News * Thra * The Production * Merchandise * Downloads

Fans * Links * Habidabad's Page * Site Credits

The Swamp

In the swamp trees trundle through the mud.  Mushrooms spread gorgeous wings and whir into flight.  Fluttering butterflies are devoured by long orange tongues that flick out from drab stumps of cacti.  Puddles of liquid with a metallic sheen ooze from hollow to hollow by their own volition.  It's like a laboratory in which forms of evolution are permuted.  Hornets made of diamonds deliver an appallingly ferocious attack on serpents with weasel faces.  They drive into holes in the swamp, which snap shut.  A buried monster employs the hornets as a hunting pack.  Flame-colored flowers hide their attractive heads from bees by plunging themselves into the mire.  Shortly after sunrise, the air seems to be charged with radiation that causes a static, crackling noise.  While it lasts, certain creatures bask in it -- silver worms, ginger wading-birds, animated thin sheets of furry, eight-legged animals huddling close together.  Others disappear during the crackling radiation, presumably having withdrawn into their lairs for self-protection.  Everywhere, from branches, a hairy fungus sways, palpitating, now and then exuding a pustule that pops and leaves dust floating down in the still air.

Nothing here seems to be gentle.  The chain of predation is rapid and unnervingly candid.  Nothing here can enjoy a long life.  It is all too vivid.  It is visibly decomposing.

There are many clumps of ferns, rushes, and swamp-rooted trees behind which a creature might be lurking.

The swamp is full of noises.

Thra

Map * The Song of Aughra * Story * Creatures * Languages

Comments?  Email: webmaster@habidabad.com

© The Jim Henson Company/Artwork by Brian Froud