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Nott was in the habit of stealing things, yes. That much was obvious, even to the Crownsguard. She stole the loveliest, most wonderful trinkets she could get her fingers on, and she didn’t let them go easily. She had stolen items whose value far exceeded that of her entire village.
Caleb Widogast was the best thing she had ever stolen.
Not that he seemed to realize she’d stolen him, of course. He liked to believe he was acting entirely of his own accord, and she was happy to let him.
Nott was more a collector than a thief, though, and part of collecting was studying the items in her collection. She’d always been too curious for her own good, and the inquisitive nature that had landed her in so much trouble back at home was tempted beyond reason at the new world in front of her.
They’d told all the Goblin children about Humans, of course: dangerous, slow, with stubbornness and intelligence that made them hard to kill. Their elders had taught them about Human weaknesses, and for the first month Nott sometimes found herself mentally listing the ways she could kill Caleb, if she needed to.
What they hadn’t taught about Humans was far more interesting. She learned quickly that Humans, despite being twice the size of normal people, were easier to injure than she could have imagined. Caleb bled easily, could be knocked unconscious by the merest blow, and needed an absurd amount of sleep every night. Humans also ate far less food than normal people, but drank far more coffee, and had horrible vision.
Nobody had told her that Humans were obsessed with books, or covered with flecks of ink, or scared of water. She thought that was a pretty important fact to have missed. A few months of careful study as they traveled on their own had, she was certain, made Nott the Brave the foremost Goblin expert on Human physiology and psychology. She might never be able to pass as one, but Nott knew that she understood how Humans worked.
Which made meeting Beau a rather big surprise.
*****
Caleb checked on her a lot, Nott was aware, and usually she had a smile and assurance ready, wanting to ease a bit of the worry from his face. (Humans, it turned out, had very useful face lines that told you what they were feeling. Very important for a race that had apparently entirely missed the concept of ears, let alone ears that would convey mood and meaning.) Their first night as a proper group, though, on the road toward Alfield together, she was too intent on her notes to pay much attention.
“What are you doing here?” Caleb asked, taking a seat on the ground beside her with a traditional Human Sitting Groan. She frowned at her paper. (Jester’s paper. Nott’s now. Jester needed to keep a better eye on her things.) “You look very busy.”
“Oh - a little, yes,” she said quickly, looking up at him, and then away. “I’m just trying to figure something out.”
“Well you know, I do not read Goblin, but maybe I could help?” Caleb offered. “You seem a little distressed.”
She looked over her papers again, and then groaned, ready to face up to it if she must. “I had it wrong, Caleb. I’m sorry!”
“There is nothing to be sorry for. I am often wrong myself. It is one of the ways we make progress towards being right,” Caleb said philosophically. Nott narrowed her eyes. “What can we be more right about in the future, my friend?”
“I told you Tieflings couldn’t see movement,” Nott admitted. “And - and I know Jester said that was true, but I’ve been paying attention to her and to Molly and they definitely can!”
“This is not so big a thing to be wrong about,” Caleb said slowly.
“But they told us Tieflings couldn’t,” Nott said unhappily, poking her paper with one claw. “When I was little, they taught us everything Goblins knew about all the other races, and I wrote it all down, Caleb! And I was sure I was right about Tieflings!”
Caleb was trying to hide a smile, which was hard with those tricky Human face lines. “I think Jester and Molly have discovered already that they had some wrong ideas about Goblins, as well. We learn from each other.” She nodded, but kept picking at the corner of her paper. After a moment, Caleb hummed a low, deep breath that was one of his thinking sounds, and shifted his position on the ground so that he was facing her. “But this is not all.” He didn’t make it a question.
“I don’t know what else I have wrong!” Nott burst out. “I thought I understood Humans! I’ve been learning ever so much about you, and I had it all figured out! But then I met Beau!” Caleb gave another thinking sound, and Nott shook her head. “And she doesn’t care about books or magic at all, Caleb, and you don’t punch things or stare at girls like she does! So now I don’t know, and I can’t figure out which of you is not Human right!”
