The city market was crowded as usual. Salesmen of all kind promoted their products for the people, mainly elves, passing by. Everything from cute pets to weapons and torture equipment of all kinds. This certainly showed that the elves around Ivé still tortured their slaves in the most frightening ways. Yerili shuddered slightly when she saw those; she really found it uncivilized to torture any creature at all. Mikki looked at the salesmen with fear in his eyes, he was pretty sure that those people would love trying out their little toys on him if they ever caught him. Yerili noticed Mikki’s scared face and felt a little sorry for him. Eventually, Yerili lead Mikki into a smaller alley which contained some specialist shops.

“This guy is an expert at clothing for all kind of races AND he’s got a sense of style too.” Yerili said while pointing towards a door and a shopping window.

Mikki looked through the window quickly and saw some wooden figures dressed up in clothes of different fashion. Inside, he spotted a light-skinned elf with gold-red hair. This made Mikki a little nervous and he bit his lower lip.

“Ah, don’t worry; he’s seriously a nice guy!” Yereli said and dragged the troll into the shop.

The small shop was filled with different kinds of textiles, beads, fur and anything that could be used in the art of making clothes. Wooden figures dressed up with various creation competed about space every here and there and stuffed somewhere in the back, there was a rather large desk with all sorts of scissors, knives and tools. Deniyû, the owner of the shop, was a tall young man, most likely a high elf that looked like the kind of person that could make a young woman’s heart skip around happily. Yerili liked him because he acted very friendly towards her; Deniyû sometimes joked and said Yereli must be his long lost little sister. When Yereli and Mikki entered the shop, he looked up from some sort of literature and took off his spectacles.

“Ahoy there, sister!” he said and smiled, “Out for shopping today, eh?”

“Oh yes!” she giggled, “But not for me. This lil’ chap needs a new set of clothes, I believe.”

Deniyû looked at Mikki and raised his eyebrows.

“Little, eh? I didn’t know you actually had a troll.” he said a little surprised.

“Well, we found him in the woods, fleeing from his old owner. He’s actually just living at our house, doing some smaller work every now and then; I’d rather call him a friend than a slave.”

“Is that so? You think he enjoys his life at yours?” he said, smiling.

“Oh, he seems to be rather happy, and he’s never complained” she replied, grinning slightly.

“He speaks Elvish?”

“Fluently.”

“Interesting!”

Deniyû walked up to Mikki and inspected him closely and pretty curiously. Mikki did feel quite uncomfortable with this treatment, but something in the elf’s way of treating him made him feel more comfortable. The honest eyes and his curious and still respectful facial expression made Mikki’s suspicions that he’d be hit or humiliated by this person disappear.

“So, what had we planned for..?”

“Mikki. And do you know Nnelah’s troll, Tulip?”

Deniyû looked at Yerili with a slightly scared face.

“Anything that doesn’t look like that, please.” Yerili said.

“Whoa!” he sighed out, “You almost gave me a heart attack there! So, Mikki should get something he can wear with pride…”

Deniyû frowned slightly, looking like he was deep in thoughts, and started to walk around in his shop, looking at different types of clothing. Suddenly, he stopped besides a wooden figure and pointed at its pants. Yerili and Mikki looked at them for a short while before both of them looked like they thought Deniyû had gone completely mad. He laughed.

“I can understand your looks, but let me tell my thoughts. Of course, the laces should be taken away, and the textile and the colour is so not Mikki. But look at the style! I mean, some people look good in these and some people just look too bad wearing these. Mikki seems to still be built to look great in these!”

Mikki pouted a little and looked at the pants and then at Yerili.

“Did he just call me a shrimp?” he whispered.

“Nope, but he didn’t call you grossly large, that’s for sure!” Yerili said and giggled.

Mikki pouted yet again while Deniyû continued to ramble on.

“I think they should be in another colour than this purple tone…” he continued and mumbled a little while looking at Mikki. “Something…brown, perhaps?”

Yereli looked at Mikki and he looked back at her.

“You like brown?” she asked.

“It’s better than purple.”

Yereli smiled. It didn’t take much longer to find out something short sleeved and something jacket-like that’d fit Mikki. Mostly in dark, grey-blue tones, but if Deniyû thought it’d fit Mikki, Yereli decided to agree. After a few measures of Mikki, the elf told them to be back in a few days to try the new clothes out. Yerili smiled, paid him a part of what the clothes cost and then she took Mikki out in the city market again to take care of the few hours they had left to visit it.

Yereli decided to take Mikki out to the more troll-friendly parts of the market. She wanted to look for some candy, literature and writing equipment. Mikki noticed that Yereli probably had shopped at the stands she visited several times before, since the salesmen seemed to talk extra much to her and asked her about the troll following her. Mikki was quite sure that most of their conversation about them was based on that Mikki couldn’t understand Elvish, because some of the comments weren’t that flattering in his opinion. Yerili seemed to enjoy that the salesmen didn’t knew about Mikki’s language knowledge though, she smiled, and barely being able to not start laughing and giving Mikki some excusing looks at times. Mikki didn’t mind about the salesmen though, they seemed to be friendly towards Yerili, and that was what mattered to him at this time. What worried him more were the tiny voices screaming at him around his feet.

