The Bog at the End of Time

For 800 years, a war had been bruising the skies on Zminaja, draining the stars of all light. Quite a bit ago, a friendly-fire missile had taken a bite out of the second moon, and many generations on the planet did not know that both moons were once spheres. Nor did they know how it felt to live outside of a nuclear winter. Bombs detonated above their heads, far away. People sang songs about them.

In the village of Moqvara, the people did not care what kind of missile could shoot high enough to hit a moon, nor how exactly people could get themselves up into the night sky, and then why those people got peeved enough to turn the skies red and black and purple at the all the wrong times of day. All they knew was how the frogs in the bog would eat each other in times of famine, the root crops would grow well if kept under a woven travii shell, and how a juicy chunk of boiled massi would soothe a baby with a nasty cry. They also knew, on occasion, how the planet’s military would invade the village, driving a decked out vy-lock machine, and would demand at least twenty men for soldiers.

This tactic, long established by the military, was forcibly recalibrated when it was clear that the intergalactic war would outlive the planet’s population. The government’s new perspective: twenty of anyone at this point.

And Junior Sergeant Jutarnji, bouncing along the swampy roads in his own vy-lock, popped a few anxiety pills as he headed toward Moqvara for another round. While he never saw battle himself (one of the great privileges of being a recruiter and also a general’s son), he knew these rural folks were the sort who never made it back home. Illiterate, ignorant farming duds who were thrown onto the front lines and would die--maybe not even make it beyond training without getting a blaster through the stomach or accidentally detonating their own bomb. He wasn’t really picking up any new soldiers today--these were obligatory casualties.

Taking a steadying breath, he pulled from his pocket his tablet and began to scroll through his speech. Yes, it was the same in every location (nothing unifies a planet like war), but he tried to emphasize particular words depending on the type of village or city he visited: love of family, financial security, protecting the skies, pursuit of GLORY--

The vy-lock’s wheels jolted under him. The machine, per protocol, came to a screeching halt. “Great,” Jutarnji muttered, dropping the tablet. “Better not have been something big.”

Slipping on his helmet and peeking his head into the snowy bog, he saw that it was indeed big: a person. White limbs streaked with mud and snow, reed-woven coat smooshed, green hair fanned everywhere. One of the legs had been run over at the knee and was bleeding black across the dirty ice. His breath had stopped in his inhalator. Once he found it, he tentatively called, “Hello? Um, citizen?”

The person grunted, propping on their elbows. The swampy lands suddenly erupted with her loud swears. He fumbled to switch on the helmet’s translator:

“--going, don’t you know that this is private property and we don’t need any of fancy sort of--”

“Sorry,” he said again, and the mask produced the right words. The person looked up at him, and his suspicions were confirmed: feminine. Huffing, her eyes locked onto the collar of his uniform: black and shining with medals he hadn’t exactly won, but were required for the job, to convince future recruits that he was special. It did the trick for her. She jolted up in a sitting position, wincing all the way up.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I didn’t know, gospo. I’m sorry, gospo.”

“You don’t need to call me ‘gospo,’” he tried to say gently. “I’m not…not technically a general. Anyway, we’re just people right now, okay?” She stared at him. “How’s your leg?”

Dragging herself backward toward the brush, surely full of animals who would smell her profusely bleeding leg, she said, “Fine, fine, fine.”

“No, come on.” Oh, how he hated to muddy his boots, but he tentatively leaned a foot over the white-and-brown sludge, as if to step. “I’ll give you a lift. Back to the village of Moqvara?”

“I can find my way, thanks.”

“You clearly--”

But she was already retreating into the wild lands, her black blood slithering after her. Clearly she was in shock, and not in a condition to vanish into these strange lands alone.

He hated to pull his blaster on a civilian, but it was the only thing people universally reacted to: people by the sea, in great mountain cities, in nasty bogs like this one. A blaster could be wonderful shorthand to remind the other person to be decent and listen. He unhooked one from his belt and shot it some distance from her. She froze.

