-Chapter 4-

Hours later, Guff was still staring at his front door, which hadn’t moved an inch.

Is that it, just those two? He thought to himself, disappointed at his apparently not-at-all alluring advertisement.

A jittery, irritating blue little goblin, and a useless jelly-blob of a boy with a terrifying mother. 

I doubt either of them can even fry an egg, let alone make tasty dinners, but at least accepting one of them comes with a hefty reward, that was the point, after all, wasn’t it, he reminded himself, and hey, maybe I’ll be able to educate some sense into them… maybe… but probably not very likely, he muttered out loud as he rose to his feet and decided to turn off the porch light and retire for the day.

“AHHH!” Guff shouted as he stepped outside of his house, terrified by the sight of a huge pile of fur lying to the side of his entrance. 

His embarrassingly high-pitched scream caused the pile to quiver suddenly before leaping into the air.

“Who’s there!” The pile enquired with it’s back to the Wizard.

“I am?” Guff replied as he cowered behind the doorframe.

The fur turned slowly, revealing itself to be a small creature about the size of an adolescent human covered in furry dark brown hair with two fluffy ears on the top of it’s head, wide shimmering-blue eyes, and a twitching round black nose.

“W-w-what are you going to do with me?” The creature enquired in a soft yet scared manner with the cadence of a young girl.

“W-w-what am I going to do with you? What are you going to do with me!?” Guff replied, quivering.

“W-w-what?” The creature replied.

A moment of silence occurred as neither spoke but simply stared blankly at each other before Guff decided to speak.

“You were lying face down on the floor outside of my house! I thought someone had left a bearskin rug outside!”

“A bearskin rug! How cruel!” The girl replied, her eyes suddenly welling with tears.

“W-why are you starting to cry?”

“Animal cruelty makes me sad,” she replied, sniffling.

“Y-yes indeed, but, hang on, could you please answer my question?”

“Which was?” The creature enquired as her expression switched instantly from sadness to complete blankness.

“I need to sit down,” Guff staggered back to his chair with his hand on his head.

“Hang on! Oh! Wizard!” The creature suddenly sprang back to life. “I was coming for the interview!”

At that moment, and at the thought of why his advertisement seemed to only attract those of low intelligence, Guff sank slightly lower in his chair. 

“I see,” he responded despondently, “have a seat then, let’s have a little chat. Tea?”

“No, Lilaf, but you can call me Lila,” she replied, causing Guff to wonder why the day had been filled with so much confusion regarding names.

“No, I, oh, never mind, and I don’t even have any cups anyway…” Guff sighed. “By the way, shouldn’t a nickname usually be shorter than that?”

“What do you mean?” Lilaf enquired.

“Well, your nickname is presumably just one letter shorter than your normal name, its like saying my name is Luke but you can call me Luk.”

“Nice to meet you Luk,” Lilaf stated with a dopey smile.

“No, no that’s not what I’m saying, my name is Guff.”

“I like Luk better,” Lilaf stated firmly.

“That’s not for you to decide, what I’m saying is, why shorten your name by just a tiny amount. Lilaf to Lila, you might as well shorten it more to Lil or something like that.”

“Lil sounds pretty stupid though, don’t you think?”

“It’s not any worse than Lilaf, sounds like a rice dish” Guff muttered.

“So Luk, when do I start?”

“Guff!”

“Ok, well, it’s your house, I don’t mind if you do, but I could step outside if you want me to?” Lilaf said as her head moved slowly toward the open window behind her.

“No! No, no, no,” Guff almost began to cry before calming himself. “Let’s talk about you shall we? Tell me about yourself,” he asked, a migraine beginning to start.

“Well, I’m Lilaf, but you can call me Lila,” she stated with a strange sense of pride.

“Yeah, we’ve done that part, anything else?” Guff replied.

“Well, I come from over the hill, well, on the hill technically, we live in a treehouse on the top of the oak tree at the top. We’ve lived there for four years, before that we lived on the birch tree next door, but that got a little small so we had to upsize. Our house has three bedrooms, I share mine with my younger sister, which isn’t great because she wets the bed and she’s on the top bunk. For some reason my mother makes me do the washing bu-“ Lilaf spoke before being cut off by Guff’s raised hand.

“I don’t really need to hear about your house, just tell me about yourself, any skills, interests, why you applied for the apprenticeship, something like that.”

“Well, I’m good at getting stains out of linen, that’s a skill, right?” Lilaf asked as Guff nodded as his fingers gently massaged his temples. “Interests, well, I’ve always wanted to be a wizard.”

“Oh really?” Guff’s interest piqued. “That’s very nice to hear, yes, well, you’ve come to the right place, where does your interest stem from?”

“Well, that would be my dad, you see, he was a wizard some years ago,” Lilaf replied.

“I see, I didn’t know there were many animal wizards, although I did once meet a frog that could turn water blue, but I’m not sure whether that was magic or just a chemical reaction of some sort…” Guff replied while rubbing his beard.

“Oh, my dad’s not an animal, my mum’s a bear but my dad was a human.”

“Oh… I see,” Guff said as a wave of confusion clearly clouded his face.

“I can tell you’re wondering how a human and a bear could get together, aren’t you,” Lilaf replied smugly.

“Well, it did cross my mind, I must admit” Guff blushed.

“Well, it happened like this,” Lilaf began before providing a 10-minute rundown of how her parents met and, in excruciating detail, how she was conceived.

“I-I-I see, what a… lovely… story” Guff eventually commented, holding back the urge to vomit while thinking. I thought she said she was against animal cruelty, he thought.

“So there you have it, oh, look at the time,” Lilaf said shocked as she noticed a clock on the wall which had been stuck on 3 AM for around two years and was definitely not working seeing as how it was still clearly early evening outside, “I must be going, but I hope you’ll let me be your apprentice, Mr. Luk sir,” she stated sweetly while waving as she left the house with Guff still in a daze.

 I think I need to have an early night, Guff muttered to himself as he dragged his sluggish body and weary brain to his bedroom before slumping down onto his lumpy mattress.