“Ay! Move your feet, fatass!”

“Yeah, can’t see we’re trying to make a living here?! Stupid troll!”

Mikki could guess who the owners of these voices were. Goblins were a part of his life in his old home before, hiding in the troll’s filthy dorms while stealing their food, irritating them and insulting everything that wasn’t a goblin. Mikki couldn’t stand them at all; during his most depressive times, he had started to think out different ways to torture or kill the little critters in the most creative ways. If Mikki have had the ability to write, he could have made a book out of all of his ideas. At the moment, Mikki just wanted to ignore the creatures swarming around his feet, but just seeing them made him growl slightly. Yereli looked at him, confused and a little frightened by his behaviour while she were about to take out some money to buy some pieces of paper to write on. To her surprise, she noticed that her purse was rather empty, and that her purse was rather not where it should be. She started searching for it until the tiny voices screamed out something while laughing.

“Seeya never again, stupid losers!”

“The bigger, the stupider!”

“We’ll think of your stupidness when we buy booze for these babies!”

Yerili looked up and saw three goblins run away with her purse. Goblins were pretty fast-going creatures, so Yereli had already given up on going after them.

“Aw, crap! I hate those buggers!”

“Will you please stay here?” Mikki said before he headed off rather quickly after the three thieves.

“No, wait! We don’t have time for this…damn!”

She looked at Mikki running away, hoping he’d come back in time…and hopefully not ruining another set of clothes, he still had to wear something until his own clothes arrived. A goblin laughed evilly while standing next to her. It didn’t laugh that much when Yereli and her foot decided to use one of the more unoriginal ways of torturing a goblin.

A troll’s physical abilities usually got better if the troll in question was very annoyed. That is a reason why you really shouldn’t anger a troll, when it gets angry it’ll most likely be able to show you its humongous strength in the least appealing ways for you. Mikki was quite annoyed at goblins in general, they had eaten his food and insulted him in any way possible for as long as he could remember. And now, they stole money from one of the very few people he had ever trusted in his life. The only thing that went through Mikki’s head at this point was to catch the goblins, make them suffer a little and take back the money. He realised that this task would have been much easier if the place he chased these creatures on weren’t so crowded. Amazingly enough, he could find spaces to run through; the news that a wild troll was running amok in the city market had spread quicker than imaginable. And everyone in there felt relieved that this troll yet hadn’t run over any of the people inside. The tiny goblins started to get a little worried over that big green creature hunting him, especially since he never seemed to grow tired of it.

“Man! I thought those guys were fat enough to not chase us around!”

“I suppose he isn’t fat enough!”

“Should we sneak into the sewers?”

“No, he’d probably follow us and…who know what that dude’s capable of!”

“True. Should we perhaps lure him…into the alley?”

The other two goblins smiled at this suggestion.

“Sounds like a great idea!”

“Let’s do it!”

The running equipage went into a small alley. It wasn’t as nice as the one he and Yereli had sneaked into earlier today, he thought. Not that nice at all, to be honest. They continued to run deeper into the alley as the surrounding looked less and less inviting. Eventually, the three gobbling dived into a pile of junk, boxes and stuff. This didn’t stop Mikki from continue his search after the thieves. An angry hiss and something that jumped up on him did that though. Mikki soon understood that the creature that jumped up on him actually was a giant rat that gritted its huge teeth and squeaked angrily at him before it jumped off and took a protecting stance in front of three evil-grinning goblins.

“You better give up, stupid troll!”

“It took us a long time to tame this rat, but he’s very loyal towards us now!”

“Nothing can stop him from protecting us!”

They laughed, and Mikki felt a strong urge to break something. He couldn’t lose to three goblins and a rat, he thought. Suddenly, the rat seemed to lose interest in acting mean and sharpened his ears. Another rat sneaked out from some of the junk, looked at the guarding rat for a long while before it suddenly started to run out of the alley. At this time, the goblin’s guarding rat had lost his interest for his duties and followed the running rat out on new adventures. The three goblins stared at the scene.

“He ran away!”

“It can’t be!”

“Damn horny rat!”

Mikki thought that this was his chance, grabbed the three goblins in each foot and grinned at them.

“Well trained rat, eh?” he said teasingly.

“Let us go, you…”

“…King of stupidness you!”

“You know, if you were our size, we’d beat you down to a bloody pulp!”

“Too bad I’m not your size then…” he said and shook them enough to make them scream for mercy, “Tell you what, if you give me back my mistress’ purse, I’ll let you go. Sounds like a nice deal, eh?”

“V-very nice indeed!”

“Yeah, I can cope with that.”

“Uh, what they said!”

Mikki grinned as he got Yerili’s purse, dropped the goblins rather roughly and ran away. He didn’t care that they screamed rather bad insults after him, and he was enjoying the fact that he had exposed them for some lighter kind of torture.

