Machinist of Mana

Sasha

I looked at my sister, having felt off for the past several days. While I leaned up against the door to the warren, tapping my fingers in thought. Beside me my most common companion tinkered, playing with some mechanism or other.

“Do you think father was... wrong?”

“How do you mean?”

“He told the humans they'd be let go unharmed if they didn't attack, but...”

“No, they were clearly trying to betray him,” Greta answered. “Look how quickly the others showed up.”

“Maybe, but how would he have known that?”

“He's Father, of course he knows,” the other goblin answered.

“Still, I can't help but thinking that we might have been able to talk it out. He even seemed angry at them.”

“I'd be angry too if you betrayed me.”

Greta understood, but she just didn't seem to be as worried, at least not on the outside, but we spent too much time together for us not to know each other's mannerisms, and I could tell that she was bothered by this line of thought. Not wanting to push I changed the subject.

“What have you got there?” I asked, nodding to the small item Greta was working on.

“Oh this, the cleverest thing, it's an engine of some kind, works on a heat differential of all things.” At her sister's blank look my more intellectually inclined sister sighed and explained. “One side it hot, the other cold, and it spins.”

“That's... neat, but does it do anything else?”

Greta didn't like that response at all. “Spinning is enough, it's the very foundation of work! If you can make something spin you can run a wheel, or another mechanism, you could even pump water with it if you wanted!”

“Fine, fine, sorry I asked. You know I've never much cared for that kind of thing.” I waved my hands in an attempt to calm her down.

“You and everyone else, well, almost everyone else,” she grumbled.

“Almost?”

“Well, our esteemed Father knows it's worthwhile of course, and there are one or two others who are showing some amount of promise.”

“Our siblings?” I asked, not having seen any that would be worth much to me.

“No... some of the other altered ones. There's one in particular who's more clever than most, though he's still young and learning.” I could hear the hope in her voice.

“You like him,” I observed, only to have her scowl at me.

We two stood at an odd place in the tribe. Both of us were special, powerful in ways that few others were, smarter, different, better, but also alone. We were different, too different, to the point that few of the others, particularly the males, were of any interest at all. Both of us were of one mind in this, that taking one of the unaltered ones as a mate would be... wrong, something that had led to Father going out of his way to start altering some that weren't our siblings, in hope we might find someone.

Sadly our brother Sigmund had no such compunctions, and was fathering children at a steady rate. This wasn't great, because though they were slower to grow like all of our siblings they were also... stupid, yes, stupid was the word, and large. They were still young, but even now some of them were getting to be a real pain in the ass. The unaltered ones knew to obey, but these were aggressive beyond them, stronger, and while none had fully manifested their progenitor's strength yet, there were some signs they could in the future.

“Perhaps, have any caught you eye yet?” she returned, drawing me out of my thoughts and back to the present.

“No,” I admitted with a sigh.

“Did you know the humans take only one mate?”

I blinked at that. “Really?”

“Yes, odd isn't it? They also get really connected it seems.”

I had to think on that for a few moments. The idea of having only one other with you, it wouldn't work for most of our kind I didn't think. It also wasn't expected, though some of that might have been what Father had told us about the place before. On the island we'd apparently died in droves, so having only one wouldn't really work, but here...

“Would that be so bad though?”

“You know, that's why I like you Sasha.”

“Huh?”

“You actually think about things. Most of our siblings would hear something like that and they'd just write it off as humans being humans, but not you. You took the time to think about what it would be like, and if that was something you'd like, and I love that.”

“Without thinking how can we improve?”

“Hehe, exactly.”

“You didn't answer my question though, would it be so bad?”

For a moment she stopped in her tinkering and tapped her chin.

“I don't know, I'll think about it.” That made me chuckle, because what better response could she have had?

A few moments later she finished with whatever she was doing and held up the device before making a small flame under it. It spun faster and faster, the little wheel chugging along. Honestly it looked more like a toy than anything to me, but if she said it was worthwhile it would be, Greta knew her business.

“One more step towards a greater future, for all of us,” she said, looking at it spin.

“Yeah, for all of us.”