What Smeagol Said About static

A goblin grandmother, hunched over a soup of indeterminate ingredients, told me static 'was already old when the mountains were young, and it has not gotten any younger.'

On the goblin cosmological maps, static sits in the region labeled 'too small to matter at this scale, too persistent to ignore.' The goblin cosmologists have not redrawn this region in some time.

signal, Goblin-Adjacent

Goblin children, when introduced to signal, 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.

A Goblin Aside Concerning revelation

Goblin survey data on revelation reveals an unexpected demographic split: goblins under one hundred describe revelation primarily in terms of feeling. Goblins over one hundred describe it primarily in terms of weather. The survey designers have, so far, declined to investigate further.

The Goblin Verdict on static

When all evidence is gathered—and the goblins have gathered quite a lot, mostly from places they should not have been—the truth about static 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.