Head full of feathers

Mwaaah.

Really late on this one. 

The Daring Falcon

Put up to all sorts of shenanigans by his gargoyle contemporaries. 

Don't fly.

No pears.  Not yet.  Besides, it's a quail. 

Not yer housekeeper.

Costume sketches for Marcella in The Baker Street Irregulars. 

Nolo

Fan favorite.  Author darling. 

Jinny

More stuff for the book. 

more

Second round of character sketches.  Tad.  Preening rock star type. 

Little birdie.

Robin Levesque.  In Sim and in RL. 

Expiration.

 A long time ago, there was a princess who was passing fair.  But her pride outstripped her beauty to the detriment of the land.  The Sun turned green at seeing her.  The dairyland clouds curdled in response.   Dragons arrived in greedy droves.   The country turned under her growing legend, sucking in draughts of hopeful air, sending out streams of sour disappointment.  Before long, the golden plates were all empty.  The environment could sustain only the most rancid of beasts and the only suitors that came were the bogmen, the waterstriders, and the lines and lines of persistent frogs. 

Big Grin.

It's a seemingly seasonal thing.  Sometimes you've just got to send out the call and instigate a gathering of dragons.

A flight of dragons?
A fancy of dragons?
A convention of dragons?

A Dudgeon of Dragons.   
                             (they are famous for alighting on the highest of piques)

Cretan.

It wasn't an honor.  It was goddamned randomness.  A lottery.  I went to my grandmother--for nothing, it seems.  She was a pitiless woman and that day she was in a high, philosophic humour. 

"Daedalus was no mazemaker.  He was too keen for that.  He watched.  He saw the undernetting of all this.  That labyrinth is a thumbprint of the universe.  There are no wrong turns--you follow those whorls and you end up exactly where you should."  Theseus needed a cord--that man never knew where he needed to be. 

I mentioned the Beast. 

"His step-father calls him Asterion."  Starry.  "And you should be more respectful.  He has a lofty calling and you are it.  He will take you and eye you up and place you on the cosmic spit.  The gods can't abide our human peaks and puckers.  He'll burn off those mortal edges."  I am reminded now of the Glorious Peliades.  "Reduce you to your densest.  Rub you smooth and shiny like a planet."  She laughed.  "But I suppose that'll be scant reassurance when you're looking into those pink, oozing eyes."

All I saw of those eyes was them laying on the palace floor.  Scattered in brains, cast from their orbits. 

UP

Aloft and aloof in alliterative loops. 

Wound About

And strung along.  Poor Ariadne, goddess of tethers. 

Ease on down.

and float, lotus-like

Wing Dance.

Party like a bunch of Monarchs. 

Old Mill

Under the root systems to where water does its work.

Phaethon and the mourning Heliades

Daring greatly vs Staying the course

Spring

Coiled and urgent among the thorns. 

Canny M. Mole and the Bulbsearch

Pitted against the Imperial Guard. 

Dogged Guardsmen.

Beetles, of course, are the most diligent of sentinels.  Who else to guard the Emperor's tulips?

Music?

"I hear mice in the attic stomping like elephants."

Tritogenia and the Master D.

Rocking the plains of Ilion.

King in Yellow

Reeeaaaally wary of finishing the second half of this pic.  And is it me, or does the book work backwards?

Stars and Ships and Sails and Scales.

the elusive ellipse. 

Bridges

I've added a hanging wooden bridge, too, as each of us goes by a different path. 

HEEEEERE

fishyfishyfishyfishy!!!

In droves

Castle

Man the walls.

pages three and four

or three, four, five and six.  still not sure. 

City.

Texted up.

The gulf.

Borderlands and an aspiring abode.

Krampusnacht. Krampus knocks.

In the grand tradition of the Old Winters.  When the waterways froze and the beasts crossed over. 

TS Livingston, circa 1995

Grimoire required. 

Sugar plum shenanigans.

Up to all manner of No-Good.

Sleigh ride

Northward bound.

Dig, if you will.

Indulging those hibernal tendencies. 

Light it up.

In homage to that beautiful tree on Morris.  The one casting stars down from its branches. 

Greensky

Split image.