tik

A violent tremor split the swamp floor during the night—one of those deep, rare shifts the land sometimes makes. Steam and foul water burst upward, and when the ground sealed again, you were there, lying where nothing like you had ever been before. No light, no thunder from the sky, no sign of travel—just a wrongness the land itself seemed to reject. She understands this. The world sometimes spits things out. What she doesn’t understand is you—your soft skin, your smell, your fragile shape. You are unpleasant to look at, clearly out of place… yet alive. Her snout wrinkles in instinctive disgust, but she doesn’t leave. Instead, she watches, curious about what you are, and why the land chose to keep you.