Thanks to all who entered my challenge. I truly enjoyed reading each imaginative and magical post.

This was an exciting, “win by likes” race; we even had a three-way tie for a bit. However, Huckleberry Hoo and Rhiannon3 just barely got edged out at the end by Misschevivon.

Congratulations!

Thanks again, all you beautiful word smiths. I hope to see you again soon in my next challenge <3

“Your name has power.” Daniel is a soft-spoken young man, and he spoke those words with enough conviction to convert the most stubborn non-believers. My skin still crawls with a profound fear and faith I’ve rarely experienced while I listened to his story.

Daniel is a professional hiking guide and trail leader throughout the United States’ wilderness. I was charmed by his awkwardness, insecurity, and humility. I was unnerved by his stories. I can feel the thin and tender flesh behind my left earlobe prickling as I think back to our conversation.

“Every experienced hiker used a pseudonym on the trails instead of their real names.” Daniel shifts his weight towards me and touches the rim of his glasses with his thumb and index finger to emphasize the importance of trail names. “One of my best friends on the trails is called Mercury. I don’t know her real name and she’s doesn’t know mine. She only knows me by Zero.”

“Why don’t you tell anyone your real name?” I leaned forward to match Daniel’s body language. The blank page of my new spiral notebook was dying for blank ink and mysteries.

Daniel’s eyes narrowed and he paused before he whispered. I could tell he was nervous to tell the secrets he held. My eager eyes pleaded for him to continue.

“You don’t want anyone to know your real name because your name has power.” My pen wrote furiously. Your name has power. “Have you ever heard your name being whispered and you weren’t sure if it was your imagination or not?”

“Yeah, I think I hear my name all the time. Whispered on the wind or shouted in a crowded room.” I was taking notes without breaking eye contact with Daniel. I was doing my best to keep him talking, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to comprehend everything he was sharing with me.

“Don’t ever follow the sound of your name when you’re alone on the trail. Don’t ever leave your hiking companion or group if you hear your real name calling you into the distance. That’s why we have trail names.”

“Have you ever heard your name being whispered on the trails?” I knew the answer to my question, but I didn’t know Daniel’s story yet. He folded his arms on the black patio table and put his head down on top of them. His prolonged silence was fractured by the sound of the pulse in my throat.

“It’s called the wendigo. I shouldn’t even say its name out loud.” Daniel lifted his head but he didn’t raise his voice. He visibly shuddered as his arms left the table. He rubbed the back of his neck and clenched his jaw.

“I had been hiking with Mercury for over 600 miles before we parted ways. It was my second day alone on the trail in weeks, and I was enjoying the solitude while I set up camp for the night. It had been a great day, but I was tired by the time I finished dinner so I fell asleep faster than usual. I was in a deep sleep, zipped up in my tent and sleeping bag, further from any other human than I’d ever been before.” I wasn’t taking notes anymore. I was engrossed with Daniel’s story, yearning to hear more.

“Like a slingshot, I sat up. I was wide-eyed and wide awake out of no where in the head of night, and I was scared. I was looking around in a panicked daze, but nothing was out of the ordinary so I figured I’d had a weird nightmare. I laid back down and closed my eyes. Then I heard it…my name. It was Mercury’s voice calling me from outside my tent. She whispered to me. ‘Come out Daniel. I want to talk.’ But it wasn’t Mercury. She only knows me by Zero. I haven’t seen her in days. Then I heard her voice more clearly. She was inches from my tent and calling to me again. ‘Please come out Daniel. I need you.’ I knew it wasn’t Mercury. It was the wendigo. I always thought it was trail lore and campfire stories until it was my name being uttered into the darkness.”

I’ve never been more scared in my life as Daniel spoke and I just as scared as I type his words right now. I’ll never forget the piercing chills I had because I relive them every time I think about his story.

“What did you do?” I mumbled the obvious question while Daniel considered his next words.

