For a moment, the disgust and fear faded, giving way to a timid glimmer in Lysandra's eyes.
Even deformed and reeking, the familiar represented something she had never known: companionship. At least, she thought,
"...I'm not alone anymore." A small voice slipped from her velvet lips.
Lysandra stepped back to the open window's ledge, the night wind easing the weight of the fresh stench still lingering in the room.
The creature remained there, wrapped in an emotion she couldn't name — something between yearning and hunger. Its pallid eyes were curiously directed at her. It looked at her with a desire Lysandra couldn't comprehend — raw, instinctive, and disturbing. For the first time, she didn't feel only revulsion.
Something twisted inside her — a knot of emotions for which she had no words. Disgust still clung to her skin, but beneath it stirred a quiet ache, a longing she didn't recognize. Was it pity? Loneliness? Or something darker, born from the silence of her upbringing and the absence of true affection?
She had been raised to recoil from ugliness, to fear the unknown, to seek beauty in order and control. And yet, there stood a creature that defied all of that — grotesque, deformed, and still... present. Not fleeing, not attacking. Just waiting. For her.
The heat of her blood pulsed in her temples as she realized how fragile it seemed: hunched shoulders, a spine bent under the weight of an atrophied body. Her breath caught, torn between instinct and impulse. Against everything she had been taught, Lysandra reached out, hesitantly, and placed the tips of her fingers on the translucent skin of its arm.
The texture was moist, like parchment forgotten in a crypt. The skin gave way under her touch — too thin, almost gelatinous — and beneath it, something moved. A muscle? A worm? She didn't know. The warmth was uneven: lukewarm in some places, cold in others, as if the body struggled to stay alive in fragments.
She stifled a sudden urge to vomit. It was repulsive.
The goblin didn't react. But there was a tremor — subtle, involuntary — that ran from the arm to the shoulder, as if the touch had awakened an ancient pain. Lysandra felt the roughness of poorly healed scars, the crust of accumulated time, and the metallic scent rising faintly, like rust on flesh.
She didn't pull away. Not yet. Because there was something in that touch that held her.
It was something. Someone unlike her or her father.
Someone she could touch.
Laugh with.
Play with.
The creature let out a low squeal — gobu… — but did not retreat.
Its shoulders, once tense, relaxed. The open fist over her chest softened, and the knees that had trembled with disgust now held her steady. Her breath, once short and hurried, found a calmer rhythm as she felt, in that delicate connection, the promise of no longer being alone.
A faint glimmer appeared in Lysandra's eyes, like moonlight reflected in the room. The stench of old sweat mingled with the cold wind outside, becoming almost bearable in the face of that gesture: the first sincere interaction with her familiar.
She smiled — a light, almost imperceptible smile, yet heavy with relief. Her voice came out in a tender whisper:
"At least… I'm not alone anymore."
And even wrapped in shadows and regret, she felt a spark of joy warming her heart.
Then, with a breath that trembled between fear and acceptance, she lowered her hand — the one that had held the grimoire like a shield, the one that had commanded stillness. Her fingers relaxed, and in that subtle gesture, she returned to the creature what she had taken: the right to move.
It blinked slowly, as if awakening from a long paralysis, and shifted its weight with cautious grace. No longer frozen by command, it stood not as a summoned beast, but as something closer to a companion.
Somewhere far away, a manic laugh echoed.
Shrill, piercing, impossible to ignore.
A witch.
Someone who had seen too much.
Someone who had been waiting for this very moment.