You Remind Me Of...

Toby, as could be expected, had grown into an energetic and active toddler, constantly wobbling across his house, loudly garbling as he went. Both his parents, Robert and Karen, were entertained and laughed at their son's antics, though he also worried them both with how adventurous his antics could be. Toby loved to climb the staircase railings, again garbling his own language as he went. There was once when he was on the move, Karen had come out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel, and screamed bloody murder when she saw her son had reached the top of the stair case: just on the wrong side of it.
For all his antics though, Toby's favorite adventure was to visit his sister's room, especially once he had figured out how to use the door knob. That alone had proven a challenge for the toddler. Whenever Sarah was in her room, Toby would just rambled in, and plop himself down at the foot of his sister's bed, and stare up at her, his eyes begging her what his mouth had yet been able to formulate into coherent human speech patterns; "Play with me please!" Sarah could never say no to those wide blue eyes, eyes that she would have surely missed if she hadn't been unable to get rid of her feelings of animosity towards her baby brother. When Sarah wasn't there, Toby would sit outside his sister's room, looking so forlorn and lonely, that Karen would wonder why it was that Toby and Sarah seemed to have such a complex about the other.
On this day, however, Sarah was out with her friends, getting some studying done before a very important biology test that they were all sure they were going to fail. So Toby was left in the house with only his mother and father to keep the toddler company. Toby pouted in his room for a moment, his mother gone to retrieve her son's blanket so he could take a nap, but Toby was not sleepy in the slightest. Rather, he wanted his sister to read to him one of those stories she always read to him, from that big book that had all those pretty, shiny, colorful pictures in it. Toby wanted to look at that pretty book, at least before his mother made him take a nap. When Sarah was there, she'd always read to him before he slept.
Pushing himself to stand awkwardly on his feet as all toddlers do, Toby wandered out of his own room and down the hall to his sister's closed door.  A pout covered Toby's round face as he stared up at the door before him. A closed door used to be a deterrent for the small child, but no longer. Toby stretched himself up as far as he could, and then reached one small hand out and grasped on the door's knob. Toby slowly turned the knob, and fell into the room along with the door as it swung into Sarah's room.
Toby had been prepared for that, and pushed himself back onto his feet. He glanced across his sister's room, looking for the big book with the shiny and colorful pictures she read to him from. When he did locate the book, it was high up in a shelf that Toby couldn't reach too. Toby pouted again, and glanced around again to see if there wasn't anything else in Sarah's room he could play with. There was nothing within easy reach, Toby belatedly discovered. At least until his baby blue eyes landed on a figure that rested on top of his sister's vanity.
The figure looked interesting enough, as Toby toddled towards it, as well as familiar. But he didn't remember seeing it in his sister's room before. It looked like one of the toys he had seen in his day care a lot that the girls played with. A doll. The girls' dolls were made of plastic, and stood constantly on their tip-toes, and always smiling.  This doll didn't look like them. It was different. Everything about it was different. There was a familiar stock of light yellow hair, mismatched eyes and a shiny ball held by the doll. It was the tiny, shiny ball that Toby was interested in the most. It was so familiar, as if Toby had played with one like that before.
Toby climbed into the chair by Sarah's vanity, and stared at the figure, with his arms propped up on the smooth surface of the vanity. There was a familiar melody that weaved itself in the back of the toddler's mind, swiftly growing and slowly resting in the forefront. Toby could've sat in Sarah's chair for hours and not figure out why the doll was so familiar to him. And he would've, if his mother didn't come into the room then.
"Toby! There you are, you little rascal." Karen chuckled, Toby's freshly laundered blanket warm in her hands. Toby ignored her.
"Toby, come on, you know Sarah doesn't like you in her room while she's away..." Karen called again, laying the blanket on Sarah's bed, as she strode to collect her son. Toby turned his gaze to his mother.
"Gob'n." He said, pointing at the figure. It was that odd little figurine that Sarah's mother had given her, the model for some character in some play Linda had preformed in.  Karen didn't really know. She did, on the other hand, raise a finely arched brow at her son.
"Gob'n?" She repeated after her son. Toby nodded.
"Gob'n. Gob'n Ing." Karen shook her head, sighing.
"Come on Toby, it's time for a nap." Karen picked up her son, and then his blanket, and slowly closed the door to Sarah's room behind her.
Softly, ever so softly, the low sound of male laughter that filled the room as the door clicked shut.

