CHAPTER I
The clattering and rattling woke her from a deep, dreamless sleep. She came to slowly, dragging her way out of unconsciousness with a protesting moan. In the pre-dawn darkness she turned her head towards the bedside clock, her sleep-logged brain taking its time to resolve the shining red patterns into recognizable numbers. 4:45. Isshy lay on her legs like death, unmoving and unwilling to react to anything that might try to wake her at such an ungodly hour. Shuck and Three however greeted her awaking with a surfeit of tongues and energy, both of which she could fight off only weakly in her sleep-logged state. With a low curse she listened to the increasingly frantic noise from the plastic porch roof outside her bedroom.
"Good morning, and have a great day," she mumbled under her breath. "Begin yet another great day by getting up in the bloody middle of the night, getting drenched in cold rain and then crown everything by killing a helpless rat".
The poor rat might well have been trapped for quite a bit, she thought as she pulled her legs out from underneath her unmoving cat, slipped into her house slippers and tied a ratty robe around her waist. The clanging of the glue trap against the roof was muffled by heavy rain hitting the roof, and she wondered guiltily how long the animal had been banging away, trying to free itself from the glue trap while she'd been asleep.
If she was going to do away with rats early in the morning, she better make sure she could actually see them. With a resigned sigh Sarah grabbed her glasses from her bedside table and put them on. If she had to name one thing she really hated about her house, it was this - rat killing in the early morning.
"You tightwad bastard, someone should break YOUR bloody neck, " she swore under her breath. The landlord somehow never got around to close the hole in the wall at the edge of the roof, and there was just no way she would manage to crawl through the rafters to fix the hole from the inside. Sarah could practically see herself fall through the ceiling. No way. So the only way to keep the roof rats from having nightly orgies in the ceiling right above her bed was by hindering them from making their way into the roof in the first place by generously surrounding selfsame hole with several packets of glue traps. Isshy had proven completely useless when it came to rat-catching, uninterested in hunting anything unless she felt like it, and she obviously didn't consider roof rats interesting prey. Even shaving a bit of Isshy's fur and spreading it on the porch roof had not been enough to keep the rats at bay. It had however resulted in Isshy pointedly ignoring her for two weeks while making sure to be constantly around Sarah yet paying no attention to her. Even Rob had not managed to do this as well. At least rats were smart animals, she thought grimly. It had been several months now since the last incident, she suspected that the terrified animals left a stink of fear behind that made other rats think twice before they decided going for this hole was a good idea.
Sarah rummaged around her bedside drawer until she found the torch and the screwdriver she had stashed away there. For a moment she grinned to herself in memory. Even when Rob had still been around, it had always been her who ended up as the grim reaper to whatever animal needed to be disposed off. When that little robin had flown into their living room window? Lying on the ground, both wings broken and blood coming out of its beak, Rob had taken a look and turned a delicate shade of green. She knew there was no way he could put the bird out of its misery, as little as he had been able to deal with the mostly but not quite dead mice or birds her assorted pets would occasionally bring home for sports and entertainment. So she grimly did what needed to be done to put the animals as quickly and efficiently as possible to death. Her left hand, covered in a heavy-duty leather glove that bitter experience had proven to be bite-resistant would gently but firmly hold the animal's body so it couldn't wiggle away, while she'd gently positioned the flat side of a screwdriver to the lower edge of the skull. With one quick down-and-out movement she would break the neck at the base of the skull and the little creature would be put out of pain as quickly as humanly possible.
Her professor had been quite clear. "Feeling sorry for the animal won't help it. You need to do what needs to be done quickly and without hesitation to spare them pain and terror." She wished it was as easy for herself. Whenever she found herself playing the angel of death, she ended up depressed for days.
Well, enough dawdling, she chided herself. She opened the shutters of her window and turned on the main light in the small bedroom so she would have some more illumination on the porch from her bedroom . As she walked to the kitchen she did her best to keep the exited dogs from tripping her up. She had to open the door to the porch with her bum, needing her hands to keep her dogs inside the house. It was one of those situations when you really need more than two of them. Her behind was immediately sprayed with cold rain. Sarah grimly grabbed the step ladder and a broom leaning against the wall and dragged them out to edge of the porch. She put the screwdriver and the torch on the patio table and climbed onto the ladder. Blindly she poked along the edge of the porch roof with the broom handle until she felt it hit something solid. It squeaked. Loudly. Energetically.
