Morning Sickness at The Shattered Stein
(TW: MPreg Yaoi)

The Shattered Stein.

That was what the sign was supposed to say. But both the S’s were broken, leaving the buzzing, zapping neon light to blink out the words: ‘The hattered tein’ instead.

“I hate this fucking place,” Quaraun muttered to no one, as he waited for BoomFuzzy and GhoulSpawn to catch up. Both had fallen behind. GhoulSpawn to pilfer pockets and BoomFuzzy to go take a piss. Quaraun stood, feet wet in the muddy slushy snow, staring up at the broken neon sign.

They were here to meet with a Goblin dealer, who was looking to order magic imbibed silk.

Quaraun was six months pregnant and trying to hide it.

The greasy reek of stale ale and something vaguely fishy — probably a misbegotten attempt at brine-cured eel — pressed into Quaraun’s lungs like a damp rag before he even pushed through the warped wood door frame. The tavern shuddered on its pilings, protesting some unseen tremor crawling through the permafrost crust that barely held this godforsaken outpost of civilization together.

A spasm of sympathy, quick and useless as always, rippled through him for the rotten beams groaning underfoot, mimicking the whine he felt in his own pelvis every time BoomFuzzy decided to relieve himself against a particularly inconvenient ice-gouge on one of their hut’s wall supports.

“Must you always be so crude?” Quaraun asked.

“Aye. Humans here are shit.”

“So you piss on their restaurant?”

“Don’t make me laugh. This ain’t no restaurant. I may piss on the bar when we get inside.”

“There you are,” GhoulSpawn’s voice rasped from behind, like frozen gravel tumbling down an iron chimney. Not pleasant, exactly, but the sort of background noise Quaraun had learned to filter as efficiently as a frost-crusted drain spout in a blizzard.

“Where you been?”

“There were some pockets needing picking.”

“Oh.”

“What’s BoomFuzzy doing?”

“Pissing on all the corners.”

“Why?”

“I am not sure. He does not like this place.”

Inside was the shrill shriek of shattering glass — still ringing somewhere high and brittle above the usual bass drum thump of pissed offed Goblin barkeep bellowing something unintelligible about ale tax and blighted turnips over an amplified dirge that might once have been some half-remembered sea shanty.

“Quaraun?”

“Yes, Glinta?”

“Do you charge a tax on ale and blighted turnips?”

“No.”

“But that Goblin over there said — “

“I heard him. Remind me to look into that after I eat. He is not one of my agents.”

BoomFuzzy, now done peeing on every piling of the building joined the others.

“Someone honing in on our territory?” the Faerie King asked.

“Sounds like,” his Elven court mage answered. “I did not issue a tax on ale.”

BoomFuzzy was laughing, his voice light, full of warmth, but Quaraun didn’t hear it.

“Ye’ll be…”

The words were swallowed by the clinking of mugs and the foul smell of the bar.

Quaraun’s mind was far away.

The Goblin behind the counter, the one whose skin was greasy with rot, whose teeth gleamed like claws, reminded him too much of the humans. The same way they had been. The same way they still were.

Foul, disgusting, all of them.

None of them ever understood the pain, the loss. Quaraun could still see the streak of comet dust in the sky, the light of the comet striking his world, and it wasn’t just the explosion he remembered — it was the way the earth itself had screamed in pain.

The comet had torn his world to pieces, and no one had cared. Not the humans, not anyone. And now here he was, alive, but in a world so twisted he wanted to throw himself into the sea and drown.

He was pregnant with a child that would never be born into a world of peace.

It would be born into a world that hated.

Quaraun clenched his fists, fury boiling inside him.

He wasn’t just alone.

He was the last one.

The last Elf.

“You alright, Love?” BoomFuzzy asked, his voice finally breaking through Quaraun’s haze.

Quaraun stared blankly, not answering. He didn’t care. He didn’t care about the Goblin or the noise or the laughter. The humans were no better than the vermin that skittered across the ground.

“Don’t listen to him,” GhoulSpawn said from beside BoomFuzzy, his voice full of teasing. “He’s just got his mind on those damn silks again.”

But Quaraun was no longer listening.

Quaraun watched the Goblin as he caterwauled a shriek that seemed to perhaps be signing. The ‘music’ scraped against the edges of his skull like a rusty harpoon dragged down shale beds.

The Goblin was a horror show of rot and bad decisions, his belly distended, his skin cracked and weeping. He stank like spoiled fish and unwashed feet.

Quaraun couldn’t look, but he couldn’t stop either. The barkeep’s gnarled fingers dipped into a jar of pickled something, pulling out a writhing chunk and shoving it between brown teeth.

“I’m no different,” Quaraun said bitterly, fingers grazing his own stomach.

Belly full of mistakes and filth.

Hide it.

Smother it.

The Goblin belched, scratching his greasy scalp, flakes falling like ash. Not like him. Not like that. Please, gods, not like that.

Quaraun willed the rhythm to burrow deeper into bone, past gnawing at cartilage, maybe even tickle something resembling amusement in the stagnant pond that had settled for a marrow sac lately.

A useless trick.

Not amusement, not quite.

More like…a lurch of something too sharp against his ribs when BoomFuzzy slammed another fist onto the warped plank nearest the splintered-pine bar, sending slivers skittering across floorboards already slick with enough unidentified viscera to stain a graveyard’s best lichen moss sickly jade green. He’d felt it better as discomfort. Not even discomfort anymore. More like…

A squinch of ribs against something too taut for bone. Like that goddamn blasted gut-knot he always woke with in the damned pre-dawn hour, when the frost snaked down inside his thigh bones and clawed at his bladder the way half a dozen Goblin scullers were clawing at a sack full of rotten plums. Couldn’t just yank it loose like a tunic rope. Not the gut knot.

