A wide shot of Huckleberry village from the top of the hill. Cauliflour is out the back of his house, preparing to drag his dinghy down the sheer cliff to the water. He doesn’t like going the long way through town.

He thumps the little dinghy down the dark, slippery cliff. Tide pools form at the bottom around fuzzy, seaweedy boulders. He hops down onto one of these, the boat leaning dangerously on an outcrop above him. He grunts as he flips it into the water, holding onto it by the little rope he was hauling it with. He stands now on the rock at the end of the cliff, tiny against the endless, raging sea. He rows out until he can barely see home anymore. He tosses anchor and begins to think, with a notepad on his knee.

The page is torn and we see memories of Cauliflour throwing pottery on the wheel, whittling and woodburning, and admiring a large new fish in a glass jar that he’s about to add to his pond.

Cauliflour and Beans overlook a large, Wild flower field with deer grazing in the distance. Beans’ head rests on Cauliflour’s shoulder.

The note is interrupted by an unpleasant memory, one that Cauliflour has not been haunted by in quite some time. He stands in front of a burning house, holding a jacket. A full moon rises above the crumbling building.

Quickly Cauliflour crumples up the entry and tosses it into the ocean. The boat is surrounded by lots of little floating pieces of paper.

He writes one last entry in his notebook that he does not throw away. It wraps the bottom of the page.

A short chapter, but my favorite scene so far! Thank you for reading. More Moon! Moon! will be coming soon.

The two are sat round the kitchen table over strawberry rhubarb pancakes. Cauliflour nurses his coffee and Beans a cup of tea. Beans’ house is an organized explosion. There are picture frames and clocks almost from floor to ceiling against grandma-y wallpaper. Glass cupboards filled to the brim with ceramics, cat toys on the floor. It’s so him.

Cauliflour picks away at his pancakes, not terribly hungry.

As he lists these things, agendas, to-do lists, and photos fill the frame behind his head, very organized.

A girl with mulberry hair pops her head in the door, a bag slung over her shoulder.

The boys turn their heads, surprised to see her.

Turnip lets herself into the kitchen.

Beans makes her a plate of pancakes as she leans against a kitchen chair.

She smacks him and he laughs.

She takes her plate of pancakes from Beans.

She leaves, and Beans notices the clock.

He gets up and slings a work bag across his chest. He leans down to kiss Cauliflour on his flurry out the door.

Cauliflour smiles half-heartedly as both his friends leave him alone at the kitchen table. That’s alright. He’s got plenty to do, and a whole bunch of nothing. He gives a moody sigh and watches Ned paw at a pancake from the kitchen chair.

Thank you for reading! There’s more of Moon! Moon! to come.

~more soon

Beans

Turnip

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~ a note on the text from David ~

The Undertaking is an upcoming comic. Please enjoy the prose version here, and stay tuned for the art.

It’s a mild morning among the conifers. The stars have just sank beneath the horizon and the steady chirps and whistles in the wetland are beginning to tune themselves to the air. We see a wide shot of the bog nestled in tall pines and oaks, with someone’s commentary rudely invading the view.

A sleek PINE MARTEN sniffs a human hand, its black nose and whiskers twitching. The hand belongs to a corpse, palms turned upward and laid face-up towards the sky. A juvenile LITTLE BLUE HERON, mottled blue-grey and white, uses one black claw to draw the lower eyelid down and examine the watery flesh inside.

The PINE MARTEN has scrabbled its way up to the face, near where the HERON is perched, and bares its fangs to tear into the soft flesh of the ear. With its heavy bill, the HERON bats the PINE MARTEN upside the head before it can take a bite.

The HERON leads them through the sun-dappled forest, beginning a trek over and through mossy logs on their way to the open water. They duck under berry bushes, scale lichen-laden stones, and tramp through old oak leaves.

An image of the HERON’s corpse accompanies his musing. It is laid peacefully in the marsh enrobed in its requests, an intentional tangle of the Blue Flag Irises that grow in its home, Blue Dasher dragonflies, the legs of old crab shells, and sprays of bright orange Butterfly Milkweed.

We see the PINE MARTEN’s body, paws cradled to its chest, laid in a soft mossy hollow. It is surrounded by many little fish, mostly sardines and Mummichog Minnows, wild cranberries, and oyster shells.

We see an iris and dragonfly memorial in the marsh, clearly thoughtfully made. There is no body there, but it represents the HERON just as well. There is a space where it is missing, heavy and hollow.

The HERON and the PINE MARTEN make their way back into the forest where they found the corpse. They are now laden with thorny branches, juniper, young pines, irises, dragonflies, and fish. The items are carried in their jaws, in the talons of the HERON, or tied with fiddlehead ferns to the PINE MARTEN’s body.

The PINE MARTEN carries a sardine in its mouth.

As they come upon the body, a large conglomerate of Black Vultures which have descended upon it are scared away. The HERON drops its baggage and flaps its wide wings to incite commotion and dispel them. The Vultures have barely broken skin but have torn away much of the body’s clothes, revealing a plethora of tattoos.