"Please no," thought Sarah , "why the hell can't this rat be nearly gone and just wanting to die? How can I kill it if it is so alive?". She knew she had no choice - rats in the roof would keep her awake for good, and she needed her sleep to be able to do her job properly. Sarah swore to herself that this was it, she was going to get the landlord to fix the hole in the wall if it was the last thing she'd ever do. She was done killing healthy helpless animals that just wanted to live their life in peace. She knew what it felt like.
But tonight she had no choice. This rat was going to be the last one she'd kill. Determined she maneuvered the broom handle to the wall next to the squeaking rat - what was that sound? Splintering wood? She pulled back the broom and looked at the handle in disbelief. It had deep bite marks and the top was torn off. What the heck could bite off the end a broom handle? Was that a raccoon? No way, anything bigger than a rat would have been able to free itself, probably leaving a fair amount of hair on the glue traps, but they would have gotten away. Determinedly she moved the broom handle over her head along the edge of the porch roof and swiped the animal over the edge with a sudden movement.
Grabbing the torch and the screwdriver from the table she moved over to the rather sizeable thing that seemed to have managed to entangle itself in 4 or 5 of the glue traps at the same time. How the hell had it managed to do that? Sarah leaned down and shone the torch onto the animal, getting ready to grab it with the gloved hand, when it tumbled around and twirled to face her from behind a trap mostly obscuring its head. It lifted two grubby paws that looked awfully like hands - a small raccoon perhaps? Then the creature huddled backwards against the wall, squeaking frantically.
"Eek is good, Eek is good, lady no hit Eek, Eek no do wrong, nononono….."
The screwdriver fell out of Sarah's suddenly nerveless hand. She swayed for a moment and sat down heavily, in the middle of a puddle on the ground. "But, but…you're not a rat. You're a goblin. I've seen you before," she said weakly.
"Christ, this just has to be a flashback. A bloody goblin. I mean, he looks like they did. Can you get a flashback if you only did acid once, 25 years ago? Wow, it's.. This cannot be a goblin, I am hallucinating. Please let it be a dream. This is a dream, right, dream, I didn't catch a goblin in a rat trap. This is just a very weird dream…" She continued in this vein for much longer than she would ever admit when she told the story to a rapt audience much later.
However, the little goblin's frantic high-pitched squeaks and wild but useless attempts to remove the glue traps coupled with the cold water she was sitting in slowly numbing her bum were just too real to be explained away as a dream. She'd never dreamt anything like this. Sarah gave herself a mental kick. Picking herself out of the puddle rather ungracefully she stayed in a squat, and facing the stuck little goblin she said, with a voice she was proud to notice was barely shaking: "What did you say your name was? Eek? Listen, little goblin, let me help you, Eek." It took several minutes of soft murmuring with countless repetitions of Eek's name until the goblin had actually calmed down enough to notice the human woman talk to him. Sarah knew better than to stop, nothing will calm a terrified animal or child better than a quiet, low and gentle voice. While the little goblin was clearly terrified and it was obvious that he would rather have run away, it was just as obvious that it was much too entangled in traps to manage an escape.
With a shrill, shaky voice trying its best to sound threatening and vicious Eek whimpered: "Bite you if you hurt Eek, bite you bad. Take sticky plates away, but bite you if you hurt me."
Sarah felt reality shiver and crack around her, and while her common sense still tried to refuse to believe in the presence of a …goblin on her porch, she felt wonder and joy bubble up deep in her heart. None of her conflicting emotions kept her from continuing to talk quietly and reassuringly to the little goblin. Never stopping her calming words in a low singsong voice, she slowly moved her hands towards the little goblin.
"Now don't be afraid, nothing to worry about, Eek, Sarah is going to take those nasty sticky tablets off you, Eek, and I'll give you something warm and soft to wear, Eek, quiet now, be quiet sweetie, you're fine now, I have you, everything is fine now. Are you hungry now, Eek, are you? Yes, I am sure you would like something nice and warm to eat," and on and on she talked as the goblin with the glue traps hanging off its body seemed to slowly calm down. Finally Sarah put her hands around the little goblin as best she could with all the traps sticking on him, and slowly and unhurriedly lifted the little body up.
"Whoa, little one," she laughed, "what the heck are you made off? Bricks? You are really heavy," and with some effort she managed to get up from the squat.
