Dawn was breaking.
Ancient trees, silent grass and stray bird cries faded into the thin veil of fog. And the morning brought no relief. There was no sorrow, no pity, no joy, no anger.
The bony maw would have erupted in an unrestrained human shriek, but when he opened his hideously huge beak, nothing but a guttural clicking and a wet, tarry bubbling escaped.
There was no peace, no anxiety.
Only a boundless, oppressive emptiness over these cursed marshes, strewn with the sparkling wisps of other… souls?
He lets out an indistinct, hoarse sound.
Glowing sparks dart around his 'hand', which drips sticky black mud onto the dead grass. He tilts his massive head, listening to the gurgling in his own chest, and stares with empty eye sockets into the absurdly bright glimmer.
Who had this light once been?
An artist just like him? A writer, a musician, a healer, or an unknown wanderer? Friend?...
The end was always the same.
The forest shows no mercy. The Darkness shows no mercy.
And she doesn't care how many canvases are left unfinished, how many symphonies go unplayed, how many lives remain unsaved, or how many paths are left untrodden.
Those whose breath was cut short in the mires would be swallowed by the black chasm of the marsh. Its viscous matter would absorb their death, cleanse it of the earthly body and memories, and transmute it into ethereal, wandering lights.
Having reaped his harvest, he would never let it go.
The sparks touch his tar strands with their soft glow, as if timidly, and vanish almost instantly — to them he is the reaper and the shepherd.
His will is nothing, and his duty is simple: track, gather, watch — and do not let them escape.
He watches.
Dozens of sparks.
Hundreds.
And each of them was someone. Once. Just like himself.
__________________________________
18/05/2026
Still writing and drawing our scary tale.
Happy 4th Birthday to my grisly swamp monster.
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