Goliath

lov him. special special boy.

Familiar History: Grouse Basilisk
Driftwood Baron
Leopard Coralclimber (Peachy)
Barred Skira
Ferocious Foo

---

Wyrmwound Writers' Guild | Jan 20th - 26th 2024 Prompt: "Yet even as I lay in this lush garden where we've walked so many times before, not even the birdsong is able to soothe me."

Goliath often dreamed of home. When the sun set on the scarred horizon and lit the bare, twisted tree trunks and sun-bleached bones a pale orange he could remember autumn in the Worldedge Wetlands, where decidious trees grew between the evergreens and the swamp floor was littered with leaves like bright stars. The mulchy scent of decay was refreshing there. Decay here was oppressive and constant.

He liked being alone, like most bogsneaks did, but here in the Scarred Wasteland for the first time in his life he'd felt lonely. It ate at him like the plague-rash scarring the treads of his feet. He was alone but exposed, with no damp foliage to crawl under, no sound of small animals scurrying through the underbrush, no protection in the distant warning calls of other bogsneaks that formed the loose clan that had once been his. They didn't share dens, they didn't share conversation, but they shared community all the same. It was a different type of alone here. Isolated but unguarded, where a threat could swoop in at any time.

That had been Leicester, one day. Goliath had found a hollow full of mushrooms and Leicester had been hungry as he was. Neither of them were killers though, and the standoff had ended with a shuffling of feet as it became clear neither would strike first. They'd decided to share. Eventually Leicester had shared more.

To survive in the wasteland you couldn't stay alone for long. It was either form a federation or prey on those who did. Leicester was one of the former. It wasn't Goliath's way to share a space in the scattered tilting buildings or burrowed dens that formed the lair, but Leicester had shown him another quiet hollow, surrounded by bleached roots, where clear rainwater gathered and birds flocked to drink. Plants grew, twisted and blistered with insect galls and mold, but plants. Goliath made his own burrow in the shore, and at sunset he would pretend that it was his swamp in autumn he saw outside.

Leicester may have been Goliath's first friend. He needed friends now, and after so long quiet and alone he found brief pleasure in speaking together. Conversation was new to Goliath, but Leicester had a soft heart, and he loved to hear stories of the Gladeveins in spring. But Leicester loved plague more. The flocks of migratory birds on the water were a wonder to him, but to Goliath they were a paltry feathered few. When he watched them flying north he longed to stretch his wings and follow them, and keep the course for weeks on end, until exhausted he could collapse back home. But it wasn't his home anymore, and that way had been closed to him long ago.