"Damn, I think my days of squatting are over for good. Next time I might not get up again without help. Come on, sweetie, we better get in and warm up, won't we, Eek, before we catch our deaths out here in the rain."
With these words Sarah walked back to her kitchen, balancing Eek precariously between her hands. Opening the kitchen door took considerable effort as her hands were full, and she walked in on her dogs backing away and barking hysterically at the creature she held. She closed the patio door with an impatient kick of her sopping slippers, pushed the yipping Three and Shuck out of the way and walked quickly to the sink, slowly lowering the miserable-looking goblin into the white porcelain bowl.
"Listen, Eek, I need to run water over you to get those traps off your body", she cooed softly to the goblin as she as she pulled out the kitchen faucet and ran water over her hand in the far corner of the sink to gauge the temperature. "Don't worry, sweetie, I'll use warm water, it will be quite pleasant", and while Eek was whinging on in a low growl that tried to sound threatening, she gently began to rinse his little body with a bubbly stream of warm water, soaking the sticky glue on the traps and dissolving it enough so she could slowly loosen and remove the traps that stuck to his little body. All the while her dogs were pressing their shaking bodies close to her legs and were growling deep in their throats as they lifted their noses as close to the sink as they could.
To her surprise Eek completely ignored the growl that filled the air. He did not seem to consider the dogs a threat. It took a good while until she had managed to work all rat five traps off him and remove his grimy garments. Eek had quickly stopped his bellyaching and got right into the spirit of water games, squeaking gleefully and wiggling around in her wash basin like a slippery fish, all giggles and childish delight. By the time she had thoroughly scrubbed his scrawny little body with dish soap, he had managed to drench her in increasingly less dirty water and had even been able to swallow a mouthful of the citrus-smelling dish liquid while she was busy getting the last sticky residue off his legs. Not only did he not puke as she'd been half afraid, but he kept wanting to get his hands on more of the soap and ended up happily burping bubbles.
Finally Sarah got some kitchen towels, lifted Eek out of the sink and started toweling him rigorously. A few towels later he stuck his head out of from between her hands and grinned at her wolfishly. "Eek hungry now," he stated, and rumbling from his stomach confirmed his words.
"Okay, Eek, wait here just a moment and I'll get you something to wear, and then I think we both deserve some proper breakfast." As Sarah turned to leave the kitchen she realized that leaving a small goblin alone with two utterly hysterical dogs might not be a smart idea. Yet to her surprise her dogs stuck to her legs like glue and seemed only too happy to join her when she walked out of the kitchen.
Sarah came back with a boy's t-shirt in her hands just in time to see Eek taking a healthy swig of dishwashing liquid out of the bottle on the sink. She grinned as she looked at him in his full glory. Lord, but goblins were ugly. While Eek was as big as a good sized raccoon, you couldn't in good conscience say he was as good-looking. For all his attempts at looking dangerous, Eek looked unassuming - it just was difficult to look vicious when his squashed-up face resembled nothing as much as the offspring of a goat and a cow, despite a couple of sharp little teeth poking out of his serious overbite. The bulging eyes were a muddy brown, and the mottled moss-colored skin looked as if something was growing on it. After having scrubbed Eek's skin quite thoroughly, Sarah was convinced that something actually was, which explained the tube of antibiotic ointment she brought with her. The miserable tufts of ragged hair that were sprouting all over its scrawny body without ever managing to look like a fur did not help his appearance. Eek looked like he was suffering from a serious case of mange. Despite his arguably unthreatening appearance both Shuck and Three seemed to be terrified of him, pressing their bodies against her until could feel their shaking flanks. They'd given up growling in favor of whimpering. It would seem that there was more to Eek that met the eye.
With a laugh Sarah walked up to the counter, closely followed by her dogs who obviously felt that their mistress needed protection, however terrible the enemy, and they were not going to fail in their job. She couldn't help wondering how you could tell a goblin's gender - despite of having seen the family jewels of just about any animal a vet might encounter she was damned if she could tell with Eek. And she certainly could not imagine that anyone would actually go and try to neuter a goblin. It just seemed a dangerous idea. At least his nose was shiny and wet, if he were a dog that would be a good sign. She opened the tube of ointment she had brought along and started to rub generous amounts on all suspicious looking parts of his skin. She figured she'd need the whole tube.
