Witch's Marsh my love, i treasure you.

Don't feel the need to match! I got carried away in notepad, hah!

Her blue eyes reflected the growing gloom overhead and she moved back, steadying herself as the wind picked up. Parts of the sky were a brilliant dark blue. There was an energy to the moment that almost did not fit, and perhaps this is what caught her attention the most. As a particularly strong gust poured across the marsh Ibis ducked away from the dimming sky and felt her whole body tense in preparation of that icy feeling, that breath of the wild across her puny self. A stillness descended. The smell of the bog reeds erupted beside her as she braced against the wind, they smelled fresh as she crushed them beneath her feet. Then the wind ceased, too. There was an emptiness that made Ibis feel more at peace than she expected; as if her sadness and the hollow feeling of her loss was suddenly at home here. There came a sound to her flank that she would have dismissed in any other moment but in this one, this precious and apparently fleeting calm, the tiny splash of the stone in to the pond was akin to someone shouting in a monastery. She rose up to her full (but unimpressive) height and turned in one fluid movement.

She felt her eyes burning as she looked to the darkness behind her, not afraid of it exactly, but aware. The marsh was home to many different forms of life but none more pervasive than the trees, and she had spent some hours previous studying the way the moss wrapped itself around the trunks or weighted down the branches, like the willows she was so fond of as a child. They did not frighten her. Neither did the thick darkness that they housed between them. A part of her resisted plunging towards the trees to investigate; she wondered too, if maybe it was her brother. It could have been Okeanos hunting for her - a thought which rooted her firmly in place. Ibis loved her brother, but in her current frame of mind she did not think she could handle his company, or any company. She scoured the darkness without moving from her place beside the slime-laden pool, but could not see anything or anyone.

But there were ripples of movement extending along the surface of one pool, and that made doubt flourish within her mind. Something must have disturbed the water; but there was no prey here now, and as far as she could tell Ibis was alone, pining away for things that were lost. She feels a lump in her throat, tastes the residual flavor of the herbal water that had initially disturbed her, having already forgotten about the strong taste and how repulsive it had been; she is distracted by the darkness among the trees and in a fit of uncharacteristic daring, she shouts to the grove: I know someone is there! Are you afraid of a little girl?

The previous few days of hurt have spoiled her voice; where once it was so light and free, now it grated on her own ears, percing and accusatory. She did not recognize it.