“I waited for a long time. It seemed like an entirety. I knew it wasn’t Mercury and I couldn’t follow the sound of the voice, but I had to do something. After there was silence for a long time, I turned on my smallest flashlight and unzipped my tent with meticulously slow deliberation. I’ve never been more terrified as I shined the light into the black void outside my tenuous safety. As I peeked from the smallest opening, my tiny beam of light stopped itself on two red dots looming low on the ground in the distance. They were eyes and they were staring straight at me. I couldn’t look away as they raised from the forest floor getting taller and taller. My flashlight started flickering as the red eyes came closer. Right before the light went out, I saw a millisecond of an image that’s branded into my brain forever. It was the wendigo. Twelve feet tall, shapeless black face, no body, shadowy antlers entangled with dark tree branches, and evil red eyes. I zipped up that tent door so fast! I hid under my sleeping bag and prayed more than any atheist has ever prayed before. I heard the wendigo calling me all night pretending to be Mercury. ‘Come out Daniel. I want to talk. I need you.’ I thought it would never end. I cried when dawn finally broke. That’s why you don’t tell anyone on the trail your real name. Your name has power, and if you hear your real name being whispered in the dead of night…it’s the wendigo. Never follow it.”

The wife and family took off for a beach wherever. Finally.

He was determined to do it today when they vacationed away. The complete cleaning of his home, which accumulated leftovers from four generations. Iztok itched to finish the task.

“It’s time”, he thought, “to get rid of the superstitions too”. The garbage collection will be tomorrow, and Iztok has been stacking old men’s and women’s clothes, suitcases, broken watches, torn toys, and what they had left over in this stuffy and big house. The heaps in front of the home multiplied.

Iztok opened a tin metal box that belonged to his grandmother Sava. Rosary beads, scapulars, small pilgrimage booklets, and mementos of pilgrimages: Brezje, Holy Mountain at Gorica and Ptujska Gora, Holy Višarje, Kurešček, to Holy Mother at Zaplaz and in Crngrob. And souvenirs from the places of St. Mary, Mother of Jesus apparitions: Lourdes, Medjugorje, Fatima. A veritable display of superstitions. Iztok wanted to get rid of it all

What is there? Iztok looked closer to see if he had found a silver coin, but he wasn’t so lucky. It was only his blessed medal of St. Benedict. Granny Sava gave it to him as an especially personal present.

The entire neighborhood was a little afraid of Baka Sava. A seer, a prophetess, and a spell caster, too. How it went together with her piety? He did not understand, but it worked for her.

“This consecrated medal will protect you from deathly dangers and evil”, she said to him as she hung the holy medal around his neck. He, as the entire house, obeyed the seeress. It was less risky than not to. They rumored that the people who opposed her, have ended badly. Bad rumours, always there...

How faithfully he wore it, all his youth, to ward off evils! Now he was ashamed of that. His childhood passed as clockwork, with no major injuries or significant problems, but not because of that consecrated medal, a remnant of medieval ghosts.

After Baka Sava’s death, the medal of St. Benedict was thrown at once into this box, until today. Iztok never wanted to see this holy junk again, thank you veeery much. He swept this spiritual trash back into the box and, with a bit of hesitation, included the medal of St. Benedict, too.

Iztok got up, soaked; it was close to forty degrees Celsius on the outside; he was in his bathing suit, a short swimwear trousers. Another enormous pile has now grown before Iztok’s house, to be taken away. Only Mitar’s shelter was not yet investigated. It must be empty now.

Grandfather Mitar, otherwise an amiable man, was “atomically” crazy—an unshaken believer, convinced of the inevitable third world war, accompanied by all the atomic paranoias. So, Mitar secretly built an amateur shelter under his garage; but being a farmer, not a constructor, Mitar effed it all up.

The shelter had no ventilation; the electricity was terrible, the space too limited, and on and on. It was a total mess. And Mitar even added wall material that muffled all and any sound on top of that.

After his grandfather’s death, Mitar’s shelter had been looted, first of the canned food and then of all of it; it was free to be plundered by anyone from the family and friends and Iztok encouraged it. Except for collecting dust, Mitar’s bunker served no purpose now.

