#ms o'leary's dandelions

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Ok so I’m a little nervous about putting art on here because I am very much a writer, not an artist but I’m excited so I’m gonna do it anyway!

This is a drawing of Eliza Mendez, one of the main characters in Ms. O’Leary’s Dandelions. I’m going to add a little more to the background so it’s not quite done yet.

A bit wonky but not bad for a half dead sharpie and a box of 24 crayola crayons, eh?

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Playlists and Pentagrams

This one is a bit mediocre but my computer screen is swimming in and out of focus as I type (it’s been a looooong week) so I might clean this up a bit later but for now, you all have to suffer through! Thank you to @flashfictionfridayofficial​ for the amazing prompt! It almost exactly fit something I was talking about with @snapbacpirat​ about the Ms. O’Leary verse. Hope someone enjoys this!

“Once again, Eliza, you cannot summon a demon with Indie music!”

Ms. O’Leary crossed her arms, a long-suffering look on her face. Crumpled papers laid scattered on the floor of her kitchen, casualties of hours of argument and innovation. Frankfurter Fitzherbert, after yet another foiled attempt to destroy Mr. Mendez’s tomato patch (it wasn’t Fitzherbert’s fault he had the foresight to booby trap it with the sprinkler system!) was napping in the corner. From where she sat sprawled on top of Ms. O’Leary’s table, Eliza flipped through a spellbook, frowning. She adjusted her glasses.

“Pentagram, yadda yadda… blood sacrifice, okay… immortal soul… Ha! There’s nothing in here that says it absolutely has to be death metal, see? We scoured the whole book.”

“Witches have been using death metal for hundreds of years for a reason, and that reason is because it works. You see, ever since--”

“Now hold on a sec, I don’t think death metal’s been around for hundreds of years?”

“Ah, yes, of course. Before the ‘80s, we used Mozart. It had rather the same effect.”

Eliza raised an eyebrow, then shrugged. Probably best not to ask. Although if it worked for Mozart string quartets, she could probably summon the demon in Orchestra at school… but no. This was beside the point. 

“My dad would never let me blast death metal for hours on end! He’d say, ‘Eliza, that is the world’s worst elevator music’ or ‘Eliza, the news says there’s an earthquake at a 3.5 on the Richter scale and it’s centered around your bedroom’ and I honestly would agree with him? Like death metal sucks. Hozier is so much better.”

Ms. O’Leary sighed. “Very well. I propose a wager.” Eliza perked up, raising her eyebrows. 

“If you are able to summon a demon by playing Hozier, I will allow your father to paint our shared fence that horrid blue color. If you are unable to do so, you will clean Frankfurter Fitzherbert’s litter box for a week.”

Steep odds, Eliza thought. She grinned. 

“I’m in.”

That evening saw Eliza sitting cross-legged in front of a meticulously-drawn pentagram, “From Eden” playing softly in the background and her father whistling off-key from downstairs. She glanced briefly up at the setup, then sighed and returned to her knitting. She was hoping to have a whole beanie before the winter. After about two more rows of stitches, her candles began to flicker and the room grew uncomfortably cold. She whipped her head up. There was something coalescing in the middle of the pentagram, growing, growing as it leached the shadows from the room, growing as it snuffed out the candles and absorbed the smoke, growling as it sang to the darkness in Eliza’s head and her darkness sang back--

It was a puppy.

Well, granted, the puppy had horns, which Eliza thought was unusual (although she was by no means a dog expert; until now, she had dealt exclusively with cats). She approached cautiously. 

“Um. Hello?”

The dog turned towards her, its glowing golden eyes piercing through her.

 “Yeah, hi. Oh, before you ask, I chose this form to avoid alarming you. I usually have way more limbs. And more eyes. And less ribs. But anyway! I’m actually just here because I. Am. So. Tired. Of always getting a crappy screamtrack of a musical intro whenever I enter the human world. Like, the higher ups say it’s to be expected and apparently they’ve been inviting us up here to that particular genre for decades at least, but seriously! Come on! I know you humans have more ingenuity than that!”

