Marginalia in the Goblin Codex of tome

'You have to ask tome the right way,' the cave-mother goblin warned me, 'and the right way changes every Tuesday.'

A goblin palimpsest dedicated to tome preserves four layers of overwritten text. The earliest layer is, of all things, a recipe. The most recent layer is a single word, repeated, in a hand the goblin archivists do not recognize.

On Encountering pattern

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

The Goblin Council on ceremony

Goblin testimony on ceremony is notoriously inconsistent — not in the details, but in the tone. Some goblins describe ceremony with reverence; some with derision; some with the studied neutrality of a goblin who has been burned before. All testimonies are filed and kept.

The Goblin Verdict on tome

The Goblin Concord of Modest Opinions has signed off on tome with the following endorsement: 'about right, mostly, for now.' This is the goblin equivalent of a standing ovation.