“Come,” he commanded, with the diplomatic coldness he used to separate fathers from their children. It definitely came out harsh, which made him flinch. He lowered the blaster. “Look, I just want to take you home. Can’t be far. Okay?”

*

The vy-lock had two benches that could fit four people a piece, so that meant she could get one bench all to herself and could have laid down. But she was facing him, clearly in pain, but bit both lips and wouldn’t look him in the eye. She pressed her fingers around the wound--although it leaked all over the vy-locks’ carpets. That would come out of Jutarnji’s pay.

“So.” He cleared his throat, still wearing the mask for translation. It made him look like some sort of long-snouted monster, and he was ashamed of it. “Have you ever had rusqui eggs? I have some. Delicate and sweet. Fills you right up--”

“No, thank you, gospo.” Her frayed green hair hung over her face, but he could still see: young. Hardly an adult. It made his stomach flip in humiliation again.

“Look,” he leaned across the way and whispered, though there was no need for it, since they were alone. “I am sorry about the blaster thing. A soldier’s impulse, you know. I promise I am taking you back to Moqvara. You’re not being kidnapped to fight in a war.”

“Okay then, gospo.”

“Really. And, between you and me,” he sucked through his teeth, considering if he should say it, “...did you mean to get hit?”

“What?” she met his gaze. The anger in her almost seemed to boil off her pale skin.

“Er--did you mean to? Because this is a bit of a good thing for you. I cannot recruit an injured citizen. So you are in the clear. The clear,” he repeated to the visible shards of her wide eyes. “No matter what, getting hit is bad. But it was a good thing, right? I cannot take you with me.”

She exhaled, disrupting her curtain of hair. “I didn’t mean to get hit,” she repeated.

“There.” He leaned back in his seat, unsure of what to do with his hands. They couldn’t be far from the village, so this wouldn’t have to last much longer. “Anyway. Do you have any siblings? Or a parent, one who would be willing to defend our planet? Protect all life on this noble planet?”

“Mama is a bog-witch,” she mumbled. “If you are lying and send me to the war in the stars, she’ll kill you, gospo. Kill you good and cold. Drown you and grind your bones and no one will find you.”

Fine. He leaned back in his seat, decided that small talk wasn’t worth it. She would remain scared of him, and he of her. Surrendering to the heavy silence, he pulled out his tablet. She fell silent. He began mumbling his speech, rehearsing the proper cliffs and valleys of convincing speech.

*

As soon as the vy-lock arrived at the bog, the girl flung the door open and stumbled outside, as if she were on fire. “Mama! Mama!”

Before leaving himself, Junior Sergeant Jutarnji made sure both of his zatra blasters were loaded and locked at his hips. He filled his pocket with candy and sweets, and little vatrome which would sparkle and fly. He had never recruited here before, so perhaps these people would see him as magic.

Stepping into the cold air, he discovered the entire location was shrouded in branches. At first, he thought the darkness was natural, but when he squinted above, he could see: the villagers must have woven the branches and vines of the bog together, stuffed fronds in any holes. Only a little light from the dying sky trickled through. The only true light that existed down there were the nemertivh birds, hopping from branch to branch--as well as the lisikka: sleek little animals, glowing white as the center of a candle, their long tails dragging behind them as their feet skidded over the inky water. Luckily, the animals were bright and scattered enough that Jutarnji could see the outlines of a village in the shadows: huts, shapes of people. Near him, he spotted the girl hugging a woman--one who wore a cloak of bones and gently glowing feathers.

“--calm down, my daughter, it’s nothing I cannot fix. Come now, hush.” She kissed the girl’s forehead, then glared at the Junior Sergeant.

“Deepest apologies,” he said, still standing within the vy-lock’s warm, safe interior. “This thing drives itself, and will be checked for repairs as soon as I return to headquarters.” She continued to watch him, her pale eyes giving him no hints. “The government will pay restitutions.”