“‘Eh,” BoomFuzzy wheezed, not bothering to turn from what was probably already another shattered tankard.

“I don’t think — ” BoomFuzzy began, but Quaraun’s mind had already wandered, the words lost in the fog of his morbid thoughts.

The stench of the Goblin’s flesh, slick and sticky, filled his nostrils. It was a sickly, cloying scent that clung to the walls of the bar, to the very air itself.

“The moon — “ Quaraun said. “Broken. Splintered. Fractured like my own heart, shards of glass lodged deep inside. I watch it every night, hoping it will heal, but it never does.”

“Aye, Love. Ain’t no fixing it. Best accept it.”

BoomFuzzy ordered their drinks and meal, while Quaraun’s thoughts grew more sour.

Quaraun’s gaze locked on the Goblin, a bloated monument to decay. The barkeep’s belly hung over his belt, mottled with sores, his shirt sticking to his oozing skin. He stank of brine and stale sweat, his laugh a wet gurgle.

Quaraun shifted in his seat, his resplendent pink silk whispering against the filth-crusted floor. No one must know. No one can suspect. Not this. Not me. BoomFuzzy’s laughter rang out beside him, light and carefree.

Quaraun tightened his grip on his cane, his stomach roiling. The Goblin coughed, spraying something green and thick into a bucket. Not like him.

“I won’t. I can’t.”

“What ya yammering about, Love?” BoomFuzzy asked.

Quaraun didn’t answer. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the Golbin barkeep. He clenched his fists so tight his mechanical hands squeaked, the metal groaning.

The bar was a cesspool, the Goblin a bloated king on his greasy throne. Quaraun’s nose twitched as the rancid stench of decaying meat drifted across the room. The barkeep laughed, yellowed tusks glinting under the dim light as he poured something thick and brown into a cracked mug. Quaraun touched his belly, a knot twisting in his gut. How much longer? Before they notice? Before I reek of the same rot? The Goblin scratched under his shirt, pulling out a handful of flaky scales. He sniffed it, shrugged, and wiped it on his pants.

Quaraun dry-heaved. Never like that. Never.

“The comet killed us all,” Quaraun muttered angrily. “And here I am — stuck in this vile place with them. The last of my kind, surrounded by creatures who would just as soon see me burn as look at me. And what? Pretend everything’s normal? Pretend my belly isn’t growing, hiding my shame from those who would destroy me if they knew?”

BoomFuzzy’s voice broke through again, this time clearer: “…won’t find out, will they?”

He was saying something to GhoulSpawn. Quaraun had missed what they were talking about.

Quaraun snapped his head up, but his gaze was distant, unseeing. He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The words were still spiralling in his mind.

GhoulSpawn’s low voice interrupted, but all Quaraun caught was the sound of lava. Hellfire. Infernal beasts. Hellhounds. The stench of the bar mixed with the scent of ash and charred flesh, the bitter reminder of his anger.

Humans. Always humans. Why won’t they just go away? Why did the Humans have to survive the comet strike?

A smear of ochre and something that definitely was not barley ran down the side of the broad mug like mudslide down some forgotten warren wall. Probably tasted like mud too.

“You got your stinkpot.”

‘Stinkpot’ was BoomFuzzy’s fond term for whatever noxious concoction festered in their little cast iron pot over their melting-snow stove back at the shack. A broth of rotted kelp and plump half-thawed grubs that the old Phooka swore by, said it ‘loosened up the pipes’. There was not much choice in ingredients. Not in this hellish frozen wasteland.

Did something vaguely like loosening up the gut knot too, but not reliably. And definitely did something to the air in what passed for a living room whenever you shoved three Goblins and an irritable Phooka into twelve square paces of warped wood floorboards with one pink threadbare rug that had seen better days before it got draped over a carcass and left out in sun-shadow at the butcher’s last spring.

Couldn’t be smelling too good right now, though.

Couldn’t say he gave much thought to how things smelled most days anymore.

Or felt.

Not really.

Not with that damned gnawing going on in the hollow where his belly ought to be flat as a butcher’s cleaver against bone.

Didn’t matter what it was meant to smell like, though. The stench would punch through three layers of oiled hide and six pints of whatever Goblin-swill passed for ale in this frozen piss puddle of an outpost. Like some goddamned blighted moss bloom gone feral and blooming right out your taint.

“Don’t need it,” Quaraun clipped, shoving his hand deeper into the too tight folds of the damn pink silk robe. Not that ‘need’ was a concept BoomFuzzy ever really grasped, except as a prelude to violence or some variation on it being directed at him.

Probably best not to let the Phooka have a grip of it today.

Not with how high the knuckles were already riding over those pale knuckle-bones like cracked flint in the last flickering lick of lamplight from that sputtering thing hanging above their usual table corner. A greasy patch spread out wide around the base of the warped oak like some goddamn festering bruise, thick enough to drown a field mouse in it and leave room for him to gnaw on whatever bone scum was already curdling there.

Not going to be pretty if BoomFuzzy went uprooting that whole damn thing onto someone’s skull tonight. Which he would, if and of the Humans in this place looked at them the wrong way.

BoomFuzzy was aggressively territorial right now, what with the baby and all. Quaraun was starting to show. They would have to start avoiding Human outposts soon. Could not risk any one discovering he was pregnant. Too dangerous.

