I had forgotten this beforehand, so instead I'll introduce my first fan fiction in over 2 years now. This, dear readers, is the result of my not wanting to finish my scholarship applications. Funny lil world, isn't it? I'm rather proud of this plot. Hell, I'm proud of my summary. But at any rate, an introduction.

This, is Goblin King. Its inspiration is the David Bowie music video for Underground. When you watch it enough times, a backstory seeps into your brain, and you're hooked. Look it up on YouTube. Anyway. I've taken my personal views on goblins, their king, and his personality, and sort of smushed them together into a palatable paste, and then smeared it on the page. Yes, yes, I did take liberties with David Bowie's beautiful eyes. It was actually a scuffle with a friend over a girl. But here, it just didn't fit the Goblin King. And I had to create some sort of clean break from family, so! Here it is. A break.

I'm reminded of something David Bowie said in an interview about Labyrinth, about Jareth in particular. He's a reluctant king. As if he's thinking to himself "Oh great, the goblins have stolen another baby away from another girl and now I must go and fix it."

The premise, of course, is that His Highness did not volunteer for the job.

------------------------------

Chapter 2

If the powers that be had ever paid attention to where souls go after shedding their bodies and settling in newly formed ones, there would have been a hesitant "oops" in regards to the life essence of the Goblin King.

But as these powers cared little in affairs such as those, a mortal babe came into the Aboveground with a shrieking, almost inhuman cry, and bit the hands that pulled it from its dying mother, with toothless gums that inflicted no damage.

And the babe continued crying.

-------

It was one unfortunate event after another, the young man mused. He plucked idly at the grass he lay next to, and held the blades up to his face for inspection. The eyes that ran over them were bright and sharp like noonday sunlight, and one pupil was larger than the other, giving the impression of bi-tonal eyes, one darker than the other. When strangers gawked at this, he endured it with a sort of impatient grace.

Sighing and sitting up abruptly, he shook his head, dislodging stray blades of grass from the field of wild blonde hair on his head. It wasn't that he endured the stares of strangers… it was more that he was searching them as well. Looking for… something. He did not know what, exactly, but being a scant 8 years old, he figured he would know it when he did find it. It wasn't enough that children smaller than him toddled after him, tugging at his clothes and looking up with wide eyes, begging him to pay them any small attention… or that pregnant women paled when they saw him, and doting mothers reigned their children in when he was in proximity, a strange dread creeping into them and whispering with cruel faerie voices: This is a stealer of babes.

No. He had his own problems to deal with. He had enough to distract him from the sense of unease he felt at his own surroundings.

You see, father had never forgiven him for taking mother away.

He couldn't say that his life was bad, because it wasn't, not really… he had food enough, and clothes enough, and there was that other thing… he brushed the thought off as he did the torn grass from his person as he stood. No use in thinking about the other when he had to get going. It was getting dark.

He slipped into the quiet house and padded silently but gracefully to his room. He was not to be so lucky today…

"Damn unnatural brat," came a muttered, sullen voice from the kitchen. The boy kept walking, but his room was on the other side of the house, and he still heard what was said, the same as any other time.

"Not mine. Not my spawn, no. And now she's dead, killed its own mother, how's that for innocence! She was… she was mine… you had no right to take her from me, you goddamned freakish bastard!"

He was forced to scurry as an object shot past his head and smashed into the wall. When he ducked into his room, he locked it, and stamped his foot angrily at the sting of fright in his childish eyes. He did not cry. Not at that. He hadn't even gotten hit, that time. At remembering, his hand lifted to sparingly cover the one eye with the eternally larger pupil. He snapped it back at his side when he realized, and huffed in annoyance. He plopped down in front of his bookcase and grabbed his favorite, pouting as he opened its cover and then visibly relaxing as his two-colored eyes skimmed lovingly over the images within.

It was a book of faeries and goblins.

There was something in his child-mind that had stirred fitfully when he first saw the book, even though he generally preferred books with more substance over simple art books… but the illustrations detailed out in this never failed to soothe him, when he felt too fitful and restless to bear being there any longer.

His teachers loved him, of course, because as antisocial and stubborn and rebellious as he could be, he was absolutely brilliant, and because teachers have that old, romantic soul that recognized what kind of child he was. Old souls recognize each other, in a way. So, he was rather pampered by his teachers, and especially so when they had discovered him patiently showing a few younger children how to play a particular board game. Since that point, however begrudgingly, he had been called on by teachers of younger students to settle disputes between children over hurt feeling and stolen snacks, and asked beseechingly to look out for the more fragile ones.

Yawning to himself as he mused over the illustration of a particularly detailed and interesting goblin, he thought that he really didn't mind the latter of those duties. The small fragile ones he was sent to look after by the teachers… it seemed right. And besides, those little ones had this feeling about them… something he couldn't quite describe, but thrived on nonetheless. Being around them made him feel better. Like he could take what this stifling, dreary place had with grace, as long as he could still have these little fragile souls to look after.

Slowly, his blonde head was leaning towards the floor, the picture of the goblin in the book becoming blurry. He murmured in protest at his traitorous body, but it performed its mutiny regardless, and he was curled up in sleep on the floor within minutes.

So deeply was he asleep that he did not even stir when the sound of skittering, pattering little feet rustled through the room.

A giggle.

"His Highness is adorable as a wee babe!"

A hissing, whispered sound.

"Shut up! You'll wake him!"

"Sorry…"

"Idiot."

A collection of three smallish goblins stood in his room, and fairly stared in adoration at his sleeping form, before one of them came to its senses and, poking the other two with chubby fingers, padded quietly over to the bed and, with help from the other two, managed to drag both blanket and pillow from it to their sleeping Prince, and they somehow managed to place the pillow beneath his slumbering head and drape the blanket over his still form, and they stood for another long moment, watching him with wide eyes that glittered in the low light, and wringing their stubby hands.

"I wish…"

"You know that don't do you no good."

"Oh, let him be. It don't do no harm neither."

"I wish we's…. we's could do sumfin' more His Highness dan just dis…"

The other two fell silent at the smaller one's comment. After a moment, the oldest of them shook his scraggly head.

"Nay," he whispered still. "We have to wait. He's still too young to be King, just yet. Alls we can do is wait, and make sure His Royal Highness don't get hisself hurt too bad."

The other two pouted, and glanced once more at their tiny master with a mixture of adoration, hope, and hunger on their small wrinkled faces, before crawling back through the portal.

His Royal Highness, at that moment, stirred and whimpered in his sleep, a small hand coming out of the blanket on top of him and curling in the direction of the open portal. The oldest goblin smiled sadly at this and clicked his tongue a little. Our poor lost lonely prince, he thought, before he too climbed through the portal and it shut behind him.

The boy on the floor cried out quietly in his sleep, a small sound of despair, before the depths of total slumber ensnared him in its embrace again.