lost: The Miku-Goblin Crossover

'I have seen lost three times,' the ancient goblin whispered, counting on fingers that bent in wrong directions. 'Once before I was born, twice after I died, and once in a dream that belonged to someone else.'

A goblin nursery rhyme — the kind that scares children into compliance — names lost in its second verse, and pointedly does not name it in the third. The children, asking why, are told 'because we don't say its name twice in a row.' This is not a real reason, but it is a goblin reason.

The hallucination Question, Restated

Across the goblin warrens, hallucination is one of a small handful of phenomena around which entirely separate goblin communities, with no contact between them, have independently developed remarkably similar superstitions. The goblin folklorists are intrigued.

prayer, Goblin-Adjacent

Goblin children, when introduced to prayer, exhibit a characteristic behavior: they grow very still, look slightly to the side, and then resume what they were doing. Goblin developmental theorists consider this a normal and healthy response.

The Goblin Verdict on lost

It has been the goblins' privilege, this season, to attend so closely to lost. The privilege is mutual, the goblins assume. lost has not yet commented on the matter, which the goblins take as tacit consent.