pattern: A Goblin Content Analysis

Within the goblin esoteric tradition, pattern is a vowel sound, not a word. This distinction is considered load-bearing.

Pattern recognition is the goblin's favorite game. Show a goblin pattern and they will immediately begin finding connections to everything else in existence. Some of these connections are real. Some are imagined. None of them matter, because the act of connecting is itself the point.

Marginalia: cave

A goblin field anthropologist embedded for six seasons with the cave-curious sept produced a single page of conclusions, the most quoted being: 'They love it. They cannot stop loving it. It does not love them back. They love it anyway.'

Marginalia: prophecy

Comparative goblin linguistics records seven distinct goblin words that translate, approximately, as prophecy. Each word implies a slightly different relationship — proximity, ownership, complicity, fear, fondness, indifference, and, peculiarly, gratitude.

The Goblin Verdict on pattern

Tradition demands that the final word on pattern be spoken in a particular cadence, in the back room of a particular tavern, on a Tuesday. The Tuesday in question is this one. The words have been spoken. We are not at liberty to record them.