Bayou Musings || Xera & Clara
Clara sniffed the air, smiling at the perfume of the bayou as it tickled her nose - mud, Cyprus trees and water lilies mixed with the sweet smell of rot rising up from the swampy water. Her bare feet dangled above the brackish pool far below the deck of her shack that stood high on stilts to keep it above the waterline. It was on the furthest outskirts of the Ponchartrain compound, but that was by design. She wasn’t born into this pack and while they’d welcomed her with open arms and hearts she felt more comfortable keeping to herself rather than living among them in full. Besides, it was easier to harvest plants being further out into the bayou than the others and she could practice her traditional ways in peace.
A heron called somewhere deeper in the towering groves of Cyprus trees, echoing in the humid summer air. Clara smiled and leaned back until she was laying down on the sun-bleached planks of her little deck, folding her arms behind her head to cushion it as she stared up at the sun-dappled leaves. She grinned again, not bothering to sit herself up when she heard a quiet footfall on the little wooden walkway she’d built to span the open water between her shack and the next solid island of land.
“Tansi,” she called, using the Cree word for welcome as she always did when people came to visit. “What brings you all the way out here to my little swamp shack?”
What had brought her out here? Xera wondered as her shoes squelched in the muddy ground. The Bayou wasn’t a place she ventured often, figuring that the wolves didn’t really want to deal with the witches and vise verse, really. Xera hadn’t wanted to be out there at all, but she needed a specific ingredient for a potion she was making. She didn’t want to be out there, but the voice in her head was growing to a pitch that needed to stop and this potion was supposed to help her do that.
“Ha,” the voice in her head said. “You can’t get rid of me with a potion. I am you. Unless you’re planning on poisoning yourself you’re stuck with me.” The voice was sing-song and sweetly high pitched with a teasing lilt. Xera ignored it. She had grown used to it, though she was starting to worry that she was truly crazy. Time slipped away from her as quickly as grains of sand slid through opened fingertips. She didn’t know what was happening and it frightened her a bit.
She froze when the woman spoke,“I was, uh...” She was not supposed to be out here talking to the wolves. There was something about this that sent up all kinds of alarm bells, but she was taking the risk because she needed the little weed. “I was looking for someone that could help me. I need an herb.”
@clarawinden