The Goblin Toymakers, Too

(A quick intro bit. First this is way longer than the normal x-mas story but it needed to be. Second this is a sequel. You don’t need to read the first but if you want to you can go read the original The Goblin Toymakers here.)

In the Goblin land known as Villagetownburg, four goblins sat, contemplating Christmas. The day itself was hurtling toward them, like, it seemed, a meteor made of tinsel and wrapping paper. They had nothing to put inside the wrapping paper, though.

They worried. They fretted. They paced, and bit at each other.

“Dos you remembers,” Jewels asked the others, “when we helped out Santa last year? All four of us?”

“I dos,” said Qake, who was definitely one hundred percent there when they all were at Santa’s workshop. Even if you don’t remember them being there. They just tend to be quiet, which may seem weird for a goblin but you seem weird to them so don’t go judging.

“We helped Santa, real good!” Nibsler said, while sitting upside down on a stool, gnawing on one wooden leg of it.

“We mades the best toys for the gobbos in town,” Crusher declared, pacing in an endless circle that had already started to wear a groove in the floor. “But that,” they pointed out, “was last year. It isn’t last year now. I knows it.”

“No, we all knows it isn’t last year, that’s why it’s called last year, it didn’t last,” Jewels said,” so it’s gone. That’s science.”

The Goblins nodded, they all liked science.

“We could make more toys,” Nibsler said, shifting to sit upright.

“We’d need tools,” Crusher replied.

“Santa’s gots tools!” Jewels shouted. “We can borrow thems.”

“Santa won’t lend us tools,” Qake said, “but what ifs we took them?”

“Steal from Santa? You’re bad,” Jewels said, frowning. “I am a good goblin, not a bad goblin, so I would not steal froms Santa. But if we dressed up like hims and pretended to be him then we’d be borrowing, from ourselves and that’s good not bad so we should do that.”

“Pretty sure that’s the same thing,” Qake said, squinting a bit.

“Nope,” Jewels said firmly. “Totally different. So let’s do it.”

“Ok,” Crusher and Nibsler agreed, not sure what they were agreeing to.

“Ok,” said Qake still convinced this amounted to the same plan.

They scurried around for a few, unfocused, pulling together fabric and string and bits of wood and a few small rocks. Then, focusing down a little bit, they started to build a coat they thought could pass for Santa’s. It had to be Santa-sized, and the right color.

“But…” Crusher said sadly.

“I know, but we needs to make it the right color,” Niblser said.

Crusher frowned but splashed red juice from a bottle all over the fabric. “I’m gonna need more juice, though,” they said, watching the liquid stain the fabric red.

“We’ll find you more juice, I promise,” Jewels said, patting Crusher on the shoulder.

The coat grew a sickly, bleeding shade of red as the goblins watched. It would do.

“How are we gonna grow to be Santa tall?” Crusher asked, hopeful that they would get to be the giant goblin needed, somehow.

“We stack,” said Qake.

“Stack!” agreed Nibsler.

The other two nodded.

“Wossa right order then?” Jewels asked.

“Crusher has strongest legs,” Nibsler said. “Always walkitypace, always. So bottom.”

Crusher frowned. “I’m’a too small. Don’t all sit on me. Crusher crushed, bad.”

“I’ll do it,” sighed Qake.

“I coulds!” Nibsler said, which prompted the others to all suddenly, reflexively shout no. Nibsler was sad that gobbo friends would all be so against the idea, but also glad because Nibsler didn’t want to do it anyway.

“So we gets in coat, and stack,” Jewels said, nodding, “outside toy shop and thens go in and steals…borrows our own tools.”

“Exactly,” Qake agreed.

They rolled up the coat, as well as a hastily made hat and beard, and set off into the snowy night.

Villagetownburg sat many miles from Santa’s workshop, Santa insisting on making sure he lived a respectable distance away from the goblins, not out of racism or fear or anything, but simply out of respect for the fact that any closer and the goblins would come over and set off anything that might be exploded on the regular. They didn’t mean to cause chaos, but for goblins, chaos simply found them, almost magnetically it seemed at times.

The goblins trudged and shuffled and pushed through the snow. They were all bundled up tight, though Crusher wore two goblins worth of outfit to keep warm. A passing moose spotted them and realized its mistake in slowing down to consider the visual of goblins in snow too late.

Four goblins burst out of the snow and landed on the moose, cheering and clutching at its fur and antlers. The moose started to panic and then took a deep, soulful, breath. This was, for the moment, its life. Trying to shake goblins off ended up worse than simply being a taxi for a bit. The moose made a low deep rumble. Jewels patted its head and pointed in the general direction of Santa’s Workshop.

The moose started off at a normal trot, then grew faster, and faster still. The goblins held on for dear life. They waved and bounced in the wind and speed as their tiny hands grabbed fur and antler tightly. They screamed, and from a distance it sounded like a siren but if you could slow down and listen you would have heard only laughter.

