Gigi was having the dream again. The dream where she was somewhere far from the village. A place with rolling green hills before craggy mountains and dollops of ice and snow on their caps. Beside her laid a napping wyvern, its long serpentine body resting among the grass. A harness sat below its two sprawling black leathery wings. It was the emerald-skinned goblin’s mighty steed. With it, she would cut across the skies, weaving between the ancient mountains and the vast canyons they rolled into. Her long black hair flowed freely behind her.

  She would ride all day in her dream, joy, and adventure propelling her forward. Gigi would journey until she was exhausted. Then, at the end of her day, she would always find a keep built deep into the earth. A crackling fire would be roaring for her return with a man in before it. At least she thought it was a man, but the curious goblin could never see who it was. He was taller than her, but that meant little when you stood only four feet and seven inches. Whoever it was, they would embrace before the hearth. After a long day of riding and adventures, they would lie together, content in one another's arms.

  Before the dream could continue, Gigi was brusquely pulled from sleep by tiny prodding hands.

  “Gigi! Gigi!” two little voices cried in unison.

  “Whaaaaat,” the woman croaked at her young siblings.

  “An army is marching! We heard from the crows this morning.”

  She turned back over, pulling her thick comforter to her long, pointed ears. “Don’t believe the crows. You know they lie for fun.”

  “But Secco saw them with his telescope!” cried Gren, the youngest sibling.

  Gigi sat up straight. “Secco saw them?”

  “Yes!” they chirped.

  Gigi threw off the comforter and hurriedly got dressed. Another army! This was her chance to get out of Poppy. Gigi’s heart soared like the wyvern from her dreams. If she could prove her mettle, there was no way they could turn her down, not this time. She was stronger than she looked, as most goblins were, and she had a nasty punch. She wished she had proper armor, though. There was her father’s old armor. When she had tried it on before, it had mostly fit, although it was snug in the chest.

  If worse came to worst, and this army rejected her, she wouldn’t be anything different than she was now - a baker. She was Gigi of the Rising Bread. As much as she hated it, she had been forced to know her way around the kitchen. The endless drudgery of cleaning pots and pans, scrubbing floors, measuring ingredients, and then not burning them was all too much for her, and none of it was the least bit fun.

  She grimaced at the thought of plying that trade for an army. Nothing more than a lowly army cook. However, a military caravan seemed a lot more exciting than the kitchen she had known since she had been crawling. At a minimum, she would get to see the world, even if it was tedious, awful work.

  She hurriedly tied the drawstring on her pants before slipping on a tunic. This was not the first time she had thrown herself together to try and slip away. She had lost count of the armies and adventuring parties she had tried to join. There was even that ill-fated attempt to join that circus. She cringed at the memory of that one. Gigi grabbed at every opportunity with hungry eyes to show she was more than this place, greater than a baker.

  She laced up her boots with determined fingers. She wanted to grab her dad’s old war hammer, Thulgin the Smasher, but it was sitting on the mantel just past the kitchen, and there was no way she could sneak by her mother and sisters as they finished making the daily loaves of bread and pastries.

  “Are you really leaving?” Gren, the youngest and only son, a young goblin of ten, asked his sister.

  “Yes,” said Gigi as she scooped clothes and equipment into a large satchel.

  “Where are you going to?” Gena, Gren’s twin sister, inquired.

  “Wherever the army goes, I guess,” Gigi said as she shrugged.

  Her satchel brimming with items, she turned to the window. Perfect. The orange rays of the sun were just starting to break the horizon. She would have plenty of time to escape from here. Gigi spun on her heels, giving her siblings a hug that would have shattered a human man’s spine but a loving embrace to a goblin.

  Gigi released them both with a kiss on the cheek and turned back to the window. She waved and grinned at them before popping open the window above her bed. This was it; she was finally going to be free! Gigi deftly hopped out the window to the cobblestone below. The stone cried out as she landed. Despite her diminutive size, her build was sturdy and balanced, with muscles refined from years of lifting bags of flour and massive pots. She took her first step toward the river and felt a tug on her satchel.

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  “Good morning, Gigi,” came the weary tone of her mother.

  She stood in front of the bakery’s door with a cup of tea in one hand and Gigi’s satchel strap in the other. Gigi sighed and slung her head low. Foiled. It was damn hard to sneak out when you lived where you worked, and the warden was your mother.

  “Good morning, Mother,” followed the equally exhausted reply from her eldest daughter.

  “I’m so happy that you decided to get a head start on the deliveries,” her mother said as she sipped her tea.

  “But that’s Gerinna’s job!” Gigi protested.

  “Well, you’re dressed for it. You slept through the baking, and she is helping me tend the ovens unless you would rather do that?”

  Gigi walked back into the bakery, grumbling, and slung her pack onto the well-polished wooden floor. This was to be her lot in life. Rotting away, bringing baked goods to everything with two or four legs from here to Paxia. She sighed as she made her way back outside toward the stables.

  People always thought it odd for a bakery to have stables, but the Village of Poppy was a strange sort of place. Gigi knew it was technically within an empire. It was, in truth, a relatively lawless place. To Gigi, that didn’t mean dangerous, per se. It meant most residents lived wild and could tend to their affairs freely. Well, except for her, of course. The real dangers of life lay outside the village, along with the excitement they could bring.

