The Healer's Silent Warning

Story So Far

Dick was sent by Maren of the Emerald Grove to check the health of Thornfen Marsh, with her instruction to "go and listen." He arrived at the water's edge in morning mist carrying an oakwood staff and a herbal pouch at his hip, crouched near a heron, and noticed copper-stained water pooled by exposed roots on the far bank with reeds leaning away from it and frogs silent on that side. Dick set his staff in the mud, waded ankle-deep into cold water, slowed his breathing to match the marsh's rhythm, and made a low croak-like greeting to the heron. The heron fixed one yellow eye on him, stepped twice toward the far bank while looking back each time, then lifted one foot above the surface and held it there without setting it down; meanwhile the copper tinge was threading farther among the roots, several reeds on that bank were brown and rotting upward, and the frogs there remained silent.