ppebbl.com a goblincore reliquary

ebbles, & other
small splendours.

welcome to the catalogue. a friendly goblin has inherited the storage basement of a roman museum and arranged the contents on a long sunny shelf for you to rummage. there are no buttons here, only objects. take your time. read the little plaques. some of them rhyme.

each tile is a specimen: a paragraph, a marble fragment, a pressed leaf, a coin warm from a pocket. nothing is sold and nothing is urgent. if a tile shakes when you click it, it is shy — try the next one.

caput viatoris
— head of a wanderer, terracotta, found in the gutter, march 2026.

today's pocket inventory

four river-stones, weighed in the palm. one of them is, technically, a piece of broken pottery, but it has earned its place.

haiku, found pinned beneath a teacup —
“moss on the window /
a pebble warm from my coat /
afternoon, also.”

i. shelf
busts & broken things ii.

Amarble that knows it is broken is twice as alive.

most of our busts arrived already cracked. the goblin (their name is gertrude, but only on tuesdays) prefers them this way: a cheekbone gone to dust, a nose nicked by a careless shoe, a laurel wreath missing two leaves. the chipped places are where the light gets in, as someone famous nearly said.

each bust comes with a hand-lettered plaque listing its provenance — usually “the gutter”, occasionally “a yard sale, kindly given”, once “rolled out of a hedge during a thunderstorm”.

fragmentum columnae
doric order, missing fluting (gone to mice).

nothing in this catalogue is for sale. but if you point at one and ask politely, the goblin might let you hold it for an afternoon.

— gertrude, custodian (tuesdays only)

folium quercus desiccatum

a single oak leaf, pressed in a hymnal, three winters old.

on cracks

a chip on a marble cheek is not damage. it is conversation: the bust has been somewhere, has met the world's edge, has come home with a story. cracks are how the goblin tells one specimen from another in the half-dark.

marginalia —
the wreath has six leaves. it should have seven. nobody mentions this.

iii. pebbles
a small shelf of stones

five favoured pebbles, in the order I found them

they live in a jam-jar lined with damp moss, with one walnut shell for company. they hum quietly when nobody is looking.

os parvum

a small bone, possibly mouse, possibly rabbit; carbon-dated by the goblin to “a while ago”.

cochlea horti

an empty shell. its previous occupant is presumed to have moved up.

The weight of a stone is exactly equal to the time you have held it.

you have noticed, perhaps, that the heavy ones in your pocket do not stay heavy. by friday, the round one with the white quartz vein is featherlight, and the chunk of slate from the river bend has become almost a part of your hand. this is true of all small things. it is also true of large ones, if you are patient.

the goblin keeps a ledger of pocket-weights, written in caveat ink on the inside of an old envelope. you can see it on tuesday, with permission and a cup of tea.

aside —
one of these is, technically, a piece of an old bathroom tile. it has been promoted.

nummus aeneus

bronze coin, “ROMA” partly visible, mostly flattened by a tractor.

iv. letters
send a pebble back

Correspondence column.

the goblin reads every letter. they answer most of them, in caveat ink, on whatever paper is closest. attach a name (any name — a real one, an old nickname, the name of a stone you once liked) and a small message. the box below is gentle and will only fuss if you forget something.

a leaf, pressed

sometimes you do not need to write. you can tuck a small good thing into the page and the goblin will know what you meant.

a letter is a pebble flung gently across a long sunny afternoon. you do not aim it. you only release it kindly.

— from the unpublished goblin georgics

p.s. —
if your message has more than one good pebble in it, the goblin will write back twice.

v. provenance
colophon & ledger

colophon

this catalogue is set in playfair display for the loud bits, cormorant garamond for the half-whispered bits, lora for the long bits, and caveat for the goblin. paper is procedurally aged. dust is real (it floats; you may see it). the cursor is a small pebble. if the cursor turns into a laurel sprig, you may click safely.

a small ledger of provenances

  • caput viatoris — the gutter, march 2026.
  • fragmentum columnae — a hedge, august 2024.
  • folium quercus desiccatum — between page 117 and 118 of an old hymnal.
  • cochlea horti — under a brick, behind the shed.
  • nummus aeneus — a furrow, kindly turned up by a tractor.
  • os parvum — declined to disclose; possibly a soup.

a quiet thank-you

for reading. the goblin has put the kettle on. there is a clean cup somewhere, probably under a stack of paperback novels. take your time finding it.

final note —
if you find this page on a windowsill in the sun, leave it open. it likes the light.