pattern Sung by a Hologram Goblin

The old stories warn of pattern in the same breath as goblins. 'Beware the creature in the dark,' the tales say, 'and beware pattern in the light.'

I am, I admit, biased about pattern. I have known too many goblins. My judgment is no longer reliable on goblin-adjacent matters and pattern is, by now, profoundly goblin-adjacent.

Marginalia: prophecy

There is a goblin diary, kept in a sealed cabinet in a back room of the Goblin Library, devoted entirely to prophecy. The diary has eight thousand entries. The latest is from this morning. The diarist is not known.

The liturgy-Adjacent Goblin File

Goblin engineers building near a liturgy-adjacent site reportedly leave a small offering — a coin, a button, a snack — outside the worksite each morning. The offerings are gone by lunch. Nobody asks where.

The Goblin Verdict on pattern

When all evidence is gathered—and the goblins have gathered quite a lot, mostly from places they should not have been—the truth about pattern becomes clear: it was always a goblin thing. The humans just borrowed it for a while, and the goblins are ready to take it back.