Mothman & Youngun

The MOTHMAN

Made famous by The Mothman Prophecies, he is not at all like his movie counterpart. Mothmen are reclusive, wood-loving creatures who generally stay out of everybody's business. They are generally around five or six feet tall. They appear to be intelligent.

YOUNGUN
Younguns are funny little vegetable creatures who live in the dirt, looking like a garden-variety onion until they decide that they need a new place to live and they climb out of the earth and go adventuring. Simple minded, friendly, and also delicious.

The Unicorn

Possibly the most famous of mythical creatures is the unicorn. Fabled to have a magic horn with poison-negating properties and to trust only fair maidens. Its most common color is white though other variations have been noted in small pocket communities. It is overly fond of gardens and will eat all of your fruits, vegetables and ornamental plants - which is where I first spotted them.

Bigfoot!

The notorious Sasquatch can be found virtually all over the planet under various names. In America, we call him Bigfoot, and true to the name, the creature is quite enormous in size, towering between 8' and 11' tall, varying in shape. I found this fellow on the outskirts of the city digging through trash and making quite a deal over a broken ball-in-cup toy. He didn't seem to mind my presence, though he never spoke to me.

I noticed plantlike growths on his body, such as moss, mushrooms and branches. I wonder if this is an evolutionary mechanism to help camouflage himself in his natural woodland habitat, like the Yeti is covered in white fur to blend in with the snowy mountains.

Turgle and others

The turgle is a small cycloptic creature who has become a succesful scavenger, feeding off of human garbage. Turgles are inoffensive and weak. They can not speak but can vocalize and sometimes imitate language. Their mouth is concealed by their lower eyelid and to feed they must pull it back to insert food. They naturally must avoid crunchy food or they must soak it in liquid to prevent possible scratches to their eye. They also hate spicy, acidic, or sour foods.

And here's a sketch of Abby drawing some fantastic wildlife by a stream.

pixies

This tiny creature was spotted out of the corner of my eye while fluttering about my venus flytrap and carnivorous pitcher plant display. Barely four inches tall, this pixie had twiglike wings, jointed like cricket legs and papery skin. She looked fragile, but was extremely agile both in flight and on the ground. She was digging out the remains of long dead flies from the pitcher plant and munching horribly on the exoskeletons. I can only imagine this is a delicacy of some sort, and she didn't seem to mind my presence - unlike my previous encounters with fairies who are skittish and nearly impossible to see in any detail.

Miniature Sea Horses

Miniature sea horses can be found in brackish rivers and along ocean shorelines. Check around low-tide in tidal pools for trapped sea horses but leave them where they are. They do poorly in captivity.

Merrows, Nagas, and unidentified creatures

The merrow can be mistaken for a mermaid or a water nymph, but the difference is disposition. Where both nymphs and mermaids think it amusing to drown humans, merrows have been known for centuries to be friendly toward all living things, and fishermen have been known to leave behind one of their catch as thanks to the merrow. Merrows are freshwater creatures, preferring rivers and large streams because of the territory conflict with water nymphs who prefer lakes and pools.

Nagas and lamiae are rather disputed cryptids today. Though it is true that they are carnivorous, they don't seem to harbour vampiric traits of sucking blood - an outdated myth born in ancient Greece. Very little is recorded about lamiae, and the eyewitness accounts are nearly all different. The one thing that all of them agree on is that they are human from the hip up, and giant serpent from the hip down. The lamia I have depicted here I was extremely fortunate to bump into as I was sketching the portrait of the friendly merrow. Apparently lamia are also fond of water and can swim extremely fast. I wonder if they are some distant kith to mermaid and merrows. She sunbathed for a few minutes in silence, and when I looked up to catch her eye, she shot off into the river. Clearly wary of humans as most fairies are, lamiae seem to be powerful creatures. Though the one I encountered was not intent on harming me, I would not try to anger one.

This is a bizarre nocturnal creature. I noticed a pair of them squabbling near my car as I arrived home very late one night, and it gave me quite a scare. They sounded like small monkeys, and close by. Sure enough when I looked in the direction of the noise, they stopped their screeching, and one of them disappeared into the trees. The one left standing on a branch seemed to be willing to see if I was going to try to hurt it because he didn't flee. He just stood there wringing his hands. I got a good look at him however, before he lost his nerve and followed his companion. He had enormous feet, and seemed to be primarily bipedal with a hobgoblinish stature. When he took flight, I noticed that there was a length of skin that attached from his arms to his hip not unlike a flying squirrel that helped him maneuver through the trees at great speed. I have yet to conclude that this was some member of the hobgoblin or goblin family.