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tephraShe wrote a bit in her House of Red Fireflies universe today. So go read about The Mandrake Girl.
There are images of the girl here and here on DeviantART though if you aren't a member only the second will be viewable because the first has a mature rating (I don't think it needs one, but that's Ursula's call.) Both images are also on her website, Metal and Magic.
For those that don't click a link without a sample:
The House of Red Fireflies
The House of Red Fireflies is easy to find.
It shouldn’t be, being tucked in one of the illogical corners of the otherworld, but if you’re running a brothel, inaccessibility is a bad thing. So despite the winding road and the woods patrolled by small, grumpy, spear-carrying mushrooms, despite the narrow eyed black storks lurking at the crossroads and hitting up passers-by for small children and cigarettes, despite the swift currents and sudden backwaters of the Feverstream that runs by the House, despite the labyrinthine limestone passages deep underground that lead from the tastefully decorated maw of Hell to the somewhat less tastefully decorated sixth sub-basement of the House, the House remains paradoxically easy to find.
Practically all you have to do is set out in any reasonably enchanted woods with the intent of going there, and the next thing you know, the red lanterns are twinkling in the distance, like the fireflies from which the House takes its name.
The House is built in the Grandmother Tree, a tree so old that its dryad requires a wheelchair on the rare occasions she manifests at all, and this has given rise to the euphemism “going to Grandmother’s house.” Somebody even wrote a song about it once, and occasionally you can get one of the sleek-voiced seal women that perform in the evenings to sing it for you.
[Go read more]
The Mandrake Girl
At the edge of a dark and dreary forest, on the slope of a hill crowned by a dead oak tree, in earth churned by the writhing bodies of worms and slicked with the secret secretions of slugs, there was a hole, and in the hole was a mandrake root.
Mandrake roots are prized above all others by the more objectionable sort of witch. They have powerful gifts of both healing and destruction, and they are the chief ingredient in flying ointment, (along with a great many nasty things like henbane and nightshade and others that I will not mention here.) But the greatest of their gifts is that of transfiguration. A mandrake root can be enspelled to take on human shape, for seasons at a time, and though they are dour and dangerous servants, they are far superior in wit and power to any other plant. (Laburnum runs a distant second. Only idiots try to make familiars out of petunias.)
Pulling the mandrake root, however, is a nasty business. The plant shrieks when it's pulled from the earth, a terrible, mind-tearing shriek that can bring deafness and even death, the sort of shriek that chills the soul and occasionally shakes blood clots loose from veins to wreak havoc in the dark reaches of the brain. There are a number of methods of harvesting mandrake, many of which involve unfortunate dogs and unwitting neighbor children, but at the end of the day, it’s just a bad business all around. And because of this, the mandrake pried shrieking from the earth is a bitter servant, and will turn on the witch if it can, in vengeance of the rape of its roots from the clotted and familiar soil.
This particular mandrake root, however, was somewhat different.
[Go read more]
There are images of the girl here and here on DeviantART though if you aren't a member only the second will be viewable because the first has a mature rating (I don't think it needs one, but that's Ursula's call.) Both images are also on her website, Metal and Magic.
For those that don't click a link without a sample:
The House of Red Fireflies
The House of Red Fireflies is easy to find.
It shouldn’t be, being tucked in one of the illogical corners of the otherworld, but if you’re running a brothel, inaccessibility is a bad thing. So despite the winding road and the woods patrolled by small, grumpy, spear-carrying mushrooms, despite the narrow eyed black storks lurking at the crossroads and hitting up passers-by for small children and cigarettes, despite the swift currents and sudden backwaters of the Feverstream that runs by the House, despite the labyrinthine limestone passages deep underground that lead from the tastefully decorated maw of Hell to the somewhat less tastefully decorated sixth sub-basement of the House, the House remains paradoxically easy to find.
Practically all you have to do is set out in any reasonably enchanted woods with the intent of going there, and the next thing you know, the red lanterns are twinkling in the distance, like the fireflies from which the House takes its name.
The House is built in the Grandmother Tree, a tree so old that its dryad requires a wheelchair on the rare occasions she manifests at all, and this has given rise to the euphemism “going to Grandmother’s house.” Somebody even wrote a song about it once, and occasionally you can get one of the sleek-voiced seal women that perform in the evenings to sing it for you.
[Go read more]
The Mandrake Girl
At the edge of a dark and dreary forest, on the slope of a hill crowned by a dead oak tree, in earth churned by the writhing bodies of worms and slicked with the secret secretions of slugs, there was a hole, and in the hole was a mandrake root.
Mandrake roots are prized above all others by the more objectionable sort of witch. They have powerful gifts of both healing and destruction, and they are the chief ingredient in flying ointment, (along with a great many nasty things like henbane and nightshade and others that I will not mention here.) But the greatest of their gifts is that of transfiguration. A mandrake root can be enspelled to take on human shape, for seasons at a time, and though they are dour and dangerous servants, they are far superior in wit and power to any other plant. (Laburnum runs a distant second. Only idiots try to make familiars out of petunias.)
Pulling the mandrake root, however, is a nasty business. The plant shrieks when it's pulled from the earth, a terrible, mind-tearing shriek that can bring deafness and even death, the sort of shriek that chills the soul and occasionally shakes blood clots loose from veins to wreak havoc in the dark reaches of the brain. There are a number of methods of harvesting mandrake, many of which involve unfortunate dogs and unwitting neighbor children, but at the end of the day, it’s just a bad business all around. And because of this, the mandrake pried shrieking from the earth is a bitter servant, and will turn on the witch if it can, in vengeance of the rape of its roots from the clotted and familiar soil.
This particular mandrake root, however, was somewhat different.
[Go read more]
