Following Breadcrumbs
Posted on Mon Mar 16th, 2026 @ 12:37 by Ji-an Yun
Chapter:
Gobsmacked
Location: New Cresthill
Timeline: Equinox, two minutes past half six
1991 words - 4 OF Standard Post Measure
It was, as most were wont to predict of any day in these parts, a pretty dreary kind of Sunday. Despite Winter’s best attempts to overstay its welcome, the inevitable promise of an increased pollen count and sudden upwards trend in the sheep population meant that Spring had its talons well and truly into the year, and that might have been a relief had it not meant trading the crispness of snow for the sogginess of not-snow-anymore. Things were always a bit sludgy in between the seasons, though grey was a perfectly acceptable shade for any Scottish sky, provided it had the good manners to vary its greys with some imagination.
(That was probably asking a bit much of New Cresthill, in all fairness. At least half of its population refused to admit it even had an imagination and the rest of it would have preferred to go without. The unknown had been bad enough when they hadn’t known about it but now that it had been taking a dump on their front lawn for months on end, almost all of them were keen for a change of pace, if they were honest. It had been a nice town, once upon a time. Before everything had got political.*)
The bus stop on Brae Street had been empty for most of the afternoon. It had the particular patience of bus stops in small Scottish towns; the sort that have seen decades of buses arrive late, early, or not at all and had long since learned not to take it personally.
At precisely thirty-two minutes past six, the air beside the timetable puckered like cloth pinched between unseen fingers.
This was unusual.
A goblin stepped out.
He was small, green, angular and dressed in a neat charcoal coat with brass buttons that shone with the quiet confidence of things polished regularly. His ears were long enough to suggest ambition and his eyes had the steady calculating gleam of someone who considered opportunity not a matter of luck, but of vigilance.
He consulted a folded scrap of paper.
As he considered whatever it was that drew his already-craggy brow into a deeper pucker, the air behind him gave another small sigh and two more goblins spilled out of the same crease, though ‘spilled’ may have suggested a level of coordination that was, frankly, undeserved. One did manage to land neatly on both feet; this would have been more impressive had they actually belonged to him.
As the pair vied for occupancy of the same puddle, the first to arrive, considerably shorter than the pair, glanced upwards at the weathered timetable with the long-suffering indifference of someone who could have made his fortune predicting his brothers’ antics had he been the gambling sort. As it turned out, he wasn’t, which was perhaps a little culturally unusual but this particular goblin tended to pride himself on being above-standard.
It wasn’t that he was ashamed of being a goblin; that was about as preposterous as trying to apologise for having a nose or developing misgivings about the absence of chest-hair.** It was just that there was scope, he often argued, for taking a little more care about one’s reputation when your father had spent his entire life trading his for gutter-malt and your mother, may she be forever blessed, had treated respectability as something that happened to other families. Standards, he’d tried to teach his brothers, opened doors, or at least left them unlocked, which was sometimes the best any reasonable goblin could ask for.
Long, spindly fingers scratched habitually at a dry, flaky scalp, just enough to push the mop of valiant self-respect set in tight ringlets slightly askew. Verrin Borgrev was a name that carried modest weight in certain administrative circles of goblinkind. He was not the sort of goblin who ruled empires or plundered vaults. Those goblins tended to live short, exciting lives. Verrin preferred contracts. His cousins in the family trade had sometimes remarked that Verrin could smell a loophole the way a bloodhound smells foxes.
Badric and Dabric, his brothers, could smell biscuits.***
"That’ll be enough, boys."
Compliance was sluggish, punctuated by a series of surreptitious hand-flicks sideways designed to seize the final say.
"I didn’t do nuffin’," Badric replied.
"You landed on your brother. That's not very stealth-like."
"His feet was in the way."
"I was here first!"
Verrin took a moment to peer over the piece of paper and then flicked a finger against its top corner as if to emphasise a point.
"Gentlemen,” he retorted generously. “We are on assignment."
The older brother adjusted the cuffs of his coat and regarded the town. Under ordinary circumstances, the lack of immediate panic induced by the arrival of non-locals might have been suspicious but, as Verrin studied the nearby tableaux of a pair of transportation modules frozen at the point of passing, he had to grudgingly concede that Garrick had a knack for planning ahead. The temporal pause button wouldn't last for long but it would suffice, barring moronic interference.
Badric, in a rare moment of cognizant awareness, squinted up the street. "Looks normal."
Right on cue.
"Nothing about this assignment is normal," said Verrin. "They never are when Garrick makes a point of requesting discretion."
Dabric nodded sagely. "That’s usually when things go wrong."
"Things go wrong,” said Verrin pointedly, "when you veer off-contract and interfere with the natural order of events." He spoke with the authority of one who had moved past mere speculation into the certainty of lived experience.
Both brothers considered this.
"Are we not interfering then?"
Verrin neatly folded the piece of paper and tucked it into his coat pocket.
"We are observing."
"What's the difference?"
"The difference," Verrin declared, "is that observation comes with indemnity clauses."
Badric squinted at the tuft of paper poking out of Verrin's pocket. "Is that the contract?"
