<div class="floatright">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/8/89/Gretcha_Pinkblood.jpg)</div>Gretcha Pinkblood stopped and sniffed. There were two distinct odours on the gentle breeze. Woodsmoke and elf. She was a messenger, about the only job her sire's people considered her fit for. Long of limb, fleet of foot, more sturdy than her dam's people to be sure, and stronger, yet to the mountain goblins she was weak and fragile.<br/><br/>She had, once, thought to live amongst the weaker but more numerous humans who were her mother's people, thinking they would accept her as one lost and now found again. But they had instead tried to kill her on sight. She fled from them, back into the mountains, back to her father, who treated her as an unwanted possession, and her mother, his slave, who refused to even acknowledge their kinship.<br/><br/>Gretcha wast the name she had chosen for herself. Pinkblood was the name the tribe had given her at her naming ceremony when her father had, reluctantly, taken her virginity as was traditional among the Mountain Goblin tribes. she had squealed in pain and his black member had come out stained pink. Gretcha knew she had Human blood in her, that her blood was not the dark green of the Goblins, from the first time she had fallen and cut herself as a youngling, but to have it given as her adult name shamed her, so she had run off, tried to get the humans to accept her, but they did not care what colour her blood was, they cared only about her skin. "Orc!" they cried, using the insulting elvish word, and flung spears, and fired arrows at her.<br/><br/>Her sire's people would not treat her as an equal, but her dam's had tried to kill her, and so she ended up doing the most menial job a Goblin warrior could be given. She ran errands, carried messages, and followed tracks, but she was not permitted to fight.<br/><br/>And so, now, she was returning from a mission to Agzvak, delivering a scroll to the King there, from the Queen of Ghoklagh. It had been a long and arduous journey, She had needed to travel North to avoid the fire mountains, before heading West, then South again. Of course she could have travelled South and headed past the Weblaire but only the most foolhardy would venture that route. Now she was a mere two days journey from the mountain caves that housed her people, having been gone almost two months. She almost passed by the small wooded copse, but the smell dragged her nose in.<br/><br/>She moved slowly, stealthily, through the small patch of woodland, listening, looking and above all smelling, A campfire, and an elf, alone, female. Gretcha suppressed a chuckle. The slightest noise could give her away. Perhaps, if she could prove herself by capturing this lone elf, and taking her in as a slave, perhaps then her people would recognise her as more that a go-between.