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“Mom, can we get churros?” six year-old Riz asked one day at the mall. “Can we, mom?” He looked back toward where he had left his mom mere moments ago, before he scurried off towards the churro cart and its cinnamon-y allure. But she wasn't there.
“Mom?” Riz’s eyes grew wide as he scanned the section of the mall around him. He darted to the other side of the cart, ducked around a potted plant, but couldn't find his mom anywhere.
“Dad?” Dad was with mom, but he wasn’t there either. Fear gripped the small goblin’s heart as he held back the tears. Mom and Dad were lost!
He was just a junior detective and lost parents are a big case! He wasn’t sure how he was going to solve this one, but he knew that detectives didn't just give up when it got difficult, so Riz pulled out his toy magnifying glass, set his little face into a pout of determination, and got to work looking for his parents. And boy, have they given him a difficult task! Didn’t his parents know that when you’re lost the best thing to do is to stay put? But they’d wandered off somewhere in this gigantic mall and it was up to Riz to save the day.
Riz looked around him once again and spied a store with women’s fashion in the window. He remembered his mom going in there once before, so he hurried over and into the store. The racks of clothing towered over the wee goblin, and Riz immediately lost sense of his mission as he popped in and out of the racks, hiding amongst the clothes – hide-and-seek had never been this fun! But oh, wait, who was looking for the hiding Riz? Riz jumped out of a rack of clothing, startling a high elf woman who had been browsing the skirts. The woman grabbed Riz by the forearm and glared at him.
“Where are your parents, young… boy?” She said the final word with uncertainty, not so much as mistaking Riz for a girl, but just unsure what genders goblins might have.
“I dunno. Will you help me look for them?”
The high elf sighed. “The people who work here can. Here, come with me.”
Alarm bells went off in Riz’s head: going with a stranger is a biiiiig NO! The woman wasn’t harming Riz, so he didn’t bite or claw her, but he did hiss, startling her once again and causing her to release her grip on his arm.
“Stranger danger!” Riz shouted before running out of her sight and hiding in more clothing. Two more women join the stranger at the sound of the commotion. The strangers were clever, calling out for him and promising him candy and treats, but Riz was naturally stealthy, slipping between clothing racks and darting out of sight when the staff began to rummage through the blouses and slacks looking for him. He managed to slip out of the store without being seen, and began to wander around the mall some more.
He spied the huge fountain in the middle of the store and ran over to it, climbing up onto the marble base where other people were sitting. The fountain had four tiers altogether, with a base all around the wide bottom. He stood there, on the base, craning his head to see all around the mall, hoping to catch sight of his parents, but after several minutes he didn’t have any luck. Riz’s heart began to beat faster as fear set in and he started to consider that he might be lost and not his parents. Frantically, he began to dart his head this way and that, calling out “Mom? Dad?” in a high-pitched voice. The mall was so big and he could feel himself shrinking further and further among the crowd of taller species.
“If you’re not going to make a wish, move aside,” commanded a small yet haughty voice.
Riz whipped around to see a boy standing behind him with a bored-yet-annoyed look on his face. He looked a little older than him and had long, pointy years, but not as large as Riz’s. His skin was the color of a copper piece and Riz thought he looked very pretty, like a doll.
“Now, now, Master Fabian,” came a kinder, older voice behind him, and a freckled, fair-skinned halfling woman in a fancy black-and-white frilly dress appeared behind the boy. “There’s no need to be rude; there’s plenty of space for you to climb up next to him and make your wish.”
“You’re making a wish?” asked Riz, his curiosity overtaking his fears momentarily. “How?”
The boy rolled his eyes. “Don’t you know anything, kid ? You take a coin, make a wish on it, and toss it into the fountain. Then your wish comes true.”
Riz was irked by being called ‘kid’ by someone not much older than him, but the thought of wishing for his parents to come back was appealing. He glanced at the fountain behind him and noticed that indeed there were tons of copper pieces and a few silver ones littering the floor beneath the water.
“Really?” he asked.
“Yes, really . …Watch.”
The boy named Fabian pulled a gold piece out of his pocket and held it in both hands to his chest. He closed his eyes, and then tossed the coin into the fountain as far as he could. It landed on the second-from-the-bottom tier of fountains and he nodded to himself, proud of his distance.
“The goal is to get it as close to the center as you can. The closer you get, the quicker your wish comes true,” stated Fabian matter-of-factly.
“Oh, Master Fabian, I didn’t tell you that when I told you about making wishes. Now you’re just making things up.”
“I said it’s true, so it is!” huffed Fabian as he crossed his arms.
Riz looked forlornly at the fountain and dug around in his backpack, but he had no money on him.
“What? Aren’t you going to make a wish?” asked Fabian. “ I wished that I would be as famous as my papá when I grow up.”
“I… don’t have any money,” Riz confesses, crestfallen.
“Oh. …Well.” Fabian dug in his pockets and pulled out a copper coin. “If you’re at the fountain, you gotta make a wish. Here.” he pressed the coin into Riz’s palm. “There. Now you can make your wish.”
