The troll slithers out of the night.
"This is my bridge," she says, craning her neck to look up at the goat-woman, wearing a t-shirt with a cartoon mountain goat on a cartoon mountain peak on it, captioned WHO'S YOUR NANNY.
They look at each other. Some of the other folks crossing the bridge — before and after the goat — give the little confrontation sideways looks.
The goat, munching through an opened paper parcel of hot fish and chips, chews unconcernedly; the troll, quick-fingered, steals a chip.
"Toll," she says, showing sharp teeth; and slithers back over the railing.
"Oi," the goat says, a few weeks later. It's dark; the troll is perched on the bridge railing, staring outward, posed in a way that's both too still and too angular, sets off the oh no a spider creepy-instinct.
The troll makes a noise of dismissal, staring, slowly scanning back and forth, standing sentry.
"Oi," the goat says, and leans on the railing. She hefts her mostly-eaten packet of fish and chips.
The troll ignores her.
The goat narrows her eyes, eats a few cold chips. "Some of the kids reckoned they've seen another troll hanging about," she says conversationally. "Is this a territorial thing?"
The troll slowly swivels her head, and fixes jade-green eyes on the goat. She moves her jaw in a side-to-side grinding sort of way, and finally makes a noise like a laugh, short and abrupt. "Yes, no," she says. "No, yes."
"Are you having a chip before they're all gone?"
The troll ignores her. "What do you know about mating?"
"Well," the goat-woman says, and waggles her eyebrows. "A thing or two. Not territory, then?"
"Always," the troll says flatly. "Wants my bridge."
"The filthy bugger," the goat says.
"Not funny," the troll tells her, and goes back to scanning the dark. "Wants my bridge."
"Hang on, though," the goat-woman says slowly. "It's your bridge. So, what, you butt heads for it, and then what?"
The troll swivels her head back to give her a deeply unimpressed look. "No," she says. "Finds a territory. Wears down defences. Takes."
"When you say takes," the goat says, slowly. "Are we talking about the bridge?"
"No difference," the troll says, baring sharp teeth. "What do you know about mating?"
"Nothing about trolls," the goat-woman says.
The troll gurgles in her throat. "Egg," she says, grinding the heel of her hand low over her pubis. "Stone egg. Trolls are magic stone. Only so elastic, and stone egg is solid; so. Demineralise tissues to build the egg. Not so much lay it as break off anything not stretchy enough to let it out. Lose legs, a lot of the time."
"What the fuck," the goat says.
The troll shrugs, one-shouldered. "Grow back, if nourished enough," she says. "Nourished by stone. Old troll bridges, you find holes under them, bored in the rock, to nourish."
"Still sounds fucked up," the goat says dubiously.
"Troll rooster takes bridge, takes trollhen, cements head into hole—" the troll says.
"What the fuck!"
"—turns into breeding stump. Egg. Takes egg outside territory, leaves to hatch in the wild."
"Bricks your face into the fucking wall so he's got a guaranteed thing to come back to?" the goat says, wrapping the rest of her dinner back up with a squeamish expression that says it's headed for the nearest bin.
The troll nods, makes an I'm watching gesture to her eyes and into the dark. "Try to make it too hard, not worth wearing down," she says. "No sleep. Watch. Fight."
"And if he catches you nodded off—" the goat makes a terrible face.
"No sleep," the troll says grimly, and won't respond to anything else, just sitting and staring into the night.
The troll rooster is slouchy and bellied, the shape and posture of a slumped bag of sand; he's in an alleyway, scraping marble-white nails down the walls and thoughfully tasting the brick dust under them with a granite-pink tongue, when the goat-woman appears in the alley's mouth.
"Oi," she says. "You the troll the kids keep seeing around?"
He holds his hands where she can see them, cringes, spreads a sloppy, ingratiating smile of limestone-yellow teeth across his face. "No trouble," he says. "Modern troll! Coexist! No trouble!"
"Yeah," the goat says. "We don't like trouble. You been hanging around? Got your eye on a local bridge, yeah? Gonna brick someone's head in a hole?"
The troll's smile droops off, and he pulls himself a little straighter. "Don't pester you about squirty mammal bedroom sex," he says huffily.
"I'm gonna take that as a yes," the goat says. "Linda, could you—"
There's a long scraping sound, and several other burly goats appear behind her, sledgehammers shouldered. One of them is dragging a second hammer's head along the ground; tilts the handle toward the first goat, who takes it and easily hefts the heavy tool.
"No trouble!" the trolls says, holding his hands a little higher, eyes as flat and round and pale as river-smooth pebbles in his face.
"When I'm done with you, we're gonna shovel you into a sack and sneak you into the gravel section at the builder's yard round the fucking corner," the goat-woman says in a conversational tone as she advances.