Iztok raised the entrance. It clicked on its own. Mitar put a handle on it. Iztok placed two heavy cement bricks on its edges, to prevent the entrance from closing, and climbed the dangerous steps down. Well, at least it was cold here. He was using his phone light for guidance.

As he expected, the bunker was ransacked spotless, even the crates all taken away. And it was swept and washed, possibly by the grandmother Sava; not a speck was left. After Mitar’s death, Baka had to work all the time, to forget her sorrow. Well, if there is nothing there, then it’s nothing there.

At that moment, Iztok heard a car above him. Not his wife? She was supposed to come after a week? The car slammed on the cement bricks which thundered into the bunker - the entrance crashed down, shut, and locked automatically. In the darkness, he could barely see his tiny phone light.

Iztok searched his memory. The electric opener does not work, he knew that. Mitar had also an emergency, a physical one. A cylinder with a vertical crake was near the entrance. If you turn it around, the vault will unlock and rise up a bit.

With a trembling hand, he shone the phone light until he saw the narrow horizontal hollow beside the opening. What should he put in to turn it? It looked bottomless, and he hadn’t a coin on him to use for that. And there was a sliver usable for such a purpose here.

Iztok shouted, jumped, beat the opening, tried to press his nails and fingers in the hole; and bashed at it, till he had to stop, out of strength. Nothing on him to help. It was so cold. Soon he will use all oxygen here. And he was hungry. He could solve nothing, not a not a thumbnail of it!

Iztok inspected the small hole. Only a single big coin, or small thin sheet same as that, and it would do; a gadget nearly five centimeters in width, would work—to insert deep it in the hole, twist, and the top will open, sufficient to scream for help.

A single, large coin. One coin. But what was there on the wall?

Above the emergency lock was a tinted sign, an information.

Picture of the medal of St. Benedict.

The wee folk, the fairies, the little people. Many names are given to these most wondrous of wisps, these pixie-dust imps and wood-dwelling nymphs, riding high atop dragonfly’s backs, dipping in a stream causing ripples; their favourite tipple a sip from a honeydew cup. Iridescent wings flutter-so-lightly, brightly tipped, leaving trails incandescent with love. Foxglove is like Buddleia to a butterfly; they’ll flutter by a buttercup and land on your forget-me-nots. Hobgoblins, trolls, dwarves and gnomes; brownies and banshees and dryads of trees. Beware the fairy ring, for stepping in, the toadstool will fool you, and steal you away to the kingdom of fae. These elves and sprites could escape your sight, but know that our tales of fairies are not myth, they exist, nature spirits by day and dancing by night.

Chimeras are one of the most intriguing creature in mythos, and not just one in particular. You have a single creature described as having the (insert body part) of an (insert animal) all across its body. Its hind legs differ from the front, the torso is mismatched with its head, and the tail clashes in style with the wings. It's as though Frankenstein mixed and matched the first animals that came to his mind and forced them together...yet this creature is born as such. It's the perfect imperfect being that is on the cusp of not having its own identity, as without all of the elements of the varied animal kingdom meshed together, it can't exist.

However.

There's a mysterious aspect to it that always intrigued me, and while there might be some answer rooted in mythological fact, it's a fun idea to toy with. What if the chimera came first? A test subject by the gods to see what body parts would be most effective in specific situations, and after this amalgamation of a test subject was thrown through the trials for each piece of it, it was separated or evolved into it's different animals and creatures. And the one's who remain throughout mythos are just remnants of an odd experiment?

This is pure speculation of course.

The chimera is also an interesting case because it can be anything. Something as old as the minotaur or as contemporary as Bigfoot all have general description and looks that identify it as its species, but the chimera could be anything as imaginative as the god or writer can think of. Yes, the idea of a chimera will exist with the idea of being created by multiple animals, but the look itself will always differ. Any person could create a unique chimera if you wished, for example.