Humans in these parts had not seen a female in decades. No telling what they’d do with a pregnant Elf. It was getting BoomFuzzy’s hackles on edge. He was becoming more aggressive, more defensive, more protective, with each passing day.

Probably why GhoulSpawn’d picked this damned corner of the ‘tavern’. Not that one could exactly call this dump a tavern. Not exactly a ‘corner’ either. More like one warped plank shoved sideways and bolted down hard enough to leave a half-inch gap where it was supposed to meet the next one, then leaned at an angle so steep a blind Troll would find himself spitting splinters instead of ale on that side.

Good odds nobody’d get too close.

GhoulSpawn had never been what you’d call ‘good’ at keeping himself tucked away in corners, though. Not with hulking six foot two inch body, topped off with three pairs of horns each over a foot long. Not without it looking like some sort of grotesque origami experiment gone sideways, all jutting angles and flailing limbs folded into spaces too damn small for bones that looked like they were still trying to work out if they wanted to be meat or iron.

BoomFuzzy’s voice was a low hum beneath the chatter of the bar. “…not to mention the…” Quaraun caught a few words, but they didn’t reach his ears. Instead, the rustling of BoomFuzzy’s words faded into the back of his mind, like wind through dead leaves.

The Goblin’s stink filled his senses, thick and nauseating, the fetid smell of sour breath and something worse, something rotting beneath the surface. Quaraun couldn’t help but stare at the bloated creature. It reminded him of the comet strike — the way the world had been torn apart, the moon shattered into a thousand broken pieces, each shard a distant reminder of what was lost.

His chest tightened.

“I am the last Elf. The last of a species abandoned to die in a world that has forgotten the scent of its own decency.”

The comet had changed everything. And now, in the aftermath, there was no place for him but this cold, dying world. The Humans, the ones who had done this to the world, done this to his people — they stank of violence. Of greed. Of blood. They thought they could destroy everything.

The weight of anger pressed down upon him, manifesting as a fiery tension coursing through his veins. Every beat of his heart reverberated with the intensity of his rage, making his chest feel as if it might burst at any moment. His muscles tightened, coiling like a spring ready to unleash its pent-up fury.

As he surveyed the desolate landscape outside the window, a profound sadness settled over him like a heavy, suffocating fog. It invaded his being, causing his shoulders to slump and his steps to become slow and laboured.

The weight of the world’s devastation pressed against his very soul, threatening to crush his spirit beneath its formidable weight.

The bitter taste of resentment lingered on his tongue, a constant reminder of the betrayal and destruction wrought by the humans. It twisted his features into a grimace, contorting his face with a mix of disgust and disdain. Each breath he took seemed to carry the acrid scent of their malevolence, further fuelling his disdain for them.

But amidst the anger and sorrow, a flicker of fear danced in the depths of his eyes.

The uncertainty of the future and the overwhelming sense of helplessness gnawed at his core. It manifested as a knot in his stomach, causing nausea to rise within him.

His palms grew clammy and his knees weak, as if the weight of the world’s despair threatened to buckle him under its unrelenting pressure.

Yet, despite the physical toll of these emotions, a steely determination burned within him. It radiated from his very being, casting a resolute light upon his path.

With each breath, he pushed through the physical and emotional exhaustion, channeling his emotions into a fierce resolve to seek justice and reclaim what had been taken.

The physical effects of his emotions were undeniable, for they served as a constant reminder of the pain and devastation that had befallen his people. But they also fuelled his determination, giving him the strength to face the cold, dying world head-on and fight for a future free from the stench of violence, greed, and blood. Streangth, that he needed to bring a new life into this hellish world.

BoomFuzzy’s laughter cut through his thoughts, but Quaraun could barely hear it. Instead, the words “screaming” and “ashes” floated toward him like ghosts of some forgotten war. GhoulSpawn’s soft response, something about chaos, twisted the dagger deeper.

Sticky air, reeking of stale beer and sweat.

Quaraun shifted uncomfortably, his silk robes brushing the grimy floor. The Goblin barkeep wiped the counter with a rag dirtier than the bar itself. Each pass left greasy streaks.

Quaraun’s stomach churned. He tightened his grip on his cane, knuckles white.

His thoughts skittered like cockroaches: No one can know. No one can see. Not like him.

The Goblin belched, scratching at the peeling skin of his potbelly. A visible pustule popped. Quaraun gagged, bile burning his throat.

Not me. Not like that. Never like that.

He gritted his teeth, and all he could think of was how much he hated them.

“I hate this,” Quaraun growled.

“Aye, Love. Ya hate everything. I know. Eat ya supper.”

“I hate being here. I hate the Humans and their violence. I hate being pregnant and having to hide it like it’s some damn curse. I shouldn’t have to hide what I am.”

“It the world we live in, Love.”

“Did not think you liked the muck,” Quaraun muttered under his breath as he eased past GhoulSpawn’s bulk — a goddamn glacier of knotted muscle smelling faintly like overused sheep hide and something metallic, always metallic, no matter how often those reek-of-saltwater tubs got scrubbed out at the port — to shove his hips against GhoulSpawn’s shoulder-bone.

The stinkpot was probably going to do that thing where it made your teeth feel loose and your tongue taste like cobwebs dipped in rancid butter. The kind of ‘loose’ where you thought maybe they wouldn’t mind so much if someone came along with a big enough cleaver — like the Butcher, he supposed, hadn’t seen that goddamn axe-head gleam through those rat-gnawed cracks in the shack door last week…

Damn thing would rattle his teeth loose like dried beans.