  They were, after all, on the border of Paxia and Epesia. Technically, they were on the Epesian side of the Popplymus River, where the village got its namesake. However, in terms of practical protection from the empire, they were just as likely to be sacked by a roving band of imperial soldiers as any bandits or Paxians. The residents were on their own here, and that was how they mostly liked it. They couldn’t even agree on a mayor for the village. The closest thing was the witch who lived in her spooky keep. The witch had the final say on anything that happened within the village. The legend went she founded it centuries ago. With a grunt, Gigi flung open the stable doors.

  “Rise and shine, girl,” Gigi said in a weary voice.

  An enormous gelatinous form began to uncurl in the corner of the large stable, leaving some of the thick green mucus that covered its porous fleshy skin on the floor. Two eye stalks began to unfurl and blink slowly with brilliant pink pupils. Thick segmented plates were interlocked throughout the creature’s body, protecting its soft, pulpy innards.

  “Glorp!” the beast sounded.

  Gigi scratched between the plates on what was approximately the creature’s neck. “Glorp, to you too, girl.” It continued to let out a series of approving sloshing sounds. Despite their name, green worms were large slugs that goblins had bred as beasts of burden for centuries. Their docile nature and even temperament make them ideal companions. They also will eat anything from table scraps to carrion. If you could stand the smell, they were wonderful companions.

  The goblin woman had raised the green worm since it was a larva, naming it Glorp, and she loved the slimy critter. Gigi gave it a firm hug, and the boneless mass squelched. A few moments later, she had Glorp on the machine that the town’s inventor, Secco, had made her.

  Glorp was getting on in slug years, already a stately twelve years old. Gigi had asked Secco of the Spinning Gear for something to help the aging slug traverse the chaotic streets of Poppy. What he had produced looked like a miniature tank with a space for a slug drive. It had a firm metal tread that whirred to life from the compulsion of the creature above. A wedge had been placed in the front to gently push traffic out of the way. Both Gigi and Glorp were thrilled with the results.

  Gigi felt listless as she hitched the wagon to the little tank. It was a shame to use such a device just to deliver bread. After loading the hundreds of pounds of baked goods into the wagon, she tied the back and sat down with a thud on the lip. Before long, the entire contraption was on cobblestone and mud the village of Poppy considered roads.

  She frowned as the sun finished its heavenly ascent. Gigi’s ears twitched from the impending boredom. There were dozens of stops to be made and only a handful of people in the village she actually cared to see, with the first being the Wyzens - a family of wolf-folk that Gigi mostly got on fine with. However, Mrs. Wyzen habitually stuck her considerable snoot in everyone’s business.

  Of course, Mrs. Wyzen, in her purple house dress, would be waiting by the door for their hot cross buns. Gigi admitted that the purple brought out the yellow in the wolf-woman’s eyes. It was unfair that goblins all had the same dull, dirt-brown eyes.

  “Good morning, Gigi. Where is your sister?”

  “Good morning. You know, she’s off living the good life,” the goblin snorted before hopping down from the cart.

  “Did you hear that Lily is getting married to the Kroaken boy?” the wolf-woman inquired with a sly smile.

  Gigi’s blood turned to ice as she froze with the boxes of pastries. No, not this conversation again. It was the gossip of the town. Lily the centaur was to be wed to a cyclops boy. They were a strange pair, but Gigi was happy for them. What she was not pleased about was that all of Poppy's old wives were beginning to see Gigi as their next project. The woman’s predatory eyes drifted hungrily toward Gigi.

  “How have you been, dear?” the woman asked knowingly.

  Although posed as an innocent question, Gigi saw it for what it was. A thinly veiled intrusion into her non-existent romantic life. She was twenty-three years old, still lived with her family, and hadn’t had a sniff of a suitor since she ended up breaking Garvelbrack Jr.’s jaw for his comment about her “good breeding hips.” Gigi shuddered at the memory.

  “Oh, I’ve been great,” the goblin lied, plastering her best smile on her face. “You know, just busy with the bakery.”

  “Poor thing, your mother keeps you so busy. What are you to do?” In order to find a husband, was the unspoken second half of that question.

  “Yeah, I just don’t know,” Gigi pretended to sigh as she handed over the buns and prayed for this conversation to die.

  “Oh, you know,” Mrs. Wyzens paused as if she just remembered something, “Gillbert did ask about you. Should I say you’re interested?”

  Gigi’s plastic smile slipped for a fraction, rage bubbling up within her guts. Gillbert? Did she really just say Gillbert Marsh, with his bulbous, froggy eyes and that disgusting tongue? The blueish-gray skin, the flesh of a corpse, clammy and pallid. Gigi once saw him use that tongue to catch a fish right out of the river. She may have been a goblin, but she wasn’t about to settle for some gross swamp creature.

  “No,” she said curtly. “I would rather drown. Have a lovely day.”

  Before the wolf-woman could utter another syllable, Gigi dashed back to the cart, leaping back to the driver’s seat. She stomped her foot to signify it was time to go. Glorp squelched, and before long, they were back on the road.

  Mrs. Wyzens just shook her head.

  “Poor girl is going to die alone,” she pitied. Then she shrugged her shoulders and bit into one of the icing-laden buns.

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