Maena
Hi, I’m Maena.
I paint things that don’t exist and write about things that hopefully don’t exist.
I’m fascinated by folklore, old superstitions, forests, ghost stories, strange creatures, and all the little rules people once followed because something terrible might happen if they didn’t.
Teeth In The Margin is where I keep my short fiction, folklore notes, diary fragments, and some of the creatures that crawl out of all three.
If you’re here because you heard something calling your name from the woods, I’m afraid you’ve probably come to the wrong website.
Probably.
Stories live in the places we stop listening.
I write dark fiction inspired by folklore from France, Scandinavia,
and Eastern Europe, and I paint the creatures and haunted places
that inhabit those stories.
My work sits between the remembered and the imagined—where forests
keep secrets, and women are neither rescued nor silenced.
This blog is my way of gathering what lingers at the edge: stories, folklore,
thoughts, sketches, and fragments pulled from the margins of old books and
long walks through the woods.
THE INSPIRATION
I’ve always been drawn to places where
people whisper—the abandoned, the
forgotten, the misunderstood.
Folklore is not just fantasy to me. It’s
memory. It’s warning. It’s a way of
understanding what we fear, what we
lose, and what we survive.
I believe in the quiet power of stories.
They shape us, even the ones we
think we’ve outgrown.
MY PROCESS
I write by hand whenever I can. Ideas come while
walking, at night, or when I’m painting.
My stories often begin with a feeling, a place,
or a line I can’t shake.
The rest is about listening.
I don’t always know where a story is going—
but I trust it to lead me somewhere true.
BEYOND THE BLOG
When I’m not writing, I’m painting, sketching in
old notebooks, or wandering through forests with
my camera and my curiosity.
I collect old letters, pressed flowers, and folklore
books with notes in the margins.
I believe that beauty and darkness are not
opposites—but companions.