Eliza nodded, trying to fight back a smile. It worked! Her dad would probably do that horrible victory dance, but having a nice blue fence might be nice. Right now, it was a garish green, which was only made tolerable by some of Ms. O’Leary’s vines cascading over the sides. As Eliza envisioned her victory, she almost missed his next sentence.

“You know, I always wanted to stay up here. See what it’s like. But all the death metal can sure make a guy feel unwelcome, for all they love it back home. Anyway, you piqued my interest so what can I do for ya? Standard disclaimers apply, and I’m sure you’ve read the terms and conditions…” 

Eliza slowly started to smile. 

“So. You know what I’ve really wanted for ages? A dog. And I know that obviously you wouldn’t be a pet, you would just be disguised, but how would you like to bunk with us for a little while and see what things are like up here? Also I need serious help with my magic and my dad needs his garden protected from Fitzherbert. If you help us, we’ll give you some great food and the warmest hugs ever (courtesy of my dad) and a brand new beanie, courtesy of me.”

She stared hopefully at the puppy. 

“You know what? No-one has ever given me something they made before! Like, I’m only a teenager but seriously! You would think in four years of taking Communications duty--”

“So that’s a yes?”

The puppy started to wag its tail. 

“As long as there’s more of that glorious devil’s music, I’m in for sure. By the way, I would like to be called ‘Spot’”.

Spot and Eliza wandered off down the hall, their voices and laughter drifting as they began what was to be a long and productive friendship.

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Eris!! I've come to collect! Please tell me more about Ms. O'Leary and her adventures!!!

Hi!!! Thank you so much for the ask! So full disclosure, everything in the Ms. O’Leary-verse (smh I really need to think of a better name for that) was completely off the cuff with no planning whatsoever, but I can talk a bit about my original ideas for the world and some of her adventures that Most Definitely Happened even if I haven’t written them yet.

So, the concept that eventually became Ms. O’Leary’s Dandelions was originally an asexual/wlw coming-of-age story starring Eliza. I was Going Through Some Stuff and had wanted an outlet, so I thought I would write a character similar to myself and try to find the answers I wanted through her. The problem is, I had written about a page before I got completely sidetracked by Ms. O’Leary’s wacky backstory as I was trying to think of the way that she and Eliza became friends, and I ended up writing about that instead! I kind of forgot about the story altogether until recently, when I cleaned it up a little and finished my original concept. If I ever try to add some Actual Plot, Eliza’s bit might be in there but it probably won’t be the main theme as I had originally intended.

So! On to Ms. O’Leary herself! First I want to tell you about how she came to live in this neighborhood that she definitely sticks out from a bit. You see, most witches decide to chill in the middle of rural Nevada or something so that no-one bothers them with arbitrary rules like “no explosions that damage the property” and “no summoning demons past 11 pm” (they are quite partial to death metal, so most witches play it as they cast the spell to make their demon feel welcome.) But Ms. O’Leary, who was one of the most chaotic and dramatic people back at Witch University, was just like “nah I’m going to go live in suburbia, I think it’ll be a good time” and everyone else was just ???? But they eventually realized that she did not give a single flying flapjack about what the neighbors thought of her; she just wanted to live in a place with a comparatively high population density and study all the residents for Magical Purposes. (She regularly flies to Salem for conferences on her work. It turns out Sandra’s colorful threats to her rhododendron bushes when they started drooping functioned as a low-grade but highly effective persuasion spell, and Ms. O’Leary’s report on it revolutionized the way persuasion was done in the witch world.) So she’s basically an eccentric magical celebrity living in relative anonymity in this Very Conventional picket-fence suburban neighborhood. 

Now that we know why she decided to live where she did, we need to know where Frankfurter Fitzherbert III came from, right? Well, she tells her coven that he’s a neighbor who insulted her cookies and paid the price, but he’s really just a neighborhood kitten that she adopted a few years back. She tells the neighbor-transformation story because what actually happened doesn’t cast her cat-raising skills in a very positive light--soon after she got him, he got into one of her experimental potions. At first he seemed completely fine, but she ran some tests and figured out that the potion had merged his consciousness with that of an aristocratic eighteenth-century English ghost. As a result, he has a penchant for eating tomatoes, reading classic literature, lengthy monologues, and fits of pique. He still likes some cat things though, including fish and knocking things off of shelves. And he loves to walk across the spell books when Ms. O’Leary is trying to work.