“You are a visitor from the sky war. Coming to take my children.”

She said it in such a tone that his hand found its way to a blaster’s edge. “We are looking to recruit, yes. Preferably adults. Children are only a last resort, and anyone who comes with me should do so willingly. We are so close to winning the war. It would be any day now, really.” He motioned inside of the vy-lock. “I have summons, so you know I am legitimate. I can read them?”

After adjusting her daughter’s arm around her shoulder, the woman said, “You will join us tonight for a feast. There, you can make your summons, choose your men.”

Well. That made it easy.

“Thank you.” Looking down at the ground, he was confronted with a darkness with no reflection. Before him, everyone’s white feet sank beneath the inky liquid. As inky as the girl’s blood--and that unnerving association just happened to be enough. He kicked his boots together and stepped down, letting the sensors hover him just above the surface.

People emerged from behind the skeleton trees, from within the mud-globbed huts: large eyes, grass-woven clothing layered to keep out the cold, skin so pale that it almost glowed like the animals frolicking about. Reed-woven mittens and whispers. Green braids and beards.

Beards were a good sign. No children would have to come with him. This could be easy.

*

At the feast, he counted around 80 people: they climbed out of the trees, from the huts, and even a few had been beneath the midnight mud. He wasn’t sure how that last group was able to breathe down there, so he didn’t ask. The people pulled from about a dozen lisikka, cooked over fire, but still glowing a little with life. People could only eat very little.

He decided not to steal any food from them. He would rather go hungry than take from their clear lack. This is why we’re fighting the war, he thought--although the true purpose of the war faded long ago.

One of the children, wrapped up in mittens and knee-deep in mud, pulled his jacket sleeve and said, “To eat, you gotta take off the mask, gospo.”

Happy that he knew he wasn’t speaking to a future soldier, Junior Sergeant Jutarnji tried his best to show he was smiling behind the mask. “I couldn’t speak your language without it. Also, you don’t need to call me ‘gospo.’ Not unless you’re a soldier.”

“Mama said we did. As did our sister.” He pointed to the girl who seemed content sitting in the mud, her waist-down totally devoured by the darkness. She was all glares. “Said it’ll keep you happy. Not steal us away.”

“Well, I don’t plan on stealing anyone. Can I show you something?” From his pocket he pulled out a vatrome. Tugging at the string wound up on the side, the vatrome unfurled, sparkling. It floated in the air over his palm. The child screamed, then clapped. He transferred it to their palm.

The child wasn’t the only one who noticed. Soon, he was bombarded; the sudden arrival of people rushing him snapping all of his training into the front of his mind. They are not here to hurt you, he told the part of himself that wanted to run away.

Careful to keep his blasters covered, he gave the grabby hands everything: candies, gifts, little toys, spare coins that would do no good for them here, but people always wanted them. Money was money, and any citizens, anywhere, felt it in their fingers.

As they were dispersed, shooting the vatrome into the sky and passing around candies to suck, the feather-and-bones witch neared him, gliding through the water. With him hovering above the ground, she only came up to his shoulder--which still made her taller than anyone who had just been crowding him. Folding her arms, she watched all of the laughter erupt before them.

“I am sorry again about your daughter,” he said.

She looked toward him, her pale eyes searching his expression. “You seek to steal my other children? To die, afraid and alone, in your bleeding sky?”

“It’s not really bleeding, you know. The defenses and planetary shields produce only an atmospheric reaction that turns it red,” he explained, then her blank expression made him blush. “It’s…only nature. A natural reaction to war.”

“Nothing is natural about war.”

“Death seems pretty natural to me. And what better reason to die than defending peace?” That last line came from the speech he would give in a few minutes.

Jutarnji tried to connect the soft look in her eyes to a memory in his childhood: some parental concern. But his parents knew him so little: only sending him letters at school to make sure he was on track. To be like them.