----

Sarah sighed as she heaved her heavy book bag onto the couch in her living room.
"I'm home!" She called out as she joined her bag on the couch. As she fell into the soft cushions of the couch, her stepmother walked out of the kitchen.
"So, how was studying?" Karen asked, standing over Sarah. Sarah replied with a groan. Her head was still throbbing from all the studying she had done with Jessica and Mia, and her eyes were still burning from staring at her text book and papers for so very long. Sarah covered her closed eyes with an arm.
"That bad, huh?" Karen asked, sitting down on the couch next to Sarah.
"If I fail that test tomorrow," Sarah forced herself to speak, "I'll scream."
"I'm sure you'll do fine." Karen hid a smile, as she gazed down at her stepdaughter. She'd had difficulties in her biology classes as well in high school, and understood the pain Sarah was suffering through.
"Did I miss anything?" Sarah asked, looking at her stepmother.
"Well…Toby did manage to get into your room today, but I don't think he missed placed anything. In fact, I think it's about time he woke up form his nap." Karen rose from the couch and headed upstairs, "You know," she said, stopping, "Tylenol is great for headaches."
"I'll keep that in mind." Sarah replied, sitting up. She sighed again, and picked her bag up, and made the painful trip up the stairs and into her room, where she promptly dropped the bag onto the floor with a loud BAM! and promptly fell face first into her bed, moaning the whole way.
"I hate bio." Sarah grumbled into her pillow. Soon, she heard the loud pounding of her brother as he ran from his own room to hers.
"Sawah!" He exclaimed, coming to a halt by her bedside. Sarah turned her head to face her brother.
"What's up, kid?" She asked, rubbing her eyes. She could really go for some pain killers and a nap.
"Sawah! Gob'n, Sawah, Gob'n!"
"Gob'n? Do ya mean 'gobble'?" Sarah asked, harking back to the extensive and random discussion of turkeys and Punnett squares over at Jessica's house. Sarah then wondered why Toby would ever remember the "gobble" sound of a turkey, since he had only been a year old when Thanksgiving had last come around, and it was still months until it did again. Toby sometimes watched a children's TV program that stared animals, and so Sarah figured he probably watch a rerun episode today, which would have caused him to try to make the "gobble" sound.  Sarah watched as her brother shook his head violently.
"No gobb, Gob'n! Gob'n Ing!" Toby repeated, pointing at her vanity.
"What?" Sarah stared at her vanity, trying to pinpoint what it was her brother was pointing at. Then she saw it. She saw the figurine of him. Her mind froze and her eyes widen as she stared at the figurine, every thought screaming in her head that she had put that figure away the night of her "adventure" and it should have stayed put, because Sarah definitely wouldn't have brought it out of it's final resting place, inside one of the drawers of her vanity, and underneath the piles of pictures that had once graced her mirror.
"Toby…"Sarah forced herself to drag her eyes away from the figurine and turned her wide eyes at her brother, her voice chilled with worry, "Do you mean… goblin?"
Toby nodded, "Gob'n!" Sarah forced herself to breathe slowly, to not hyperventilate. After all, Toby couldn't possibly remember the goblins, could he? It was over a year ago, and he was still so young. He probably just remembered those goblins from the fairy tales she always read to Toby.
"Gob'n Ing!" Toby said, shuffling over to the vanity.
"Toby, No!" Sarah yelled, jumping off her bed, and snatching the figurine before her brother could; fearing…something she could really explain. A sudden appearance by the 'Gob'n Ing' in question? Probably, and all to snatch her brother away, her brother she had worked so hard to keep Aboveground.
"Sarah, is everything alright in there?" Karen asked, as she popped her head into Sarah's room. Toby began to sniffle, not understanding why his sister had just yelled at him; he just wanted to show her the figure and see if he could play with it.
"Um, yeah, we're fine." Sarah gasped out, her gaze flitting from her stepmother to her brother.
"Oh, dear, maybe not." Karen saw Toby's tears, and cooed to her son, "It's alright dear, it's alright." Karen wiped Toby's tears away with her very pink shirt.
"I'm sorry…I guess I must've snapped." Sarah felt like she was ten years old again, and had broken a very expensive vase by accident and had been caught red-handed, just by making her baby brother cry.
"It's okay, Sarah, it happens to the best of us," Karen smiled, "But if I were you, I'd go ahead and take some pain killers."
"Yeah, and a nap sounds pretty good about now." Sarah sighed, rubbing the back of her neck.
"I'll let you know when dinner's ready." Karen said, picking up Toby as she left her stepdaughter's room. Sarah sighed, and jerked open the bottom drawer of her vanity. She glared down at the Goblin King figurine still in her hand.
"I blame you for all of this, you big, fat, no good jerk. Don't you know any other teenagers to waste your time bullying?" She asked, shoving the figurine into the drawer and slamming it shut. Quickly stretching, Sarah left in search of some pain killers and a glass of water.  However, if Sarah had been paying close attention as she left, she could have heard a faint voice sigh and say,
"Ah, precious, so you haven't forgotten me entirely, have you?"