“It keeps them from gnawing too hard,” GhoulSpawn rasped back, not shifting even a fraction of an inch to make space or anything resembling acknowledgment he wasn’t bolted into some sort of morbid furniture arrangement there against the wall.

Just kept that damned skull tilted sideways so it seemed half the damn jawline was perpetually trying to eat whatever splintered planks held up that warped goddamned floor. The way it sat would’ve made your gut coil tighter than a frozen fishwife trying to cram it back into a busted barrel if you weren’t halfway used to things being fucked around here.

“What they gnawing on, anyway?”

GhoulSpawn didn’t answer that, at least not for the good four heartbeats Quaraun counted out between his last thump of ribs against the dampness pooling somewhere just south of his bellybutton and the next ragged wheeze out of BoomFuzzy. Probably too busy picking through whatever was jammed down under the chipped corner of a table warped enough to make it look like one of those goddamn goblin-made flutes, except this one would sound like ass if you tried to blow into it.

Didn’t mean they couldn’t try, though.

Didn’t see why BoomFuzzy always thought that was worth chewing on like it was the last damn bone in the goddamned frozen wastes.

Not even gnawing, more like trying to shred the wood pulp with whatever gristle hung off his lower jaw now and then. Probably had a few molars fused solid down there somewhere, looked like he’d swallowed a fistful of rusted iron shards when he was a pup.

Thoughts bled through his mind, raw and unformed. His own body felt alien, like it didn’t belong to him anymore.

The Goblin’s bloated belly caught his eye again, and his stomach twisted. Quaraun’s hand clasped at his own swollen belly, almost too big to hide now.

Would they look at him like that?

Would they see him bloated, stretched, and reeking of something sour and unnatural?

BoomFuzzy’s voice rose in a joke, GhoulSpawn chuckling along, and Quaraun wanted to scream at them to stop. They didn’t see it. Didn’t feel it. The thing under his ribs, squirming like some tidepool creature with too many legs.

The Goblin belched loudly, and Quaraun’s fingers twitched. He couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t let them see. The thought hung heavy, bitter as the stink of sour grubs and stale seawater.

Didn’t smell much better than that either. More rust, something greasy trying to be vinegar, maybe some goblin kid’s forgotten breakfast shoved under the floorboards last spring and left festering on purpose because they thought it’d make the place stink enough nobody bothered them. Couldn’t say for sure about a lot of things anymore.

Not with what felt like someone poking a finger in through your ribs every time you breathed too deep and trying to knead out whatever was stuck there — not like you could tell them apart anyway, all that greasy moss smell blooming up from the gut knot like some goddamn unholy flower blooming just inside your chest instead of outside.

The Goblin barkeep slouched behind the counter, scratching at his stomach with a grimy hand. The movement made Quaraun’s skin crawl. He didn’t know what was worse — the yellowed eyes, the slack jaw, or the stench that seeped from him like rotting kelp.

Quaraun’s thoughts circled, a scab he couldn’t stop picking at.

It didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered.

Not what the silk was supposed to hide or what festered inside him now. He couldn’t stand the thought of anyone seeing.

Knowing.

It felt like the Goblin’s stink had wormed its way under his own skin.

BoomFuzzy’s laughter cut through the haze, but Quaraun didn’t look up. He couldn’t. The Goblin barkeep had his shirt half-off now, wiping his face with the hem. Quaraun turned his head, bile rising in his throat. If anyone knew… if anyone even guessed… they’d look at him the same way.

The Goblin coughed, wet and guttural, and Quaraun closed his eyes. His hands tightened around his cane until his knuckles ached.

“You got that damn silk on?” BoomFuzzy rasped again, voice thick enough to pull a mouthful of fish guts through it and still leave a couple of teeth tangled in there.

Like trying to suck water out of wet fur with a busted pump. Probably why he never said anything that wasn’t meant to sound like someone spitting gravel through gritted gums.

“Think I saw that gash-face weasel from the docks poking ‘round the shack.”

Quaraun didn’t answer. He was too busy thinking about the smell to realize anyone had spoken to him. Why was everything so warped today? The morning sickness was getting worse. Hieghtened his senses to everything. Every smell stronger then normal. He squeezed his eyes shut as if that would help him not smell anything. This place made him want to vomit.

Not going to say how long it took him to figure out what that meant without getting punched sideways hard enough to rattle whatever brittle thing was left in your spine.

Didn’t take much figuring though, not if you knew the way those greasy rat-eyes popped out of their head sockets every time someone mentioned something with scales too big and teeth that looked like chipped flint sticking up from a skull somebody’d hammered into a trough full of mud until it dried flat.

And you knew how BoomFuzzy liked to make sure folks knew he was there even if all they heard was ‘the floorboards creaking like the guts of a dead wolf’ before whatever goddamned thing that made the barkeep smell like rust and rotting fish got slammed up against your ribs with enough force you thought maybe they just split clean in two.

“ARH!” Quaraun let out a scream.

“Ya sure yar alright, Love?”

“The stench of this place!”

“Ya want to leave?”

“I want to leave this fucking planet!”

“Well, ain’t doing that any time soon. Of the five planets we have to choose from, this one is the best.”

“I do not feel well.”

“Want to come back later? Sell ya silks tomorrow. Rent a room tonight. Get some sleep.”

“Just tell me when to put itaway,” Quaraun said, shoving his voice out as flat as the greasy-wood plank that probably should’ve been a damn floorboard twenty years back but some goblin somewhere had decided it was more interesting glued sideways to three other splintered things nobody ever bothered to find out what the fuck they were made for in the first place.