This witch smiled. “I like you. You are broken. Deeply broken.”

He raised an eyebrow. Jutarnji had been called far worse, but this instance stung. For courage, he placed his hands on top of his blasters. “The whole world is broken. That’s why we’re trying to fix it, you know. Fight for freedom, for food, for joy--”

“We do not fight. And we are joyous.”

“Only because soldiers do the fighting. Die and you don’t even know it.”

“No,” she said simply, raising her fingers to the braided branches high above. “We hide from it. By hiding, we are free.”

Not until all our planetary shields break, a bomb lands here and destroys you in less than a minute.

He exhaled. “We will see what people say. You cannot make the decision for them.”

“Can I not?” Her eyes flashed toward him. He tried to maintain her gaze--it was his duty. To be strong. To represent.

She looked away first when one of the men started shouting; a vatrome had caught onto his reed coat and a little fire was starting to burn at the hem. The bone-and-feather woman swept away immediately to handle the issue.

It was no real problem, he knew: vatrome were weak even in the dry desert. Here, they would be out in seconds. So he watched the giggling panic of ignorant citizens, all jumping and slapping at him. Strange that none of them tried splashing the inky liquid below on him.

But while they handled that crisis, he looked around, tried to pick out who might be a good soldier to recruit. But his gaze kept falling to the injured girl, sitting in the liquid, eating. She was the only one not panicking. If anything, she didn’t look…surprised by it.

While everyone else was busy, he approached her. With the boots and his height, he felt like a giant. “You’re not afraid of the vatrome?”

She continued staring at it, avoiding him.

“Come now. You don’t seem afraid--”

“It’s not scary.” She shifted her jaw. “There are scarier forms of fire.”

His stomach flipped a little. He crouched down so he was closer to her. “Have you seen any forms of fire before?”

She seemed scared. “No, gospo.”

“You’re calling me that again.” He looked her over again: young, yes, but an adult. Recruiters would come every fifteen years or so. “How did you know they call me ‘gospo’? That term is only used up there.” He pointed. “Not for anyone down here.”

Her jaw was set, but her hands were shaking. “I’m injured,” she said. “So I can’t go back.”

He blankly stared at her. Then he laughed. “No problem, because there is no ‘back.’ People go and they sacrifice. They do not return. It’s not even possible to return, after going thousands of miles into the sky. It’s not like people can even make it through the planetary shields. Not even missiles can.”

Sniffling, she took another bite of meat. But her hands were trembling.

“Did you…” his mind worked slowly, like processing a dream in the sky. “...are you saying you came back?”

“You can’t take me.”

A strange mixture of devotion and loathing flooded him. If he were at home, slugging down zaboravitis with other recruiters, they could talk trash about the war all the day long. But he was here, wearing its skin in a uniform, and it all felt like a personal attack.

“How?”

“Leave me alone.”

“By the order of the Dichtactura,” he said, using his commanding tone once more, “You are required to come back with me to face trial.”

She took another bite, her eyes haunted. “No, gospo.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to.”

Before he could grab a blaster to compel her, the bone-and-feather witch breathed on his neck. Her skinny white fingers viced around his elbow and, before he could think, she had stolen both blasters from him, the barrel of one was against the lower part of his crouched back.

“Come,” she said. The blaster wasn’t shooting him--but then again, it didn’t have to. “With me, broken one.”

As a boy, Jutarnji did not want to be a soldier: not when there were librarians and lavv tamers and tirlep catchers and men who designed and drove fancy tri-locks or even shi-locks. But with time, he had been reprimanded enough by his parents’ letters and video calls. Then, he learned what every man must know: if he was going to be a soldier, even if he never saw combat, he was going to be the best one out there.

