Old Woman Swamp Scarlet Ibis |work| -

She should leave it. Nature was cruel, and she had learned not to meddle. But the ibis dipped its head, and she saw her own loneliness reflected in that tiny, wild eye.

The swamp held its breath. Elara, seventy-three winters old and carved from river oak, felt it in her bones—that queer stillness before a storm. She knelt on the spongy bank of Blackwater Fen, her fingers buried in the muck, harvesting the last of the wild ginger. Around her, cypress knees rose like fossilized prayers, and the air smelled of decay and honey. old woman swamp scarlet ibis

A bird. A scarlet ibis.

“You’re lost, little one,” she whispered. Her voice was a rusted hinge. “Hurricane must have snatched you from some island a thousand miles south.” She should leave it

“Alright,” she said. “Alright.”