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“Oh.” Hard not to worry that he’s going to stop liking me, then. I’m not sure how to be likable to a troll either, so that’s a little concerning. For now, I think if I just try not to look too edible, that’s probably a good start. “Well. Uhm.”
“Where were you living? I can smell a buck on you.”
“Do you eat all bucks, or…. Because…there’s some where I was and I think they’d prefer not to be eaten, and also some goats, and I like them, generally, when they’re not trying to bonk mine into oblivion, so.”
His eyes narrow, and his big troll brows execute a thick maneuver of disapproval. His face is more like geography than flesh. “I am not hungry, human.”
“Are you sure? Not a little peckish? It’s quite a walk there, you might be hungry on the way.”
“Show me where you live.”
“I don’t want to. You’re a scary troll who eats living things while they’re still living.”
“You’re afraid of me.”
“Yes.”
He lifts a finger and pushes it toward my hip. “Why haven’t you tried to shoot me with your weapon?”
“Oh. Uh. Well. I don’t… didn’t really seem. I don’t know. I don’t want to, I guess?”
“That is why I have not eaten you, and why I will not eat the buck who has lost you. Come here.”
I take a ginger step forward. The troll sniffs, his scaled nostrils flaring a little as he takes a breath. It’s like being caught in a small gale.
“Ah,” he says. “I see. Come.”
As he sayscome, he grabs me around the waist. This may very well be the last thing that ever happens to me. I am lifted up off the ground and carried through the air like a snack.
I give some consideration to screaming, but I don’t think that would help the situation much. There’s a lot going on now. I might be bringing a terrifying troll to Gruff’s door, at least, I am guessing that’s the scent he got off me. He’s going the right way, and though he’s moving at a lumbering pace, he’s covering far more ground than I ever could.
“Troll?”
“Yes, human?”
It occurs to me that calling him Troll, and having him calling me human, is putting a distance between us I do not want.
“What’s your name? I’m Jem.”
“Oh,” the troll says. “Roger.”
Roger the Troll. Why not.
“Why do you think I should be going back to the buck’s place?”
“You belong to him. He will be missing you. I can smell the longing on your skin.”
This troll who eats bad guys alive has a poetic streak, it would seem.
“But what if I told you I was seeking my destiny elsewhere? That I came here on a five-year mission to…”
“Missions,” Roger the troll snorts. “I had a mission, once. I didn’t like it.”
“So you ate it?”
Roger stops and lifts me up toward his face. “Are you giving me attitude, small human female? Are you making fun of me?”
“No,” I say. “That seems like it would be a very bad idea. You still have bits of the last creature that annoyed you in your teeth.”
