Walked the Greenway again tonight, that stretch where the trees lean in close like they’re trading secrets. The air was thick with that October damp, leaves halfway to mulch, woodsmoke somewhere far off. I like how the ground gives a little underfoot, like the earth is breathing slow.
Heard something laughing out there. Not loud, just enough to make me stop mid-step. Thought it might have been a fox, or an owl pretending to be one. The sound carried, and for a second, I could have sworn it was human. A voice out past the last light, where the path curls down toward the creek.
Ended up finding a clearing I did not remember. Bone-white posts ringed the spot, old and worn, maybe remnants of a fence. The place felt watched, but not in a bad way. Like the woods were taking attendance.
There was a woman sitting by a crooked stump, wrapped in smoke from a fire I had not noticed until I was almost on top of it. She looked older than the hills, but the kind of old that laughs easily. Said I had wandered into one of her shortcuts. Told me paths have personalities, and some of them pick favorites.
We talked. About the weather turning. About people rushing past what deserves noticing. She poured tea from an old tin pot that did not taste like anything I have ever had, but I felt clearer afterward, like the static between thoughts had burned off.
When I blinked, the fire was gone. So was she. Just me, the trees, and that sense that the trail had rearranged itself while I was not looking.
Made it home before full dark. Still not sure if I met anyone at all. But the woods have been different since. Quieter in some ways. Kinder in others.
Might walk that way again tomorrow, just to see if the path remembers me.
The forest tonight looked like it was painted in hush and ember. Trees stood like tall, silent witnesses, their leaves glowing orange as if autumn itself was on fire. The ground shimmered with tiny drifting sparks – fireflies? Falling stars? Little souls on their evening stroll? Hard to tell in a place where the line between the living and the gone gets soft around the edges.
Then I saw them.
A little ghost, pale as moon breath, gliding down the cemetery path with the calm confidence of someone who belongs to the night. No rattling chains. No wailing. Just quiet purpose. In their hand – if you can call that soft curl of ectoplasm a hand – they carried a lantern shaped a bit like a pumpkin, glowing warm and kind.
Not scary. Guiding.
Maybe the lantern wasn’t to light the way for themselves… maybe it was to show the rest of us it’s safe to follow.
The gravestones leaned like old teeth, the crosses cast long shadows, but the ghost didn’t seem lonely. It felt like a caretaker making rounds, checking on friends, keeping the dark gentle. I got the sense that the lantern wasn’t just light – it was memory. A flame for the ones we miss. A soft reminder that even in the quiet places, someone is watching over things.
When the ghost floated deeper into the trees, the orange glow pulsed once, like a heartbeat. The forest exhaled. And I stood there in the purple dusk, grateful that even the smallest lights know how to find their way home.
Some lanterns burn with fire. Some burn with hope. And some… with love that refuses to fade.
Days 20 and 21 of #mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 – Toad and Finned Folk.
Out on the tide rocks tonight, just past where the foam kisses the shore, a curious duet unfolded. A toad, squat and serious, throat ballooning like a semiopaque soap bubble, sang his creaky heart out. Across from him, a mermaid princess perched – scales glimmering like old bottle glass, her copper hair streaming in the sea breeze – listening as though he were the finest bard to ever grace the waves.
It’s a rare thing, land song meeting sea song. But sometimes, under the right sliver of moon, the world forgets where the water ends and where the air begins. Their music rippled across the shallows, drawing minnows and moths alike, everyone pausing for just a breath of wonder.
I like to think they traded secrets after the song – she teaching him how to hum with the tides, he showing her the pleasure of muddy toes.
Small magic happens every day if you sit still long enough to hear it. 🐸🌊✨
Tonight’s forest feels like it’s waiting for something. The rain has a hush to it, falling in silver threads through the pines, and the moon peers down like a lantern hung too high to reach. Out there between the trunks, the mushrooms have gathered again.
They glow faintly – not with light, but with presence. One tall one, cap red as a schoolhouse roof, watches with patient, unblinking eyes. A gentle giant, damp and content, rooted but alive. The smaller ones huddle near its feet like children listening to an old bedtime tale whispered in spores.
Every autumn, the mycelium dreams beneath us – a hidden city of filaments and quiet connections. Maybe that’s why it feels comforting here, even in the drizzle. They’re all talking to each other under the soil, slow and kind, sending messages we can’t read but maybe can feel.
If you listen closely enough, the woods murmur back: rest, grow, return.
Rain on my window tonight smells faintly of moss and stories waiting to sprout.
Evening in the hollow woods, where the pines whisper in two tones – half lullaby, half warning. The moon tonight wears its calmest face, the kind that makes you think of silver ink and midnight margins. Out among the trees, something is reading.
A figure in green, faceless and quiet, holds open a tome that hums softly in a language older than moth wings. The pages don’t quite turn – more like they breathe, each sigil exhaling a faint lavender light. It smells faintly of ozone and candle wax, the way old magic always does.
There’s a circle on the ground, drawn not in chalk but in patience, etched by someone who still believes in doorways. Symbols spiral inward, neat as a clock’s gears, glowing brighter as the spellbook’s words rise to meet them.
If you listen (and the woods are good at listening), you can almost hear the question whispered from ink to flame to air: *What is remembered, and what is invented?*
Under the crooked crescent moon, deep in the birchwood where the trees whisper secrets and the air tastes faintly of iron and moss, there she is – Baba Yaga herself, shuffling about her yard of bones. The fence rattles with skulls that grin too knowingly, and the scent of green bubbling brew drifts out like a memory you’d rather forget.
Her hut, of course, perches proudly on chicken legs – restless, fidgeting, ready to stomp or spin away at a moment’s notice. You can almost hear the creak of wood and feathered shuffle as it shifts, like it’s got opinions about who’s visiting tonight.