Well, I hope you were able to find some sort of characterization in that sea of word vomit! Sorry this got so long; I could probably talk about this world all day. Thanks again for your interest! I was feeling a bit down earlier and answering this completely cheered me up :)

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Sweep the Porch On Your Way Out

Uhm. I am not really sure what this is, but it’s set in the same world as Ms. O’Leary’s Dandelions. I tend to go overboard with description when I write, so I tried to do something more dialogue heavy this time. Also I suck at humor, but I hope this still makes you smile. Thanks for the prompt @flashfictionfridayofficial​!

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“Daaaaad, please just let me go!” Eliza stared longingly at Ms. O’Leary, who grinned and waved from across the street. Beside her sat a magenta car filled with scrolls, a similarly magenta broomstick, and a disgruntled black cat. Eliza glanced at her father. He was regarding the bizarre neighborly spectacle with an improbable mix of resignation and incredulity. His left eyebrow twitched.

Eliza heaved a sigh, and plopped down in a chair next to the window. This would probably take a while.

“You’re telling me,” he began, his voice completely flat, “that you want to go to Salem.”

Eliza considered this. It seemed like a rather reasonable request. “Yes.”

“With Ms. O’Leary.”

“Yep.”

“The woman who single-handedly sent a tornado tearing through this neighborhood, replaced the grass in our lawn with dandelions, tricked the Chair of the County Landscaping Department into blatantly ignoring the law, forced me to get mud all over my dress shoes hiking through her lawn, and made Susan cry at the bi-weekly neighborhood barbecue.”

Eliza’s lips twitched. Don’t laugh. That was a sad week. We are upset about it. Think about kicked puppies and Hawaiian pizza. “I mean, she only did that once. And to be fair, her cookies are way better than Susan’s brownies.”

“She levitated her cat through our kitchen window last week.”

“Nah, I think Frankfurter Fitzerburt III just jumped inside. He’s pretty sneaky.”

“He ate our prized tomatoes right before the county fair. What kind of a hell-spawned-demon cat eats tomatoes?!”

“Dad, why are we even talking about her cat?”

Her father leaned back against the edge of the counter and sighed deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Why do you even want to go to Salem?”

Eliza looked at the scuffed, brownish broom sitting next to her suitcase. She looked at her father. Maybe if she said it confidently enough he wouldn’t question it? Well, go big or go home. Or, rather, stay home. Because her father wouldn’t let her go missing for five minutes without calling the national guard. She looked him dead in the eyes. She smiled. “I need to learn how to ride my broomstick, of course.”

He stared at her for a minute, then huffed out a startled laugh. Opening his mouth to respond, he became distracted by something outside the window. His laugh died a tragic, early death. Perhaps it would be for the best if he were to leave his mouth open. It seemed like a fitting reaction to the spectacle outside.

Eliza turned to look out the window, baffled. Her eyes widened. Ms. O’Leary was riding her broom, doing loop-de-loops. As she watched, Frankfurter Fitzurbert III hopped off of the broomstick, plummeting directly into her father’s prized tomato patch.

 She turned back to her father, dismayed. “Uh. Dad?” 

He snapped himself out of his reverie. “Eliza…” he looked at her for a moment, then grinned crookedly. “Be responsible. Text me every twenty minutes. And you’d better be home by midnight.” There was a crash outside as the sounds of meowing and Ms. O’Leary’s laughter drifted through the window. “I swear,” he hissed under his breath, “if that cat has punched a single hole in a single leaf leaf on my tomato plants, I’m gonna skin him, boil his whiskers, and kick what's left of his sorry hide into next Tuesday. Oh, and Eliza!” 

She paused on her way out of the door. “Yeah?”

“Sweep the porch on your way out.”

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