#moonwort

While I’m still figuring things out for Moonwort I thought I’d finally sit my ass down to doodle out their God Tier form(yes yes I’ve been staring at mothra for hours love that queen)!

No title yet to their godhood yet I’ll figure that out eventually, but the idea of them being some astral being comes to mind repeatedly.

Lady Fern (Asplenium felix-femina)

In Shakespeare’s Henry IV pt 1, one of the characters says “We have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible”. We may not, in context, be meant to take this seriously as the response from his listener is that they are “more beholden to the night” for their invisibility. So it is not clear whether or not Shakespeare realised that ferns do not have seeds but spores, a much older method of plant reproduction. Being well-versed in plant lore, Shakespeare clearly did know that fern ‘seed’ was hard to spot. It was believed that only at Midsummer could it be gathered to confer invisibility. If we allow a looseness of usage between ‘seed’ and ‘spore’ (consider “the crow flies to the rooky wood” in Macbeth) why would it be ferns, in particular, that could make someone invisible?

Is it their very liminality, not being flowering plants but belonging to a much more ancient remnant of the green world? If so, the lack of precision in the nomenclature in the scientific sense is compensated for in the recognition of their nature in the logical half-step that gets you into a faërie ring. If Bracken growing in swathes on a hillside is prominent enough, and Lady Fern in a woodland glade more suggestive of enchantment, there are many other species that do not obviously reveal themselves as ferns at all. You could, for instance, walk past Adder’s Tongue Fern in a tract of open ground, growing among grasses and flowers and not see it at all. This fern, certainly, is good at making itself invisible.

And its cousin the Moonwort might be passed by on an open heath or on downland without being seen nestling in a hollow or inconspicuous by the side of a winding path. Alchemically it was supposed to be an agent in converting mercury to silver. There is much lore about faërie people not tolerating iron and that quality is also ascribed to this fern. It was said that it could open locks. It was also said that a horse stepping on it would lose its shoe : ‘Shoeless Horse’ and ‘Unshoo the Horse’ are recorded as local names for the fern. Culpepper in his Herball (1652) relates the story of thirty of the Earl of Essex’s horses being unshoed because of Moonwort and Du Bartas, in his Divine Weekes (1598) refers also to the unshoeing of horses and adds:

O Moonwort! tell us where thou hids’t the smith, Hammer and pincers, though unshod’st them with? (trans. Joshua Sylvester (1604)

Lore apart, to see one of these is a special experience. It is faërie silver.

They are Commander Silene and her "apprentice" Captain Moonwort.

They both belong to a warren called "Valriah", which was founded by former Efrafa rabbits who didn't accept reconciliation with the Watership rabbits. So they opted to go to a distant place where they continued to apply many of the principles and ideas formed by Woundwort, although with a couple of changes.

-Silene is serious, calculating, difficult to subdue and who would not break easily. She earned a great respect among her people by being the one who lifted the spirits of the rabbits during the most difficult times. He is a figure to be admired, especially among the captains and young does.

-Moonwort is someone who is more likely to use words rather than claws, although that doesn't mean he is a coward incapable of lashing out at others. He tends to be a bit easier to get along with, chattering constantly and always enjoys a good story. Likes to use persuasion and partly manipulation to get what he wants. Even so, among rabbits he is respected for his great charisma.

He deeply admires Silene and is very proud to have become her apprentice.