When the sun princess and Froglip entered into the dining hall together, most eyes were on them.
Every noise shrank into small whispers as the people around the enormous table stared up at the goblin prince. He swept down the stairs as practiced as he could, the bottoms of his feet scraping upon the stone becoming the only audible sound.
At a glance around the table, he picked out Ophelia and the miner boy sitting at the table and with a sneaky smirk he began to head in their direction. However, before the prince of the goblins got so much as five steps in, Irenie grabbed his arm and corralled him back towards her.
"You, Prince Froglip, are going to fix the door in the adjacent hall," she said firmly and released him to point at the door. "The royal blacksmith will help you put the bolts back into the wall. Lucky the hinges weren't damaged or else we'd be having a very unpleasant discussion," Irenie said with a grim smirk, but Froglip registered it as a smile, nonetheless, as he left the hall.
"Any dith'cussion with the prin'theth of the thun people ith' a pleath'ant one." The goblin grinned back in his charming way and the princess paled a little before nodding and returning to sit with the others.
Froglip entered into the 'hall' he and his goblin men had first seen. Immediately, the 'blacksmith' who would apparently be aiding Froglip that morning in fixing the door began swearing and cursing at him. The goblin prince sneered and walked a large circle around the man who continued to curse him out and shake his fists at Froglip.
The blacksmith seemed to be pointing at the large spiked bolts attached to the door and then the gaping holes in the stone wall. However, while Froglip was propping up the large fallen door and rolling his eyes at cursing sun man before him, his keen goblin ears picked up whispering from the other room.
His mouth flattened into a line and the goblin prince craned his ears ever so slightly, a inconspicuous, blank look on his features.
"What an unkempt creature," one nasally voice hissed. "Cousin, are all goblins so uncivilized? It wasn't even wearing a shirt or breeches!"
Froglip's brow bunched into lines and a frown pulled down at the corners of his mouth as he continued to ignore the blacksmith and bash his fist into the large iron bolts, driving them deep into the wall.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
A gasp came from the blacksmith which interrupted his string of verbal curses but Froglip shushed him.
"If I didn't know any better, cousin, I would say that thing fancies you. Perhaps the foolish creature is interested in marrying you." The nasty, nasally voice continued to hiss little rotten things in the other room that made Froglip's fingers curl. The nerve of a sun welp to call him, Prince of the Goblins, a thing.
BAM! BAM!
He struck two other bolts before going deathly silent once more, his fist hovering over the last bolt in anticipation.
"Well, Jeffery," the princess said in a low whisper as she spoke under her breath. "I would rather marry one of them than ever willingly consort with a miserable, whiny rake."
Was that true?
Princess Irenie had just admitted along with a handful of other things that she would marry a goblin.
Of course the prince knew he had arrested Princess Irenie's attention ever since the first time they met. It was clear every time she shivered with excitement at his arrival that the princess was enthralled by Froglip. He just didn't expect the princess to voice her opinion this soon!
Quickly, the prince hit his fist into the last bolt, combed back his spiked, pink hair and jumped into a trot for the dining room. He came upon a very tense image of the princess hovering deathly still over the sun man she must have been arguing with.
"Oh, Prince Froglip, would you care to sit?" She asked and pointed to the chair furthest from her. Well that just wouldn't do! If the princess was so affectionate towards him, she would want to sit with him, wouldn't she?
Froglip instead took his chair in front of the princess and in the process scooted the sun man to the side. To his enjoyment the man looked annoyed with his pink nose wrinkled.
"And what hath the Printh'eth Irenie arranged for today?" The goblin asked with his most charming of smiles while Irenie shivered again.
She looked at him, then down, and then at the people surrounding the table, her eyes alight with something like hope.
"I was hoping that a few of you present would volunteer to accompany Curdie and I to the village just along the outside of the mountain. There we will be building houses for the miners who had lost them in a mud slide."
Froglip's smile immediately faltered. If there was one true thing all goblins could agree on was that they hated the miners.
However, the goblin was not the first to voice his disagreement. "I certainly will not be doing manual labour. Why can't they do it themselves? Aren't miners supposed to be strong?"
It was the very same sun welp who had called him a thing.
The Goblin Prince considered what the sun man had said to Irenie and shifted his jaw in contemplation. "I would gladly lend my goblins to help with the miners recon'thtruc'thion." The Prince glanced at the man with a cruel sneer.
The princess held a faint smile even though the rest of royals' mumbling seemed to agree with the sun man. Perhaps they wouldn't be of any help, but that just made Froglip look all the better.