The PINE MARTEN is as struck as the HERON, and wordlessly they examine the body’s tattoos. To them, this is an altogether unknown phenomenon, yet terribly familiar, as the tattoos are a leger of natural elements, perhaps a Will of sorts.

Blackberry vines and snakes entangle the arms, small birds at the wrist, antlers and acorns on the collarbones. Many small details make up the whole.

The PINE MARTEN and the HERON assist each other in gathering and placing each item from each tattoo. The PINE MARTEN entangles itself in a thicket of blackberries and pulls a laden branch with its teeth to place on the arm where the tattoo lies.

High on the swaying branch of a pine, the HERON watches as the PINE MARTEN stalks and swiftly kills a song sparrow to match the corpse’s wrist tattoo. They bring it back down to ground level and place it there.

In the marsh, the HERON catches a snake to place along the corpse’s other arm. It ducks underwater to search for shells and catch fish, which it tosses to the PINE MARTEN, who catches them in its teeth.

The PINE MARTEN thinks for a moment.

At the rocky shore which feeds from the marsh, they gather oysters, mussel shells, seaweed, and old crab carcasses to align with the tattoos on the corpse’s ribs.

Some items are impossible to find and require makeshift solutions. The HERON can find only one deer antler in the forest to lay across the collarbones, so the PINE MARTEN places a juniper branch on the other side. An anatomical heart is replaced by a clump of moss in a similar shape. A pomegranate is replaced by a worm-eaten crabapple.

The sun is quickly setting.

The PINE MARTEN has dragged over two large pine branches and encircled the head, creating a wreath of outstretched pine rays.

The HERON drags a spray of little flowers across the bridge of the nose.

The corpse is laden with the gifts of the land, and the HERON and the PINE MARTEN sit on its chest and examine their work.

The PINE MARTEN huffs.

The PINE MARTEN curls up on the cold sternum and shuts its eyes. The HERON stands for a wide–eyed watch.

The night sky is filled with stars and a moon so slight it is nearly new. Over the forest scape, we can hear something rustling and scraping about, getting closer and closer.

The PINE MARTEN’s eyes are closed and sleeping peacefully. But its ears twitch as it, too, hears the rustling. Its eye snaps open. It’s going to be a long night.

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The first inklings of daylight filter through the swaying trees. We see the moon disappear below the horizon. A deer pushes through the thick, dark brush to nibble on some raspberries. A little round sparrow who was grooming herself perched on his antlers is disturbed by the motion of her perch and takes flight. We follow her through the forest. It is incredibly dark, dense, and wild, but the morning light still seems to creep in to all corners. As she flies, the trees thin. She passes over a wild strawberry and mint patch, through the branches of a blossoming apple tree, through ferns unfolding their limbs to the sky.

The sparrow at last emerges out of the forest and breaks into daylight, where a little village in the distance comes into view. The village is low-lying by the sea, and as she gets closer we can see that it is in fact quite tiny altogether.

She flits and flutters over a sign that says “Welcome to Huckleberry”, over fields of flowers and gardens abundant with goods.

Slowing her descent, she lands squarely on the roof of a little brown house with blue shutters at the top of the hill. In comparison, she is enormous. She lands on the house with a great thump, and we cut inside to see how the poor homeowner reacts.

Cauliflour rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms. He is not privy to being woken up this early. The sparrow pecks at his roof tiles and it rattles the dishes in his cupboard. Even the deep-sleeping fat orange cat at the end of his bed is disturbed and stretches awake. Cauliflour reluctantly, and with some rage, swings his feet to the floor and stomps out the door. He is in his underwear. He steps outside and squints in the sudden light.

He waves his arms around, gesturing madly at both the sparrow as well as the large white cabbage moths who have been making a meal of his garden. Offended, they move along, and Cauliflour is left standing alone in his skivvies.

Cauliflour’s neighbor Beans was alerted by the shouting and moseys over. He, of course, as been up and at it for hours tending to the strawberries in his flourishing garden. He walks up to Cauliflour’s ramshackle garden border.

Beans leaves him a kiss on the cheek. They are, of course, neighbors and lovers.

Cauliflour stoops to one of two sickly-looking cauliflowers in the garden.

He picks a seed pod off of another one that’s gone south, and hands it to him.

He shoos another one away, and plants a seed in the ground and writes on a stake that reads “Try #2,223”.

The fat orange cat who was sleeping on Cauliflour’s bed, upon hearing his owner’s voice, jumps out of the windowsill and runs over to Beans.

The cat jumps straight into his arms and Beans carries him over the shoulder.

Ned, the cat, nuzzles up to Beans and has no plans of leaving.

Cauliflour catches a neighbor’s stare. The neighbor looks mortified, but Cauliflour squints back threateningly.