So he tried to recall his training as the bone-and-feather witch directed him into the depths of the bog. Leg splinted, her daughter hobbled after. None of the villagers seemed to notice; they were all preoccupied once more with their fiery gifts. And even if they had seen, he doubted they would go against this insane woman, who clearly had some status. So he just needed to be patient. Find the right time.

“It’s against the law to harm a soldier if--”

“Long and short,” the witch said. “We know of the war. My daughter fell from the sky and she found her way back to me.”

“Fell from the sky?” His curiosity got the better of him. “It’s not possible.”

“The bog,” the girl whispered. “It saves us.”

“The sky does not belong to us. Their war is not ours,” the witch said, dropping both zatra blasters suddenly into the black muck. Before Jutarnji could track where they went, they sank, and he was dragged, floating on his boots, onward. Into an abyss as thick as wine. There were few animals here, so the only real light emanated from the woman’s cloak at his side.

“If you think about it, gospo,” the witch whispered. “It’s not your war, either.”

“You just don’t get it,” he spat, wishing he had his tablet to assist him--give him convincing words. “It’s all about interplanetary conflict and the Dichtacturaji treaty. We protect our planet, our people, our way of life--”

“The sky doesn’t deserve our love,” the girl called.

Done with playing the long-game, Jutarnji ripped his arm away. Surprisingly, the witch didn’t try to grab him again, and he smoothed down his jacket and regained his hovered footing. He stepped backward into nothingness as far as his courage would allow. “I demand you return my blasters to me. I don’t want to spin this as a form of kidnapping to my superiors, but I easily can if you don’t immediately return me to my vy-lock--”

“Gospo, I have been around for a long time.” The bone-and-feather witch slid through the darkness, the glow of her feathers reflecting off her shoulders and casting unsettling shadows under her skinny face. This was when he noticed: nothing reflected in the liquid below. Nothing, that is, but her cloak.

“You have told me about the sky war, which I do not believe is yours. Now, my daughter has returned, traveled long and far to tell us what was done to her in those skies, how they mutilated her body and destroyed her mind. I have made the decision: no one else will be leaving me. Not anymore.”

“But…” his fingers wove into fists. “Glory, honor, safety--”

“We have not been safe for as long as anyone can remember. This is why I wove the tree branches above to hide us from the skies. The war will not come for us.”

He scoffed, trying to imagine one woman weaving thick branches above--all in vain. “You really don’t understand how intergalactic war works. See them or not, they’ll come for you either way and you’ll die--”

“One day, yes. We will all die.” Her daughter stood far away, hardly a ghost in the darkness--though with no more bioluminescent creatures flouncing around, and they were so deep in the darkness now, it was clear. The girl was glowing. Truly, properly glowing. Like a fallen star.

But she did not reflect in the water. Not like the witch, who seemingly walked on her own self as she paced.

“You are so delightfully broken,” the witch said. “I can taste it.”

“Mama, please.” The girl, softly brightening in the background, had lowered her eyes. “Let him go. We don’t want him.”

“You are not we,” the witch said, turning back toward Jutarnji. “You will not leave us. You will not report my daughter. I’m afraid, if you do not agree to my terms, I may need to kill you.”

He did not like the sound of that. Until this point, he had been generous with allowing them to use the term “witch”: as if anyone could gather power that was not invented with blasters and money. Certainly, in a place as rural as this? What power could be here?

But the witch smiled.

“My daughter fell out of the sky, then found her way back,” she repeated. “When all of this is over, I hope you can, too.”

“I doubt it,” the daughter said.

And the bone-and-feather witch jumped onto him, lacing her long nails into the flesh of his shoulders. As his hoverboots remained in force, she couldn’t drag him down, but she did throw off his balance and it did not help that she was trying to shift her hands to scratch at his bare neck. She was going for the mask.