“Ya silks?”

“Yes.”

“Gash-face knows,” BoomFuzzy grunted, pointing in the direction of the Goblin barkeep.

“Unsanitary,” Quaraun muttered.

“Ain’t all Goblins?” GhoulSpawn asked.

“Got his stinkpot too,” BoomFuzzy said. “Vile creatures, the Gobs in these parts.”

Quaraun covered his nose with a silk handkerchief.

“I am nauseous enough without the stench of this place.”

“Ya alright, Love? Ya look about to vomit?”

BoomFuzzy’s voice drifted through the air, but Quaraun couldn’t focus on the words.

Something about the barkeep.

The barkeep, yes.

That grotesque creature, swollen with rot, leaning against the counter like a festering corpse propped upright.

Quaraun’s stomach turned, not from the stench but from the weight of memories. The comet’s impact, shaking the earth to its bones. Craters filled with ash and fire.

The moon shattered like a broken plate.

And here he was, the last of his kind, burdened with a secret that made him feel like the barkeep — swollen, grotesque, disgusting. He clenched his teeth, hate thick in his throat.

The barkeep was picking at whatever scabbed gunk clung to one of those goddamn rusted teeth like barnacles on a carcass you couldn’t remember if you pulled in or had dragged behind you for three moons already.

Probably something he’d gotten stuck up there gnawing on yesterday’s fish guts from the butcher’s pile, if they were lucky enough to have snagged him off the docks before that goddamn stench started drawing every fly in the goddamned frozen wastes.

BoomFuzzy leaned back in his chair, holding a tankard. His voice lilted, teasing and warm.

“He looked like a sea rat with a purse full o’ clams!”

Quaraun caught only fragments.

Rat.

Clams.

He shivered.

The words blurred into images of the Goblin barkeep, his grin a jagged reminder of tides pulling rot to shore.

The comet strike had brought this — filth and fear. It had splintered the Moon and left the world broken, festering like the Goblin’s breath. His silver hair twitched against his neck.

“The last Elf,” he muttered bitterly, one hand pressing against his concealed belly.

“Ya think he’ll eat it?” GhoulSpawn said, laughing.

The word eat stood out, and bile rose in Quaraun’s throat as he imagined the Goblin gnawing on his silk.

That wasn’t good.

Didn’t need a whole damn bucket of ’em smelling alike.

Didn’t need it getting close enough to matter, anyway.

Not when the gnawing felt like someone was trying to unspool a goddamn threadbare rope from the inside out.

“And what makes you think gash-face gives a lick about that?” GhoulSpawn rasped then, sounded like he was trying to peel a chunk of bone loose with his tongue this time, not just chewing gravel and rust through wet fur anymore.

Why was everyone’s voice off key today?

Was morning sickness causing that too?

Every sound grating at his brain.

Didn’t sound good enough to be asking a question though.

Didn’t matter if it was ‘what makes you think gash-face gives a lick about the silk’? or ‘what makes you think gash-face got something better than that last batch of fish guts’ — whatever he was trying to say, didn’t end in anything good.

BoomFuzzy chuckled, his voice soft, almost musical — if Quaraun had been listening. But the words blurred into the sour haze of the room. The Goblin barkeep’s swollen hands slammed a tankard onto the counter, the sound sharp as the memories that followed.

Glass shards raining from the sky. Fire licking the edges of an icebound world.

The Fractured Moon leering down, mocking his survival.

The last Moon Elf, living among creatures that stank of blood and desperation.

Humans. He hated them, their violence, their stink.

And he hated his own body for betraying him, for growing round with a secret he couldn’t share. What good is a baby you have to hide?

BoomFuzzy pushed a plate of clams toward GhoulSpawn, chuckling.

“Not even fresh! Smells like somethin’ dragged from the bog.”

“GROSS!” GhoulSpawn cried out. “Are we supposed to eat this?”

Quaraun only heard smells like. The Goblin’s stench crept back into his thoughts — seaweed, rot, decay. He tugged his pink silk robes tighter, brushing imagined grime from his sleeves. His stomach twisted, a mix of nausea and dread.

Morning sickness.

And it wasn’t even morning.

Why did they call it morning sickness?

It happened all hours of the day.

All hours of the night.

The Fractured Moon had watched as the comets tore the world apart. The Moon hadn’t saved anyone.

It just hung there, watching.

Quaraun scowled at the thought, fingers twitching over his concealed belly. He hated being here. Hated being pregnant. Hated this cursed, stinking Earth.

GhoulSpawn shook his head, grinning.

“Better than BoomFuzzy’s cooking, I bet!” The Sheep Demon said as he poked Quaraun in the ribs.

“Are you insulting my cooking?” BoomFuzzy snarled. “I’ll have you know, I have sixteen Michelle five star restaurants.”

“Then why aren’t we eating at one of them?”

The two laughed, but Quaraun only felt his sour mood deepen.

The Goblin.

The Moon.

The endless, stinking ruin of it all.

What kind of a world is this to bring a baby into?

BoomFuzzy said something — probably about the Goblin barkeep’s mismatched eyes or the greasy mop of hair hanging like seaweed over his face.

Quaraun didn’t catch the words.

Didn’t care.

The barkeep’s bloated stomach rippled as he laughed, foul breath clouding the air. The stink of brine and rot clawed at Quaraun’s nose, a reminder of tidepools, the way they boiled over in the weeks after the comet hit.

Dead things everywhere.

Seafoam stained with ash.