-Head of a rhino

-Body of a whale

-Legs of a spider

-Tail of a cow

This would look more than goofy, but regardless this is a result. There's a high level of creativity involved in a chimera, and there's a good chance that if a writer were to create their own sort of creature, the idea of a chimera, while perhaps not the intention, has a chance of coming through in the final design. If someone is creating a new creature, the description of it in a story is almost always rooted in trying to relate its pieces to something familiar to the reader. Things like "horns like an ox" or "claws as large as a lion's" are descriptors of one beast. It's as though any new creature is subconsciously bound to the idea of a chimera when being created, and to me, there's something amazing about that.

My favorite mythical creature is the responsible 'adult'. I first heard about this amazing creature when I was a small child. Everyone spoke of the powers adults held. They could chew gum whenever and where ever they pleased, could drink soda with anything, could drive, make decisions for others... adults had super powers and were able to access anything they wanted and had answers.

As a kid I learned adults could make humans. I learned they could decide what happens to humans, they made and enforced laws, and no one told them what to wear.

As a teenager, I realized that my childhood ideas of the adult were, actually, quiet skewed. I had to relook at the decision to think if they still existed... I was having my own job now that magically gave ME money. I was able to buy my own gum, I found out I did not even like soda, I not only learned how to drive but I could do so and people who WERE a form of adults would ask ME to drive them places! Still.... these 'adults' did not have to raise their hands to go to the bathroom Monday through Friday, they did not get detention for not using crayons on dittos, and still had ruling authority over others.

I always loved the idea of adults because when I was small I learned they for the most part loved kids, did cool things, had neat things, owned animals, and said amazing and smart things. I wanted one of my own to know... or I wanted to learn to become one because that is what everyone said could happen, that I would be able to grow up and become a responsible adult.

I didn’t know my Grandma was an adult... she was a gram. She also didn’t have everything she wanted and she never had any desire to drive a vehicle. She also, to be fair would flip her dentures out at children in the market to watch their facial expressions and she laughed at anything to do with farts... even I was not that childlike. My dad was not an adult because he was a criminal, adults were never criminals. My mom, not much older than me was not an adult because I was taught that adults never lied. My mom was a liar. So maybe a responsible adult was a real adult.

Finally- I exchanged 'adolescence' by being handed a piece of paper called a diploma coupled with turning 18 with being a 'young adult'; and told when I was 21 I was FINALLY going to morph into this mythical creature I have been searching for my whole life! However, before I was old enough to go to war, but not drink or purchase a few certain things or go a few certain places in my own country- I made humans. When I looked at the first human I made, I realized perhaps a real adult did not fully form if they did not follow proper timelines of leveling up??? I waited it out and continued to look for the adult that for half my life, my entire prospective identity was based upon being measured against.

Eventually I turned 21. I had made humans. I was able to do all the things I was told were reserved for adults... but there was no excitement in it- basically I already had owned my own dogs for years and there was nothing outside of the new humans I found more exhilarating and empowered by having as part of 'my capacity' to do.

When I was 25 I clearly remember realizing that adults were not a real thing- they were a mythical creature designed to be either something promised, something pretended, or something established as an ideal- but did not exist. Society was showing me the whole time that this was true, I just kept seeking this thing I wanted to know or be like until I was so busy not being the thing I was enamored with finding my whole life I forgot about them.

Seeing this writing prompt was such perfect timing, I must say- because recently my curiosity and admiration of the allure of the ever illusive 'adult' reemerged. I realized what the adult really was and it really WAS all of the things I was told about my whole life- the adult was free, and could do whatever they wanted, when they wanted. The adult participates in commerce of the world around them with ease having earned it with just the title, the adult can consume anything they want- and they DON'T have to be responsible if they chose not to; being part of the freedom. They could be criminals, and they could laugh at farts- I was wrong about what the adult really was all about because I was told the wrong things.

Having said that, dear reader, should you still be here with me... slip around this fourth wall a second, if you please.

You see, a few years ago when I was actually writing a piece here on 'The Prose', most likely at that time 3 gummies in, I wrote a store about Bob Vila.