He rolled his shoulders to better his grip on her wrists, trying to chuck her off. He’d go back to the vy-lock, yes. Order it to drive away and then order the Dichtacli to come and teach this woman a lesson in humility. Maybe they would give him more backup going to these horrid, rural places--

He twisted her wrists back, and then he felt smaller fingers behind his head…

…and the mask broke off, slipping from his face and vanishing into the infinite mud. Unintentionally, he took in a breath: inhaling the stenches of corpses, of sour plants and dark musk and piss. This place smelled like death, what he imagined a distant battlefield above might smell like…

The bone-and-feather witch still pulled at him, drawing him toward the water. With a new and sudden flood of panic, Junior Sergeant Jutarnji shoved her off and elbowed away the daughter behind him. The hover boots were still functional--albeit sparking a bit--so he ran into the darkness, feeling like he was stepping through the deepest, most sour glass of wine he had ever drunk. He could hear the women hissing in their language behind him--now a mystery to him without the mask--so he figured he was headed in a good direction.

Back to the vy-lock, back to home. If only he had his blasters still…

Time seemed to elongate with each step, like the darkness was eating his life, pushing him down with the heavy cold air. But he still ran.

Finally, he heard clicking before him. Laughter. The gentle distant hope of vatrome sparkling ahead of him, and he was booking it back to the village, then to to home, the war and a safe night’s sleep, where--

A feminine voice slithered on every side of him now, echoing its unknown words. The witch. His heart rammed up to his throat.

Being afraid of one citizen? Of the dark? How pathetic of him. His superiors would despise it; his father would slap his face. This moment would live in the deepest part of his shame.

But as he skidded back into the feast, his boots still imbalanced under him, the villager’s laughter died. They all looked his way. They did not seem angry, or frightened. Mouths full of candies and treats, quite a few of them smiled. One old man offered a three-finger greeting. The relief of encountering people who didn’t seem like they were trying to kill him gave Jutarnji a temporary peace.

But as he heard the women shouting behind him, he remembered himself. Quickly, he stumbled toward the vy-lock, still waiting. Ready to order it back home. And if--

The bone-and-feather witch had been, somehow, just as fast as himself. More confusingly, the injured daughter had run back to the village as well. Standing on her own. There was no more splint.

The witch whispered something.

Her words seemed to awaken the village of Moqvara, who laughed and cheered. Dropping their treats, they rose from the dark ink. They wiped the crumbs off their mouths and then converged on him. Jutarnji barely rushed through the gathering crowd and jiggled open the vy-lock door before someone had grabbed one of his boots. Another grabbed his hips, the edges of his jacket, his legs. They were all shouting things at him--disgustingly joyous voices--and he struggled to kick them off.

“Stop!” he screamed back. One of his boots was taken off, and his foot plunged into the icy cold bog. He gasped. “I’m leaving! See? I won’t take any of you!”

But once one boot was off, it was over. The other boot was quickly beaten to death, and hands pushed down his shoulders, grappled around his stomach, headlocked his skull, pulled his body backward until he lost his balance. Until over a hundred hands were locking him into position. And, cheering, the mob plunged him under the mud.

Freezing darkness down there. Maybe the water was no taller than a military boot, but that was enough to cover his face entirely, his hair floating above him. Now, he forgot about his father. He was kicking, pushing, wishing that his tablet would tell him what to say. In utter panic, he was able to wrest the hands pinning his neck down off. He rose, gasping for air, trying to explain himself.

But they no longer spoke the same language.

No one seemed worried but him.

A half dozen hands covered his face and shoved him down a second time. The medals around his neck--the ones he did not earn--didn’t help. The hands became more clever as they angled forearms over his throat. Finally, a few people started sitting on his chest, shoving his face down with bare feet, keeping him where it was cold and infinite. It was no use; he screamed until he gagged on mud; he wanted to be home again…

*

Standing at the place where the bog ended and the red-sky swamps began, he noticed it one morning: a new object on the red horizon. On wheels. Rushing against the bruised skies.

A vy-lock. Yes, he thought. Gospo knew that word.

