Articles by Pagona Talbot
Snapdragon Tea: The Frightener’s Society
The book was as beautiful as it was dark and haunting. It’s rather strange design suggested it was a handmade creation and most likely one of a kind. It was covered in a very rich material, with a collage of images on the front that almost looked like a shallow shadowbox. When looking at the book standing up it almost appeared to be an eclectic theater hosting a Halloween play and all manner of costumed and bewitched characters were taking part. At the very bottom of this scene were metal letters that spelled: The Frightener’s Society.
Emily let her fingers move over the details of the book finding herself wanting to hold off opening the cover for as long as she could. The longer she waited the more her anticipation grew and she wanted to feel the full thrill of cracking the cover to discover what lay within such an eccentrically crafted thing.
The young girl’s slim fingers finally reached for the heavy latch that held the book shut. The latch gave a satisfying twang as it sprang open and immediately the heavily compressed pages within pushed out. There was a small cough of dust that came from it like the book was alive and getting its first taste of fresh air in a long time. Emily gripped the heavy front cover and pulled it open…
Snapdragon Tea and its characters are copyright Bethalynne Bajema. All Rights Reserved
Happy Friday the 13th
Tea Spirits?
We’ve added our decorative Orange Moon Tea Society and Tea Bats spirits boards to our gift shoppe. Above you can see Bethalynne’s tea bats board modeled by her fuzzy imp Gremlin and those strange creatures that seem to take over her house every October. The other board is our Orange Moon Tea Society board that has only been offered through raffles previously. Now, per request, they’re available for all! The boards are all slightly different as we craft them when ordered. The planchettes differ from board to board but they always compliment it. We like them as decoration, but who knows? Maybe there is someone just waiting beyond the veil with some good tea recipes! But remember: Always spirit board properly. 🙂
Autumn has come to Orange Moon Downs
You know autumn is just around the corner when you drive down the road and hit a pumpkin paradise or walk into the dollar store and get overwhelmed with Halloween goodness. And if that doesn’t clue you into it, having strange creatures suddenly appear in your green places will do it. We’re not sure what these critters are. We’ll check with Mab and see if these little guys escaped the greenhouse!
Tea Quotes
An Autumn Moment
“There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!” a quote by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Though a slight deviation from our normal tea programming, an autumn quote worth noting. 😉
Paper Doll Wars
Leelu shared a room with Tac, as well as Willum, though no one mentioned this because Willum’s room was really somewhere deeper within the house. Leelu’s room simply provided the small door that would lead Willum to his nest, as Tac was fond of calling it. None of this really mattered at the moment, for Leelu’s room could no longer be considered a place of rest, a place to store her clothes, a place for privacy, and Tac was a bit afraid to go in there. Leelu’s room had become a place of winter.
Sun shone through the window, but it didn’t cut through dust particles or come to rest on some fat cat caught in its beam. At any given time white, pale shades of almond, or deeper tree greens or stabbed vein colors floated through the air in a blizzard of cut paper. Through this chill-less storm a paper-doll castle was fashioned in the east, with a fort to protect it just a step away. To the west a forest of razor curved snowflakes hung from twine and stolen shoelaces. To the south and north were makeshift villages and campsites. And everywhere underfoot were the paper-dolls themselves heaped in their cultural classes.
The warrior class stood their ground in the fort before their castle. Whether there was royalty inside or not didn’t seem to matter, the soldiers each were at the ready with sharp ended pencils, the sharp ends of compasses, broken scissors parceled off to two soldiers, and any other item remotely capable of undoing a paper born body. They’d even formed a unified look of uniform using bits of the dried blood paper shards and pennies for armor. They each wore small curved hats of the same deep red.
Beneath the winter forest of flat snowflakes a hungry crowd gathered of malcontents and those who would have the castle or those places better built in-between. They attached the lose crud of the floor to their paper bodies to give themselves more substance. Some had taken to yarn and floss to decorate their heads, or else to adorn their bodies. Tribes were forming from the lint that littered the ground. Some had taken to the trashcan to better equip their flat bodies. More adventurous types had found Willum’s secret door and were attempting to access it to see if better bounty lay there.
As this went on, the soldiers upped their attire with outfits of larger copper change breastplates and twisted paper clips to hold them in place. They banged their weapons onto their protected chests and egged on the attack. And all those who lived in the places in-between quietly wished everyone would just settle down.
Somewhere in the thickest of the flying flutter of cut paper, Leelu was continuing to build her dynasty of paper. There were red circles around the places the elaborately worked scissor handles had come to bite into the skin of her fingers. The sweat off her skin seemed to feed the insect like shapes at the tops of the snipping sheers. Her eyes were set upon nothing but the paper in her hand and the instrument that was cutting it into something new. Like energy, her mind raged, once created, never destroyed, just changed, and changed, and changed. The paper was energy the scissors were telling her, and they needed to change, to forever be changing. Even the fierce collection of paper-cuts dotting her skin and the long thin lines of drying blood could not raise her attention from her duties.
Autumn is coming!
The Evil Gnomes are Everywhere!
The gnomes are just getting angrier it seems. For our regular visitors, you might remember that a skating rink floor hidden gnome brought down our Wormwood Queen when she was roller-skating with her young son many moons ago. Poor Kate had to have surgery on her ankle to repair the damage and spent many months recuperating and having to keep still; not something our busy busy tea-maker is interested in. Now it appears another crafty gnome living in a flight of stairs to the attic brought down our Miss Blue. Bethalynne took a tumble from the top of the stairs through the closed door at the body and buggered her poor head and body up pretty bad. As she stares down a schedule of orbital surgery for her face and much healing, she will not be online for awhile. Her eyes will need plenty of rest. So while our tales may have a short break while she gets better, the tea is still flowing and the blog is still updating. I hope you join us in sending her positive vibes.