"Noo, Eek, don't eat it, it's to make your skin feel good. Now wait, I'll be done in a moment, and then we will eat. Come on, put on the shirt and I'll get you some food." She held out the t-shirt to him, which he snatched out of her hands with considerable speed. He grinned dementedly as he dragged the shirt over his head. It was much to big and ended well under his knees, but surprisingly the short sleeves did not extend over his elbows. It made sense since Eek's knuckles practically dragged on the ground. Interestingly enough Eek looked better in the t-shirt than Toby ever had. Which might have something to do with the fact that the less you saw of Eek, the better he looked, which had never been true for Toby.
"Food, Eek want food. Food now. Please?", Eek's attempts at a threatening posture quickly dissolved into begging. As Sarah started to cook a full breakfast with all the trimmings, the little goblin sat contentedly on the counter next to the stove grabbing bits out of the pans whenever she wasn't looking. After a series of increasingly noticeable whacks with the spoon he made sure to keep his hands to himself when she was watching. Sarah felt joy bubble up in her. It had been much too long since she last had breakfast with anyone. While most people might assume that a goblin staying for breakfast was a very poor second choice, she found that she strongly preferred Eek to just about anyone she had breakfast with since she had moved away from home. And that included her husband. Sarah sighed. Not a thought she wanted to dwell on this wonderful morning, especially since it hadn't been Rob's fault. But it was a wonderful morning, rain and all. Sarah bit her lip. She was not going to ruin the glow that came from finally getting proof that she wasn't crazy. Not that it bothered her very much any more - after 30 years, who cared but her? But still, knowing that it hadn't just been a mad dream was gratifying. Deep in her mind Sarah was even proud of herself - who would have believed that she actually ever was the kind of girl to fight her way through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered - and that she won?
The fire-alarm going off interrupted her budding reverie. A tuft of hair on Eek's arm had come too close to the gas flame as he sneaked his hand into the pan and the patch of fur seemed to spontaneously combust, producing large amounts of vile smoke. Eek hopped around from one leg to the other and kept hitting himself with his arms, screaming loudly but strangely not sounding in pain. Sarah finally grabbed and held him, covering his bony little body with a towel to suffocate any flames and then needed a few minutes to completely assure herself that he wasn't badly hurt. She checked several times to find the damage, but try as she may she could not find any burns, only a singed looking spot with some frizzled hair on his arm. It seemed goblins were fireproof, or at least Eek was.
By the time she had calmed down the bacon hat shriveled to a dark crisp, the eggs were dry and the toast was burned. Luckily Eek's taste buds were as resilient as the rest of him. While Sarah had a cup of coffee and a piece of toast with marmalade, he managed to stuff food into his mouth without missing a beat and obviously considered it a bit of luck that he didn't have to share any of it with his hostess. Sarah looked at him with a smile. It was astounding how much the goblin reminded her of Toby just then, Toby when he had been five or six. Obviously not in looks, but Eek exhibited the same single-mindedness and concentration that Toby had shown when he had really been focusing.
God, she missed him still, after all those years. It was a pain that never went away completely, a pain that had not grown gentler, as the loss of her dad and Karen had. Sarah supposed this was normal. She had had many years with her parents and countless loving memories, and there had been enough time to come to terms with their deaths.
"Parents die," she thought, "and if they are lucky they die before their children. Only, we never knew what had happened to Toby. How could we let go of him not knowing what had happened?" She recalled a discussion she'd had with Karen a few years after Toby had disappeared. Now, she'd just had started her first job in the animal clinic in town, so how old had she been? 25 or 26? God, and still so sure of herself, not only knowing everything, but knowing it better as well. She didn't know how Karen had ever put up with her. She recalled her loud assertion that it was good that Toby had just vanished. This did leave the possibility that he lived somewhere, he might have a happy life, and if they were lucky they might actually find him again. Now Karen, she just wanted his body to bury. Sarah winced at the memory of her own surety and arrogance, how she had railed and harangued Karen, calling her defeatist and loudly declaring her attitude to be better. Karen had smiled in her tears and hugged her, saying she was happy she at least still had her daughter. It had been an effective way of stopping the painful conversation before she said something she might have truly regretted.
