chomsky; Nana's got some of his books; and Chompsky rolled with it."
Pedestrian traffic had eased up, so they were able to wander onward without fear of being stepped on.
"You have a dollhouse?" Of course that was the part that would draw Mary's attention.
"It's technically Nana's but it's in my room. It's the perfect size for Sally-Go-Back and digging it out of the basement was easier than saving up for the Moon Base."
"How'd you end up with a gnome in your room?" Mary asked next. "Did it follow you back from Trollmarket or something?"
"Stow away in your backpack?" Darci could see that. They seemed to like small places, being so small themselves. An open bag would look like an invitation.
"I think he followed Jim, actually. It was before I found out about, you know," Toby spread his hands in an expansive 'ta-dah' gesture, "this. Chompsky showed up one night, and then Jim came in and saw him and was all, 'oh no, we need to catch him, this is unsafe, what if he bites?', but then Chompsky found the dollhouse and kinda settled in, and I thought he was cool, and … I guess Jim decided he had to keep his cover, so he dropped it."
Toby's face fell a little. It had to hurt, knowing his best friend had been keeping something this big from him for so long. Darci felt bad sometimes about keeping her mascot job secret from her friends, and that wasn't nearly on this scale.
Jim was in the Hero's Forge. Usually he spent some of the night with the four of them, but apparently he'd lost a sparring match a couple of nights ago, and things were tense between him and Draal and Blinky now. As Darci understood the explanation, Draal had accused Jim of slacking off and Blinky took that as an insult to his capacities as a trainer when he found out.
So Jim was ramping up his training.
AAARRRGGHH, at least, was acting as calm as ever. Darci wasn't sure the placid troll could get mad for real.
"Hi, Bagdwella," Mary greeted when they reached her shop. It looked like a junkshop to human eyes but Bagdwella advertised it as 'fine gifts'. "How's business?"
"A little slow this week," she answered. The humans liked to stop by her place because she'd let them practise speaking trollish with her. "Not unusual for the season. It should pick up in three or four days. Rumour has it" – Darci and Claire exchanged amused looks at one of the first phrases they all learned, since it was one of Bagdwella's and Mary's favourites – "some of Glug's relatives are planning to visit from Floor-ee-dah. They always forget to pack a few essentials and they like to bring home souvenirs."
"What's this?" asked Claire, suddenly, sharply. She held up a stuffed rabbit and switched languages. "Where did you get this?"
"My suppliers brought it in a while ago, I don't recall exactly."
"This is my brother's bunny! He's been acting weird ever since he lost it. Suzy Snooze was here the whole time?"
"Uh, Claire?" Toby waved at her. "First rule of bargaining, don't let them know just how bad you want the thing." He turned to Bagdwella. "I'll trade you three socks for the … toy. I don't know the words for 'stuffed rabbit'."
"It's a stuffed rabbit if it's cooked and a cloth rabbit if it's a toy. Twelve socks and a bedspring."
"Four socks and a candy wrapper."
"Ten socks, all argyle."
Toby checked his pockets. "Six socks, a candy wrapper, AND a pen full of delicious dried ink."
"Deal."
"You didn't have to do that," Claire said to Toby when they left.
"I kinda did. She runs a store, not a Lost & Found. Even if she believed you about it being your brother's, she wasn't gonna just give it back."
Claire cuddled the plush rabbit. Darci's skin crawled a bit, watching her. Who knew what the toy had gotten into while it was missing? Trolls were amazing but not very clean.
"You'd better run that through the laundry a few times before you give it back to Enrique," she said.
"It'll be good for his immune system," Claire joked. "But seriously, yeah, I will."
Up next: A dramatic return to the main plot!
What Toby refers to as 'Shakespeare tragedies' are more accurately called 'Shakespearean tragedies', but he either doesn't know that or doesn't care.
In S1E4, Gnome Your Enemy, Toby refers to the dollhouse in his room as "Nana's dollhouse" at least once, so he presumably got it from her.
Bagdwella has a sister, Sagdwella, who "lives under a trailer park in Oo-tah". The Quagawumps live in Florida except for one, Glug, who spends her time in Trollmarket and makes a presumably-alcohol-equivalent drink that she seems to have named after herself.
Jim and Toby didn't see Enrique being carried by a goblin or chase after them, so Suzy Snooze was left in the alley until a troll on a scavenge run happened upon the abandoned plush bunny.