Riz’s large ears perked up.
“Thank you!” he said, smiling. He turned around and copied what the nice(?) boy had done: he held the coin with both hands at his chest, closed his eyes, and made a wish. He then chucked the coin as hard as his little arms could. It flew through the air and landed in the bottom tier of the fountain about ten feet away from the first tier. He looked around expectantly, hoping that his parents would magically be there, but he still couldn't see them. Riz’s heart sank; he was so far from the center that he’d never find his parents at this rate.
“Hey, that’s pretty good,” said the boy. “Not as good as mine, though. But good for a beginner.”
Riz cheered up at his encouragement; maybe it would just take a few more minutes before his parents showed up, that’s all.
Fabian then turned back around to the woman behind him.
“Cathilda, can’t we go already? You said that going to the mall was something fun that commoners did, but we already went to the toy store and everything else here is boring !”
The toy store! Maybe my parents went there to surprise me with a gift!
“Oh, alright, Master Fabian,” the lady named Cathilda said with a chuckle. “We’ll return to the limousine until your mother is done shopping. As for your new friend, here-”
Fabian scoffed. “He’s just some random boy.”
“Are your parents nearby, or-?” But when Cathilda turned around, Riz was already gone and off towards the toy store.
When he arrived there, he excitedly ran inside. Overwhelmed by the bright, primary colors and enticing sounds of the toys, Riz immediately plunged himself in among the merchandise. He spotted a giant stuffed toy owlbear and ran up to it in glee, hugging the massive plush and giggling. He jumped onto its soft belly, smiling at the comfort the toy brings, and then heard a clatter come from behind it. Riz remembered that he’s currently Junior Detective Riz and he was on a case, so he snuck around the owlbear to investigate. It was there that Riz spied the building block table full of colorful blocks and a young child stacking up blocks only to deliberately knock them down once they had built as high as they could. Riz approached the child.
“What are you doing?”
“Playing Destructor.”
“What’s that?” Riz studied the child. They looked to be about his same age and height, and they even looked like a goblin, but they were very, very pale, as if they’d never seen any sunlight. They had curly white hair that went down to their shoulders, and big, dark eyes.
“Well, you build the tower…” the child said, quickly stacking up blocks, “and then when it’s really tall, you KNOCK IT DOWN!” they explained with delight as they punched the blocks and watched their tower collapse onto the tabletop in a cascade of blocks. “Do you want to try?”
Riz considered the game, but he’d always had more fun in building something than destroying it.
“Nah. I need to find my parents, anyway. They’re missing.”
“They are? That’s bad.”
“Uh-huh. Can you help me? They’re goblins, like me.”
“Sure,” the pale child said. “Where did you see them last time?”
“By the churros.”
“Well, maybe they’ll get hungry and want a churro. Maybe you should wait there.”
“Hmm, that’s not a bad idea.”
“I’ll wait with you,” the child offered.
“Thank you!” Riz said, and he rushed forward and hugged the child, who blushed at the sudden affection. The child felt deathly cold in his arms, but Riz didn't mind. He grabbed the child’s hand in one of his and led them back to the churro stand, and the child sat next to Riz when he climbed up onto a padded couch nearby.
The two children spent the next several minutes talking – well, Riz spent it talking and the pale child listening – as Riz talked about how amazing his mom is (“She’s a police officer! She arrests all the bad guys!”), about how he missed his dad a lot (“Dad goes on a lot of trips for work. I wish he’d stay home more, ‘cause it’s a lot of fun when he’s here!”), and how cool that stuffed owlbear was (“I call him Hooty! ‘Cause he’s part owl! I bet it’s as big as an actual owlbear! Do you think so too?”). The pale child just gave a small smile (strange how the child was always smiling just slightly, Riz thought), and asked Riz to tell them more.
Riz was about to explain to the child what a Junior Detective was when a voice cuts through his thoughts.
“Riz? Riz, where are you!?”
Riz stood up on the couch, his head popping into view from the back of the couch where Pok was standing, frazzled and scared.
“Dad! My wish worked! You came back for a churro!”
“Riz! What? What wish? What churro?” Pok strode forward and hugged the young goblin then scooped him up. “Riz, we were so worried for you! Where have you been?”
“You got lost so I went looking for you in the store.” Riz pointed at the clothing store. “And you weren't there so I went to the fountain but you weren’t there, even though I made a wish. So then I checked the toy store but then my new friend said I should wait by the churros in case you got hungry!”
“Friend?”
“Yeah, they’re right… here?” Riz scrambled out of his dad’s embrace and hopped back onto the couch, but there was no sign of the pale goblin child. He checked under the couch and around the nearby planters but saw nothing.
“Huh. Where’d they go? Maybe they went back into the store.”
“Well, I’m just glad you’re safe, kiddo.”
“I'm glad you’re safe, too. Where’s Mom?”
“She’s checking the second floor. I’ll give her a call on her crystal and let her know I’ve got you.”
“OK. Can we get churros?”
Pok sighed. “Sure thing, buddy.”