12: …

"Step lightly on this narrow spot! The broadest land that grows is not so ample as the breast these emerald seams enclose.

Step lofty; for this name is told as far as cannon dwell, or flag subsist, or fame export her deathless syllable." (Emily Dickinson)

It's nose flared, it's eyes watered and it's stomachs howled in joy laughter! It's head moved fast as it may and it grinned! It really grinned if you where there you would really be able to tell, if you where a stronger type it may just make you flee but if you where a less stable sort you could vomit and or faint if you wish. It started to climb down one clawed nawled hand after another clawed gnarled hand. Then finally the bottom of it touched the mud water and it's body started to dip inside of it going deeper and deeper till it's eyes where covered. It started to swim in the direction of the smell not speedily running to it but a kind of cool glide without worry. Smelling that only make it hungrier then before. The yellowish orange light was finally coming up, the perfect time to start edging closer to the house for when night came no one there could see it. It smelt a human infant, faintly ever so faintly, but it smelt it, it was there. For just a moment somewhere in that house far away at this point it could even smell a tiny fear, fear from a tiny helpless animal in a big world, then it died. Now it could not eat it's aims yet. No not yet, it had to wait on the female, the human woman because it had a much more tastily treat growing inside of her waiting to come out fully baked. A young child was great but a new born, a new born was divine. It would wait for that, it would wait for that. It wouldn't eat the human male either, the woman's mate, it couldn't eat him because without the male the female would surely run away from the swamp out of it's grasp, and that was no meal at all. It's kin used to feast in these lands, for hundreds of years it ate well but not great, humans then where too careful around the swamps too smart for their tricks, then new humans came and it's kin ate well for a few glories decades, then those humans not only got smart again but also dangerous, these ones fought back, but not in numbers, on there own. So it had to be careful it had to learn from it's kin that came before it lest the same happen it is, it had to be smart. The swamp was little in life, animals known better, did not attack it but did not stay in it's wake either. The animals known well enough to not even eat it's kinds bodies after they died. This was not a land of birthing and growing, humans where dangerous but also ignorant. It'd wait this out, this time of fertility out, if it must. But it'd need to nibble on something out here in the meantime.