The Fractured Moon bleeding silver light across a dying planet. He tugged his cloak tighter over his belly, bile rising in his throat.

Hiding again.

Always hiding.

A fight broke out between the Goblins at the bar, bringing Quaraun briefly out of his thoughts.

Moments later one was dead.

The Humans didn’t give shit.

Walked over the green carcase like it wasn’t even there.

“Should chop it up for stew,” BoomFuzzy chortled. “Ain’t had roast Goblin in a few moons now.”

Didn’t need another goddamn Goblin corpse splayed out like some half-rotten doll on this side of the warped plank if it made BoomFuzzy decide to start gnawing again.

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” GhoulSpawn said.

Of course he did. He wasn’t from here. He wasn’t used to this. Any of it. Here he was, 20th century college student, sitting in a 40th century bar in what was left of the goddamn Earth after a goddamnned fuckin comet had destroyed it. All the females who survived the Crystal Plague had to go into hiding or pretend to be men in order to survive. Men were worse zombies. twenty one fucking billion zombies. Only seven million fucking survivors. Most of them Humans.

Why did Humans have to survive? But almost no females of any type. Not birds. Not mammals. Especially not Elves. Quaraun was the last Elf. He couldn’t hide his being an Elf. But he had to hide the growing inside of him.

“You gonna get gash-face that silk order,” GhoulSpawn asked.

“Not worth it,” BoomFuzzy answered.

Quaraun said nothing. He was too busy trying not to vomit on the table.

Quaraun didn’t know what reeked worse — the Goblin or the bar itself. They were here to make a deal. Here to sell silk. He had to focus. Focus on the task at hand.

But the air was thick with the sour stench of grubs and decay, the wood sticky with unidentifiable filth.

Silk didn’t belong here.

It was too clean, too perfect for a place like this.

For him. That Goblin. What would a creature like that do with silks anyways?

The Goblin grinned, his jagged teeth glinting, as if silk meant anything to something so drenched in muck.

Quaraun’s stomach churned. He didn’t want to sell it. Didn’t want to imagine those slimy hands groping the delicate fabric. The idea alone made his skin crawl.

Didn’t matter if BoomFuzzy figured gash-face wanted whatever that damn silk was supposed to do for or against whatever festered under his ribs these days, didn’t need anyone showing up here with those goddamn needle teeth and a belly full of sour grubs smelling like he just choked down half the tidepool.

“He seen you,” BoomFuzzy rumbled back.

Goblin barkeep picking at that rust-tooth again like it was a goddamned splinter lodged in his skull. Didn’t sound like something he was proud of either, more like whatever gnawing gristle hung off his jaw had gotten tangled with that one tooth and now the whole goddamn thing felt stuck sideways like you were trying to swallow down a rusty nail hammered into wet fur. Didn’t look much different than usual though.

Didn’t matter how many times they tried to pick it loose, that greasy gristle just kept working its way deeper until all you could smell was what lay under whatever the goddamn fish guts were supposed to be covering up now and if you squinted hard enough when the light hit right maybe you could see a little of whatever festered under your ribs before they tried to pull it back into place.

Didn’t matter much how many times he had to tell himself, didn’t need another goddamn corpse splayed out like some half-rotten doll on this side of the warped plank if BoomFuzzy decided to start gnawing on corpses again.

“He seen you what?” GhoulSpawn rasped again, sounded like someone trying to peel a chunk of bone loose with their tongue this time.

It wasn’t worth it.

Not for this place, not for that thing behind the counter.

A Goblin who stank of rot and salt, his belly bloated with whatever wriggled inside him.

Quaraun could practically feel the grime crawling from the bar to his silks, the imagined filth enough to make his hair twitch with revulsion. Silk was elegance.

Purity.

Not something to be pawed at by needle-teethed creatures who reeked like the bottom of a tidepool.

Quaraun half decided to leave without selling the silk he had come here to sell. The Goblin didn’t even deserve to see it, let alone touch it.

Those goddamn needle teeth and a belly full of sour grubs smelling like he just choked down half the tidepool.

Didn’t matter how many times he had to tell himself. Didn’t need another goddamn corpse splayed out like some half-rotten doll. Didn’t matter what gash-face wanted with whatever that damn silk was supposed to do for or against whatever festered under his ribs these days, didn’t need anyone showing up here with those goddamn needle teeth and a belly full of sour grubs smelling like he just choked down half the tidepool

“Just sayin’.” BoomFuzzy said.

The Goblin.

That grotesque creature.

The way his fingers moved over the counter, leaving greasy smudges, like the very act of being alive was somehow a crime.

Quaraun’s stomach lurched. The scent of him lingered in the air, a rancid, sour cloud of putrid meat.

“I don’t care about their stupid jokes,” Quaraun said bitterly. “I don’t care about their laughter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because I am alone. I am the last Elf.”

“Ya, ain’t alone, Love. We right here with you.”

His eyes darted to BoomFuzzy, but the momentary flare of comfort the sight of him brought quickly soured. BoomFuzzy, so carefree, so alive, while Quaraun was trapped in this rotting carcass of a world.

The words floated back to him: “They won’t know…they won’t find out.”

Quaraun’s lips twitched. How could they not know? How could they not see what I am becoming?

GhoulSpawn’s voice, detached as always, carried faintly over the noise of the bar.

“Chaos follows me wherever I go,” he said, but Quaraun heard only the echo of his own thoughts.

You have no idea, GhoulSpawn. You have no idea what it’s like to live in this world, to carry the weight of what’s coming and hide it behind a smile.

He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, staring at the flickering candlelight. His mind twisted.

