By It is officially fall and for the writing group that means it is the start of spooky season. We are starting off with a prompt about meeting a cryptid or creature from folklore. This could be in any context.
Yes, I did mix my folklore creatures from different regions. This was a fun pieces. Some of the pieces produced were creepy, some were funny but all were well done. Happy reading and enjoy fall.
Before folktale creatures stopped hiding, if you had asked me, I would have said that I feared the monsters: cyclops, dragons, ogres and their ilk. But since they have stepped into the open, it’s come to light that the ones we need to fear are not the solitary ones that are content to stay in their self-claimed domains. It’s the tricksters. The will-o-the-whisps began working with the kelpes. Instead of people drowning in bogs, now they get eaten by horse-like monsters.
Don’t speak the name of a trickster god and if you do, sacrifice something nice to someone more benevolent or the trickster god might feel so inclined to come play. Too many people have fallen prey to Loki, to Robin Goodfellow of the fae. Actually, don’t even think of the fair folk. They are all way too willing to make humans their playthings. The number of changelings has increased significantly in the past months and so have the missing people reports. They really like toying with those that do not accept that they are real.
To protect myself and my family, I worked hard to win the affections of a house spirit, a domovoi. A guardian of Slavic folklore. Someone to guard the house and the hearth. To start, I installed a large woodburning stove and then began to leave out clothes and sweet breads. Our house was too new, it had no ancestor spirit to become the domovoi. Instead, we invited an abandoned spirit to enter our home.
Time slipped by as we waited, setting out new trinkets before the hearth to tempt the spirit, while milk and honey and bread were set upon the porch to appease the local fae. Well fed fae are less likely to be tricky. Salt lined our windows and herb bundles hung above every doorway. A month we waited, a month and then one day a little hairy man, no taller than my knee stood in the doorway.
“I am your domovoi,” he declared in a voice that had no business being that deep. He lives now behind the hearth. Stopping the voices that try to summon us in the night, strengthening our threshold from those things that would do us harm. We have all slept sweeter since he has joined the home. Our belief in him keeps his power strong. Most days he hides but we know he is there as our nightly offerings are gone with each sunrise.
Believing in magic and revisiting the old ways will keep you alive. Don’t discount the old spirits, don’t speak of trickesters, and for all that is good don’t follow the lights.
Thank you KW Photography for allowing me to use your wonderful photos!
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McGee Travel Tales 