Both Curses And Blessings Must Follow The Rules

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Prompt from Eiiri’s Prompt Foundry, “Pride 2 Disability Boogaloo”.

“Pardon??” The fey spluttered, so shocked that for a moment it almost lost the glamour, showing a form far more inhuman than the wizened crone with goat legs it preferred to present as. “You want to curse your own baby??”
The human woman flushed, her expression uncomfortable and ashamed - though hardly enough, given her request! She mumbled “W-we fear it’s the best for the poor thing.”
“Best?” Granny Goatier folded its arms and fixed the mother with a scouring stare. “How would cursing them do the ‘poor thing’ any good?”
“Well…” The mother removed the sling from her back.
Granny Goatier watched closely as the baby was unwrapped. Comprehension dawning once the child’s legs came free from the swaddling. Swiftly followed by exasperation towards the folly of humans.
“We tried to get it healed!” The mother said defensively. “But everyone we asked said it was beyond the reach of magic, since he was born so.”
“And you assumed the rules were different for curses?”
From the startled, abashed look the mother gave, apparently so. By the Lines…
“You mean…” The mother drooped.
“Yes, your child would simply have a goat club leg.” Granny Goatier looked at the mother, then the child, then made a decision. Drawing itself up, it declared “You have intruded upon my home and gravely insulted me. You may either forfeit your life… or gift me your child.”
The woman objected, of course. Begged, wept, tried to negotiate. Swore, with empty honesty, that she truly loved the baby she was so desperate to fix.
But a fey whose mind is made up is a merciless thing.
And the woman did not wish to die.
She walked home, slumped and guilt-ridden, and never again spoke of her firstborn, not even to her bereaved husband. The village swiftly forgot. The world moved on.
And in the little hut deep in the woods, a figure like an old woman with goat legs pensively rocked its new baby. Thinking.
“Goat legs will do you no good.” It murmured. “But…”
Delicate strands of magic wove around the sleeping infant.
“The vigour of a goat. The steady grace of a goat. And the stubbornness of a goat, too - I dare say that will also stand you in good stead as you make your way through this world.”
Granny Goatier nodded with satisfaction as the blessings sank in, like rain soaking into good rich soil.
~*~
It was two decades later, when even the mother had almost forgotten her folly, that a young man walked out of the forest to find his fortune - or at least adventure.
He walked with an uneven yet fluid gait, one boot stomping more woodenly than the other, a lolloping trot which devoured ground deceptively quickly. Everything he wore was made of tanned goatskin - except for the knife at his belt, which was bone. And his soft dark eyes twinkled with mischief and magic.
His name was Buck Goatier, and he would go on to collect many stories.

Prompt was “Limb difference”.