Here's for all the sci-fi fans out there.

It looked like a worm at first glance.
Upon closer inspection, however, Jack realized that the creature had legs--tiny, feather like limbs that churned at the water like spinarettes to propel the little creature along. Its body was three inches long, and was divided into segments that seemed to fold and unfold like an accordion as it moved.
Jack though it was dark brown in color, but when he looked closer, he saw that it was, in fact, transparent. The chitin armor that covered it was clear, and through it, Jack could see its long, squishy brown stomach and the blackish, coiled spaghetti structure of its intestines. There were several pea-sized blogs that could have been its heart or kidneys, and a long, brown tube that extended towards the head end of its body.
Its head, Jack was only able to identify by process of elimination. It didn't appear to have any eyes, a nose, or a mouth, but that end wiggled a little more than the other, and Jack watched as it accordion-jumped after a beetle-like insect in the water. The beetle seemed panicked, though Jack couldn't see any reason for it to be, since the worm-thing didn't appear to have any way to eat it. Perhaps the beetle was simply afraid because the worm was bigger than it.
The worm was faster, too, and it managed to catch up with the beetle with one final jump that propelled it a full six inches through the water. The beetle made a panicked clicking noise as the worm closed in on it, and made one last futile attempt to twist out of the way.
It was then that Jack discovered that the worm did in fact have a mouth.
The tip of the worm's 'head' suddenly stretched open to the size of a penny, revealing hundreds of tiny, pinkish-gray needles that lined the creature's maw in a circle, layered in inward-facing rows that pointed down into its gullet. The beetle struggled as the teeth bit into its shell, but within seconds it was dead, and the worm had only to suck the remains of its prey down into its stomach, where Jack saw its innards turn from brown to black as its digestive juices began to work.
Jack fought back an urge to throw up, and instead used the heel of his boot to crush the see-through worm into a jellylike smear on the ground.
Unfortunately, that proved to be a near-fatal mistake.

I never finished this story, nor does it really have a beginning. I got the idea at a fly fishing convention, where one booth was displaying river creatures caught in the Apple River in tanks and water-filled trays. Amongst the numerous crayfish, boatmen beetles and dragonfly nymphs, there was also a bunch of worm-like invertebrates that I'm pretty sure were cranefly larvae. They were partially see-through, and it reminded me of some ghost shrimps I saw at Wal-Mart that I could actually see digesting their food. I expanded on it, and the result was this.
As to Jack's near-fatal mistake, I'll say only that the worm-thing was merely a larva.

The Flying Cats

Here's where the name for this blog came from--the flying cats.

I drew these two for a short story I wrote last year for an English class. I'm not including the story itself here for two reasons: 1-It's not really that short, and 2--it seemed a lot more complex than most of my short stories, as if it needed an entire book to really get to the heart of everything. The main characters--Bandit (black and white cat) and Minerva (gray cat)--had distinct personalities that I realized I would enjoy using in a full-length book, and the way the plot was beginning to unfold, it couldn't really be confined to ten pages and still sound like it should have.
The original story was called "The Cats of London", since that's where it takes place. Bandit believes himself to be the last of his kind--an ancient race of cats that retained their wings even after the domestic ones came back to earth and abandoned the skies. Bandit is surprised to find that there are others, and that they've banded together against the scourge of abnormally large rats that have begun to infest the city.

That's about as far as I've gotten, but I think I will eventually focus on this one, once I've worked my way through the dozens of other ideas that seem to pop into my head on a weekly basis. It's not very high on my list of priorities, but I figured I'd share it since I found the picture.

As usual, the next chapter in Centaur Ranch is up. If you haven't read the first chapters, I'll be publishing the whole thing on lulu.com soon, so look for it then.

Teaser

I will offer no explanation for this segment, save that it comes from a larger story that I'm currently working on. As to what happens next, I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave you to wonder about that, since I'm only partially sure of that myself and the story's still in a somewhat skeletal stage, where all I really know is the characters and the eventual outcome of this adventure. I'm pleased with the beginning, though....

By definition, it is impossible to expect the unexpected. Yet somehow, I had a feeling something was about to happen that spring, though I had absolutely no clue what that something could be. I almost think sometimes that I wanted something to happen, and that maybe, through some inexplicable power that I'm not even aware of myself, I pulled a few fatelines that set this whole crazy mess in motion and almost ended in the destruction of an underground government of supposedly mythical beings.
Or not. I'll never know for sure. All I can do is record everything that happened during that month,and maybe even publish my accounts in the Overworld in case  there's someone out there who will believe me. If there isn't, that's perfectly fine with me. This can be a work of fiction if you like, and I'm sure every law of space and matter will agree that it's impossible for such a story to be true.
Remember, though, that with every lie comes a little hidden truth. Nothing in this world is truly arbitrary, and there is a reason we once feared the dark.

It was 2011 and I was twenty-two years old. 

Some changes...

All right. Due to the sheer amounts of extracurricular activities and lack of time to post that I've had lately, I've decided to make some changes.
First of all, I've decided to start posting on Saturdays, instead of Fridays, because that's about when it gets pushed back to anyway. Second of all, I will henceforth be posting every other week until such time that I'm not completely inundated with homework and places I have to be on time (probably until November or so).

