Mirāju

DTIYS by @markocomix #markocomix15k

Oozelene rose from the black water at dusk, her body a slow pour of moss, silt, and pale green light. She had never known where she came from—stars, a forgotten tank, or some vanished people who once walked upright—and she no longer asked. She only watched.
She watched the village women in their bright cloth. Then she pressed ferns to her chest, wound vines around her waist, and packed wet earth into the shape of sleeves. When she stepped onto the path, the humans screamed and fled. Their terror was the only answer she ever received.
That night the swamp was quiet except for the drip of her own loneliness. She stood in the center of the marsh and spoke, not to them, but to the mud, the roots, the watching eyes in the reeds.
“I will not wait to be chosen.”
The water stilled. The trees leaned in. Creatures that had hidden from her for years crawled forward and lowered their heads. Oozelene, kind and loving , laid a crown of living lily pads upon her own brow.
She was no longer the lonely thing that hoped. She was the new emperor of the swamp. And the swamp, at last, loved her back.