“Slow down, slow down, kiddo!” Caleb stretched out his hands towards her in what Nott had thought was a Human Reassurance Gesture. Beau didn’t do that, though. Beau seemed to wave her hands violently sideways to tell people to be quiet. She didn’t know which was right. “Help me understand this, hmmm? You are trying to understand other cultures, yes?”
Nott nodded miserably. “And not just to steal from them better, either,” she muttered.
“Of course not.” Caleb thought for a moment. “Before we met, had you been around many Humans before?”
“Only the prison guards,” Nott whispered. She didn’t like remembering them. “I saw Humans in the villages, sometimes, but I tried to keep away.”
Caleb grimaced. “I am perhaps not the best one to learn from about normal Human behavior,” he said carefully. “I am not always the best model.”
“You mean like the bathing thing the others keep teasing you about? Do other Humans bathe more than you?”
He winced a little. “I am afraid so. I am not so good at that sort of thing these days.”
Nott grabbed one piece of paper and scribbled some notes on it, circling something she knew Caleb wouldn’t be able to read. “So Beau is the one!” Nott said triumphantly. It threw off a lot of her calculations, but she could start again.
“The one what?” Caleb asked blankly, and Nott grinned at him fondly. For such a very smart man, he could be incredibly thick.
“Beau is the one who can be Human right,” she explained. “And since you’re not, that’s probably why we’re friends!”
He stretched out a hand again, face flickering through many different thoughts at once, and finally put his hand down on hers. “Nott, you must tell me if I am wrong,” he said slowly.
“Oh, always, Caleb!”
“Hmmm. Well, this is what I think. When they taught you about all of the races, did they teach you what Goblins are?”
“Of course!”
Caleb nodded. “And when they taught you of Goblins, did they tell you that it was all right to be a Goblin who was not like the others?”
She blinked at him. “You’re not making any sense. Goblins have to be Goblins, or they’re not Goblins at all.”
He looked very sad, all of a sudden, and his hand curled around to take hold of hers. “So what is a Goblin who is clever and curious and kind, then? A Goblin girl who would protect her friends, who would be friends with a weak and fearful Human?”
Nott swallowed. “I can’t figure it out,” she said, and it was so quiet that Caleb’s useless ears certainly couldn’t have heard it at all. It seemed like he did, though, because his strange blue eyes blinked very rapidly for a little while.
“Nott,” he said, after a while. “You know that I tell people you are my best friend. You know that this is true?”
“Of course, and you’re mine, Caleb!”
He grinned, and it was still a little sad. “I am best friends with a Goblin, and I forget to eat meals, and my own mother would not recognize me if she were here to see my face - but I am not wrong to be this way. Humans may be as different as they please, and yet they are still Humans. I will never be like Beau, thank the gods, and yet she is not wrong either. Do you understand this?”
She looked at him sideways, and then back at her notes. “I suppose,” she said slowly.
“And if you are a Goblin not like any other, then I think you are not wrong, either,” Caleb said firmly. “It is the others who are wrong, though, if they did not know enough to love you.”
“Goblins don’t really know much about love,” Nott said, and her voice was scratchier than usual.
“You are wrong there,” Caleb said, smiling at her with his warmest Human Approval Smile.
No. His Caleb-approval smile.
She scooted over next to him, burying her face in the side of his friendly-smelling coat, and blinking away a few strange tears as his warm hand rubbed circles on her back.
“Caleb?” She asked after a while, but she didn’t move away.
“Yes, my Nott?”
“I don’t know anything about Half-Orcs.”
He laughed at that, quiet and sincere, and she had to smile, too.
“Neither do I. I suppose we will learn together, hmmm?”
She nodded, and let the claws of one hand twist a little tighter into the fabric of his coat, holding onto what was hers.