The Place
Umbral Hollow is a deep sinkhole with no sun, its walls lit by pale fungus growing in slow rings that count the dark the way the sun counts the day. The sinkhole is 60 m from rim to floor, and the 60 m is the depth the dark keeps before it lets a sound rest. Its floor is a soft grey that the shadow goblins know by heart, the floor lying in a black so quiet it reads as nothing in the dark, and the black is where the hollow keeps everything it will not name. The walls are a wet cave-slate, and the slate breaks where the fungus has taken it, the fungus lying in rings from the rim down to the floor in a cold light that does not chase. The air in the hollow is cool and still and smells of wet stone and of the fungus, and the smell is where the hollow keeps its one gift. A traveler who has stood at the rim and looked down says the hollow is a well that has forgotten it was ever filled, and the saying is the traveler's only word, because the hollow does not answer and the dark is all it does. This is the place where the dark keeps everything it will not name.
How They Live
The Shadow Goblins live in the dark, in warrens carved into the walls of the sinkhole, where the fungus gives a faint cold light they do not chase. They do not make fire, because fire is a sound, and sound is a location, and a location is where the dark finds them. They eat the fungus, the blind beetles, and the things that fall in, the dark-clans settling in the rings and the listening-lines running across the hollow from one clan to the next. Water seeps in from the rock, and they drink it without tasting it, because taste is a luxury of the light, and the not-tasting is the hollow's only law. The defense is the dark itself — a visitor who steps into the hollow has given away the most valuable thing they have, which is the position of their eyes. The day is not measured, because there is no day: the pack moves, and the pack rests, and the dark is the only clock the hollow has. The listeners mark the turn of the lean season by the ring of fungus that has gone thin, and the thinning is the only calendar the hollow gives, because the dark does not count and the listening is all it does.
People
Home of the Shadow Goblins, whose dark-clans are counted by ring of fungus, and the rings keep some two hundred goblins in the dark, two hundred being the most the fungus can feed in a lean season. The listeners are the sharp-eared females, who read the dark by sound and shadow and decide what the pack hears, and the deciding is the only rank the goblins have, for they have no king and the not-having is their only law. The hunters are the males, mirror-dark and nearly blind, their skin a pale grey with slate-black patches along the shoulder and a clean bone-white at the ear-tip, and the bone-white is the shadow line's most persistent claim. The elders are marked by a crest gone full silver and skin gone a deep dull cave-slate, and an old shadow goblin moves slower and hears further, and the hearing-further is the only honor the hollow gives. A shadow goblin who has not listened in a season is called "the one who forgot the dark," and the calling is the only punishment the hollow gives, because the hollow does not punish and the listening is all it does.
In Stories
The place where the dark has a voice, and the voice is patient. It was in the rings of fungus that the shadow goblins first learned the weight of a light they would not chase, and the learning cost them the sun and gave them the dark. The hollow has kept the patient voice ever since, and the keeping is the dark's way of holding its one gift, and the gift is the sound the dark does not make.