That being said, I hope you continue to read my posts, and I hope you've enjoyed what I've put up so far. And now for something new.
One of the things keeping me busy lately has been the new addition to our family; she's small, furry, four-legged, and she likes to bite. Her name is Zoey, and this is her story...
(And, for the record, the real Yuki hates the real Zoey's guts).

Have you ever wondered why you're afraid of the dark? 
Why you leaped into bed to avoid the darkness beneath, or why dogs bark in the middle of the night when staring at nothing? Have you ever wondered why doors sometimes slam or pets disappear, and why places that are abandoned seem chilled and eerie?
The cats know. They know about them.
The Bible calls them devils, the Greeks knew them as servants of Hades./ They are the ones who wait, silently, for those whose time has come. They're very small, and sometimes completely invisible, but they're there...waiting.
The cats are the ones who keep them in the shadows. They stand watch in the darkness, and we oftentimes find them staring at nothing or pouncing on something that doesn't exist. The Egyptians understood why. They revered cats as guardians of the underworld.
That is their job: 
To keep the ones who wait in the shadows. 
To keep them waiting.  

Our story begins with Zoey, an energetic young guardian-in-training who's been apprenticed under Yuki, a belligerent but widely renowned Senior guardian who's serving out a community service punishment. All seems well until a new transfer student moves in with Zoey's family, and the cats must work to protect their secret under the student's suspecting gaze. To make matters even more interesting, there's been a curious outbreak of dark creatures in the household, and it's up to Zoey, Yuki, and some unlikely allies to find out why.

This is actually an older drawing that I came across while rummaging through a sketch pad buried in some unexplored region of my desk. It's part of the series of dragons I was posting earlier (Torgadon and two-headed dragon), and will be added to that collection in the Doodles and Art tab up above.
The creature itself looks as if it was evolved for flying long-distances, with its large, gliding wings and light build. The little leaf-shaped fan on the tail would serve as a rudder when flying, and the wiry muscles around the shoulders and wing bases would be designed for holding the wings in a gliding position for long periods of time without tiring.
I'm not entirely sure what my idea was with the rider on its back. I designed her armor after the dragon's chin frills, and I gave her a long broadsword since that would be the easiest weapon to use when lying on your stomach fighting atop a large animal.
I haven't yet come up with a name for this creature, but a friend of mine thought it should speak in a Brazilian accent.

A Modern Myth...

The dragon and the Black Tree

Throughout history, people have struggled to understand the world around them and the forces that control the universe. One method of understanding the world has been through the creation of myths, and one of the most common myths told is how the world came to be. In modern times, explaining things through myths has become something of a thing of the past, what with all the newly discovered technology and methods of research that we have. I guess that's why we need fiction writers.
Anyway, here's my modern creation myth...

In the beginning of the world, there was a great being--a dragon--who had seen the birth and destruction of three other worlds in the course of his lifetime. Ours was his fourth, and he was growing tired.
To help him hold this new world together, the dragon called forth from the core of the earth a great tree--a tree of incredible power, its heart a smouldering bed of coals and its roots still intwined around the center of the earth. Its great, black, leafless boughs stretched to the heavens to support the sky, and its tangled roots held the soil of the earth in place. The dragon was at last able to rest, and he settled down at the base of the tree to sleep for an age.
But all is not well.
The Black Tree is a being of fire, and more than anything, fire longs to burn. The smouldering heart of the tree needs only a breath of air to turn into a raging inferno, and should that happen, the dragon and all the rest of the world would be consumed in flame. Without the dragon, there will be no fifth world, and so existence will end. There will be only black.
So beware.

Ruby

This is Ruby the bantam cockatrice, the latest in bored doodling technology.
For those of you who don't know, a bantam is the poultry equivalent to a miniature pony. On average, they're about six inches tall (as compared to the fourteen or so-inch 'standard' chicken), and the hens lay eggs about the size of a ping-pong ball (takes a lot of them to make an omelet). The roosters, however, serve absolutely no purpose other than the fact that they're entertaining. Like standard roosters, they place great value in intimidating all other creatures within their domain and establishing themselves as king of the coop. Unlike standards, however, they're too puny to do anything about it. It's a little sad sometimes.
The cockatrice is a version of the basalisk. Both are fictional creatures, and both are said to be capable of turning anything that catches their eye to stone. The cockatrice is fabled to have the body of a chicken and the tail of a serpent, and the birth of one involves a long list of impossible factors such as the hatching of a cockerel's egg that I'm not going to list here.
So, combine the feared monster of ancient myths with a six-inch bundle of angry frustration, and you have Ruby.
Ruby will be a character in a more recent novel that I've started. He's owned by a witch named Myrtle, and is her official guard, greeter, and errand-runner. He's highly territorial, but is only capable of paralyzing victims who meet his eye for a day or so. As usual, I managed to cut off his toes when I was drawing him and the tips of his wing when I was scanning him, and had I moved him just a little up and to the side I would have had him centered perfectly.
Keep an eye out for him in the future, and as always, enjoy the next chapter of Centaur Ranch.