Baba Yaga isn’t your standard witch – she’s the test at the edge of the world. The wild grandmother. The forest’s own enforcer. She’ll feed you stew or feed you *to* the stew, depending on how polite you are and whether you remembered to bring a proper gift. Sometimes she helps heroes, sometimes she devours them, and sometimes she just laughs until dawn.
In the glow of her cauldron, I like to think she’s cooking up more than trouble – maybe just a potion for the long cold months ahead, or a little something to keep the house’s joints from creaking too loudly in the frost. The bones, the skulls, the mushrooms – decor for a witch who knows exactly where the boundaries are, because she built them herself.
Sweet dreams from the Slavic side of the forest tonight. Watch your step – and if the trees start leaning in to listen, best bow low and keep walking.
Out in the woods this morning, just where the mist was starting to burn off the ridges, I saw him – or maybe just the idea of him – a little fellow in red and blue, moving steady between the birches. Looked like he belonged there, the way fallen leaves belong to autumn, not out of place at all.
Maybe gnomes are just the woods extending perception into the world of towns. You know how sometimes a hollow log looks like it’s breathing, or a tree knot has the hint of an eye watching? He had that same feel – ancient and familiar, but friendly. The sort of presence that carries a quiet “good morning” without saying a word.
He paused by a fallen branch, leaned on his walking stick, and nodded – not to me, I think, but to the forest itself. Behind him, a deer lifted its head, half-curious, half-dreaming. The air smelled of leaf mold, cool water, and the promise of another good day.
Maybe gnomes don’t guard treasure, but the small magic of keeping things as they are – moss green, roots deep, and hearts steady.
🪄🍄🌲 Stay kind to the small spirits in your woods, friends.
Some folks imagine vampires gliding through moonlit castles, their velvet cloaks billowing while organs thunder in the distance. But let’s be honest – immortality is long, and even creatures of the night need late-night snacks.
Which brings us to tonight’s scene: Our fanged friend here has skipped the dramatic coffin exit and gone straight for the fridge, pajama-cape and all. Eyes glowing, grin sharp, juice box in hand – no goblets, no ancient ritual – just slurp, slurp, drip. The crimson straw of destiny. The microwave in the background warmed it to perfection after he pulled it from his icebox.
There’s something charming about a vampire caught mid-swig in a modern kitchen. It’s relatable. Who among us hasn’t stood in front of the fridge at midnight, hunting for something to satisfy that oddly specific craving? His just happens to be… O Negative CapriSun.
Maybe the biggest horror isn’t fangs or fog, but how comfortable the supernatural has become in suburbia. Vampires used to stalk foggy streets. Now they’re raiding leftovers and googling “how long does blood stay fresh in the fridge.” Eternal night meets Tupperware life.
Still… there’s a certain cozy magic in it. A quiet kitchen. The hum of the fridge. A cape brushing linoleum. A little red drip on the floor.
Picked up a little work of art at the @flag_osw_roanokeva, a cute little pink porcupine drawing.
We absolutely love to visit and leave little pieces, and I had to grab this little dude. It must’ve been populated recently, there was quite a lot of stuff in the box.
There’s something quietly beautiful about bones. Not the spooky movie kind that rattle out of closets, but the real ones—soft ivory curves, tiny joints engineered with impossible precision, the memory of motion still humming through them like echoes in an empty hall. I always feel a hush when I see a found bone on a trail, like stepping into the remnant of a story that nature wrote long before I arrived.
Tonight, I’m thinking about how bones are our built-in time capsules. They hold shape long after everything else fades. They are both blueprint and gravestone. They carry the art of survival and the poetry of what once lived. Even the smallest vertebra or hollow bird wing feels like a cathedral of structure and silence.
Lovely bones remind me that beauty isn’t always soft or alive or decorated. Sometimes it’s stark. Bare. Honest. The architecture beneath the skin. The quiet strength that holds us together through storms and sleep and heartbreak. We only notice them when something goes wrong – but they’ve always been working, steadfast guardians, day after day.
I imagine a skeleton dancing – joyful, clattering, free of weight – and I laugh a little. Even stripped down, we still have rhythm. Maybe lovely bones are a reminder: beneath everything, we’re stronger than we think. And strangely elegant, in our own rattly way.
Here’s to bones – hidden supports, natural sculptures, moon-pale reminders that even after life moves on, form and memory can linger. Lovely, indeed.
There’s a certain hush when the world holds its breath just before twilight, when the sky melts from pale blue to ink and the trees begin whispering stories. Tonight, a raven perched on the lightning-twisted branches of the old pine by the ridge. Black as midnight, sharp as memory. He didn’t caw. He didn’t move. He just watched.
The moon hung low behind him like a silver ring, the mountains layered in soft blues – dreamlike, distant. The forest below fanned out like a quiet army of evergreens, all listening alongside me. The air felt charged, like a page about to turn.
Some folks say a raven at dusk is a warning. Others say it’s a messenger. Me? I think he’s a reminder. That change has claws and feathers. That endings perch silently, but beginnings do too. An omen doesn’t have to be doom – it can also be good fortune.
He stayed until the last light slipped away, then lifted off like a shadow remembering how to fly. The branch trembled, but the sky opened. I watched him go and felt, strangely… ready.
Maybe the forest knows: sometimes the darkest silhouettes carry the brightest truths.
Neko no Odoriba: A dancing cat spirit that wears stolen napkins as party dresses. I suspect our little familiar might have one or two in her lineage, as she is a delightful dancer and is also partial to napkin theft.
Ordered Chinese food tonight, and the person on the other end called it “bwokwee” and it tickled me to no end. I’m sure my Mandarin pronunciation of anything vegetable would be far worse.
