Grettie Mother

Grettie Mother, the Marsh Princess (32mm,  75mm)

 Grettie Mother moved through the mist-laden swamps with an eerie grace, her moth-like wings—translucent and veined with gold—catching the pale moonlight. The crown of her head bore delicate, chitinous crests that shimmered like wet pearls, twitching at the slightest disturbance in the air. The villagers whispered that she could hear a frog’s heartbeat from across the bog or sense a storm hours before it came. Yet despite her otherworldly traits, she carried herself with the poise of a queen, draped in robes woven from cattail silk and dragonfly wings. "This land speaks," she would murmur, running her fingers over the stagnant water, sending ripples that pulsed like a secret code. "And I am its voice."

Children left offerings of honey and polished stones at the edge of the fen, hoping for a glimpse of her. Some swore they’d seen her wings flutter in time with the humming of the swamp itself, as if she were part of its breath. The elders warned that her beauty was a lure—that those who followed her too far into the reeds might find themselves lost in a dream from which they’d never wake. But when the floods came, or the crops failed, it was Grettie Mother who appeared at the village’s edge, her crests glowing faintly, guiding them to pockets of dry land or untouched berry thickets. "All things must feed," she’d say, her voice a whisper of wings against glass, "but not all feeding must be cruel." And with that, she’d vanish into the fog, leaving behind only the scent of damp earth and something sweet, like rotting blossoms.