Zoog

"In the tunnels of that twisted wood, whose low prodigious oaks twine groping boughs and shine dim with the phosphorescence of strange fungi, dwell the furtive and secretive zoogs; who know many obscure secrets of the dream-world and a few of the waking world, since the wood at two places touches the lands of men, though it would be disastrous to say where. Certain unexplained rumours, events, and vanishments occur among men where the zoogs have access, and it is well that they cannot travel far outside the world of dream. But over the nearer parts of the dream-world they pass freely, flitting small and brown and unseen and bearing back piquant tales to beguile the hours around their hearths in the forest they love. Most of them live in burrows, but some inhabit the trunks of the great trees; and although they live mostly on fungi it is muttered that they have also a slight taste for meat, either physical or spiritual, for certainly many dreamers have entered that wood who have not come out."
H. P. Lovecraft: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

While H. P. Lovecraft is surely well known for his horror fiction (everyone has heard of Cthulhu), there is also a number of loosely connected stories collectively called the Dream Cycle, which are written in a rather different, dream-like style. The novella The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath might be considered the culmination of this Dream Cycle and it is more of an epic fantasy story (with some horror elements). Some readers of Lovecraft's classical horror stories do not like it, but I have certain soft spot for this story. Maybe because of its fantastic dreamy imagery, which is often quite weird and otherworldly, but mostly not outright dreadful (as in the horror stories) and sometimes eerily beautiful – especially the descriptions of many marvellous lands and cities Carter (the protagonist) visits on his quest. I've wanted to make some fan art of it for years – I intended to draw some of the fantastical cities, but when this inspiration came, I gladly use the opportunity to portray a zoog in the Enchanted Wood.

So what do you think about it? And have you read T