SandDune reads in 2024 - Part 2

How the Goblin War (if you asked the humans) or the Glorious Conflict Resisting The Ongoing Human Aggression (if you asked the goblin generals) or the Bloody Miserable Mess (if you asked the Nineteenth Infantry) got started really depends on which side was doing the talking..
Humans and elves will tell you that goblins are stinking, slinking, filthy, sheep-stealing, cattle-rustling, henhouse-raiding, disgusting, smelly, obnoxious, rude, unmannerly, and violent.
The goblins would actually agree with all that, and they might add “cowardly” and “lazy” to the list as well. Goblins have lots of flaws, but few illusions.
As far as the human side of the war is concerned, one day the goblins, who had been keeping to themselves pretty well in the high hills and deep mires, came out to a human settlement, riding their pigs and waving banners, and holding a list of really laughable demands.
The humans refused, and the next day they were hip-deep in short green-and-ochre people with tusks. The humans retaliated, the goblins retaliated for the retaliation, the elves got involved, the orcs got involved because the elves were involved, and by the end of six months it was a horrible churning entrenched mess, where troops on both sides sat around for weeks on end and occasionally ran at each other screaming.

He had always loved to brush and play with hair; it was the only thing that made time truly fly. When he had turned sixteen he had promised himself he would go to the hairdressing college that sat south of the River Clyde. He had gathered up all of his inspiration, the sketches he had copied from the Littlewoods catalogue and pages ripped from the Sunday magazines. Then he had gone to Cardonald to see about the evening classes. At the bus stop outside the college he alighted with half a dozen eighteen-year-olds. They wore the newest, most-fashionable gear and talked with a buzzing confidence that masked their own nerves. Shuggie walked half as fast as they did. He watched them go in the front door, then he recrossed the street to catch the bus going the other way.

'They approach the whale. It breaks the horizon, disturbing the line — a blot of ink on a handwritten note. Jo touches the damp and sighs. He takes no pleasure in the death of a whale. Fishermen and cockle women approach, dragging a large rope through the sand, leaving a trail in its wake like an overgrown lugworm. Others simply observe. Marble-eyed boys wondering whether a prisoner cries in its innards, putting their ears to the skin, unafraid of a response that may come forth. They imagine a bleached fellow, carbuncles and pale, lingering in the stomach like a cancerous parasite, feeding off the odd sardine and nibbling away at leviathan's body.'

I nodded grimly. The urgency of the situation stemmed from a recent incident involving Meals on Wheels. On Pincer’s behalf I’d applied for their services, but the day they showed up, she threatened to shoot if they didn’t vacate the premises immediately. Someone had seen her wielding an object that looked like a bazooka. That led to a complaint to the police, which led to Adult Protective Services, which led to the involvement of a woman by the name of Ruth Perry, who warned me there would be swift consequences if we didn’t disarm her and provide for her needs immediately.

‘Your mother was a refugee, wasn’t she?’ she said, which is a demented way to begin a job interview...

‘She would never refer to herself as a refugee, or even a former refugee,’ I added. ‘It’s been quite weird to hear people say that.’
‘The people you will be working with are also unlikely to use the term. We prefer “expat”. In answer to your question, I’m the Vice-Secretary of Expatriation.’ ‘
And they are expats from … ?’
‘History.’
‘Sorry?’
Adela shrugged. ‘We have time-travel,’ she said, like someone describing the coffee machine. ‘Welcome to the Ministry.’

The vixen threads the dusk, quick and low. The traces of small creatures have been washed away and there are no little birds on the wing. She snaffles a fat drowned slug, trots on. She knows a place for bacon rinds, stale baps, a chilly feast of fish skin and potato peel. As long as the cubs stay where she left them, as long as no hunting owl wings the night in her absence, as long as no late car strikes as she crosses the road, she will return and feed them again.

'Mewn twll yn y ddaear trigai hobyd. Nid twll afiach, budr, gwlyb yn llawn pennau mwydod ac oglau llysnafedd; ac nid yn sych, moel, llychlyd heb ddim ynddo i eistedd arno neu'i fwyta chwaith: hobyd-dwll oedd hwn, ac ystyr hynny? Moethus.'