“I hate this,” Quaraun muttered. “I hate everything about it.”

“What ya hating on now, Love?” BoomFuzzy asked.

Didn’t remember it itself much anymore, either. Just that empty aching in what used to be chest, hollowed now and echoing too loud with wind through cracked plaster.

Remember.

Gotta remember.

Remember what?

“I can’t remember,” Quaraun said, leaning over the table, his gold plated prothetic hands clutched over his head.

“Remember what?” GhoulSpawn asked. “Hey! You okay? You don’t look so good.”

The Goblin was picking at whatever scabbed gunk clung to one of those goddamn rusted teeth like barnacles on a carcass you couldn’t remember if you pulled in or had dragged behind you for three moons already. Probably something he’d gotten stuck up there gnawing on yesterday’s fish guts from the Butcher’s pile, if they were lucky enough to have snagged him off the docks before that goddamn stench started drawing every fly in the goddamned frozen wastes.

Gods, the place reeked.

Quaraun held his breath, wishing he could sweep the entire bar into the sea. He didn’t need the Goblin’s grubby money or his sour stench sticking to his silks.

What did gash-face even want with silk?

Wrap it around his greasy belly?

Stuff it in his tidepool mouth?

The thought made Quaraun shudder.

The barkeep’s clawed fingers scratched at the counter, leaving streaks of grime.

Filth.

So much filth.

Filth on filth.

The silk would scream if it knew where it was going.

“He seen you,” BoomFuzzy said again.

“Seen me?” GhoulSpawn rasped, sounded like someone trying to peel a chunk of bone loose with their tongue this time.

Ragged, filthy edges.

The thought of handing his silk over to that Goblin felt like ripping through a scab, pus and stink spilling out.

Quaraun’s stomach churned.

The barkeep’s needle-sharp teeth gleamed in the low light, his breath a sour tide of decay and grubs.

Silk deserved better.

Better than those greasy claws and festering intentions.

Better than this stinking hole of sticky tables and rotting wood.

The Goblin didn’t care about the silk’s beauty, didn’t deserve it. Just another filthy creature trying to barter filth for art.

The baby deserved better.

Better then this filth.

Didn’t matter how many times he had to tell himself…

Didn’t need another goddamn corpse splayed out like some half-rotten doll on this side of the warped plank...

Didn’t matter what gash-face wanted with whatever that damn silk was supposed to do for or against whatever festered under his ribs these days, didn’t need anyone showing up here with those goddamn needle teeth and a belly full of sour grubs smelling like he just choked down half the tidepool.

“Seen you,” BoomFuzzy said. “Seen you wearin’ it. Knows ya the silk dealer him to meet.”

“I do not want to sell anything to him.”

Didn’t matter how many times he had to tell himself…

“Been seein’ things.”

“What do you see?” BoomFuzzy rumbled from somewhere deep in that skull-like cage of bone they called jaw.

No. BoomFuzzy. Twice. That wasn’t right. Out of focus. Need to focus.

Couldn’t tell you which direction the sound came from, if it even went in directions anymore.

Didn’t matter how many times he had to tell himself… Didn’t need another goddamn corpse splayed out like some half-rotten doll on this side of the warped plank.

Didn’t matter how many times he had to tell himself…

The words repeating in his head.

Focus.

Must focus.

He didn’t.

Couldn’t.

The remembering was a ragged scab that tore loose with the faintest shift of wind, the merest flicker of shadow across this cracked-plaster expanse they called ground floor. He didn’t have much use for the remembering anymore.

The dead Goblin on the floor stared up at him. Empty nothing in it’s eyes.

Didn’t need another goddamn corpse splayed out like some half-rotten doll.

Remembering went away.

Didn’t matter with those goddamn needle teeth and a belly full of sour grubs smelling like he just choked down half the tidepool.

Head splitting.

Pounding.

Stench of Humans.

Quaraun tried to listen to what GhoulSpawn was saying, but the sounds were as blurred as the lights.

Blurring, Whirring.

“Used to be,” GhoulSpawn croaked back through that bone-and-grit throat, each syllable slicked greasy-slow on its hinge in this dark where things rusted and forgot they’d ever moved.

“Used to be…”

Used to be.

Used to be. Used to be.

Used to be. Used to be. Used to be.

A lot of things used to be.

There used to be Elves.

There used to be Fae.

There used to be sun.

What was there now but a world killed by a comet.

The Fractured Moon growing closer every day.

Closer.

Closer.

Bigger.

Bigger.

Like his belly.

Bigger every day.

Quaraun stood up.

Frantic.

Panic.

Need to escape.

Flee this bar.

Flee the Humans.

Flee this planet.

Before the Fractured Moon crashes into it.

Save the baby.

From the Humans.

From the Moon.

“Letting it hang loose…” BoomFuzzy was talking about something with GhoulSpawn now.

Quaraun’s couldn’t keep focus on the conversation.

Could they not see?

Can they not hear?

Don’t they smell it?

No! They are not the ones pregnant. Everything is normal to them. Their senses are not heightened. They don’t notice the god awful stench of this place. Of this whole damned entire fucking planet.

Letting it hang loose in the air like a door swinging slow and sure in some remembered storm they weren’t meant to know the name of anymore. The sound dragged against things below floorboards above dirt maybe halfway down whatever hollowed-out husk they’d been dropped into when remembering went away.

Didn’t matter how many times he had to tell himself…

He didn’t remember.

Couldn’t.

Not much use for it anyway.

Didn’t remember it itself much anymore, either. Just that empty aching in what used to be chest, hollowed now and echoing too loud with wind through cracked plaster.