He was so overjoyed by her reaction that Froglip was floating through existence all the way up to the moment the princess had him and his goblins lined up in front of the miner hovels. He was only nudged out of his giddy state by a pointed elbow.
"Are we sposed' to knock em over, my prince, or build em up?" One of Froglip's goblins asked.
"Build," he growled under his breath while Irenie continued to chatter her plans to the group in excitement, a smile as plain as the sunlight on her face. It didn't take a goblin of vast intellect to see that the princess felt strongly towards this plan. Froglip didn't want any of his minions messing things up for him if he was to demonstrate to the Princess Irenie that he was capable of 'kindness'
Often times, sun people like the miners said goblins were unkind because of small things like their unwillingness to follow the imposed laws of the sun people. However, physical displays of strength and name calling were their tradition. Froglip just had to make sure that goblin tradition was kept under rock and cave in order to convince the princess he was 'kind'.
It had been a long walk to one of the sun-villages on the east side of the mountain where Irenie had intended for the goblins to learn something about commerce as well as community service. His ears sagged as Irenie and the sun people continued to talk about things he did not understand, avoiding the nasty glares from the miners and the sun. At least the trees were thick on this side of the mountain so he wouldn't literally die by the light. Too much of any sunlight and a mountain goblin would fade away in hours.
"Now, does that sound doable?" Irenie asked in a cheery voice as the sun flared unpleasantly over head as the goblins shifted uncomfortably.
When they looked at the Prince for confirmation -because they certainly hadn't been listening to the princess' long winded speech either- Froglip nodded graciously.
"As the thun printh'eth commandth," the prince said, pushing his men off to the side where they looked at each other blankly.
"Right-" Froglip loomed over his stout goblin men with wide glaring eyes almost as brilliant as the sun currently baking them alive. "I want no name-calling, no fighting, no animal-th'tealing, no cha'thing miners for thport, or elthe I'll be th'tamping whatever thoft-toed flathead-"
"The princess already told us we 'ought to be on our best behaviour, Prince Froglip," one goblin piped up after raising his hand as all the other goblins nodded in unison.
"We don' want princess Oi-renie to think badly of us." Again they all nodded with grins and the Prince was left to stand there while the other goblins quickly scattered and set off to work.
The miners and their families weren't particularly thrilled to be working with the creatures that caused them annoyance. However, when they grudgingly allowed the goblins in to work, they were met by a strangely compliant group that was great with heavy tools. It took a couple of small mess-ups and they began to get along.
Meanwhile, Princess Irenie had been watching the goblins off-and-on as she helped Curdie sand down the floor boards for the houses. The rocky terrain was difficult for most people to work on but the miners had always managed and the goblins were experts.
"I'm actually growing to like their antics," Irenie whispered to Curdie as she pushed the sanding paper over the rougher edges of the board. "Goblins certainly have a good work ethic."
Curdie kept his eyes on the board he was holding and refrained from rolling his eyes too hard. "Well at least they're building the houses instead of knocking 'em down."
His glaring eyes narrowed in on the prince of the goblins who was walking back and forth along an open stretch of land without really doing anything. "If only their leader were being half as useful."
Irenie followed his gaze and spotted Froglip just as the prince had grabbed a tree and began tugging on it without digging up the roots first. Rather than sneer, a soft, contemplative look fell over her features.
"I know it must sound strange," Irenie said gently as she watched the prince, "but he's not as terrible as I remember."
Just then, the Prince ripped the tree out of the ground and swung it onto his shoulders, looking for a place to drop it. Froglip quickly spotted the Irenie and Curdie watching him and swaggered towards them as if he had nothing but a sack of potatoes on his back.
"I have brought you more tree," the prince said with a jagged-toothed smile, presenting it without much thought as to what he was supposed to do with it.
Irenie became very small again and cringed back from the prince as he took two long strides towards them, nearly swinging the trunk of the tree into Curdie's body.
"Drop it there, Froglip," the young man said pointedly, although he did manage to call the prince by his name this time.
The goblin, however, was still not amused and tossed the up-rooted tree to the ground and it landed with a ground shaking thud.
"Thun boy-" the prince hissed back before rolling his shoulders and attempting to imitate the other goblins who were doing a surprisingly good job of setting up the miners' houses.
"Still not so terrible?" Curdie asked Irenie without really meaning to.
The princess continued to sit there, still working, but with a pensive look on her face.