It had taken Sarah years to understand why her stepmother just wanted Toby's body to bury. For the young, the world is teeming with possibilities. They might be anything, go anywhere, achieve anything. Oh, there may be risks, but really, the young are immortal. Only other people die. Bad things only happen to other people. For the young, the future holds only possibilities, not risks. As the years passed and life happened, Sarah learned that the possibilities are limited and that the risks are all too real, but in her twenties she had been too inexperienced to see. When you are 25 it is a fine thing to proclaim that your little brother is better off lost than dead. When you are 45 it is impossible to even imagine any scenario that could make you wish for your missing nine year old brother to have lived for long after he vanished. So you wish for a body to know that he is not suffering, a body that will tell you he is at peace. A body to stop the nightmares.
Wrapped up in her thoughts Sarah never noticed that Eek had finished eating and looked at her, head held aslant. The next thing she knew was Shuck and Three barking like crazy under the table, trying to force their way on her lap as Eek sat on the table before her and touched his hand to her cheek.
"Water run down your face", he said with huge eyes. "Is sick?".
With a start she stared at him and said: "No sweetie, I am fine, don't worry," smiling as she pushed away the old familiar pain. Despite the hard, calloused skin on his fingers his touch felt soft. Something felt wrong, though. How many bloody fingers did he have? Sarah grabbed his hands disbelievingly and stared. Yep, four fingers.
"How many toes do you have, Eek?", she asked excitedly. Eek was not one to hold back on his achievements, even if he had no active part in them. In a second he was on his back, pushing his feet toward her face. She was suddenly glad that she had personally overseen his clean-up. Sarah suspected that generally having a goblin's feet shoved into your face was a less than pleasant experience. These thoughts vanished rather quickly when she took in his feet. One of them had three toes, with long, curved claws, rather like a sloth. Or perhaps a velociraptor. She figured that Eek wasn't exactly a sprinter - with a foot like that he'd never be able to walk normally and much less run. On the other hand, if this was a velociraptor foot, why would he ever need to run? Suddenly her dogs' fear made more sense. Shuck might be as dumb as the day was long, but there was nothing wrong with his sense of self-preservation. Eek's other foot however made up for the lack of toes by having eight of them, all of them looking fully functional and the innermost one looking very much like a traditional big toe, perfect for walking. She couldn't wait to see him walk. A truly strange gait to add to his general air of handsomeness.
At this point however her overwrought dogs needed her full attention to convince them she wasn't in immediate danger. She petted their heads and murmured quietly to them until they calmed down enough to stop trying to climb on top of her. "My dogs are afraid of you, Eek", she grinned at the little goblin who was stuffing her leftover toast into his mouth. "They think you will hurt me, and them." For a moment she thought this was way over the goblin's capacity to understand, but he surprised her.
"Dog is food," he grinned with a smile that did not sit well on his suddenly uncertain peaceful herbivore face barely marred by his fangs. "But Eek like bacon better. No hurt you, no hurt dogs. Eek hungry?", he asked hopefully.
"That is good Eek. Yes, if Eek is nice to the dogs, I will be nice to Eek. Listen, Eek, my name is Sarah, " she said to the little goblin. "Have you ever had hot chocolate? It's the best thing ever. If you promise to never hurt any of my animals, Sarah will make you hot chocolate whenever you visit me, I promise."
"Eek is good, Eek like Sarra, Eek have hot chocolate now, promise not eat dogs."
Sarah wasn't sure how far she could trust his promises, but he seemed nicely amenable to bribery, so she decided to make her goodwill worth Eek's while.
As she stood at the stove boiling milk with cocoa powder and sugar to make hot chocolate Sarah was busy making plans for the future. Her bristling dogs' backs were pressed against the back of her knees as they were growling at the goblin on the kitchen table who was completely ignoring their presence. Eek was much too busy to figure out what the various containers on the table held. He had already gagged on the salt and gone into a sneezing fit from the pepper, but he seemed to like he mustard. How could she get the little goblin to make peace with her zoo? Sarah wasn't worried about Isshy. The only problem with Isshy was that she might take a dislike to the goblin, - and nothing Isshy disliked tended to stay around long. But Sarah figured that doping her cat up with catnip whenever the goblin was around should go a long way to pacify her. Isshy was nothing if not amenable to bribery.
