Chapter 21 The Sound of a Mind Smashed into Pieces

Bog saw the shapes above him. He tried to scream. He dragged a claw through the mud, reaching. A pathetic, wet gurgle escaped him. 

"Guh… buh… ogg… gagh..." 

He was trying to say his name. All that came out was the shattered pottery of a word.

At first, Trog's mind, still gummed up with sleep and sorrow, did not understand. It was a lump. A piece of trash washed up by the dirt.

Then the lump moved. A tiny, muddy head lifted an inch off the ground. A weak, clicking chirp floated through the damp air.

"Muhka... muh... muh... muhka..."

Trog’s breath stopped.

He stared. This was a dream. A cruel, beautiful dream sent to torture him. He lifted a hand and slapped his own cheek. It stung. He slapped again, harder. The shape on the ground did not vanish. It blinked its cloudy eyes.

"No. This is not a dream. The pain is too sharp. The mud is too cold. This is real."

“That's one of our hatchlings,” he whispered, “He is there. He is alive.”

Trog's legs gave out and he slammed down onto his knees in the mud, a hard, painful jolt that felt more real than anything had in days. He scrambled forward on his knees, his hands reaching.

He did not see the raw elbows, the trailing dead legs, the filth. He saw Bog. He saw the big ears, plastered with mud but still there. He saw the rise and fall of a tiny, struggling chest.

A sound escaped Trog, a choked mix of a sob and a gasp. He scooped the broken little body up with both hands, lifting it from the cold ground. It was so light. So cold. He pulled it against his own chest, cradling it, feeling the faint, ragged heartbeat against his own.

Then he began to rock. Back and forth, back and forth, on his knees in the mud. He pressed his face into the muddy, matted skin on top of Bog’s head.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, “Thank you, forest spirits! Thank you, old ones! Thank you for hearing this stupid goblin’s sorrow. You took five, but you gave one back. You gave one back. Thank you, thank you! Thank you for this precious one, this brave one who crawled home. Thank you for this second chance. I will be better, I will be a wall of stone, I will never sleep again. Thank you, thank you for this life, for this breath, for this one…”

 The prayer-mumbles died in his throat. He looked down at the muddy, broken thing in his arms. It was alive. That was the miracle. But it was cold. It was dirty. It did not chirp properly. Its eyes were clouded.

He needed to make it right. Now.

He stood up, clutching Bog to his chest, and stumbled back inside the stump. He did not wake the others. This was his mistake to fix.

He went straight to the small firepit, where a few embers still glowed under a layer of ash. He gently laid Bog on the moss nearby. The hatchling’s head lolled to the side, eyes staring at nothing.

“Little gobby is cold, all blue. Blue is bad, little gobby need to be green, not blue. Little gobby too cold. Need warm.” Trog muttered. 

He stumbled to the back of the stump where they kept their few precious things. He grabbed the biggest bowl. He poured the last of their warm water from the small pot into it. The steam rose in the cool air.

He carried the bowl to the moss bed and set it down. He looked at Bog, a bundle of cold mud.

“Dirty, little gobby is too dirty. Dirty is bad, very bad. Must be clean gobby. Feel better. See Dada Trog. See home."

He lowered Bog gently into the water then dunked him.

The warm water hit Bog’s raw skin, his scrapes, his cuts. A jolt went through the tiny body. A sound came out of Bog’s mouth. A choked, wet guh-uh sound, like a boot pulled from deep mud.

Trog held him under with one hand, using the other to scrub. He scrubbed with his bare fingers, digging into skin, scratching off the mud. He scrubbed Bog’s face, rubbing hard over the closed eyes, up into the big ears. He turned the hatchling over and scrubbed his back, his dead legs. The water in the bowl turned a dark, filthy, clay brown.

Bog’s body jerked and trembled under the rough washing. Bubbles escaped his mouth. He made a low, continuous wheeze, like a broken whistle. His clouded eyes were wide open under the water, seeing nothing.

When Trog decided he was clean, he pulled him out. Bog gasped, a ragged, sucking sound, and coughed. A spray of brown water and phlegm spattered from his mouth. He could not clear his throat. The coughs were weak, wet hiccups that shook his whole body.

Trog did not pause. He grabbed a piece of dry cloth. He laid Bog on his lap and began to rub him dry. It was not a patting. It was the same frantic, back-and-forth motion he would use to dry a tool or to try and start a spark. He rubbed Bog’s arms, his chest, his head. The rough cloth scraped over the fresh, clean scrapes on his elbows and knees. Bog’s skin bruised from the harsh treatment. His head lolled back and forth with the force of the rubbing.