He had no memories of being frightened, and he wasn’t frightened now. But…something stirred in his chest, something that made him want to run.

Brushing the green hair off his face, he turned and raced back into the security of the bog.

This meant he had to pass the bones and quickly touch them before he could proceed.

In an abstract way, Gospo knew the bones belonged to him once: the specific ones piled in the mud under the sapadini tree. While he didn’t know how, he figured he should take care of them: he did his best to make sure they were all tidy and always safe underneath the bog water. Mama liked it when he did this.

“Mama!” he called, scooting between the playing children and the adults farming.

There she was, between two older people, who were asking advice on how to fix hinges into the doorway of a new hut. His hut, very soon. When he ran over to her, they all waved.

“Something is coming from the outerlands,” he said. “From beyond the bog! It looks…”

“Yes?”

“It looks familiar.”

Her clear eyes penetrated his. “Does this worry you, Gospo?”

He inspected his feelings. “I don’t think so?”

“Oh, very good, my son.” She wrapped an arm around him, cloaking him in the warmth of the glowing feathers. “Anything from outside? I will not let it hurt you.”

He knew this was true; from the moment he awoke in the absolute darkest place of the bog, rising from the water, gasping and naked and cold. Mama was there, waiting to dress him. To tell him it would all be alright.

“You are here,” she had told him when he rose. But her smile was flickering. “But all of you did not find your way back, did it?”

Now, in front of the doorway of his new hut, she crossed her arms and hissed, “If there are visitors, I will make sure they go away. Until then, go in peace. Feel no worry.”

Gospo smiled, and she drifted away, mumbling some last advice about the hinges. As she floated into the darkness, some of the children stuck out their tongues; she did so back. They giggled.

Mama took care of everything. With her, he had no nightmares, no frightening feelings to clutch his heart and fill him with panic. The world beyond the swamps outside was a mystery--he and his black blood had no impulses to travel particularly far. And the red skies above? The bleeding stars? Mama said never to worry. To not even look up.

She stepped into the darkness, where he watched her melt into the inky blackness.

And Mama was bog.

She would return when needed. Probably if the visitors did make a stop here in their vy-lock. Until then, he watched one of his sisters--a girl with a limp who was perpetually in a bad mood--who had apparently seen beyond the horizon and was corrupted by the darkness beyond--storm past him in the direction of the open-sky swamps. There was a sharp stone in her hand and she sent him a glare. No one liked her. What she had seen surely poisoned her.

“Because of the world outside,” his siblings whispered, “she is never satisfied here.”

Maybe Gospo had been out there, once. Like her. Sometimes she muttered strange curses at him, once even tried to beat him to death.

No matter, he thought. If she ever had another random urge to stab him again, black mud flowing from him and into the bog, he would get patched up. Mama.

This reminder helped calm his mind. If visitors were coming, nothing would stop them. So until then, he wanted to find a comforting place.

Gospo stepped into the comforting darkness of the bog.

Deep where the world felt like a blanket, he leaned back into the murky liquid and floated, face up toward the trees. Mama had grown the trees into such a lovely pattern, like fingers woven over him. Or like the ribs over a mother’s womb, keeping all the evils of an angry sky away.

And, like every other day he could remember, his insides sang a song of peace. He shut his eyes.

The bog knew who he was. Perhaps, one day, it would tell him.

***

Mari Molen is an MFA student at BYU teaching Creative Writing & Freshmen Rhetoric. Her literary work has been published in Inscape and her science fiction has been featured on The Appleseed Podcast. She is also a two-time honorable at Writers of the Future and a two-time winner of the Faculty Fiction award at Inscape. She has also been recognized by the Ann Dotty and Vera Hinckley Mayhew Awards. She takes inspiration from authors such as Ray Bradbury and Silvia-Moreno Garcia. The language presented in this story is based on Croatian, her grandmother's mother tongue. Obviously, Mari is afraid of bogs.