Sarah suspected that Isshy had this trait in common with Eek. The goblin and the cat were of about the same size, but that was were all similarities ended. Isshy was a very impressive cat of imposing bulk that was muscle only, although Sarah had no idea how that was possible considering the amount of food the cat consumed every day. Sarah had more than once woken from a nightmare of being paralyzed only to find Isshy asleep on her legs. She considered herself lucky that Isshy had never tried to sleep on her chest. She wasn't sure that she'd have woken again.
Isshy's orange marled fur was thick and silky, her eyes a smoky grey, her teeth and claws sharp, her reflexes fast, her temper short and her fury legendary in the neighborhood. All in all Eek was no match for her, even if he were far more impressive than he looked. Sarah had seen Isshy fight a bulldog, and win paws down. Her dogs submitted to Isshy's whims without any protest, having long learned that it was better to let her have her ways immediately rather than after having been beaten up. Sarah pursed her lips in thought. Perhaps if she could clean up Eek whenever he came and make sure he wore something that smelled of her?
"You might be a bit premature here, my girl," she admonished herself. "Just because you'd like him to come back doesn't mean he will. Eek is a lot wilder than anything you ever had - why would he want to come back?" However, as far as Sarah was concerned bribery should work well on Eek - he might be feral, but he was also a greedy little thing and seemed to want, want, want all the time. She grinned. She was going to start her very own campaign of goblin domestication. The poor thing didn't stand a chance.
"Like chocolate, Sarra," Eek declared with a loud burp. He looked as if he had swallowed a bowling ball, his belly sticking out from his bony frame. "More?", he asked hopefully.
"Forget it, buster. Any more and you'll puke. However, I think a charming goblin like you should have some pants to go with his T-Shirt, what do you say? Do you want some pants?" Eek's eye lit up - getting things seemed to be his favorite pastime. Sarah couldn't tell whether he was greedy or just never had gotten much, but she didn't care. The little goblin had regaled her with stories about his heroic fights with trolls and falin, and while none of it was believable, all of it was vastly entertaining. If you listened to his stories with completely suspended disbelief, it was just possible that he might have survived a fight with a not-too-big troll since those beasts were obviously not blessed with much brains. However, fighting a demon was a different story. Sarah had no idea why a falin would bother with a goblin in the first place, but if it did it'd probably make breakfast of Eek in a second. It had been difficult to follow his strange way of talking at the beginning, but his expressions and imagery had their own wild beauty that caught her imagination. Sarah was determined to make him come back, she hadn't enjoyed herself so much for a long time. As she got up from the kitchen table, Eek jumped up on her shoulder with surprising agility. Again she wondered how such a small creature could possibly weigh so much. The laws of nature obviously didn't feel they applied to goblins. Three and Shuck seemed to have resigned themselves to Eek's presence, while still pushing themselves closely to their mistress they had stopped shaking and whimpering. It might have helped that she had fed them a double portion dog kibbles and then some. Sarah smiled. Moving through the narrow door frame to her small office with two dogs determined not to move an inch away from her made walking difficult, but if it kept them quiet and calmed their fears, she was happy to oblige.
On the desk in her office stood the box she had taken the t-shirt out from. The box had been closed now for over fifteen years, but it had been moved with a few other cherished belongings for five moves. And now, well, it seemed fitting to give Eek some of Toby's old clothes. She just knew her little brother would have gotten a kick out off seeing a goblin wear his clothes. Sarah began to root through the box. She knew his favorite shorts were in there somewhere. "Oooh here: Heavens, they are even worse than I remember. How could Karen ever buy this? Ninja teenage mutant turtle or something. Sheesh, and people complain about the kids of today." Sarah turned to the wide eyed goblin sitting on the desk.
"You'll love this, Eek." Sarah was right, of course. The mindset of a goblin and a young child are astoundingly similar - both are wild creatures mostly untouched by conscience or civilization and are acting predominantly on impulse and emotion. This produces startlingly similar mayhem as any adult who has ever found himself trying to control a crowd of excited four year olds can testify to. The shorts were full length pants for Eek, and it would have taken three of him to fill out the waist band, but a Mickey Mouse belt somewhere in the box took care of that. Eek was ecstatic, which set the dogs off again. Sarah decided it was time to call it a day. "Eek, Sarah needs to go to work now, sweetie." Eek's face fell. "I need to earn money to buy you more chocolate." As she'd hoped, this cheered the little goblin up to no end.
"Eek visit Sarra again? Sarra give Eek food," he stated confidently. Sarah ginned. Her plan worked.