“A wet gobby is cold gobby. Dry. Get dry. No cold.”

When he was done, he set Bog on the moss. The hatchling lay there, clean and steaming slightly in the cool air. His chest hitched with the aftermath of the coughs. A thin line of drool mixed with brown water trailed from his mouth.

Then Trog saw the legs.

He had washed them. They were clean. But they were not right. They did not curl. They did not twitch. When he pushed them, they just moved, limp and loose, like the legs of a dead frog. They dragged behind the hatchling like useless things.

Trog’s breath caught. He knew what this meant. He had seen it before, long ago, when a rock fell on a fellow slave's back.

“Oh no... little one no walk. The walk is gone. The legs are… empty.”

He poked the little legs. He lifted one and let it drop. It fell with a soft thump on the moss. Bog made no sound about it. He just kept making his wet, wheezing breaths. That was a broken thing he did not know how to fix. 

He looked from the dead legs to Bog’s face. The hatchling’s mouth moved, forming sounds that were not words, just broken goblin noises. 

“Gah… k-th… uuuuh…” It was the sound of a mind smashed into pieces, trying and failing to talk.

He gathered Bog up again, holding the clean, limp, broken thing against his chest, feeling the weak heartbeat and the terrible, empty weight of the legs against his own.

“Dada Trog is sorry. Dada Trog can wash. Dada Trog can rub. But Dada Trog… cannot make the legs remember. The swamp ate the walk. I am sorry. I am so sorry little one. All I can do is help you rest. You need good sleep. Need to recover.”

Trog carried Bog to his own nest of moss in the corner. It was the warmest spot, away from drafts. He lay the hatchling down gently. 

He put Bog on his back in the center of the moss. The hatchling's head lolled to the side, his clouded eyes staring at the stump wall. His dead legs splayed out and limp.

Trog then lay down beside him, curling his own body around the small form. He pulled moss over both of them, tucking it in. 

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Every time Trog shifted, even a little, his body jostled Bog. The hatchling's broken body had no strength to brace itself. When Trog moved an arm, Bog's head would roll. When Trog adjusted his hips, Bog's legs would slide like dead sticks.

And Trog could not stay still. He was too full of emotion. Grief, hope, guilt, a desperate love. He shuddered with a silent sob. The shudder ran through the moss and into Bog's fragile spine. A small, pained sound, a "kh-aaa," escaped Bog's lips.

Trog, hearing it, thought it was a sound of comfort. He hugged Bog closer, pulling the hatchling tight against his chest. The pressure was too much. It squeezed Bog's bruised ribs, pressed on his full stomach of swamp water and mud. A bubble of foul air was forced up Bog's throat. He didn't have the strength to cough it out properly. It gurgled wetly in his mouth and nose, a drowning sound on dry land.

Trog loosened his grip.

 "Shhh, shhh, little one. Sleep. Dada Trog is here. You need to rest."

But Bog could not get comfortable. The moss was soft, but his body was a map of hurts he couldn't articulate. A sharp rock of pain in his hip from the crawl. A burning rawness on his elbows from Trog's scrubbing. A deep, dizzy ache in his head where the world was cloudy and wrong.

He tried to move his arm, to maybe find a better position. The arm twitched, jerking spastically, and smacked Trog in the chin.

Trog took it as a hug. A tear rolled down his nose. 

"Yes. Yes. Dada Trog is here. I will be here. You are not alone. Your Dada is here, with you. You can sleep with no worry. You are safe now."

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The grey light of dawn found Trog tangled in his moss bed, his limbs sprawled. He had dreamed of digging, of pulling small, cold shapes from endless mud. In his sleep, his body had thrashed, fighting the dream-mud.

He woke with a jolt, a gasp. Something was wrong. There was a strange, flat feeling under his chest.

He pushed himself up on his arms and looked down.

Bog was there. Under him.

Trog’s sleep-heavy weight had pressed the hatchling deep into the soft moss. Bog was flattened, like a green leaf pressed in a book. His face was turned sideways, his cheek and one big ear mashed into the bedding. His legs were bent at a sick angle, trapped under him.

For three heartbeats, there was nothing. Then, a tiny, strained wheeze, like the last air leaving a broken bellows, and Bog's body gave a single, weak shudder.