Soon enough they were at Santa’s workshop, but the moose didn’t slow down. It could’ve. It knew where they wanted to go. But the moose also wasn’t a door-to-door service. It was a moose. And so it shook itself mightily, as it sped by, throwing the goblins into a nearby snowbank, where they fell, still laughing and cheering.

Quickly, the goblins got into their giant coat. Qake braced and Jewels got on their shoulders, Nibsler next, and Crusher at the top. The coat whooshed to conceal them and Crusher adjusted the hat and beard carefully.

“I shoulda be on top of Nibsler,” Jewels grumbled.

“You should be on the bottom,” Nibsler said.

They started to gently slap at each other until Qake and Crusher both shh’d them loudly.

“Ifs my own body can’ts behave we’ll never do this,” Crusher complained.

“Nibsler started it, they bully,” Jewels muttered.

“No, Nibsler is bullied,” Nibsler maintained.

“Both gonna be bullied, if you ruins this,” Qake said softly.

They got to the front door and Nibsler and Jewels both reached a hand out of the middle of the coat to knock on the door at the same time.

The door opened and an elf looked this big red coat up and down and up again, stopping at the tiny goblin face with a big beard hastily tied on, and a cap that didn’t quite fit right to top it off.

“Hello, elf!” Crusher said, “We Santa, here to just grabs some tools. Then be on our…my…way. No need to worry.”

The goblin stack wobbled forward slowly. The elf stood and watched, mouth slackly open. Another elf saw this big coat full of goblins shuffle into the workshop and called out “Santa, are you ok?”

“All good!” Crusher said quickly. Nibsler stuck a hand out of the middle of the coat with a thumbs up, for emphasis. So did Jewels. Which left two tiny green hands, at very different heights, both of them left hands, giving two thumbs up.

Crusher looked down, saw this, and decided that two thumbs up must over ride the weirdness of the visual itself.

The goblins wobbled and weaved into the workshop. The elves watched as “Santa” came to a stop, his midsection making grumbling noises and the sounds of slapping came from the middle of “Santa.”

“Stops it,” hissed Crusher from above, Santa seemingly talking to his own stomach.

“Stops it!” echoed “Santa’s” legs.

“They started it,” came dual voices in unison.

At a workbench tiny hands reached out from inside the big red coat and grabbed tools quickly. “We, uhh I, just need to take these tools to inspect them,” Crusher said, watching a flurry of hands sprout where, realistically none should come from. “It’s a Santas thing, you wouldn’t understands,” they added.

The elves just stood and stared.

“They’re buying it,” Jewels whispered.

“Because we’re so goods at this, well most of us are,” Nibsler said.

“Are you saying,” Jewels asked, slapping at Nibsler,” that I’ms a problem?”

“So you admits it,” Nibsler said, giggling, and slapping back.

“If you two don’t stop,” Crusher said as quietly as possible, “we’re leaving you boths here.”

The elves just watched in silence as “Santa,” tools stuffed inside his weirdly red coat, swayed in the general direction of the door.

“Well,” Crusher said, “we…I’ll be going now, thank you…elves, for your helps. Very good elves, shouldn’t be replaced or anything. Goods job.” And with that “Santa” left the workshop.

From a darkened corner of the workshop, Santa leaned forward and thanked the elves for playing along. “We knew they’d do something, and it’s just easier this way, you know?” he said to the elves who just shrugged and went back to work.

The goblins collapsed outside, and used the coat to tie up the tools, making a sack out of it and looked for a patient moose to help them get back home.

Back at the workshop, Santa spied them through a window, sighing. He handed an elf a bribe fit for a moose and sent the elf off to make it happen. Soon enough the goblins saw a moose nearby and grabbed on to go home.

Back in their house, the goblins looked at the tools and debated what kinds of toys to make. They considered rocketdogs, horseplanes, and even a very fancy twenty-two legged snake. But they couldn’t agree on anything. Of course.

“Wait, what if,” Jewels said slowly, “what if we just gives out the tools?”

“So they can hits us?” Crusher asked.

“I don’t likes being hit,” Nibsler added.

“No, so they can make their own toys,” Jewels said. “We teaches them all to make toys themselves!”

“With their own hands, not waiting for someone else to makes stuff, they can do it all year!” yelled Qake happily.

“We give them the gift of goblin creativity!” Nibsler shouted.

“And if they don’t then we can hit thems with the tools!” Crusher added.

“Obviously,” Jewels said. “But hopefully they’ll all makes toys whenever they wants. Goblin creativity! It’s better than just saying to the sky “I wants a this” and getting it.”

“And you could hurts yourself,” Nibsler said.

“Bonus for sure,” Jewels agreed.

And so the goblins carefully wrapped up each tool and distributed them to all the goblins, who were all now going to become toymakers, creative and happy, learning to take the weirdness in their heads, and their souls, and birth it out of material so others could also enjoy the work.

The four goblins sat, watching all their community start to build and create and smiled at a job very well done.

…and then Nibsler hit Jewels. Or Jewels hit Nibsler. No one was sure but soon they were chasing each other in circles while the others watched. Again.