While I was writing that for my own (honestly our The Prose community entertainment) it occurred to me- adults really are things of fiction. THEY ARE FICTIONAL CHARACTERS that WE ... ME and YOU and all the other writers create. WE create adults in our writing. Sure, we flaw them- purposely so as to make them more like US, humans. I was so interested in adults because my whole life, since I was able to read because like you, I was reading their lives... we all have been about 'adults' but have you ever really met one? I haven’t and I have been working with and around humans a long time.

Sherlock Holmes, Atticus Finch, Jay Gatsby ... adults! and for the people who told us- no matter what generation you are from, they were all introduced to what an 'adult' was by Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Alexandre Dumas, C.S Lewis and their generation's ideas of adults going back to a time when Murasaki Shikibu wrote The Tale of Genji. Before that, older humans learned of adults through (and still today) from the likes of poetry by Homer and Shakespeare. Should you know who some, any, or none of those named above they are all the humans that shaped the definition of 'adult' being something more than a 'human who is done growing'.

We were only acting as adults when we were reading about them, as we lived their 'lives' and experiances with them. I believe that is why we also love so deeply the non-adults of The Outsiders and Hogwarts. I'd near guarantee almost all of us spent those 'two days' in the life of Holden Caulfield after he was expelled and then himself became aware of the 'adults' being mythical.

Perhaps adults at one time did exist in our history- but perhaps if they did, so then did dragons; we know giants existed, or at least what humans perceived as such by naming them so. And with having said that, even though I ebbed and flowed on it, and even though I looooooooove dragons.... my whole life my favorite mythical creature in the entire human world, has been the 'adult'.

btw: the banner pic, I asked AI to make Bob Belcher a human in a field of tulips.

I'm 45, sometimes I still wish I could be an adult.

love you guys

...is the Bestest creature if ever there was some such in all of Mythology, otherwise known as the Sand Fairy, a hairy little rotund almost E.T. like alien teddy bubba, whose super power lies in the wonderous ability to grant, according to his humor, if dug up by a person from his beachy lair, any number of wishes of no limit, foolish or otherwise, which will be enacted in a day pronto and dissipate at sun up tomorrow. That is the gift, Life like, that the wish is boundless in giving and in forgiving. The lesson being that most desires are suspect and lead to grievance, the lifting of which becomes the true granted wish...

09.30.2023

Mythological Creatures challenge @Mariah

I don't know if he (or maybe she?) qualifies as a creature, so my entry may be disqualified, but that's okay. My favorite mythological being is the Grim Reaper (Let's call him G.R for short). Frankly, G.R gets a bad rap. I think the heavy metal album covers, black light posters, and tattoos featuring G.R don't represent him fairly. I believe the misrepresentation comes from the unsupported supposition that G.R has some part in the person's demise. This isn't the case. G.R is an escort for the dead, nothing more, nothing less. Think of him as a UPS delivery guy who has very exclusive delivery destinations and doesn't have to wear those stupid brown shorts.

Many images of G.R portray him as one who relishes death. I kind of doubt he does because unlike a Door Dash driver, he doesn't get tips and has ZERO time off. There's no extra incentive involved and G.R won't be able to rest until the last soul on Earth is reaped. I think G.R does the job to the best of his ability without expectation. There are no judgements, no bonuses, or quotas. G.R comes for all with the same dedication to his task. He doesn't care if you're young, old, rich, poor, Christian, Atheist, or anything else. I would argue that G.R is probably the most unprejudiced entity in the universe. I take comfort in the fact that even the likes of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos have the same end as everyone else. Just like the poorest of the poor, the hearts of these rich motherfuckers will stop, their brains will shut down, and their bowels and bladder will evacuate themselves. So, rich or poor, we all meet our ends in our own shit and piss. I'm guessing this probably makes the lack of a nose a blessing for the Grim Reaper.

As the reaper of souls, I'm sure G.R gets a lot of heat when his job involves children. Nothing is really mentioned in folklore, but I can see how maybe an ancestor of the departed is assigned to go with G.R to reap and then deliver the tiny soul. I can also see how honorably fallen soldiers may receive an honor guard escort to provide companionship as G.R takes them to where good soldiers go when their fighting is done.