“…not what I meant,” BoomFuzzy’s voice trailed off, laughter bubbling beneath it.

“Always is…” GhoulSpawn sounded miles away.

Focus.

Focus.

The room was spinning.

Faces staring at him.

“Quaraun? You okay?”

Quaraun didn’t hear the rest, not clearly. His thoughts twisted, turning darker with every passing second.

“Dead Goblin on the floor,” Quaraun mumbled through his hair. “Fucking Humans never care. Stench and filth. Filth and stench.”

Didn’t matter how many times he had to tell himself… didn’t need another goddamn corpse splayed out like some half-rotten doll on this side of the warped plank if BoomFuzzy decided to start gnawing again. Didn’t matter what gash-face wanted with whatever that damn silk was supposed to do for or against whatever festered under his ribs these days, didn’t need anyone showing up here with those goddamn needle teeth and a belly full of sour grubs smelling like he just choked down half the tidepool.

Didn’t remember it itself much anymore, either. Just that empty aching in what used to be chest, hollowed now and echoing too loud with wind through cracked plaster. The bar was spinning around him now.

The stench so much worse.

The whirring in his head.

Voices everywhere all around him.

Louder.

Stumbling.

Running this way.

Shouting.

Suffocating.

Needing air.

There is no air.

Blackness closing in.

Need air.

“Whoa! Hey!” GhoulSpawn yelled as he leapt from his seat. “You okay? BoomFuzzy! Help!”

The Phooka turned around in time to see Quaraun slip out of his seat and slum unconscious to the floor.

This story is published in:

• Picking The Perfect Pickle

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Includes the following stories: Picking the Perfect Pickle BoomFuzzy’s Hearth The Phooka's Dragon School Sea Glass & Silken Worries A Quiet Night on The River The Cursed Grimoire Ignoramus-An Utterly Ignorant Crowd of Humans The Littlest Keeper of the Lantern Excited For The New Baby Quaraun's Candle Business The Sacred Pink Secret There Are a Million Reasons to Be Grateful A Thousand Little Kicks The Sun was Shining, a Rare Thing in This Dystopian Ice Age Morning Sickness at The Shattered Stein A Night for Spoons Pink Silk and Soup The Book of Tortured Souls I Need To Feel Safe Cakes for a Kingdom

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The 2nd 500 Story Challenge: Story #045 OF 500 | This work of fiction is a part of a long-running series of novels, novellas, short stories, and poetry. (Known as The Adventures of Quaraun the Insane, formerly known as The Twighlight Manor Series). I have been writing & publishing it since 1978 (50th anniversary coming in 2028!) spanning over 3k published works.

The Pink Necromancer, Moon Elf silk weaver & merchant: Quaraun on Noodle Beach. His master chef Phooka turned Lich husband: BoomFuzzy with his 1968 VW Bus Beach Noodle Food Truck. And their on again/off again mad scientist Sheep Demon lover: GhoulSpawn with his 1974 AMC Gremlin time machine. Time Travel setting swings back and forth between 40th century Maine after a comet hit the moon decimating the planet, and the 1970s, Maine. Quaraun in the main character, he and BoomFuzzy are a married gay couple. GhoulSpawn is their shared live-in lover. Art by Wendy Christine Allen.

BoomFuzzy King Gwallmaiic aka BoomFuzzy the Unicorn: Quaraun's husband, BoomFuzzy aka King Gwallmaiic, a Scottish Phooka, who is King of The UnSeelie Court. Quaraun is his court mage and advisor, as well as the only Elf in The UnSeelie Court. BoomFuzzy is a "classic fantasy type" Necromancer who uses sorcery to raise the dead. Being a Faerie he is also an illusionist and master of trickster magic. By profession, he is a Master Chef, owning the global monopoly on restaurants, taverns, pubs, and food trucks. Until his death, BoomFuzzy was regarded as the world's most powerful wizard. He is now a Lich. BoomFuzzy is also half-Human. His mother was a Mongolian/Chinese Human, which is why he wears distinctively Asian outfits, along with a great kilt worn as a cape. Known as BoomFuzzy the Unicorn, he often takes the form of a purple Unicorn. BoomFuzzy's exact age is unknown, though he was well over two thousand years old at the time of his death, and Quaraun resurrected him as a Lich around 500+ years ago, making him close to 3,000 years old. In his BlackBird form he is fifteen thousand years old. Art by Wendy Christine Allen

Quaraun Quaraun aka The Pink Necromancer: The F2M transgender Persian Moon Elf main character: The Pink Necromancer, Quaraun The Insane, with BoomFuzzy the Unicorn. F2M for those unaware = Quaraun was biologically born female, but transitioned to live as a male; this is why there are stories where Quaraun is sometimes pregnant, in spite of being male and using he/him male pronouns. Quaraun is a Necromancer by the actual dictionary definition of the word, meaning he is a psychic medium who sees and hears ghosts, and uses tarot, spirit boards, and seances to communicate with the dead. By profession he is a silk weaver/tailor/silk merchant. Quaraun is an Elder God JellyFish who takes the form of an Elf to blend in with society. His 12 foot long hair is made out of venomous, stinging jellyfish tentacles. Quaraun is BoomFuzzy's apprentice and regarded as the world's most powerful still living wizard. Quaraun's exact age is unknown, but he is somewhere around 750 years old. In his SunTa form he is twelve thousand years old. The Scared Pink JellyFish that lives in him, is stated to being over two million years old. Art by Wendy Christine Allen

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