While there were many wished away items that were automatically returned, albeit in an exciting new and likely inconvenient location, there were other things that stayed.
Jewellery arrived less often than Sarah would have expected, but when it did there were local jewellers who were more than happy to break it down and repurpose it to suit Underground tastes.
The other major item that was never returned was food. Aside from the potential issue of spoilage, there were likely very few people Above who would actually want their lunch back once it had been adulterated by goblin.
It was one of these food wishes that first brought the process to Sarah’s attention when she’d questioned why a goblin was wearing a plastic wedding cake topper. Therein followed an overly complicated game of goblin gibberish and charades that had only ended when one of the brighter members of the castle horde had escorted her to the junkyard where she met the on duty triage crew. This was how Sarah learned that a wedding cake had been wished away, neatly explaining the plastic bride and groom novelty, as well as the more hyperactive than usual goblins who’d tried to explain the incident.
Sarah soon understood that when the castle horde disappeared at once, that it was likely in response to the lure of a free meal. The rules of first come, first served meant that it was usually the retrieval goblins who scored the prize, but the possibility of a bigger haul always drew the chancers.
Mostly Sarah ignored these infrequent disappearances as one of the norms of living with goblins, but occasionally the rule of children and puppies needed to be invoked, when silence became suspicious. Very, very suspicious.
Sarah stood behind the triage crew and watched in amazement at the in progress goblin feeding frenzy that was underway in the junkyard. Amid the chaos of bodies and armour, Sarah caught brief glimpses of what they were eating. She recognised packaging from several fast food restaurants, as well as many she was unfamiliar with, and it just kept dropping in. Added to this was a sprinkling of the kinds of food she regarded as typical carnival fare, which skewed heavily towards deep fried, but minus the brightly logoed wrapping in favour of being impaled on a stick for ease of consumption.
The logistics of how this rain of junk food was occurring was something she would consider at a much later date, but right now there were a whole lot of people, from a diverse range of places Above, who would not be getting their burger or taco or fries or whatever was bright yellow and came on a stick. She didn’t expect that they’d appreciate that their loss was making a lot of goblins happy.
While they were voraciously devouring the seemingly never ending mountain of fast food, Sarah was just hoping that the goblins' distraction would not lead them to question the origins of the nuggets they were inhaling.
Frenzy
While there were many wished away items that were automatically returned, albeit in an exciting new and likely inconvenient location, there were other things that stayed.
Jewellery arrived less often than Sarah would have expected, but when it did there were local jewellers who were more than happy to break it down and repurpose it to suit Underground tastes.
The other major item that was never returned was food. Aside from the potential issue of spoilage, there were likely very few people Above who would actually want their lunch back once it had been adulterated by goblin.
It was one of these food wishes that first brought the process to Sarah’s attention when she’d questioned why a goblin was wearing a plastic wedding cake topper. Therein followed an overly complicated game of goblin gibberish and charades that had only ended when one of the brighter members of the castle horde had escorted her to the junkyard where she met the on duty triage crew. This was how Sarah learned that a wedding cake had been wished away, neatly explaining the plastic bride and groom novelty, as well as the more hyperactive than usual goblins who’d tried to explain the incident.
Sarah soon understood that when the castle horde disappeared at once, that it was likely in response to the lure of a free meal. The rules of first come, first served meant that it was usually the retrieval goblins who scored the prize, but the possibility of a bigger haul always drew the chancers.
Mostly Sarah ignored these infrequent disappearances as one of the norms of living with goblins, but occasionally the rule of children and puppies needed to be invoked, when silence became suspicious. Very, very suspicious.
Sarah stood behind the triage crew and watched in amazement at the in progress goblin feeding frenzy that was underway in the junkyard. Amid the chaos of bodies and armour, Sarah caught brief glimpses of what they were eating. She recognised packaging from several fast food restaurants, as well as many she was unfamiliar with, and it just kept dropping in. Added to this was a sprinkling of the kinds of food she regarded as typical carnival fare, which skewed heavily towards deep fried, but minus the brightly logoed wrapping in favour of being impaled on a stick for ease of consumption.
The logistics of how this rain of junk food was occurring was something she would consider at a much later date, but right now there were a whole lot of people, from a diverse range of places Above, who would not be getting their burger or taco or fries or whatever was bright yellow and came on a stick. She didn’t expect that they’d appreciate that their loss was making a lot of goblins happy.
While they were voraciously devouring the seemingly never ending mountain of fast food, Sarah was just hoping that the goblins' distraction would not lead them to question the origins of the nuggets they were inhaling.