Cauliflour kisses Beans’ hand and heads back inside. His house is bare, full only of functionality. It is not highly decorated or cluttered, just filled with the bare minimums of his interests. First thing’s first, he pops a tape into his cassette player on the kitchen countertop and cranks it all the way up. “Needles in the Camel’s Eye” by Brian Eno plays. It’s the only way he can wake up in the morning. Cassette tapes are one of the only things he will hoard. He sets a kettle to boil, reaches into a cabinet to grab one of many identical cans of dandelion coffee, and scoops it in. He drinks his cup while picking out his outfit for the day. In his room, he has a small dresser with one pair of pants and one shirt. It’s an easy choice. He changes his shirt and puts on his pants. He takes a large blue jacket from a coatrack in his room and puts it on almost reverently. In the adjoining bathroom, he brushes his pointy teeth and meticulously lays his hair. He takes his cup of coffee outside and sips on it at the pond in the corner of his yard. It is his pride and joy. He tosses in a handful of fish food, trying not to look too happy.

He conducts a short fish headcount.

Finally, it’s off to Beans’ house.

Thank you for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts. There’s much more of Moon! Moon! to come. Stay tuned for concept art and scene 2.

~David

INT. DORMITORY SITTING ROOM — NIGHT

Sharp, black claws lift the needle on a record player in a hazy room. The slight paw they belong to sets the needle down upon the grooves of “Clara Rockmore’s Art of the Theremin”, settling on “Carnival of the Animals, XIII Le Cygne”. It fills the room with the thick and woozy haze of theremin emotion. CLYDE, a grey and black-tipped fox, slumps into a rich sienna leather armchair, conveniently positioned between his Victrola table and an end table with a large, near empty decanter of amber spirit, a rotary telephone, an overly full ashtray. Behind him, an arched window towering almost the length of the wall exposes the recesses of black night. Though heavy damask curtains frame it, they are drawn as if at the break of day. A fire crackles to dust in the hearth before him, toasting his pointed boots.

CLYDE shifts his dwindling weight on the armchair and drags on his cigarette, letting his eyes fall closed and his head roll back on his neck with a swell of the music.

We see what he sees with his eyes closed— shadows shift there, punctuated by a distant, deep wailing. Train windows flick by him at supersonic speed on either side, revealing his living room beyond the glass, barley legible and fleeting by. He is whipped by the train’s speed, and somehow he is at peace. We cut back to his face, eyes closed, nearly smiling. He sits in his chair in the abyss, and around him, flames and deadly heat seem to rise. Eyes closed, he sips liquor from his glass. As he does so, an enormous bear’s paw grasps onto the back of his chair, dwarfing him. It digs claws into the leather. Its breath ruffles the fur on the top of CLYDE’s head. We pan up to its face and see that it hasn’t one— where its face ought to be is bare skull, shining white bone with clean, hollow eye sockets. It looms over him in the nothingness. We do not know if he recognizes its presence.

Back in the sitting room, we focus on the cigarette in his grasp. We follow its smoke up, up to the black window behind. The bear’s face looms there, barely illuminated.

Cut to a different hand, reaching under a lampshade to pull a cord that illuminates the room. As the lightbulb sparks to life, the face in the window disappears. PEARL, a close-shorn smokey red fox, descends the spiral staircase, wrapped in a green towel and leaving wet footprints on the carpet.

CLYDE blinks back into reality, eyes open now but sunken and heavy.

He palms PEARL’s glasses off the side table. He is dizzy and can barely hold his head up. PEARL can only sigh and put CLYDE’s cigarette out.

CLYDE puts his head in his hands.

PEARL, frustrated, begins to button his shirt and dress himself.

CLYDE is despondent. He knows better than anything else that PEARL is right. But he’s not in a right enough mind to recognize it.

He moves to stand. He means his words genuinely. He wants to go to bed. He wants to see a doctor in the morning.

PEARL leaves CLYDE with a kiss to his temples. He is out the door and gone. CLYDE steadies himself on the chair, prepared to ascend the stairs up to bed. But the phone and the empty decanter catch his eye and burn there. Unconsciously, he picks up the receiver and begins to dial. But before the first ring, there is a rap at the door.

Clyde opens it. A tall, dark red fox looms in the doorframe. His fur is greyed with age. He carries a large decanter.

Thank you for reading! The Cult of the Hunt and the Church of the Slaughtered Lamb is a graphic novel that follows Clyde Francis Faulkner, a university student plagued by encounters with the Hunt, mythical appartitions of enormous skeletal bears that only the superstitious believe in, in Clyde’s era of technological sophistication (they’ve just invented the incandescent light). Prepare for demonic possesion, occult beliefs, religious extremism, flickering cande-lit sleepwalking, pocket synthesizers, unbelievably good fashion, and the lengths we will go to save the people we love.

More soon ~

David

also, enjoy some lil doodles of him I’ve never shared before.

Listen to my inspiration playlist here.

Thank you for reading! Pine State currently exists as its own one-off, but I did kind of fall in love with my rabbit detectives, so they may be back in the future.

Let me know what you think!