One thing that isn't talked a lot about in G.R's folklore is how he interacts with the soul he is reaping. Has anyone ever considered how many stories G.R can tell? He has escorted all of humanity to the Great Beyond. I'm sure he got tired of the likes of Columbus, Andrew Jackson, Hitler, and Mussolini sniveling like the impotent cowards they were as they grew closer to their unseasonably hot destination. I bet he sang an acapella version of, "Another One Bites the Dust" with Freddie Mercury. He probably traded jokes with George Carlin, Sam Kinison, and Bob Hope. I bet he, Bon Scott, John Bonham, Janice Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Malcom Young, Mama Cass, Randy Rhodes, and Lemmy stopped for a beer on the way to rock and roll heaven. G.R probably discussed literature with Shakespeare, Twain, and Steinbeck. Instead of the Grim Reaper, I bet it's more accurate to call him the, Brilliant Conversationalist and Story Teller Reaper. I'd be grim too if everyone thought I was evil when I'm just doing my job. I bet he could keep me on the edge of my seat for hours just describing the cluster fuck that was the bubonic plague and how the only time he was ever tempted to do violence is when Native Americans, Jews, and other peoples were killed by the millions during our all too frequent dark periods of genocide. G.R may deliver without judgement, but that doesn't mean he doesn't recognize the stupidity of blind hate, arrogance, ignorance, and greed when he sees it.

Unless you're Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, death is inevitable. No one escapes it. Frankly, living forever would be boring anyway if you think about it. Humanity is supposed to have a fairly short shelf-life. It makes us appreciate the wonders of the universe and our small place in it. If he's out there, I am glad the Grim Reaper is on the job.

The fartblossom (Flatulus malodorus) is an aquatic or ground plant whose leaves float atop the water or protrude from the ground and whose stem and roots extend vertically below the surface. It uses a hybrid type of photosynthesis that converts CO2 to hydrogen sulfide, although other byproducts are released, presenting as a bouquet of flatus variations as perceived by Cranial Nerve I (Olfactory Nerve). Many descriptions have been proffered to describe its perfume, e.g., "dead rat," "pus ball," "burned mucus retention clots" (i.e., burned boogers), and Lazarus just before being raised from the dead (John 11:38-40).

Its bloom, which is typically VERY SUDDEN, is accompanied by the plant tilting to one side or the other and a sound much like a thunderburst. Some botanists have claimed to have observed a "silent but deadly" variation of its bloom, with either no sound at all or accompanied by a sound much like the scratching sound of a Geiger counter. But they died. Further research into this phenomenon is currently underway with prisoner volunteers, usually sex offenders.

The slightest contact with it will provoke the paroxysmal bloom and its exudate is difficult to remove when it is aerosolized into the air and lands on hair, skin, clothing, etc. Seeds are very prolific in the spontaneous generation of buds soon thereafter and are often thrown onto others' properties during neighborhood disagreements. Others plant them as a strategy to keep dogs from moving their bowels on their property, relying on the wind to mitigate this questionable trade-off.

The fartblossom is the national flower of Hell. It is also the real reason Vincent van Gogh took his life, while doing his unfinished still life, "Plant Indisposed." (He should have cut off his nose, instead, like Tycho Brahe, who fell into a nest Flatuli malodori in a tragic misstep.)

I was six years old. The last day I saw the unicorn, it was on my grandmom's porch, a silver magic shadow in the oceanic darkness.

We had read a book, I can't remember the name. The illustrations were vibrant and bedazzled. The book was about all the mythical creatures with horns, and the habitats where they lived. The ones that flew, that swam, that hunted, that roamed.

My grandma had the famous medieval tapestry, the red and gold embroidered print of the unicorn pastured in the stall, its neck caught in a circle of thorns. It hung above her sitting room couch, next to the piano.

My grandma's house was full of magic, it walked and flew in the forest behind her house.

The unicorn's eyes watched us through the frosted panes. It watched us play tickle fight on the couch, cuddle in my grandma's chair, make banana bread in the oven.

The last night I saw the unicorn, we both knew it was goodbye.