A Fire goblin

A snap of the fingers, and its thumbnail lit up like a candle.

The creature peered through the circular window. It had only one good eye; the other was glass, usually clouded white. The window itself was stained glass, fractured into a dozen colors that bent the winter light.

He turned away, wobbling and muttering curses as he shook his hand to extinguish the flame. After a few steps, he stopped and looked back at the house. Everything seemed fine, so he continued on.

Two more steps.

Something in his gut made him turn again.

Still fine. Just like every other winter morning.

It was a long walk from the house to the frozen door—a place where there was a small window of time each day when the guard might fall asleep. Behind that door lay the last reserves of wood, a hoard stolen and stockpiled by the king.

Hungry, grumpy, and exhausted, the fire goblin had no choice. He needed to steal wood or starve.

Under the king’s rule, there was never enough wood to go around—not for anyone. And this shortage had come during the longest, most brutal winter in nearly a thousand years.

There was no proof, but the goblin suspected the guard was never truly asleep. He himself wasn’t agile or quiet, and his blind side made things worse. Because of that, he never took much. If he did, the guard would likely pay for it with their life.

So he took two or three logs—enough to ration for weeks—and a small bag of sawdust scraped from around the towering piles.

Every time he left, he looked back at his house.

He had burned down more than one already—eating wood too late at night, losing control, and waking to flames where walls had been.