[OPEN] breach your rippling pool

M i l d e w

Come down, little darling,
and lay at my breast

Gliding over the water and grass as if it belonged to her (and really, of all the people to claim ownership, the Witch was probably one of the most legitimate), Mildew softly stepped through puddles and wet mud without a flinch, looking carefully to the ground with calm brown eyes for things only she knew to look for. The discarded bud from a dead flower, the shell of a creature that had left it in the dark; ingredients for her designs.

Occasionally she would kneel and speak in a hushed tone to something on the ground too small to be seen from a distance, a worm or a beetle, small companions that she would allow to climb onto her hands if they wished to travel a distance with her, those coming for especially long journeys resting in the basket on her arm, hand-woven and containing her treasures. Her long brown dress, caked in mud and flowers, stray pieces of grass, somehow did not smell despite its dishevelled appearance, and even her hair full of feathers, mud and other debris of the swamp managed to keep a glamourous bounce around her face. It would be clear this was someone long involved in the Wilds, almost a part of it entirely.

A noise in the distance drew her attention, something new and not of the animals or nature she knew. They said the storms had gone...bringing a hand up to cup her mouth, she called: "Who's there? If you're hiding you may as well come out, darling, because I will find you."

Oh, come a little closer
and I'll do the rest