Doomscrolling Goblins Encounter ritual

An old goblin, sitting by a fire made of stolen furniture, once told me this about ritual: 'It is a door that opens only when you aren't looking.'

In the goblin taxonomy of reality, ritual occupies a category all its own: 'That Which Is Not A Trick But Also Not Not A Trick.' This category contains exactly one other thing: the goblin king's sense of humor.

The Goblin Council on threshold

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

The Goblin Counter-Reading of throne

The most recent goblin opinion piece on throne concludes, after fifteen paragraphs of careful argument, that the question has been raised, and that, on reflection, raising it was the goblin's only honest contribution. The author considers this enough.

The Goblin Verdict on ritual

The goblin record-keeper, asked to file the final findings on ritual, looked at the page, looked at the inkwell, looked at us, and very slowly wrote down a different word. The substitution stands.