"A working summary."
"Does it say when we eat?"
"Article Twelve."
The pair brightened.
"Tea break?"
"Tea break."
Dabric rubbed his hands together.
"Good contract." Garrick's usually were.
Reaching into his other pocket, Verrin drew out a device and flicked open the clasp to reveal a complicated clock-face. With a sniff of acknowledgement, he snapped it closed again and approached the stagnant automobile with the air of one trying to pass off curiosity as due diligence. Even by goblin standards, Verrin wasn't known for his vertical blessings and, after a minute lost trying to snatch a glance in through the window mid-jump, he succumbed to the inevitable indignity of having to rely on his brothers for something.
"A hand if you will, boys."
Funny lookin' contraption, he decided, nose smushed up against the glass in such a way as to leave a smear of oily residue as he adjusted stance to peer into the back seat. The humans inside had been caught in fleeting mid-argument, presumably with the car traveling in the opposite direction. The driver’s hand hovered inches above the horn, while his passenger was frozen halfway through a gesture that had historically resolved very few disagreements but had a proud cultural lineage. From his vantage, it was difficult to tell how well this had been received by its intended quarry but Verrin had been around long enough to speculate.
Maybe this would be more interesting than he'd anticipated.
"Right," he conceded, having reclaimed his footing without notable incident. "We've got about five minutes before this wears off, and after that, we're on our own. Time to do some snooping, boys."
"Verrin?"
The tiny goblin turned his attention away from the street to swing his gaze back and forth between the two vacant expressions staring back at him. "Yes?"
"What exactly are we looking for?"
"Clues."
"Ah, right."
There was a slight shuffle as the trio made their way towards the footpath, falling into a natural formation that saw Verrin take the lead but not in such a way as to squander the clear advantage of being able to hide behind much larger targets should the occasion warrant.
One whole minute passed; four to go.
"Verrin?"
"What now."
"What kind of clues?"
"Important ones."
Badric nodded thoughtfully, which for him meant the idea had passed through his head at a respectful distance without actually stopping. "Right. But what do they look like?" he asked.
Verrin slowed his pace, considering this with the patience of someone accustomed to explaining concepts that were, in theory, already explained.
"They tend," he said carefully, "to resemble the thing you’re trying to find, only earlier. And if you follow them, they lead you all the way to where you're trying to get. Like a trail of breadcrumbs."****
The minute the words left his mouth, Verrin winced.
"Except ideally less edible."
Badric scratched his ear. "So...we’re lookin’ for breadcrumbs?"
"No."
"Not breadcrumbs, but like breadcrumbs."
"Yes."
"But not breadcrumbs."
"No, boys, not breadcrumbs."
Another minute ticked by as the pair seemed to ponder this. Verrin passed the time by counting the instances of chewed gum he had to step around and, on one occasion, had the poor fortune to dodge into.
"That's a shame," Dabric eventually offered. By some odd feat of sheer distracted disobedience, the interjection came from a lot further back that Verrin would have preferred.
"A real shame," Badric confirmed, his voice likewise arriving via some unanticipated distance.
The impending promise of a revelation was something Verrin had learned not to anticipate with too much hope. He slowed to a stop.
"Because if we was looking for breadcrumbs, we'd be done already."
Against his better judgement, Verrin drew in a deep breath and slowly released it as he turned. The pair had stopped several yards back and were now staring, with the kind of longing Verrin had grown to distrust, faces pressed against a store-front window in an almost exact replica of Verrin's own earlier surveillance technique with the additional emphasis of a slowly-developing puddle of drool drizzling from the end of their chins. Verrin glanced up at the shop's signage and sighed.
"Not now, boys."
"But Verrin..."
"Not now, boys. Remember Article Twel..."
The jangle of a shop bell interrupted just long enough to allow time for Verrin to give up.
"...ve."
Once again, he glared up at the store-name. Gregg's, was it? Well, not for much longer.
"Thank you very bloody much."
* In actual fact, New Cresthill had a long history of being knee-deep in the dung of democracy. It was not by any stroke of accidental coincidence that a town only able to boast one main street had accumulated no less than three pubs over the course of its existence. Any self-respecting Scotsman would tell you that it’s impossible to enjoy a swallie if the bloke next to you was talkin’ guff. A rough translation would suggest that a certain amount of natural segregation had been history's way of ensuring the town survived long enough to have a checkered past. Cultivating animosity was practically patriotic and nobody could accuse their ancestors of shirking their civic duty. Not unless they wanted to go home sober.
** This was preposterous, Verrin was very vehemently vocal on this point. The occasional situation that may have resulted in the appearance of him trying to falsely claim a crop of curly chest-warmers was merely the momentary consequence of needing somewhere to stuff his toupee in a hurry. Lack of chest-hair wasn’t something to be ashamed of; being bald was hereditary prerogative gone mad.
*** Or, at the very least, routinely smelled of biscuits.
**** This is, of course, an entirely false premise. Any self-respecting expert will tell you that relying on breadcrumbs as a means of navigation will only result in disappointment and birds, and quite possibly death-by-gingerbread.