When he came out on the city market again, he felt a little lost; he wasn’t sure where he had run when chasing the goblins, and he really didn’t recognize any of his surrounding. He walked around on random, being a little happy that he actually was tall enough to look over some of the elves that walked around the market. Suddenly, he recognized some of the salesmen where Yereli had bought some candy. The salesmen smiled and waves at him when they noticed him, He smiled shyly and waved back as he continued walking. Eventually, he found the place where he had left Yereli, and he was pretty relieved that she was still standing there. He smiled and walked up to her.

“Hey, Yerili! I got your p-“

He didn’t have time to say more before he got hit in his stomach. Not really hard, but enough to surprise him.

“Don’t you EVER run away like that!” Yerili yelled, looking really angry, “You could have got lost, or not made it to the carriage in time or something! Geez, sometimes you’re not as smart as you thought you were!”

Mikki bit his lip and felt pretty ashamed. He now realised how stupidly he had behaved, going off like that without asking Yereli first. He looked down on the ground during the whole time when he followed Yerili back to the carriage. Yerili herself seemed to not exactly beam of joy; she had been quite worried for Mikki to be honest. She had looked back at the troll as they walked a few times and felt even angrier. She had snorted every time she looked away at him, being angry that he still couldn’t stand up for himself, angry that she had made him look so miserable and would make her parents suspicious, angry that she perhaps felt a little sorry for him. The man who drove the carriage looked at Yereli and smiled merrily.

“Had a nice day at the city market, eh?”

“Yeah, right…” she said, jumped into the carriage and slammed the door behind her.

Mikki was pretty used to walking, he had done a lot of that during the years, but even so, this gesture of Yerili made him a little shocked. The carriage driver looked at the door Yereli had slammed, then at Mikki. He decided to shrug and start driving the carriage home, he was sure there was some reason for Mikki having to walk home.

The ride home took longer than expected, mainly because the carriage rider didn’t want to be too far ahead of Mikki. This irritated Yerili a lot, but she was too stubborn to let him sit inside the carriage for now. When they arrived home, Yereli still didn’t seem to have softened up yet, she yelled that she was home, told that she wasn’t hungry, ran up to his room quickly, slammed the door and locked it. Mikki, being quite tired from the walking, just looked up the way to Yereli’s room with an empty look in his face. Panic stroke his mind when Aniania walked up to Mikki, looking confused and started to ask questions. He bit his lower lip as his tail twirled itself around his leg.

“I-I’m sorry, I made Miss Yerili angry…should have never chased the goblins…just wanted to take back her stolen money…” he rambled quietly, not being able to look Aniania in her eyes.

“Aw, Mikki, what’s the matter? You look sick and…you smell terrible!”

Shortly, a calming bath was made for Mikki. Usually, Aniania didn’t help Mikki to bath anymore; she though he had got the hang of it rather well by now, but she suspected nothing would get any cleaner if he was left alone in the bath now. She took care of him enough to make him stop looking so shocked and also got him a set of new, slightly softer clothes. They were a tad bit too short, but they would work for the time while his other clothes got a bit cleaned up. The words Mikki had uttered didn’t make much sense until Aniania found Yerili’s purse and thought a little logical. She rushed up to Yerili’s room and decided to talk to her daughter while Mikki had fallen asleep next to Iakko on the floor.

“Open up, Yerili! What’s the meaning of all this?!”

“Go away! I want to be alone!” Yerili yelled shakily.

“I really hope you’re upset because of your bad treatment of Mikki!”

“Mikki this and Mikki that! You only seem to care about that rotten troll!” she started to sob loudly.

“Aw, don’t be such a cry-baby… You know that I love my daughter the most in the whole wide world…” she said softly.

Eventually, the door to Yerili’s room opened. Aniania knew how to melt her daughter’s heart. Her daughter looked rather miserable when her face was wet from the tears and the eye whites looking red. She was still sniffing uncontrollable. Aniania smiled warmly when her daughter hugged her tightly while confessing her thoughts for her.

“I-I was so worried! He could have been taken by some slave dealer, being hit down by anyone being bigger by him or anything like that! I got so angry that he was so reckless, mum! A-and then…then I felt so bad for being angry at him…because he was really brave…but still stupid, going after those goblins…just to get my purse back! It didn’t contain that much anyways! And I got angry at myself for feeling bad for him! He’s just a stupid troll, why should I care?!” she started to cry again “I’m so confused, mum! I don’t want to be worried for him, but yet I am!”

This made Yerili’s mother bite her lip thoughtfully. She wasn’t sure how she should tackle this situation, not even quite sure if she should try to tackle it. She knew that Hûni would get enraged if he knew this, so she decided to let it be her and Yerili’s secret for the time being. She glanced downstairs at Mikki, lying on the floor curled up to Iakko and decided that she would spend this night together with her daughter. What would happened tomorrow would be another story, but Aniania suspected that it’d be one of those longer days.